Interpreting LGBT History at Museums and Historic Sites by Susan Ferentinos

Author:Susan Ferentinos
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers
Published: 2014-12-12T16:59:39+00:00

Figure 6.4. The anniversary of the Stonewall riots is celebrated every year in June with LGBT Pride events throughout the world. LGBT Pride Parade, San Francisco, 2012.

Courtesy of Library of Congress, LC-DIG-highsm-21340

The Turn of the Twenty-First Century

Perhaps more than any decade of US history, the 1990s were a roller-coaster ride with regard to LGBT civil rights and acceptance. LGBT people were increasingly visible to the wider society due to a combination of individual decisions to come out to family, friends, neighbors, and coworkers and an increasing representation in national media. In some ways, this increased visibility bred greater tolerance for a range of sexual and gender expressions. In other ways, such open diversity was seen as a threat and continued a backlash that had begun with the Briggs Initiative and “Save Our Children” campaigns of the late 1970s. LGBT activists achieved some major gains during the 1990s while also experiencing significant political losses.

Despite ongoing illness and increasingly strident antigay rhetoric from the religious right, a groundswell of LGBT individuals chose to live more openly, alerting the people in their lives that LGBT issues had a real and immediate impact to them. The change was striking. In 1985, more than half of Americans believed they did not know anyone who was gay or lesbian. Fifteen years later, that number had shrunk to 20 percent. The percentage of Americans who reported having a gay or lesbian family member rose from 9 percent in 1992 to 23 percent in 2000. This national coming-out party had the effect of increasing the number of straight allies to the LGBT struggle. Membership in Parents and Friends of Lesbians and Gays (PFLAG) swelled during the 1990s, and the group led the way for a host of gay-straight alliances that would eventually spring up in communities, high schools, and universities throughout the country.56

Within popular culture, there was a flowering of representations of gays, lesbians, bisexuals, and transgender people. In 1993, the feature film Philadelphia told the heart-wrenching story of a man dying from AIDS. While certainly not the first film to deal with the disease, Philadelphia starred A-list actors, including Tom Hanks and Denzel Washington, and earned Hanks his first Academy Award, for Best Actor. Other popular films of the decade portraying LGBT lives included The Crying Game (1992), The Wedding Banquet (1993), Go Fish (1994), The Bird Cage (1996), In & Out (1997), and Boys Don’t Cry (1999). On television, increasing numbers of shows featured LGBT characters. Television’s first same-sex wedding took place in 1994 on Northern Exposure, and Spin City featured an African American gay male character. Ellen DeGeneres created a media sensation when she and the title character of her hit sitcom Ellen came out the same month (April 1997), and a year later, in 1998, Will & Grace premiered and chronicled the friendship between a gay man and his best friend, a straight woman. Star musicians also began coming out publicly, including the singers k.d. lang in 1992 and Melissa Etheridge in 1993.57

By the mid-1990s, the landscape of AIDS had begun to change.

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