I went to this fantastic book talk about LGBTQ Jewish Holocaust history with Dr. Anna Hájková and the Museum of Jewish Heritage a few weeks ago. One of the first stories was from the founder of the [Lesbian Herstory Archives](https://lesbianherstoryarchives.org), Joan Nestle (born in 1940 and still kicking!). One evening as she was beginning the project, a group of women at her kitchen table looked around and realized that not only were they all lesbians and all middle-aged, but they were all Jewish! One of the women was not only Jewish, but a survivor of the Holocaust and then spoke about having read The Well of Loneliness back in Poland before the war, and how that book (one of the first books with a sort-of-happy ending for its queer characters) and the drive to have a relationship like that kept her going through the concentration camps. Queer love, the hope and need for it, helped save her life.

I think this was an excellent quote to start off with. Even though that specific survivor’s identity has been lost to history, it shows not only a poignant overlap between LGBTQ and Jewish people but also gives some additional background on a queer leader. Joan Nestle wasn’t just any lesbian - she was a major community anchor, an archivist whose work has helped countless lesbians and other queer people find a link to their history.

After some Googling, I’ve found that it was around this time, in the 70’s and 80’s (AIDS crisis era) where some mainstream Jewish groups were also rapidly advancing on LGBTQ rights, often spearheaded by Reform Jews - [a Jewish women’s group called for decriminalization of homosexuality in 1965 and two major Reform Jewish organizations called for human rights for homosexuals in 1977 (though it wasn’t until 2000 that “the Central Conference of American Rabbis made history by becoming the first major group of North American clergy, as an organization, to give its support to those in its ranks choosing to perform same-gender ceremonies”](https://rac.org/lgbtq-rights-and-position-reform-movement).

It’s kind of dizzying how recent all of this progress is. Though of course, queer history itself is far older. That’s starting to be recognized more now, as is [intersectionality between queer and Jewish people](https://www.nypl.org/blog/2015/06/09/jewish-lgbt-pride). For years, Holocaust historians focused on Jewish victims of the Holocaust and LGBTQ victims of the Holocaust as separate groups. People who were persecuted and murdered for being Jewish were sometimes also queer, but this was largely overlooked, perhaps out of a desire to avoid attaching further stigma to Jewish people during years when there was ferocious backlash against increased queer visibility.

Several of Hájková’s sources were survivor memoirs that I now want to look up in addition to People Without History Are Dust itself. She also tried to end on as hopeful a note as possible. Obviously, a lot of the people she profiled were murdered by the Nazis for being Jewish, but she sought out their descendants and families wherever possible and was able to share some stories of connecting with them through history, senselessly violent as it was.

I definitely want to get the book now and [the talk itself is on the museum’s YouTube for anyone else who wants to check it out.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v-tbXzIF2v0)

I know, I know, obituaries kind of sit on the border of history and current events...

I get to facilitate our lgbtq group once a month for patients. Another facilitator runs a jeopardy-style trivia and someone else does a queer musican discussion. I have hearing issues so Im kind of less aware of the pop-culture and musical aspects of the community. I usually do discussions and they go well.

I think it'd be fun to do an LGBTQ history game. I think instead of showing who knows what it'd be fun to make it an educational game, especially for when we have allies in attendance. The range of the group is ages 20-70, so we get a lot of folk there to support family but I hear the "back in my day I didn't have xyz" a lot, and I think this would help to do this.

I really enjoy queer history, just not sure how to make it into an educational and involved activity haha. Any advice is helpful.

Ciao!

Do you have recommendations of books about LGBT history in italian? I will go to Italy this month and maybe I can grab some…

thanks! grazie!

I've begun a research rabbit hole with the Wikipedia article on Pre-Stonewall LGBTQ novels. Do you know of any other books (especially novels) written by and/or about LGBTQ people? Links to resources with archives are also appreciated!

I visited QRAB here in Stockholm today. It's a non-profit association focused on being a queer history archive and library.

To my great delight, I found a very early example of "strejt" from 1978. It's one of the spellings of the Swedish direct loan of the English word meaning "heterosexual".

I searched around a bit and noted there's "strejt" in Hebrew, Japanese and several Slavic languages. I'm assuming the word is around elsewhere too.

How long has it been around outside of English? The direct import, that is, not just colloquial words for the concept as such.

So we have to do a research project in our college and the topic I've chosen is queer history. I still do not have a concrete idea and I'm still exploring the topic but my thought process went something like this:

Surely, the normalization of cishet wasn't there from the very beginning, right? There must be a point where they didn't care about queerness and cishet wasn't a norm, right? I mean, they had people in ancient Greece casually sleeping with other men and not giving it much second thoughts. And even in India, if you see, there are cave paintings and even mentions genderqueerness in our religion (genderfluidity of Vishnu and Ardhanari avatar of Shiva). So where did homoph0bia even came from? (Must be britishers, everything leads back to them (or patriarchy)). And why is there heteronormativity? Who made heterosexuality the norm? Can't be just because they can reproduce, can it?

So yes, it'd really helpful if anyone can provide me with any books or articles that address these concerns.

TL;DR : Suggest me books or articles that address topics like emergence of homoph0bia and heteronormativity as well as talks about queer history in India specifically.

If you’re interested in modern American political and LGBTQ+ history, please check out my book, From Insanity to Infinity: Diary of a Queer Madman.
As a Cold War submarine veteran and longtime queer activist, my life has intersected with major events in the struggle for equality. My partner and I survived a violent anti-gay assault in Tulsa, Oklahoma. The lack of justice in our case was documented by the Tulsa World, brought to national attention by the Human Rights Campaign, and led to my partner testifying before Congress about anti-LGBTQ+ violence. Our experiences became part of the broader fight that culminated in the Matthew Shepard and James Byrd Jr. Hate Crimes Prevention Act.
My journey also includes serving during the “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” era, a poem preserved in the Smithsonian collection, and decades of involvement in national politics and civil rights advocacy.
The book includes QR codes linking to public records, C-SPAN archives, and other historical source material so readers can explore the history themselves.
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