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I can think of five individuals who have passed in 2018 and only two of them have recorded their experiences in our archive. We see this playing out again as LGBT-identifying folks are struggling to embrace non-binary gender and sexual identities.ĭuring 2018, our region lost some of our LGBTQ elders. The world talked about the gay community and lesbians but rarely acknowledged (much less validated) bisexual, queer and transgender identities.
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Long before gender identity was part of our conversation, our transgender siblings experienced multiple levels of oppression in the gay and lesbian community at the time. Racism manifested itself and shaped the emergence of the general LGBTQ community.Įlders shared the experience of surviving the AIDS epidemic and witnessing its toll firsthand. Despite social stigma, it sometimes went more smoothly than expected. Bars provided the main refuge for people of age.įor a significant portion of our elders, coming out was something that happened much later in life for a myriad of reasons.
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Some wrote of the time when when there were no activities for LGBTQ youth and adults could barely navigate everyday life safely. But for my purposes, I define elder as anyone over 45 because of accumulated wisdom and life experiences.Įlders shared a variety experiences. One contributor described his coming out experience during the John Kennedy administration in the early 1960s. Sponsored by the Dick Thornburgh Forum for Law & Public Policy Contributors range from age 18 to 75, identify as part of the LGBTQ community and have a self-defined significant tie to Western Pennsylvania. The contributions are marvelous in their unique and sprawling descriptions of coming out, political opinions and assessments of pop culture. In 2015, I launched The #AMPLIFY LGBTQ project, describing our stories in our own words through a question-and-answer format.Ĭollecting the first-person history of community elders in particular has highlighted the disconnect among generations and opened my eyes to experiences from Pittsburgh’s queer past I had never considered before the project, experiences that I now realize must be preserved. I was fortunate to participate in some of these experiences of Pride, many of which served as a gateway to Pittsburgh’s rich LGBTQ history. Their stage was never an open mic, where any speaker had the opportunity to address the crowd for a short period of time or any interested local performer could share their music or poetry before the largest gathering of LGBTQ people in the region without gatekeepers or entry fees or content constraints. Dance parties and tea dances and film screenings dotted the calendar. They never had the grassroots Pride experience of workshops throughout the city with panelists donating their time and talent to build community.