A kissing booth is an attraction, usually at a carnival, where the person running the booth kisses other people, often to raise funds for charity. [1] There are newspaper articles dating back to at least the early 1900s advertising upcoming kissing booths and their "osculatory favors". [2] A 1918 article from The Garden Island newspaper states, "All the horors [sic] of war disappears for the man with a roll of bills at the Red Cross kissing booth -- that is 'till his wife sees him." [3]
At a national convention of the American Library Association in Dallas in 1971, LGBT equality campaigner Barbara Gittings staffed a kissing booth underneath the banner "Hug a Homosexual," with a "women only" side and a "men only" side. [4] [5] When no one took advantage of it, she and Alma Routsong kissed in front of rolling television cameras. In describing its success, despite most of the reaction being negative, Gittings said, "We needed to get an audience. So we decided, let's show gay love live. We were offering free—mind you, free—same-sex kisses and hugs. Let me tell you, the aisles were mobbed, but no one came into the booth to get a free hug. So we hugged and kissed each other. It was shown twice on the evening news, once again in the morning. It put us on the map." [6]
American musician Marnie Stern ran a kissing booth at some of her concerts in 2008. [7] [8]
The Daughters of Bilitis, also called the DOB or the Daughters, was the first lesbian civil and political rights organization in the United States. The organization, formed in San Francisco in 1955, was conceived as a social alternative to lesbian bars, which were subject to raids and police harassment. As the DOB gained members, their focus shifted to providing support to women who were afraid to come out. The DOB educated them about their rights, and about gay history. The historian Lillian Faderman declared, "Its very establishment in the midst of witch-hunts and police harassment was an act of courage, since members always had to fear that they were under attack, not because of what they did, but merely because of who they were." The Daughters of Bilitis endured for 14 years, becoming an educational resource for lesbians, gay men, researchers and mental health professionals.
The American Library Association (ALA) is a nonprofit organization based in the United States that promotes libraries and library education internationally. It is the oldest and largest library association in the world, with 49,727 members as of 2021.
Canal Street is a street in Manchester city centre in North West England and the centre of Manchester's gay village. The pedestrianised street, which runs along the west side of the Rochdale Canal, is lined with gay bars and restaurants. At night time, and in daytime in the warmer months, the street is filled with visitors, often including LGBT tourists from all over the world. The northern end of the street meets Minshull Street and the southern meets Princess Street; part of the street looks across the Rochdale Canal into Sackville Gardens.
The Detroit News is one of the two major newspapers in the U.S. city of Detroit, Michigan. The paper began in 1873, when it rented space in the rival Detroit Free Press's building. The News absorbed the Detroit Tribune on February 1, 1919, the Detroit Journal on July 21, 1922, and on November 7, 1960, it bought and closed the faltering Detroit Times. However, it retained the Times' building, which it used as a printing plant until 1975, when a new facility opened in Sterling Heights. The Times building was demolished in 1978. The street in downtown Detroit where the Times building once stood is still called "Times Square." The Evening News Association, owner of The News, merged with Gannett in 1985.
The 16th Annual GLAAD Media Awards (2005) were presented at three separate ceremonies: March 28 in New York; April 30 in Los Angeles; and June 11 in San Francisco. The awards were presented to honor "fair, accurate and inclusive" representations of gay individuals in the media.
The Ladder was the first nationally distributed lesbian publication in the United States. It was published monthly from 1956 to 1970, and once every other month in 1971 and 1972. It was the primary publication and method of communication for the Daughters of Bilitis (DOB), the first lesbian organization in the US. It was supported by ONE, Inc. and the Mattachine Society, with whom the DOB retained friendly relations. The name of the magazine was derived from the artwork on its first cover, simple line drawings showing figures moving towards a ladder that disappeared into the clouds.
"Let's Go to Bed" is a song by English rock band the Cure, released as a stand-alone single by Fiction Records in November 1982. In the aftermath of the dark Pornography, Robert Smith returned from a month-long detox in the Lake District to write the song, the antithesis to what the Cure currently represented. It was later included on the album Japanese Whispers, which compiles the band's three singles from 1982-83 and their five B-sides.
"Cowboys Are Frequently, Secretly Fond of Each Other" (1981) is a song by Latin country musician Ned Sublette, whose music, according to Howard Cohen, features a "lilting West Texas waltz feel". It is, according to Gene Tyranny, "the famous gay cowboy song". The lyrics satirize the stereotypes associated with cowboys and gay men, such as in the lyrics relating western wear to the leather subculture with the line: "What did you think all them saddles and boots was about?"
King & King is a children's picture book co-authored and co-illustrated by Stern Nijland and Linda De Haan. King & King tells the story of a young prince whose mother is forcing him to find his princess. However, after meeting many princesses, the prince falls in love with another prince. King & King was originally written in Dutch and has since been published in ten languages. The book's illustrations have received both positive and negative reviews, as has the storyline. The book has been analyzed for both its usefulness in the classroom and its challenges to social norms.
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 to 1966, 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.
John Ercel Fryer, M.D. was an American psychiatrist and gay rights activist best known for his anonymous speech at the 1972 American Psychiatric Association (APA) annual conference, where he appeared in disguise and under the name Dr. Henry Anonymous. That event has been cited as a key factor in the decision to de-list homosexuality as a mental illness from the APA Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders. The APA "John E. Fryer, M.D., Award" is named in his honor.
Alma Routsong was an American novelist best known for her lesbian fiction, published under the pen name Isabel Miller.
Luke Snyder and Noah Mayer are fictional characters and a supercouple from the American CBS daytime drama As the World Turns. Luke was portrayed by Van Hansis, and Noah was portrayed by Jake Silbermann. On Internet message boards, the couple is referred to by the portmanteau "Nuke". They are notable for being one of American daytime television's first gay male couples.
Christian Clarke is a fictional character from the BBC soap opera EastEnders, portrayed by John Partridge. He first appeared in the show's 3,509th episode, originally broadcast in the United Kingdom on 17 January 2008, and was introduced as the brother of established character Jane Beale. He was introduced as a new homosexual character for the show, following the popularity of Coronation Street's Sean Tully. Christian and Partridge's casting were announced on 20 November 2007.
Katherine Lahusen was an American photographer, writer and gay rights activist. She was the first openly lesbian American photojournalist. Under Lahusen's art direction, photographs of lesbians appeared on the cover of The Ladder for the first time. It was one of many projects she undertook with partner Barbara Gittings, who was then The Ladder's editor. As an activist, Lahusen was involved with the founding of the Gay Activists Alliance (GAA) in 1970 and the removal of homosexuality from the American Psychiatric Association's Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM). She contributed writing and photographs to a New York–based Gay Newsweekly, and co-authored two books: The Gay Crusaders in 1972 with Randy Wicker and Love and Resistance: Out of the Closet into the Stonewall Era, collecting their photographs with Diana Davies in 2019.
Janet Jackson is an American pop and R&B singer-songwriter and actress. Jackson garnered a substantial gay following during the 1990s as she gained prominence in popular music. Recognized as a long-term ally of the LGBT community, Jackson received the GLAAD Media Award for Outstanding Music Album for her Grammy Award-winning sixth studio album The Velvet Rope (1997), which spoke out against homophobia and embraced same-sex love. In 2005, Jackson received the Humanitarian Award from the Human Rights Campaign and AIDS Project Los Angeles in recognition of her involvement in raising funds for AIDS Charities and received the Vanguard Award at the 19th Annual GLAAD Media Awards in 2008. In June 2012, Jackson announced she is currently executive producing a documentary on the lives of transgender people around the world titled Truth, saying she agreed to sign on to help stop discrimination against the transgender community.
Queer Liberaction (QL) is a Dallas–Fort Worth, Texas-based grassroots organization advocating for lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) rights. The group was founded in November 2008 following the international attention surrounding California's Proposition 8, which changed that state's Constitution to deny marriage rights to any LGBT couples who are not defined as "a man and a woman", passed by a slight majority. The organization is a proponent of same-sex marriage rights for LGBT couples, considering civil unions and domestic partnerships as less than full equality.
Max Adler is an American actor. He is best known for his role as Dave Karofsky on the television series Glee (2009–2015).
No Joy are a Canadian shoegaze band from Montreal formed in late 2009 by Jasamine White-Gluz and former member Laura Lloyd.
In the post-Stonewall era, the role of libraries in providing information and services to LGBTQ individuals has been a topic of discussion among library professionals. Libraries can often play an important role for LGBTQ individuals looking to find information about coming out, health, and family topics, as well as leisure reading. In the past 50 years, advocate organizations for LGBTQ content in libraries have emerged, and numerous theorists have discussed various aspects of LGBTQ library service including privacy concerns, programming, collection development considerations and librarian/staff education needs, as well as special services for juvenile and teen patrons.
 | This festival-related article is a stub. You can help Wikipedia by expanding it. |