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Like I mentioned in SWOYM sometime back, I've been reading The Gay Revolution: The Story of hte Struggle, and as I'm reading it as a bi/pansexual person, I'm just blown away by how much of our history that I didn't even know. I didn't realize how horribly LGBT people were treated as recently as 50 years ago or how many people have suffered and fought to get where we are today...to be part of mainstream society, to have rights that we take for granted now, and to just be able to live our lives openly.

It makes me wonder how many others in the LGBTQ community don't know our history...I mean, it is our history, why don't we know it? We know our nation's history and some amount of world history, right?

I don't know where I'm going with this, but I'm just curious if it's something anyone else has thought of, and if anyone's thought about whether there should be more about it out there...

Not gay, but my past year's AP US History curriculum devoted quite a bit of time to LGBT history. Throughout the textbook, there are sections about the homophile movement, the influence of the World Wars on underground gay communities, the Kinsey Reports, Stonewall, DOMA, etc.

To be fair, APUSH has often been accused of having a liberal bias, and my school's textbook is rather new and quite liberal (particularly by American standards).

Ah yes, the course that conservatives think teaches students to hate America.

I think it's safe to say though that it isn't being taught in typical history classes...I'm sure many politicians would describe that as 'indoctrination'.

Ah yes, the course that conservatives think teaches students to hate America.

I think it's safe to say though that it isn't being taught in typical history classes...I'm sure many politicians would describe that as 'indoctrination'.

And of course we have to remember that the state of public education varies wildly from school to school in the US... For instance, there's that Virginia 4th grade textbook claiming that thousands of blacks fought for the Confederacy during the Civil War, which is simply objectively untrue.

Yeah.  Then again, history textbooks are generally tailored for the big states (California, Texas, Florida, Virginia, NY, etc.) and will consequently include the political views that state politicians from those states believe are true. 

The natural consequence of this is, of course, radically different curricula across the country that range from condemning the "War of Northern Aggression" and praising Reaganomics to predominately focusing on "identity politics" and "vilifying patriots by saying they owned slaves." 

Personally I believe that the notion that there is a vast liberal indoctrination of students is complete and utter bullshit, especially considering that union history is nearly completely untaught.  Case in point: the Coal Wars

Then again, it could be argued in general that more education does lead to more liberal viewpoints in general.

Do you believe there's a conservative attempt to keep students uneducated (as some people say: keep em' poor, keep em' sick, keep em' stupid)?

I think based on my own interest and reading of history, we're somewhere in between the nation portrayed by one side or the other...we're a nation that was founded on high ideals by educated and inspirational but flawed people, and since then our attempts to live up to those high ideals have varied with the times. At times as a nation we've done things that we should be proud of, and at other times we've done things that we need to learn about so we don't drift into doing those things again. I suppose gay history in America is a great example of both sides of that spectrum...a group that, while not universally accepted yet, now enjoys more acceptance and rights than anytime in the country's history. And truth be known, the same could be said of many other minorities.

We may not be there yet, but we're a lot further than we were for sure.

Not gay, but my past year's AP US History curriculum devoted quite a bit of time to LGBT history. Throughout the textbook, there are sections about the homophile movement, the influence of the World Wars on underground gay communities, the Kinsey Reports, Stonewall, DOMA, etc.

To be fair, APUSH has often been accused of having a liberal bias, and my school's textbook is rather new and quite liberal (particularly by American standards).

Ah, APUSH. I had fun in that class. It was basically just my teacher mocking the textbook, American Pageant.
Sweaty_Axemen.jpg

Then again, it could be argued in general that more education does lead to more liberal viewpoints in general.

a shitton of conservative politicians, and the majority of politicians in general are lawyers of some kind. That requires quite a bit of education.

Do you believe there's a conservative attempt to keep students uneducated (as some people say: keep em' poor, keep em' sick, keep em' stupid)?

I think based on my own interest and reading of history, we're somewhere in between the nation portrayed by one side or the other...we're a nation that was founded on high ideals by educated and inspirational but flawed people, and since then our attempts to live up to those high ideals have varied with the times. At times as a nation we've done things that we should be proud of, and at other times we've done things that we need to learn about so we don't drift into doing those things again. I suppose gay history in America is a great example of both sides of that spectrum...a group that, while not universally accepted yet, now enjoys more acceptance and rights than anytime in the country's history. And truth be known, the same could be said of many other minorities.

We may not be there yet, but we're a lot further than we were for sure.

There are, of course, instances of political narratives being strongly pushed into history education. The Lost Cause is a very good example; pro-South groups successfully wrote it into mainstream historiography for roughly a century. But I doubt that there's an organized conspiracy to keep people dumb; it's more that change is hard and there's no broad movement to do so, and this just happens to help politicians' interests, so they don't put in the effort either.

And yeah, both liberal and conservative narratives of history are flawed in some way, though all of them contain truths that people should read to construct their overall picture. You won't get the full story from A People's History of the United States, but neither would you get it from A Patriot's History of the United States.

Then again, it could be argued in general that more education does lead to more liberal viewpoints in general.

a shitton of conservative politicians, and the majority of politicians in general are lawyers of some kind. That requires quite a bit of education.

As much as I hate to admit it, I agree with Justinian. Education and intellect itself have little direct influence over one's politics. You can hand two people the same list of facts and have both come to a different conclusion. It's less about education and more about intention. I am admittedly not as familiar with queer history as I should be. But at the moment our history is still being shaped and formed. Most of the community can't agree on who did what, where. Or of this person was this color or that orientation. It's very much in flux, with each group seeking to guide what is told to future generations. It's hard to find solid facts without an angle being sold.

As much as I hate to admit it, I agree with Justinian. Education and intellect itself have little direct influence over one's politics. You can hand two people the same list of facts and have both come to a different conclusion. It's less about education and more about intention. I am admittedly not as familiar with queer history as I should be. But at the moment our history is still being shaped and formed. Most of the community can't agree on who did what, where. Or of this person was this color or that orientation. It's very much in flux, with each group seeking to guide what is told to future generations. It's hard to find solid facts without an angle being sold.

But hasn't that always been an issue with history? A few years ago I took an online course on the Civil War, and part of it was going over how the war was re-interpreted over the years afterwards by historians, reflecting the popular mindsets and believe of the time. History is often some facts strung together with the narrative the historian believes those facts most fit, and sometimes the historians themselves don't even agree with which narrative is the right one...or consensus with which one is right changes over time. I personally found it fascinating that there's a history of how history is interpreted (historiography).

The problem with gay history in particular is that there was no Martin Luther King-like figure to unite the community...in the 50s and 60s, it's made up of small, incremental advances by small groups which received little notice outside their local area. Even if something happened to advance 'the cause' in New York, for example, the odds are low that it was noticed by the gay community in Washington, San Francisco, or anywhere else. The national press didn't cover it, and gay magazines were still taboo (there was even a legal fight over whether the post office had the right to refuse to send them out due to 'obscenity').

I think the Stonewall Riots are so celebrated in the gay community because it's one of the first events that received decent press coverage, which subsequently led to an explosion of gay rights groups and support (although the national community remained fractured on a number of issues).

I mean it's easy to take for granted when you don't have to experience such awful things on a daily basis. I'm in Canada, I've got rights, but I've also got a few friends in places where it's not safe to be out. One of my friends can't talk about the whole being gay thing. We don't have a single person to point to who played a major role. It was little amounts of change, over time, which gave us LGBT rights. As cool as it would be to have MLK or someone of the like, I think that it's for the best that there isn't any one person. There will be no era in the history books saying "that's when the gays got their rights", it'll just be normal or covered in a couple pages or a footnote somewhere. I think that's the best thing that could happen, for everyone to think that it was normal in our time. There are a lot of quiet changes that have happened in society, I'd like to think that this movement will be one of those.


Edit 2: Removed details and changed my argument.

I mean it's easy to take for granted when you don't have to experience such awful things on a daily basis. I'm in Canada, I've got rights, but I've also got a few friends in places where it's not safe to be out. One of my friends can't talk about the whole being gay thing. We don't have a single person to point to who played a major role. It was little amounts of change, over time, which gave us LGBT rights. As cool as it would be to have MLK or someone of the like, I think that it's for the best that there isn't any one person. There will be no era in the history books saying "that's when the gays got their rights", it'll just be normal or covered in a couple pages or a footnote somewhere. I think that's the best thing that could happen, for everyone to think that it was normal in our time. There are a lot of quiet changes that have happened in society, I'd like to think that this movement will be one of those.


Edit 2: Removed details and changed my argument.

For what it's worth, I read the original post, and the fact that even you don't feel comfortable leaving the original comments on an internet forum goes to show we still have some strides to make when it comes to this issue.

Besides geography and lack of media coverage, I think a reason there has never been a singular person associated with gay rights is because the LGBTQ community itself was so fractured...people who thought gays should present themselves as average, everyday people and people who thought they should embrace their distinct minority culture loud and proud. Gay men and lesbians, who generally didn't get along in the same groups. Even divisions by class...more well-to-do gay men who had money, privileged, and access to politicians vs those out 'on the street'. And even some gay and lesbian groups kicked out transgender folks based on their biological gender, which in turn caused those who supported transgender rights to abandon those groups.

Until the 1980s, partially prompted by the AIDS crisis, these groups couldn't stand each other and rarely worked together unless the cause was especially dire (such as fighting Save Our Children and copycat groups trying to repeal gay rights ordinances throughout the country). And afterwards when they did come together, it was through coalitions...the LGBTQ community has never fully stood behind any one person or group, at least not in the US.

@Wintermoot
I mean I guess, but I know that no matter what I've got some friends who would be willing to help me if I ever needed it. Even as I write this I'm in school; I'm not afraid. Society has gotten pretty accepting, and it's important to note that my parents were raised in India and I'm not clear on their opinions about the whole gay thing. I guess there are still things we need to do, many things, but there aren't any movements in history which we can honestly say are 100% finished. I guess being gay or whatever won't be normal until everyone stops treating us like an extraordinary class. The day we don't need special protections will be the day that we're truly equal.

Are you saying we're not worthy of being extraordinary?