Gregory EfthimiosLouganis is an American Olympic diver, LGBT activist, and author who won gold medals at the 1984 and 1988 Summer Olympics, on both the springboard and platform. He is the only man and the second diver in Olympic history to sweep the diving events in consecutive Olympic Games. He has been called both "the greatest American diver" and "probably the greatest diver in history".
The LGBT community is a loosely defined grouping of lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, LGBT organizations, and subcultures, united by a common culture and social movements. These communities generally celebrate pride, diversity, individuality, and sexuality. LGBT activists and sociologists see LGBT 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 LGBT 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 LGBT community is diverse in political affiliation. Not all people who are lesbian, gay, bisexual, or transgender consider themselves part of the LGBT community.
Gay bashing and gay bullying is an attack, abuse, or assault committed against a person who is perceived by the aggressor to be gay, lesbian, bisexual, or transgender. The attack may be physical or verbal. This can also include abuse, bullying or assaults perpetrated against a heterosexual person whom the attacker perceives to be LGBT.
PFLAG is the United States' first and largest organization uniting parents, families, and allies with people who are lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer (LGBTQ+). PFLAG National is the national organization, which provides support to the PFLAG network of local chapters. PFLAG has over 400 chapters across the United States, with more than 200,000 members and supporters.
In gay slang, a "friend of Dorothy" (FOD) is a gay man; and more broadly, any LGBTQ person. Stating that, or asking if someone was a friend of Dorothy was a furtive shibboleth used for discussing sexual orientation while avoiding hostility.
LGBT culture is a culture shared by lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer individuals. It is sometimes referred to as queer culture, while the term gay culture may be used to mean "LGBT culture" or to refer specifically to homosexual culture.
Jean O'Leary was an American lesbian and gay rights activist. She was the founder of Lesbian Feminist Liberation, one of the first lesbian activist groups in the women's movement, and an early member and co-director of the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force. She co-founded National Coming Out Day.
The Hetrick-Martin Institute (HMI) is a New York City-based non-profit organization devoted to serving the needs of lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, or questioning (LGBTQ) youth between the ages of 13 and 24, and their families.
Barbara Gittings was a prominent American activist for LGBT equality. She organized the New York chapter of the Daughters of Bilitis (DOB) from 1958 to 1963, edited the national DOB magazine The Ladder from 1963–66, and worked closely with Frank Kameny in the 1960s on the first picket lines that brought attention to the ban on employment of gay people by the largest employer in the US at that time: the United States government. Her early experiences with trying to learn more about lesbianism fueled her lifetime work with libraries. In the 1970s, Gittings was most involved in the American Library Association, especially its gay caucus, the first such in a professional organization, in order to promote positive literature about homosexuality in libraries. She was a part of the movement to get the American Psychiatric Association to drop homosexuality as a mental illness in 1972. Her self-described life mission was to tear away the "shroud of invisibility" related to homosexuality, which had theretofore been associated with crime and mental illness.
Edythe D. Eyde better known by her pen name Lisa Ben, was an American editor, author, active fantasy-fiction fan and fanzine contributor, and songwriter. She created the first known lesbian publication in North America, Vice Versa. Ben produced the magazine for a year and distributed it locally in Los Angeles, California in the late 1940s. She was also active in lesbian bars as a musician in the years following her involvement with Vice Versa. Eyde has been recognized as a pioneer in the LGBT movement.
Timeline of events related to sexual orientation and medicine
Harold Leland "Hal" Call was an American businessperson, LGBT rights activist, and U.S. Army veteran. He served as president of the Mattachine Society and in the 1950s, was one of the first gay activists to speak publicly on television. Call founded printing presses for LGBT publications and later opened gay adult shops and pornographic film screening venues. He received a Purple Heart for his service in the Pacific War.
Kevin Brett Jennings is an American educator, author, and administrator. He was the assistant deputy secretary for the Office of Safe and Drug-Free Schools at the U.S. Department of Education from July 6, 2009 – June 2011.
Jeanne Sobelson Manford was an American schoolteacher and activist. She co-founded the support group organization, PFLAG, for which she was awarded the 2012 Presidential Citizens Medal.
Shirley Willer was an American feminist and activist. Born in Chicago, Illinois, Willer joined the Daughters of Bilitis (DOB) in the 1950s and became the president of the organization a few years after. Because of her energy and dedication, she helped to revolutionize the homophile movement in the 1960s and helped pave the way for future civil rights advancements for the gay community.
Homonormativity is the privileging of heteronormative ideals and constructs onto LGBT culture and identity. It is predicated on the assumption that the norms and values of heterosexuality should be replicated and performed among homosexual people. Homonormativity selectively privileges cisgendered homosexuality as worthy of social acceptance.
Making Gay History is an oral history podcast on the subject of LGBT history, featuring trailblazers, activists, and allies. Most episodes draw on the three-decade-old audio archive of rare interviews that the podcast's founder and host Eric Marcus conducted for the two editions of his oral history book about the LGBT movement, which he was commissioned to write in the late 1980s. In February 2020, Making Gay History was adapted for the stage at New York University's Steinhardt School of Culture, Education, and Human Development.
Billye Talmadge, also known as Billie Tallmij, was a lesbian American activist and educator at the forefront of the burgeoning gay liberation movement in the 1950-60s as well as a founding member of the Daughters of Bilitis, the first organization established to fight explicitly for lesbian civil and political rights in the United States. Her main focus was empowering lesbian youth through education and counseling at a time when many homosexual and lesbian voices had been silenced by the current social and political climate.
