Making Gay History | LGBTQ Oral Histories from the Archive

A special guest episode from Revisionist History, which does a deep dive into the ’90s sitcom “Will and Grace,” which was quietly revolutionary in changing our collective beliefs around gay people and marriage equality.

What made Stonewall different? How can we carry the lessons of the uprising with us today? Eric is joined by one archivist and four activists to answer those questions in an intergenerational conversation recorded at the Stonewall Inn on May 23, 2019.

Like so many other acts of LGBTQ resistance, the 1969 Stonewall riots could have become a footnote in history. But the protests and organizing that followed launched a new phase in the fight for LGBTQ rights. Hear how anger found its voice and how joy propelled the first Pride marches.

The Stonewall uprising began in the early morning hours of June 28, 1969. Revisit that moment, and the hours and days that followed, with voices from the Making Gay History archive. Relive in vivid detail the dawning of a new chapter in the fight for LGBTQ rights.

Conflict has context. In this first episode of Making Gay History’s Stonewall season, we hear stories from the pre-Stonewall struggle for LGBTQ rights. We travel back in time to the turbulent 1960s and take you to the tinderbox that was Greenwich Village on the eve of an uprising.

Women can’t get AIDS—or so Michelle Lopez thought until she tested positive for HIV in 1990. Viable treatments were years away, but the undocumented immigrant from Trinidad would not be defeated. She turned her diagnosis into an opportunity to help others while she fought for her life.

As a complement to our episode featuring Ann Northrop, meet Peter Staley, another seminal member of ACT UP, in this 2021 interview courtesy of the LGBTQ&A podcast, hosted by Jeffrey Masters and produced by The Advocate in partnership with GLAAD.

Fierce and unflappable, veteran journalist Ann Northrop is a natural activist. In this episode, she discusses her most dramatic ACT UP arrest, her work as an AIDS education advocate, her blue-blooded upbringing, and the lure of Angie Dickinson.

Randy Boyd’s “gay agenda” was to be radically open about who he was: a gay, HIV-positive writer—not the straight professional athlete he was always assumed to be. Determined to blow up stereotypes about Black people, gay people, and people living with HIV, he had his work cut out for him.

From her home in Juneau, Alaska, Sara Boesser watched with alarm as the AIDS epidemic rolled across the lower 48 states, threatening lives and hard-won gay rights. The soft-spoken building inspector decided there was no time to waste. She became an activist and got to organizing.