This Week in Queer History

On July 24, 2011, New York Governor Andrew Cuomo signed the Marriage Equality Act into law. Same-sex couples could now legally marry in the most populous state on the East Coast, the state with the highest visibility, the most political weight, and the deepest symbolic connection to the modern LGBTQ+ rights movement. This short episode looks at what that moment meant and how it happened. New York...

On August 7, 1987, more than a hundred LGBTQ+ people gathered at Piccadilly Circus in London and kissed. In public. On purpose. In defiance of a country that had recently passed Clause 28, which prohibited local authorities from "promoting" homosexuality, and which maintained an unequal age of consent that treated gay relationships as inherently suspect. The Kiss-In was organized by OutR...

"Macho Man" hit the Top 40 in 1978. "YMCA" followed later that year. And something happened that nobody in the mainstream music industry fully understood at the time: an entire community heard its own coded language broadcast on AM radio, and responded. The Village People were a creation with layers. On the surface, a campy disco group with costume characters. Underneath, a gro...