Thomas M. Tunney is an American politician and entrepreneur from Chicago, Illinois. From 2003 to 2023, he served as an alderman on the Chicago City Council. He represented the 44th Ward of the city, which includes major tourist destinations, Northalsted and Wrigleyville neighborhoods. He was also vice mayor from 2019 to 2023.
Cherríe Moraga is an influential Chicana feminist writer, activist, poet, essayist, and playwright. A prominent figure in Chicana literature and feminist theory, Moraga's work explores the intersections of gender, sexuality, race, and class, with particular emphasis on the experiences of Chicana and Indigenous women. She currently serves as Distinguished Professor in the Department of English at the University of California, Santa Barbara.
David Thorstad was an American political activist who co-founded or ran a number of homosexual rights groups following the Stonewall riots in 1969, including as a former president of New York's Gay Activists Alliance. He later engaged in pedophilia and pederasty activism with the North American Man/Boy Love Association (NAMBLA), of which he was a founding member.
Gayle S. Rubin is an American cultural anthropologist, theorist and activist, best known for her pioneering work in feminist theory and queer studies.
Bisexual erasure, also called bisexual invisibility, is the tendency to ignore, remove, falsify, or re-explain evidence of bisexuality in history, academia, the news media, and other primary sources.
This article addresses the history of lesbianism in the United States. Unless otherwise noted, the members of same-sex female couples discussed here are not known to be lesbian, but they are mentioned as part of discussing the practice of lesbianism—that is, same-sex female sexual and romantic behavior.
Valerie Taylor was an American author of books published in the lesbian pulp fiction genre, as well as poetry and novels after the "golden age" of lesbian pulp fiction. She also published as Nacella Young, Francine Davenport, and Velma Tate. Her publishers included Naiad Press, Banned Books, Universal, Gold Medal Books, Womanpress, Ace and Midwood-Tower.
The Front homosexuel d'action révolutionnaire (FHAR) was a loose Parisian movement founded in 1971, resulting from an alliance between lesbian feminists and gay male activists. The movement had no official leaders, but Guy Hocquenghem and Françoise d'Eaubonne were among its most prominent representatives, while other members included Christine Delphy, Daniel Guérin, and Laurent Dispot. It had disappeared by 1976. Surviving early activists also include painter and surrealist photographer Yves Hernot, now living in Sydney, Australia.
GLQ: A Journal of Lesbian and Gay Studies is a scholarly, peer-reviewed journal based published by Duke University Press. It was co-founded by David M. Halperin and Carolyn Dinshaw in the early 1990s. In its mission, the journal seeks "to offer queer perspectives on all issues touching on sex and sexuality." It covers religion, science studies, politics, law, and literary studies.
Deborah L. "Deb" Mell is an American politician from Chicago. She is a Democrat and was formerly a member of the Chicago City Council, representing the 33rd ward. She previously served in the Illinois House of Representatives from 2009 to 2013.
Sharon Kleinbaum is an American rabbi who served as spiritual leader of New York City's Congregation Beit Simchat Torah for 32 years. She is now the synagogue's first Senior Rabbi Emerita. She has been an active campaigner for human rights and civil marriage for gay couples.
Susan O'Neal Stryker, best known as Susan Stryker, is an American professor, historian, author, filmmaker, and theorist whose work focuses on gender and sexuality and trans realities. She is a professor of Gender and Women's Studies, former director of the Institute for LGBT Studies, and founder of the Transgender Studies Initiative at the University of Arizona. Stryker is the author of several books and a founding figure of transgender studies as well as a leading scholar of transgender history.
Racism is a concern for many in the Western lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBTQ) communities, with members of racial, ethnic, and national minorities reporting having faced discrimination from other LGBT people.
Paris, the capital of France, has an active LGBTQ community. In the 1990s, 46% of the country's gay men lived in the city. As of 2004, Paris had 140 LGBT bars, clubs, hotels, restaurants, shops, and other commercial businesses. Florence Tamagne, author of "Paris: 'Resting on its Laurels'?", wrote that there is a "Gaité parisienne"; she added that Paris "competes with Berlin for the title of LGBT capital of Europe, and ranks only second behind New York for the title of LGBT capital of the world." It has France's only gayborhoods that are officially organized.
The African-American LGBT community, otherwise referred to as the Black American LGBT community, is part of the overall LGBTQ culture and overall African-American culture. The initialism LGBT stands for lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender.
William B. Kelley was a gay activist and lawyer from Chicago, Illinois. Many laud him as an important figure in gaining rights for gay people in the United States, as he was actively involved in gay activism for 50 years.
Adrienne J. Smith (1934–1992) was an American psychologist. She came out as a lesbian in 1973 and became one of the first openly out lesbian psychologists in the American Psychological Association (APA). She worked for reforms in the APA and spoke on LGBT rights across the country.
