Shoulders to Stand On

Our History Is Our Strength

by Evelyn Bailey

From the very beginning of time, women have been viewed as the “weaker” sex. However, when you look at the women who wrote our history with their lives, they can hardly be identified as “weak”!

The women involved in the gay history of Rochester in the 1970s came out of a closeted frightened homosexual culture. Community meeting places consisted of bars that were commonly raided by police once a month on average, with those arrested exposed in newspapers.

Gay Liberation Front

by Evelyn Bailey

Over the next three months, Shoulders To Stand On will honor the Rochester Gay Liberation Front (hereafter referred to as the RGLF), forerunner to the Gay Alliance of the Genesee Valley.

Who or what - you might ask – was the Gay Liberation Front? To answer this question we need to take a trip back in our LGBT history.

The event that most authors seem to identify as having the most influence on the beginning of the gay liberation movement was the Stonewall riots of 1969. It would be a mistake to consider this event as the origin of the concept of gay liberation or the origin of a sense of community and gay pride.

Women Who Contributed to the Gay Rights Movement

by Evelyn Bailey

March is Women’s History Month.  We begin with a couple of local Rochestarians, and move on to those who are recognized nationally for their contribution to the gay rights movement.

Dr. Karen Hagberg is a founding member of the Gay Liberation Front at the University of Rochester (UR), precursor to the Gay Alliance of the Genesee Valley (GAGV).  Karen helped organize the first LGBT Dance at the UR and participated in the first public action for gay rights in Rochester.

Women's History - The Early 1970s

by Evelyn Bailey

A friend of mine, Tilda Hunting, is trying to downsize.  In her efforts to accomplish this, she has boxed up a number of books on lesbianism, homosexuality, and the feminist women’s movement.  In this collection that she is generously giving to the Gay Alliance of the Genesee Valley, there were a number of “newsletters” titled The Ladder; copies of a litereary magazine The 13th Moon; a couple of issues of Community, A Publication by Gay People; published bi-monthly by the Capital District Gay Community Council, Albany, New York; and many more “goodies”. 

Given our most recent vote in Connecticut for recognition legally of same sex marriages, I decided to peruse these periodicals for a story about the issue of marriage equality.  There in the Amazon Quarterly, Vol.3 #2 was an article titled Womanlove by Del Martin and Phyllis Lyon.