Don Kilhefner is an LGBTQ rights activist, community organizer, and Jungian psychologist living in West Hollywood, California. [1] He founded and co-founded multiple gay organizations, [2] including the Radical Faeries, [3] the LA Community Services Center [4] (now the Los Angeles LGBT Center), and the Van Ness Recovery House. [5]
Kilhefner was born March 3, 1938, in Ephrata, Pennsylvania [1]
He finished high school and enrolled Millersville University, where he majored in history. [1] His attained his first master's degree, in African American History, from Howard University. [6]
After completing college he taught German and world history in high school for a year in suburban Wilmington. He was one of the first to volunteer for the Peace Corps in 1962. [7] He spent three years of his life living in Ethiopia, while teaching secondary school history. [1]
The LGBTQ community is a loosely defined grouping of lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer or questioning individuals united by a common culture and social movements. These communities generally celebrate pride, diversity, individuality, and sexuality. LGBTQ activists and sociologists see LGBTQ community-building as a counterweight to heterosexism, homophobia, biphobia, transphobia, sexualism, and conformist pressures that exist in the larger society. The term pride or sometimes gay pride expresses the LGBTQ community's identity and collective strength; pride parades provide both a prime example of the use and a demonstration of the general meaning of the term. The LGBTQ community is diverse in political affiliation. Not all people who are lesbian, gay, bisexual, or transgender consider themselves part of the LGBTQ community.
Henry Hay Jr. was an American gay rights activist, communist, and labor advocate. He cofounded the Mattachine Society, the first sustained gay rights group in the United States, as well as the Radical Faeries, a loosely affiliated gay spiritual movement. Hay has been described as "the Founder of the Modern Gay Movement" and "the father of gay liberation".
Radical Faeries are a loosely affiliated worldwide network and countercultural movement seeking to redefine queer consciousness through secular spirituality. Sometimes deemed a form of modern Paganism, the movement also adopts elements from anarchism and environmentalism. Rejecting hetero-imitation, the Radical Faerie movement began during the 1970s sexual revolution among gay men in the United States.
Founded in 1952, One Institute, is the oldest active LGBTQ+ organization in the United States, dedicated to telling LGBTQ+ history and stories through education, arts, and social justice programs. Since its inception, the organization has been headquartered in Los Angeles, California.
Troy Deroy Perry Jr. is an American cleric and the founder of the Metropolitan Community Church, with a ministry with the lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender communities, in Los Angeles on October 6, 1968.
Over the course of its history, the LGBTQ community has adopted certain symbols for self-identification to demonstrate unity, pride, shared values, and allegiance to one another. These symbols communicate ideas, concepts, and identity both within their communities and to mainstream culture. The two symbols most recognized internationally are the pink triangle and the rainbow flag.
The Los Angeles LGBT Center is a provider of programs and services for lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people. The organization's work spans four categories, including health, social services, housing, and leadership and advocacy. The center is the largest facility in the world providing services to LGBT people.
Eric Rofes was a gay activist, educator, and author. He was a director of the Los Angeles Gay and Lesbian Center in the 1980s. In 1989, he became executive director of the Shanti Project, a nonprofit AIDS service organization. He was a professor of Education at Humboldt State University in Arcata, California, and served on the board of the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force. He wrote or edited twelve books. One of his last projects was co-creating "Gay Men's Health Leadership Academies" to combat what he saw as a "pathology-focused understanding of gay men" in safe-sex education.
John Lyon Burnside III was an American inventor and gay rights activist, known for inventing the teleidoscope, darkfield kaleidoscope, and the Symmetricon. Because he rediscovered the math behind kaleidoscope optics, makers of optically correct kaleidoscopes sold in the United States paid him royalties for decades. Burnside was the life partner of Harry Hay from 1962 until Hay's death in 2002. Burnside was living in San Francisco, at the time of his death on September 14, 2008, from complications of brain cancer.
The GLBT Historical Society maintains an extensive collection of archival materials, artifacts and graphic arts relating to the history of LGBTQ people in the United States, with a focus on the LGBT communities of San Francisco and Northern California.
Mitchell Lynn Walker is an American gay activist and Jungian psychologist who has written many influential articles and books on gay-centered psychology.
The first openly lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender clergy in Judaism were ordained as rabbis and/or cantors in the second half of the 20th century.
The lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer, and other non-heterosexual or non-cisgender (LGBTQ+) community is prevalent within sports across the world.
Ivy Bottini was an American activist for women's and LGBT rights, and a visual artist.
Jeanne Córdova was an American writer and supporter of the lesbian and gay rights movement, founder of The Lesbian Tide, and a founder of the West Coast LGBT movement. A former Catholic nun, Córdova was a second-wave feminist lesbian activist and self-described butch.
The David Bohnett Foundation is a private foundation that gives grants to organizations that focus on its core giving areas – primarily Los Angeles area programs and LGBT rights in the United States, as well as leadership initiatives and voter education, gun violence prevention, and animal language research. It was founded by David Bohnett in 1999. As of 2022, the foundation has donated $125 million to nonprofit organizations and initiatives.
The lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBTQ) community in San Francisco is one of the largest and most prominent LGBT communities in the United States, and is one of the most important in the history of American LGBT rights and activism alongside New York City. The city itself has been described as "the original 'gay-friendly city'". LGBT culture is also active within companies that are based in Silicon Valley, which is located within the southern San Francisco Bay Area.
Although often characterized as apolitical, “Los Angeles has provided the setting for many important chapters in the struggle for gay and lesbian community, visibility, and civil rights." Moreover, Los Angeles' LGBTQ community has historically played a significant role in the development of the entertainment industry.
Dr. Virginia Uribe was an American educator, counselor and LGBT youth education outreach advocate. She was best known for founding the Los Angeles Unified School District's Project 10 program, an educational support and drop-out prevention program for LGBT youth, and the nonprofit arm of the Project 10 program, Friends of Project 10 Inc.