Empty Closet 40th Anniversary Celebration Is February 27

By Evelyn Bailey

The Empty Closet 40^th Anniversary Celebration is scheduled for Sunday, Feb. 27, in the Tea Room, fourth floor, Auditorium Center, 875 E. Main St.

This year the Empty Closet turns 40 – a milestone in anyone’s life, but an exceptional one especially today for any newspaper, let alone a gay newspaper!

Bob Osborne, Brian (Monday) Tangen, Debbie Lestz, Larry Fine, RJ Alcala, and Patricia Evers were the first six writers for The Empty Closet. Each put pen to paper and what they wrote was pretty radical even by today’s standards, and I quote,  “Gay Liberation is more than a group of oppressed people joined together to seek freedom and justice.  Gay Liberation is a call to power.” (Debbie Lestz, Empty Closet, January, 1971)