In 1978 Harvey Milk calls on gay people to gather in D.C. the next year to protest the anti-gay campaigns of Anita Bryant and her ilk. Organizers are stymied by internal conflicts until Milk’s assassination galvanizes them and a date for a national march is set. But will anyone show up?
Visit our episode webpage for additional resources, archival photos, and a transcript of the episode.
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Coming of Age During the 1970s: Chapter 6: Marching On

Eric gets an A on his freshman sociology paper, “Marginal Man: The Alcoholic and the Homosexual.” But his sunny predictions for the future of the gay rights movement are met with skepticism from his professor. Mere weeks later, Anita Bryant launches her anti-gay “Save Our Children” campaign.
Visit our episode webpage for additional resources, archival photos, and a transcript of the episode.
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Coming of Age During the 1970s: Chapter 5: Thank You, Anita

Gay rights activists in NYC are first out of the gate to propose anti-discrimination legislation, confident it will sail through the City Council. Instead, they hit a wall of ignorance and bigotry. Meanwhile, 15-year-old Eric happens upon some revelatory literature in his dentist’s waiting room.
Visit our episode webpage for additional resources, archival photos, and a transcript of the episode.
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Coming of Age During the 1970s: Chapter 4: Respectable

When Jeanne Manford’s gay son is badly beaten at a 1972 GAA protest, the shy elementary school teacher takes a stand. She cofounds the organization now known as PFLAG and launches a movement that harnesses the strength of our fiercest allies: parents and the other people who love us.
Visit our episode webpage for additional resources, archival photos, and a transcript of the episode.
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Coming of Age During the 1970s: Chapter 3: Family Ties

While activists are demonstrating, filing lawsuits, and pushing for anti-discrimination laws, 16-year-old Eric is on a ferry to Fire Island, a legendary gay refuge off Long Island, with his neighbor Rev. Mullen—a trip that would introduce him to a vivid slice of mid-1970s gay life, ready or not.
Visit our episode webpage for additional resources, archival photos, and a transcript of the episode.
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Coming of Age During the 1970s: Chapter 2: Fire Island and Other Stories

The Stonewall uprising ignites an explosion of protests and organizing that transforms a small, often tentative homophile movement into a newly assertive national force that demands gay liberation and equality. In a Puerto Rico hotel pool, 12-year-old Eric experiences a transformation of his own.
Visit our episode webpage for additional resources, archival photos, and a transcript of the episode.
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Episode art photo: Gay Liberation Front Poster Image (1970) by Peter Hujar. Credit: © 2023 The Peter Hujar Archive / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York.
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Coming of Age During the 1970s: Chapter 1: A Surge of Energy

The decade between Stonewall and the 1979 March on Washington lives in the shadow of the AIDS crisis and all that came after. In this six-part season, Eric Marcus explores the heady years of gay liberation and the backlash that followed against the backdrop of his own coming of age as a gay teen.
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Coming of Age During the 1970s: Preview

Known for her smashing parties, lighter-than-air soufflés, and comedic wit, Lucy Hicks Anderson never let anyone tell her how to live her life—not even the courts. When her gender was put on trial in the 1940s, the publicity around her case made her one the first documented Black transgender figures in American history.
Find more Sidedoor episodes at si.edu/sidedoor or wherever you get your podcasts. For additional resources about Lucy Hicks Anderson, go here.
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Guest Episode: Sidedoor: Lucy Hicks Anderson

Wait, THAT Harvey? When activist Craig Rodwell told Eric in 1989 who his first serious boyfriend had been, Eric was stunned. In our special Valentine’s Day episode, hear how love unfolded—and unraveled—for two of our movement’s titans.
This episode discusses a suicide attempt. If you’re having thoughts of suicide, please contact your country’s suicide prevention hotline. In the U.S., that’s the Suicide and Crisis Lifeline, which you can call or text toll-free at 988. 
Visit our episode webpage for the episode transcript and for links to background information, archival photos, and other resources.
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Bonus: A Complicated Love Story

When Kathleen Boatwright fell in love with a woman at church, she fell hard. But this was no carefree romance. The church was staunchly anti-gay. Kathleen was married to a man and had four children. She’d never had a relationship with a woman. As she told Eric in 1989, it was “Pentecostal hysteria.”
Visit our episode webpage for background information, archival photos, and other resources, as well as a transcript of the episode.
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Season 11: Episode 6: Kathleen Boatwright

In 1980, conservative congressman Robert Bauman was caught soliciting sex from a 16-year-old boy. The scandal landed the married father of four on the front page of newspapers across the country. It spelled the end of his political career—and the start of a years-long journey toward self-acceptance.
Visit our episode webpage for background information, archival photos, and other resources, as well as a transcript of the episode.
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Season 11: Episode 5: Robert Bauman

Indian-born activist and lawyer Urvashi Vaid was fiercely attuned to injustice from an early age. Adamant that the fight for LGBTQ equality cannot be separated from other progressive struggles, she became one of the most influential, outspoken, and inspiring movement leaders in recent history.
Visit our episode webpage for background information, archival photos, and other resources, as well as a transcript of the episode.
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Season 11: Episode 4: Urvashi Vaid

In 1972, Faygele Ben-Miriam’s penchant for wearing dresses to the office got him fired from his government job in Seattle. The fact that he had recently brought one of the very first same-sex marriage lawsuits was another strike against him. Undeterred, he went back to court and sued his employer.
Heads-up: The interview featured in this episode was conducted in 1989. You’ll hear Faygele Ben-Miriam refer to intellectually disabled people using an outdated and now offensive term.
Visit our episode webpage for background information, archival photos, and other resources, as well as a transcript of the episode.
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Season 11: Episode 3: Faygele Ben-Miriam

Growing up in the segregated South, Rev. Carolyn Mobley-Bowie knew the challenge of finding an accepting place in the world—a challenge that only grew when her attraction to women came into conflict with her devotion to God. The predominantly gay Metropolitan Community Church offered refuge.
Visit our episode webpage for background information, archival photos, and other resources, as well as a transcript of the episode.
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Season 11: Episode 2: Rev. Carolyn Mobley-Bowie

In 1954, Craig Rodwell was just 14 when he was arrested for having sex with a man. The experience set the young Chicagoan on the road to becoming a self-described “angry queer”— and one of the most consequential LGBTQ rights activists before and after Stonewall.
Visit our episode webpage for background information, archival photos, and other resources, as well as a transcript of the episode.
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Season 11: Episode 1: Craig Rodwell

We’re back with more engaging voices from Eric Marcus’s MGH archive! Meet six history makers as they share stories of faith and redemption, of family, of scandal, and of radicalization and liberation.
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Season 11: Preview

This special guest episode is from Revisionist History, Malcolm Gladwell’s podcast about things misunderstood and overlooked. Gladwell 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. The episode also looks at how television’s ability to change public opinion has faded with the rise of modern-day streaming. 
For more Revisionist History, go to https://podcasts.pushkin.fm/rhs7?sid=mgh.
 
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Guest Episode: Revisionist History: When Will Met Grace

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.
First aired June 27, 2019. Visit MGH’s episode webpage for background information, archival photos, and other resources, as well as the episode’s transcript. 
 
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Rewind: Stonewall 50: Episode 4: Live from Stonewall

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.
First aired June 20, 2019. Visit MGH’s episode webpage for background information, archival photos, and other resources, as well as the episode’s transcript. 
To hear more from Craig Rodwell, go here. And listen to Barbara Gittings and Kay Lahusen here as they discuss how homophile activists fared in the heady days of post-Stonewall organizing.
 
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Rewind: Stonewall 50: Episode 3: “Say It Loud! Gay & Proud!”

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.
First aired June 13, 2019. Visit MGH’s episode webpage for background information, archival photos, and other resources, as well the episode’s transcript. 
To hear more of Marsha P. Johnson and Randy Wicker’s conversation about Stonewall, go here. And listen to Morty Manford’s account of the riots here.
 
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