Column: Short-term memory: will the LGBT community forget its past?

David Webb – The Rare Reporter Despite its stellar, well-known rise to political prominence in many cities across the country, local LGBT communities might find themselves hard-pressed to document their glory days in coming years. We apparently are forgetting our history as fast as we live each new day. So many people have either died, moved away from the cities of their youth or both that the number of people who remember what happened in their locales after the birth of the gay rights movement in June 1969 are dwindling daily. It’s not unusual for people not to be able to remember local LGBT political gains in cities nationwide because definitive histories have not been written about our local cultures. It’s not unusual for arguments to break out about what gay bars existed when and where because there is so little record of their existence. If we don’t remember where we’ve been and what we’ve done, are we prepared for where we need to go in the future? Many LGBT communities are fortunate to have long-running publications that have chronicled the events of several decades, but most lack those resources. Some LGBT people have amassed personal collections of gay magazines, newspapers and other literature dating back to World War II before most people in the community were born. But I’m only aware of a few cities where such collections have been saved for scholarly use. When old timers in the LGBT community talk about what they witnessed decades ago, it provides a fascinating glimpse into what life was like for LGBT people struggling in an oppressive time that most of us have never experienced. Research of newspaper archives reveals that in the 1950s and 1960s law enforcement agencies aggressively pursed gay people in their homes during private parties. People were literally arrested for same-sex dancing in those days. PBS has produced a fascinating 90-minute documentary, “Stonewall Uprising,” that focuses on LGBT life in New York City in the 1960s and what led up to the pivotal moment in 1969 when gay men, lesbians and drag queens decided to revolt against tyranny. Likewise, there have been show business histories written about the persecution of LGBT people in Hollywood in the 1950s, but what happened in most other cities is in danger of being lost forever. LGBT communities thrived in some manner in every city of any size, and it needs to be documented. We can’t afford to forget that our lives today are literally blessed in comparison to what the people before us experienced. We can’t ever let politicians forget that our lives matter, and that we will never go back to the old days of subjugation. And don’t ever forget that there are still many people around who would like to see our community dissolved and powerless. Pastors of churches that are members of the powerful Southern Baptist Convention are proponents of a movement to discredit and render us politically powerless. That’s why it is important to document our history, to show young people in our community what we accomplished and to show our detractors that we’ve fought many battles in the past and that we will do it again if necessary. Perhaps, it could be a collaborative effort with many writers who lived through the times reflecting on what happened. We’ve certainly got the talent and the resources in every city to document our history. The idea has been tossed around before, but apparently nothing has ever came of it. Isn’t it time that we did it? David Webb is a veteran journalist who has covered LGBT issues for the mainstream and alternative media for three decades. E-mail him at davidwaynewebb@yahoo.com. ]]>