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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