David Eisenbach is a historian and an expert on media and politics and a lecturer in the history department at Columbia University. [1] He was a Democratic candidate for New York City's Public Advocate in the 2017 primary election, where he received 23.42% and 92,246 votes against incumbent Letitia James. [2] He was also a candidate in the February 2019 non-partisan special election for the same position in which he came in 13th place in a field of 17.
Eisenbach received a BA in modern European history from Columbia University in 1994, an MA in history education from Teachers College, Columbia University, and an MA (2001), MPhil (2003) and a PhD (2006) in American history from the Columbia Graduate School of Arts and Sciences.
At Columbia, he teaches courses on the U.S. presidency and media and politics. At the Manhattan School of Music, where he has been on the faculty since 1995, he teaches courses on American history, Shakespeare’s tragedies, and the literature of the 1960s. [3]
Although identifying as straight, [4] Dr. Eisenbach's first book, Gay Power: An American Revolution (2006) is a history of how the gay rights movement in the 1960s and 1970s transformed American politics and society. The American Library Association named Gay Power a 2007 Stonewall honor book, [5] and it was a finalist for the 2007 Lambda Literary Awards in LGBT Studies.
Together with Larry Flynt, Eisenbach co-wrote One Nation Under Sex (2011) which documents how the private lives of America's most powerful leaders shaped history. [6]
Dr. Eisenbach was the communications director for Senator Mike Gravel's 2008 presidential election campaign.
He was a Democratic candidate for New York City's Public Advocate in the 2017 primary election, where he received 23.42% and 92,246 votes against incumbent Letitia James. [2] He was also a candidate in the February 2019 non-partisan special election for the same position in which he came in 13th place in a field of 17.
Eisenbach has been a featured expert and historian on a number of TV productions, including those on AMC, the History Channel and SundanceTV:
David Eisenbach is referenced in "David," the opening track of Nellie McKay's 2004 album, Get Away from Me. "David" begins with "Hcabnesie" ("Eisenbach" backward) sung several times. Eisenbach was one of McKay's professors during her short stay at the Manhattan School of Music.
Larry Claxton Flynt Jr. was an American publisher and the president of Larry Flynt Publications (LFP). LFP mainly produces pornographic magazines, such as Hustler, pornographic videos, and three pornographic television channels named Hustler TV. Flynt fought several high-profile legal battles involving the First Amendment, and unsuccessfully ran for public office. He was paralyzed from the waist down due to injuries sustained in a 1978 attempted assassination by serial killer Joseph Paul Franklin. In 2003, Arena magazine listed him at No. 1 on the "50 Powerful People in Porn" list.
Maurice Robert "Mike" Gravel was an American politician and writer who represented Alaska in the United States Senate from 1969 to 1981 as a member of the Democratic Party. He ran for president twice in 2008 and 2020.
Laurence David Kramer was an American playwright, author, film producer, public health advocate, and gay rights activist. He began his career rewriting scripts while working for Columbia Pictures, which led him to London, where he worked with United Artists. There he wrote the screenplay for the film Women in Love (1969) and received an Academy Award nomination for his work.
Urvashi Vaid was an Indian-born American LGBT rights activist, lawyer, and writer. An expert in gender and sexuality law, she was a consultant in attaining specific goals of social justice. She held a series of roles at the National LGBTQ Task Force, serving as executive director from 1989-1992 — the first woman of color to lead a national gay-and-lesbian organization. She is the author of Virtual Equality: The Mainstreaming of Gay and Lesbian Liberation (1995) and Irresistible Revolution: Confronting Race, Class and the Assumptions of LGBT Politics (2012).
Michael Callen was an American singer, songwriter, composer, author, and AIDS activist. Callen was diagnosed with AIDS in 1982 and became a pioneer of AIDS activism in New York City, working closely with his doctor, Dr. Joseph Sonnabend, and Richard Berkowitz. Together, they published articles and pamphlets to raise awareness about the correlation between risky sexual behaviors and AIDS.
Stonewall is a 1995 British-American historical comedy-drama film directed by Nigel Finch, his final film before his AIDS-related death shortly after filming ended. Inspired by the memoir of the same title by gay historian Martin Duberman, Stonewall is a fictionalized account of the weeks leading up to the Stonewall riots, a seminal event in the modern American gay rights movement. The film stars Guillermo Díaz, Frederick Weller, Brendan Corbalis, and Duane Boutte.
John Nelson Sullivan was an American videographer who chronicled life in Downtown Manhattan’s arts and club scene from 1983 until his death. His hundreds of videos documented daily life in the city, wild nights out on the town, and private moments with his many famous friends — including RuPaul, Keith Haring, Sylvia Miles, Larry Tee, Susanne Bartsch, Tom Rubnitz, Lady Bunny, Phoebe Legere, Michael Musto, Ethyl Eichelberger, John Sex, and Michael Alig.
PinkNews is a UK-based online newspaper marketed to the lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer, and questioning community (LGBTQ+) in the UK and worldwide. It was founded by Benjamin Cohen in July 2005.
Gay Sex in the 70s is a 2005 American documentary film about gay sexual culture in New York City in the 1970s. The film was directed by Joseph Lovett and encompasses the twelve years of sexual freedom bookended by the Stonewall riots of 1969 and the recognition of AIDS in 1981, and features interviews with Larry Kramer, Tom Bianchi, Barton Lidice Beneš, Rodger McFarlane, and many others.
This is a list of notable events in the history of LGBT rights that took place in the 1960s.
The North American Conference of Homophile Organizations was an umbrella organization for a number of homophile organizations. Founded in 1966, the goal of NACHO was to expand coordination among homophile organizations throughout the Americas. Homophile activists were motivated in part by an increase in mainstream media attention to gay issues. Some feared that without a centralized organization, the movement would be hijacked, in the words of founding member Foster Gunnison Jr., by "fringe elements, beatniks, and other professional non-conformists".
A zap is a form of political direct action that came into use in the 1970s in the United States. Popularized by the early gay liberation group Gay Activists Alliance, a zap was a raucous public demonstration designed to embarrass a public figure or celebrity while calling the attention of both gays and straights to issues of gay rights.
Arnie Kantrowitz was an American LGBT activist and college professor. He authored two books and contributed articles, essays, poems and short fiction to magazines, newspapers and anthologies.
New York state, a state in the northeastern United States, has one of the largest and the most prominent LGBTQ populations in the world. Brian Silverman, the author of Frommer's New York City from $90 a Day, wrote that New York City has "one of the world's largest, loudest, and most powerful" LGBT communities", and "Gay and lesbian culture is as much a part of New York's basic identity as yellow cabs, high-rises, and Broadway theatre". LGBT travel guide Queer in the World states, "The fabulosity of Gay New York is unrivaled on Earth, and queer culture seeps into every corner of its five boroughs". LGBT Americans in New York City constitute by significant margins the largest self-identifying lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender communities in the United States, and the 1969 Stonewall riots in Greenwich Village are widely considered to be the genesis of the modern gay rights movement.
LGBT history in the United States spans the contributions and struggles of lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) people, as well as the LGBTQ social movements they have built.
New York City has been described as the gay capital of the world and the central node of the LGBTQ+ sociopolitical ecosystem, and is home to one of the world's largest and most prominent LGBTQ+ populations. Brian Silverman, the author of Frommer's New York City from $90 a Day, wrote the city has "one of the world's largest, loudest, and most powerful LGBT communities", and "Gay and lesbian culture is as much a part of New York's basic identity as yellow cabs, high-rise buildings, and Broadway theatre". LGBT travel guide Queer in the World states, "The fabulosity of Gay New York is unrivaled on Earth, and queer culture seeps into every corner of its five boroughs". LGBT advocate and entertainer Madonna stated metaphorically, "Anyways, not only is New York City the best place in the world because of the queer people here. Let me tell you something, if you can make it here, then you must be queer."
Richard Joseph Leitsch, also known as Richard Valentine Leitsch and more commonly Dick Leitsch, was an American LGBT rights activist. He was president of gay rights group the Mattachine Society in the 1960s. He conceptualized and led the "Sip-In" at Julius' Bar, one of the earliest acts of gay civil disobedience in the United States, LGBT activists used "sip-ins" to attempt to gain the legal right to drink in bars in New York. He was also known for being the first gay reporter to publish an account of the Stonewall Riots and the first person to interview Bette Midler in print media.
The 2020 presidential campaign of Mike Gravel, former U.S. senator from Alaska, began on March 19, 2019 with the formation of an exploratory committee, followed on April 2, 2019 with his campaign filing with the Federal Elections Commission to officially run for the presidency. Gravel's initial intention was not to win the nomination, but rather to inject his platform into the conversation so that his ideas become part of the mainstream, though he announced that he was "running to win" on April 29, potentially after realizing that a candidacy focused on sending a message rather than putting him in the presidency might disqualify him from the primary debates.
Stonewall is an American opera about the 1969 Stonewall riots, the spark of the modern LGBTQ rights movement, which received its world premiere June 2019 in conjunction with Stonewall 50 – WorldPride NYC 2019, projected to be the world's largest LGBTQ event. Stonewall was commissioned by New York City Opera (NYCO), and features music by Iain Bell, libretto by Pulitzer Prize-winning Mark Campbell, and direction by Leonard Foglia. The production is a 2019 Pride Initiative of the NYCO, an annual production of an LGBT-focused work each June in commemoration of Gay Pride Month. The opera premiered in June 2019 at the Rose Theater at Jazz at Lincoln Center. The opera was produced to honor both the 50th anniversary of the Stonewall Riots, and the 75th anniversary of the NYCO. Stonewall is the first opera to feature a transgender character written for an openly transgender singer, mezzo-soprano Liz Bouk.