Y'All Means All - Pride Month Resources

East Kentuckian Lige Clarke had a prominent role in early gay and lesbian journalism.  Born in Knott County, he was a religious youth beloved by his family. Always known by his family and friends as creative and a “free spirit” who as a child was theatrical, collected dolls, and created “fashions” that included skirts, Clarke was popular growing up in Hindman. The youngest of three and easily recognizable with long, nearly-white blond hair, he spent his early years dividing his time between a little white house on Cave Branch and a residence above his grandfather’s store at “the forks of Troublesome Creek,” as his older sister has recalled.  After he joined the army, he returned to visit frequently.   In 1964, while holding high security clearances as part of his job at the Pentagon in the Office of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Clarke saw men get caught kissing in a closet only to be summarily dismissed.  Clarke nevertheless remained undetected and unscathed by the military’s homosexual witch hunts. And he knew why—“he was simply another Kentuckian. Homosexuals in the mountains of Kentucky, [the Pentagon] must have reasoned, are as rare as truffles.”  A small band of Washington D.C. Mattachine Society activists staged the first openly gay picket outside the Pentagon, including Clarke's own hand-lettered signs "Gay is Good."  During the late 1960s, a heterosexual psychotherapist, George Weinberg, coined the term “homophobia” to refer to individual anti-gay behaviors and attitudes. Herek, in an article titled “The Psychology of Sexual Prejudice,” maintained that Jack Nichols and Lige Clarke first used the term in print in their column on gay issues in the May 23, 1969, issue of Screw Magazine.  Their column "The Homosexual Citizen" was the first regular LGBT-interest column printed in a non-LGBT publication. One month later in New York City, a police raid on a gay bar called the Stonewall Inn ignited an extended protest against the harassment of gay people and is celebrated around the world as the touchstone of the modern gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender movement.  Lige Clarke and his companion Jack Nichols were at the forefront, not only coining homophobia as an idea but also later publishing the first newspaper, Gay, targeted to gay men.  In a remarkable story, Clarke outed the idea of Fire Island. The small islet was a jealously guarded secret of homosexual New Yorkers when, in 1969, Clarke published an account of his sexy weekend along its beachfront. Lige Clarke, the island’s seasonal habitués complained, “blew their cover."  Years later Jack Nichols would publish a book about the island, proudly putting Clarke on the cover.   Clarke worked with Nichols on books such as I Have More Fun with You Than Anybody and Roommates Can't Always Be Lovers: An Intimate Guide to Male-Male Relationships, before Clarke's untimely death in 1975, murdered mysteriously in Mexico.

The Stonewall Riots began in the early hours of June 28, 1969.   The next year defiant protestors marched the streets of New York City in honor of those killed or wouded, and in that span, the American Pride movement was born.   Pride is celebrated each June in honor of the original protest movements.  In 1978 what is perhaps the most-recognized symbol of Gay Pride made its debut at the San Francisco event: the rainbow flag. The flag, with its eight colours (sexuality symbolized by hot pink, life by red, healing by orange, the Sun by yellow, nature by green, art by blue, harmony by indigo, and spirit by violet), was designed by San Francisco artist Gilbert Baker and has been adopted worldwide. The following year a six-colour flag, which is in common use today, appeared (with red, orange, yellow, green, blue [harmony replaced art as symbolized by blue in the flag], and purple/violet), partially because of the unavailability of some of the fabric colours. Although the flag's colors have been used in tacky, commercial ways--to decorate key chains and license plates, for example--its power has endured. Its popularity arises from the need for an oppressed people to have a unifying symbol of their own. In the words of Ann Northrop, a long-time activist: "It's still a brilliant signifier and connector and identifier of us as a special tribe of people."