“No Pride for some of us without liberation for all of us.” – Marsha P Johnson Who Was Marsha P. Johnson? Marsha P Johnson was a Black transgender woman, drag queen, and activist. She was assigned male at birth on August 24, 1945, and recognized early on that she was more comfortable wearing clothing traditionally…
The History of the Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell Military Policy You might be familiar with the “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy from the 1990s, but have you ever wondered how we got there? In the early 1950s, Senator Joseph McCarthy, leader of the fear-based anti-communism campaign known as the “Red Scare,” launched the “Lavender Scare.” A…
The time between when AIDS was first recognized as an epidemic and when President Reagan finally publicly acknowledged it was approximately four years. When it was first publicly acknowledged by the White House staff in 1982, the Press Secretary, Larry Speakes, took the opportunity to crack a homophobic gay “joke” rather than answer the question professionally, and asking the reporter,…
