Primary Sources for Pride Month

LGBTQ Pride Month originated in 1970. It first spread to major American cities, and now is celebrated around the world. Because nontraditional sexuality and gender considerations were severely stigmatized until quite recently, many libraries find themselves with very little depth in their collections and resources devoted to helping people understand and research topics in this area.

Gale’s Archives of Sexuality & Gender, the largest collection of resources available to support the study of gender and sexuality, was introduced to address this dearth of information. LGBTQ History and Culture since 1940, Part II expands the breadth of unique, fully searchable primary sources on social, political, health, and legal issues—and provides extensive coverage of underrepresented LGBTQ communities.

The path to today: A brief timeline

While LGBTQ history has hundreds of milestones, we’re highlighting a few to share primary source content from the Archives of Sexuality & Gender series.

1969: Police raid the Stonewall Inn in New York City. Protests and demonstrations begin.

1973: First meeting of “Parents and Friends of Gays,” which goes national as Parents, Families and Friends of Lesbians and Gays (PFLAG) in 1982.

1973: The American Psychiatric Association removes homosexuality from its list of mental disorders in the DSM-II Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders.

1979: The first National Conference for Third World Lesbians and Gays convenes in Washington, D.C., hosted by the National Coalition of Black Gays.

1979: The first National March on Washington for Lesbian and Gay Rights takes place. It draws an estimated 75,000 to 125,000 people.

1988: The World Health Organization holds the first World AIDS Day to raise AIDS awareness.

1996: President Bill Clinton signs the Defense of Marriage Act, banning federal recognition of same-sex marriage.

2004: The first legal same-sex marriage in the United States takes place in Massachusetts.

2009: President Barack Obama signs the Matthew Shepard and James Byrd Jr. Hate Crimes Prevention Act into law.

2015: The Supreme Court rules that states cannot ban same-sex marriage.

The next step

Help your community, students, educators, and researchers discover vast, rare, and unique primary sources that document LGBTQ history. Take the next step and request an archive trial.

Upcoming webinar June 15

Join Kristin Pekoll, assistant director of ALA’s Office for Intellectual Freedom, and Deb Sica, chair of ALA’s Gay Lesbian Bisexual, and Transgender Round Table, as they discuss how to serve an underrepresented population and protect content from censorship. Register now.