FROM STONEWALL TO THE AIDS EPIDEMIC: 1969-1981

Gay and lesbian life in Bloomington in the summer of 1969 responded to the same currents that moved similar communities nationwide. The Stonewall Riots did not result in a sudden break with past, but they did inspire a new wave of activism, and new forms of organizing, that gradually gathered strength. Within a year of Stonewall, Bloomington had a Gay Liberation Front organization; over the next decade it experienced many of the same successes and failures that characterized queer experience elsewhere in the United States: a new sense of pride and visibility, the first wave of community-based service organizations, contentious intra-community struggles over sexism and racism, disagreements about politics, and a serious right-wing backlash that overturned some early civil rights victories.

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Gay Liberation Front in Bloomington

Christine Jorgensen Visits the IU Campus

Women's Spaces and Lesbians in Feminism

Early Gay Awareness Conferences

Cutter Homoerotics in Breaking Away

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New Horizons

Bars and Businesses

Bloomington Human Rights Ordinance

Homophobic Harassment in the Community

Out Gay and Lesbian Faculty

Founding the Women’s Studies Program

Indiana Contingent at the First Gay March on Washington