Gallery Theme: Community

All of us want to affiliate with people who are like us, who share common needs, experiences, and values. We yearn to create a place for ourselves that affirms our identity, where we can be free to be who we are. To that end, LGBT people have shaped distinctive subcultures: worlds that vary widely by geography, time, and the identity of their participants.

To form community, LGBT people have gathered in bars, bookstores, and bathhouses. They organized softball teams, male beauty contests, and poetry clubs. Some LGBT people sang the blues, while others danced to disco, flocked to Broadway musicals, or camped it up at The Rocky Horror Picture Show. Of course, not all LGBT people identified with these subcultures—perhaps because they were unaware of them, were geographically isolated, or feared being stigmatized or ghettoized.

Story Element: Places and Spaces

LGBT people have used places, both public and private, as opportunities to form a social world, a sense of community, and an identity.

• Blues club, Harlem, 1920s: Bisexuality was an integral part of the scene.
• Cafeteria, NYC, 1930s: Places like Horn & Hardart’s were safe for gay men to grab a cheap dinner, gossip, and meet new friends and lovers.
• Softball game, Omaha, 1950s: Lesbian teams were a place to make contacts outside of a bar as well the home of heroes and legends.
• Finnie’s Balls, Chicago, 1950s: An annual Halloween party drew thousands of participants and spectators, including many black working-class gays.
• Sunday church service, LA, 1968: From a dozen worshipers grew the Metropolitan Community Church of 300 congregations in 18 countries.

Story Element: Pulling Together

Certain events, especially during the past 50 years, have strengthened LGBT community ties, both within and across subcultures. Examples include:

• ONE Magazine ruled not obscene by the Supreme Court (1958)
• Stonewall Riots, New York City (1969)
• Anita Bryant’s “Save Our Children” campaign (1977)
• Assassination of Harvey Milk (1978)
• AIDS crisis (1980s)
• Georgia’s sodomy law upheld in Bowers v. Hardwick (1986)
• “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” law passed (1993)
• Murder of Matthew Shepard (1998)
• California Proposition 8 (2008)

Story Element: Cracking the Code

Exhibit Elements

Gallery Theme: Family

For some people, the diverse arrangements of contemporary American families are alarming—indicative of destructive changes to the fabric of our society. A serious study of the history of the American family, however, reveals that the only constant over time has been change. The American family has always been a dynamic institution in terms of its composition, the roles of its members, and its function in society. In other words, there is no such thing as the traditional American family.

Story Element: Family Album

All of us have family—that is, the people we consider our closest relationships and our primary sources of love, companionship, and protection. These relationships may be based on kinship, partnership, or just friendship. A sampling of contemporary family photos would reveal a multiplicity of arrangements: married couples with kids, unmarried couples with kids, single moms and single dads, blended families (mine, yours, ours), grandparents taking care of grandchildren, multi-racial and multi-ethnic families. And LGBT people are part of that spectrum. 

Story Element: The “All-American” Family

Whatever our sexual or gender identity, as we grow from childhood into adulthood, from immaturity to sexual maturity, from dependency to independence, we look beyond our initial family for our closest and most intimate relationships. Family is part of what defines who we are. But what if we don’t fit the heterosexual norm? Or our family has disowned us? Or laws prevent us from having intimate partners or spouses of the same sex?

A look at history reveals that LGBT families are not a new phenomenon. They have always existed. Family is fundamental.

American Profile: Two Spirits

In as many as 130 Native American tribes, men who took on the dress and customary roles of women were not only an accepted part of their communities but often revered for their special spiritual qualities. In some tribes, transgender males were free to marry other men or to form long-term same-sex partnerships. Although European missionaries ultimately drove these men underground, the tradition, know as “Two Spirit,” is still alive among native peoples. (Women also took on male roles with some of them becoming tribal chiefs or warriors.)

American Profile: Boston Marriages

Long-term households established by two unmarried, usually college-educated, women during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Among these women were the nation’s first social workers and its first female physicians and lawyers—career paths that would likely have been blocked to them if they had chosen a heterosexual marriage. For most of these “educated spinsters” it is unclear whether their domestic relationships were sexual. 

American Profile: Bachelor Housing

American Profile: "Lavender" Marriages

“Lavender,” or front, marriages between gay men and lesbians were not uncommon during the 1950s. A form of “passing,” they provided cover for both parties from family, friends, and co-workers during a period of intense national homophobia. The term, “lavender marriages,” first came into colloquial use in the 1920s.

Story Element: Fighting for Family

Families and friends have become a powerful asset to the LGBT fight for equality. Harvey Milk’s 1978 “Hope Speech” implored gays and lesbians in San Francisco’s Castro district to come out to their friends and families as a means of building a political base. A mother by the name of Jeanne Manford marched with her son Morty in the 1972 Christopher Street Liberation Day Parade carrying a poster that read, “Parents of Gays: Unite in Support of Our Children.” Even Frank Kameny’s mom joined some of his protest marches. Today, organizations like Parents, Families, and Friends of Lesbians and Gays (PFLAG) have hundreds of chapters and hundreds of thousands of members.

Exhibit Elements

My Family: Using a touch-screen interface, visitors share their experiences of family, breaking down myths and stereotypes about American family life and family values. “My Family” stories can become part of the Museum’s archival database and be shard with other visitors.

Fighting For Family: A film explores the journey that families have taken to understand, accept, and respect each other when gender expression and sexual orientation conflicted with family expectations. The film honors the courage of parents and children as they work privately and, at times, publically to keep the bonds of family intact. 

Gallery Theme: Society

American society has always passed judgment on people whose sexual or gender behavior did not fit the perceived norm. Over time, same-sex behavior has been categorized as immoral, damnable, criminal, inverted, perverted, and sick. Being open about one’s sexuality in America has always carried risks: alienation from family, loss of jobs, confinement in a prison or a mental hospital, less-than-honorable military discharge, verbal and physical abuse, denial of the right to marry, separation from children, and even deportation and execution. Today, the risks to one’s safety and livelihood are fewer but have not been eliminated.

Despite being perceived as outsiders, LGBT people have participated in—and contributed to—every facet of society. Doing so often meant keeping private lives hidden from public view, and perhaps even from one’s self. However, every occupation, town, or family includes LGBT people.

Story Element: Our American Stories

Being Me in America is told through individual personalities. These profiles take us into all aspects of American life: the workplace, the military, the arts, the political arena, and beyond. Set against a historical backdrop, each profile featured in Being Me in America reflects the prevailing medical, legal, and religious attitudes of the period and the contemporary social contexts of gender, geography, and class. The stories underscore the cyclical swings in acceptance and intolerance. Profiles of major American figures are thematically grouped to highlight LGBT contributions to American history and culture that include some of our greatest treasures, finest moments, and defining art forms. 

American Profile: Rev. Michael Wigglesworth, 1700s

In 1662, this Puritan clergyman published The Day of Doom, a fire-and-brimstone poem about the Last Judgment. Excerpts from the poem are still used to illustrate the severity of New England Puritanism. In his diary (not fully decoded until the 1960s), Wigglesworth recorded his battle with his “filthy lust” for men. Religious teachings and moral attitudes of Wigglesworth’s time focused on the “sin” of sodomy. In some colonies, sodomy was a capital offense. 

American Profile: Alexander Hamilton and John Laurens, 1800s

In a letter to his friend John Laurens, Alexander Hamilton explained that his marriage would not change his love for Laurens: “I wish…by action, rather than words, to convince you that I love you.” Same-sex affection was expressed more openly during Hamilton’s era than in later centuries, and the boundaries between friendship and sexual attraction were not always clear. However, Hamilton’s role as an architect of American democracy is undisputed. In 1787-88, he worked with John Jay and James Madison to write a series of essays in support of the Constitution. Known as The Federalist Papers, these writings proved critical in achieving ratification of the Constitution. 

American Profile: Walt Whitman and Peter Doyle, late 1800s

Walt Whitman described Peter Doyle, a Washington, D.C., streetcar conductor, as his “dearest comrade.” Their relationship exemplified the virtues of the close male-to-male friendships that Whitman waxed lyrical about in his poems. In public, Whitman equivocated about the sexual aspects of these friendships, reflecting the amorphous notions about sexuality of the period. Doyle said about Whitman: “His disposition was different. Woman in that sense never came into his head.”

American Profile: Civil War soldiers, 1860s

It is estimated that more than 400 women who passed as men fought as soldiers in the Civil War. For centuries, women have passed as men in order to live the lives they wanted to—doing “men’s work” or living with other women. For others passing allowed them to live with other women. Many went undetected until illness or death “blew” their cover. 

American Profile: Susan B. Anthony, mid 1880s-early 1900s

Industrialization and urbanization changed the American landscape, and with this change the first wave of feminism broke on shore. Anthony, the most famous of these pioneering feminists, dedicated her life to achieving social and political equality for American women. Like many of these trailblazing women, Anthony never married and formed her closest emotional and affectionate bonds with other women. Whether their relationships were sexual is largely unknown.

American Profile: Alain Locke, 1920s

Locke was among the leading intellectual figures of the Harlem Renaissance, many of whom were “in the life.” Despite the relative tolerance toward homosexuality and bisexuality during the 1920s, the black gay literati remained circumspect about their sexual orientation, emphasizing their blackness instead.

American Profile: Billy Strayhorn, 1930s-60s

Composer, pianist, and arranger, Strayhorn was one of the forces behind the sound of Duke Ellington’s band, creating some of the Duke’s best-known pieces, for instance, “Lush Life” and “Take the A Train.” Despite his incredible talent, Strayhorn remained in Ellington’s shadow as an under-estimated composer. Strayhorn lived openly as a gay black man during an intensely homophobic era. He also was active in the nascent civil rights movement. 

American Profile: World War II veterans, 1940s

The military’s tolerance of homosexuality among its troops ended with the close of World War II. Some soldiers and marines were dishonorably discharged, others received a court-martial, and yet others received a less-than-honorable “blue” discharge. Service men and women who were identified as homosexuals were put on “queer ships,” and discharged to the nearest U.S. port city such as New York or San Francisco, giving birth to some of today’s largest homosexual communities.

American Profile: Harry Hay, 1950s

In the 1950s, when it was illegal in California for more than two homosexuals to congregate, Harry Hay co-founded the Mattachine Society, the first enduring organization for gay men and women. (However, it consisted primarily of men.) Known as the father of the modern gay movement, Hay is credited with being the first to apply the term “minority” to gay men and women, affirming his belief that LGBT people share a culture, as do members of various religious and ethnic groups. The Mattachine Society eventually grew into a national network with chapters in dozens of cities, creating a national model for gay activism.

American Profile: Aaron Copland, 1950s

The story of Copland, whose sinewy music is rooted in American folkways and icons, epitomizes a paradox of the early Cold War years, the first decade following World War II. Like Tennessee Williams, Samuel Barber, James Baldwin, and other gay artists of the period, Copland played a major role in America’s post-World War II rise as a cultural power. This role, however, did not protect him from the homophobic Lavender Scare that swept America at the time. In 1953, the State Department barred his work from nearly 200 American libraries around the world. 

American Profile: Frank Kameny, 1960s

Fired in 1957 as an astronomer with the U.S. Army Map Service for being a homosexual, Frank Kameny became the first federal civil service employee to be dismissed on the basis of sexual orientation. Refusing to accept this infringement on his civil rights, Kameny fought his case all the way to the Supreme Court, but the court denied him a hearing. Determined to secure equality in employment for gays and lesbians, he took his case to the streets, organizing pickets in front of the White House and other government buildings. Kameny was a pioneering social activist in the civil rights movement for the LGBT community. 

American Profile: Bayard Rustin, 1960s

A civil rights activist, Rustin was a longtime adviser to Martin Luther King, Jr., who introduced to King the tactic of non-violent protest. Rustin, however, had been arrested on a “morals” charge in 1953. Because his homosexuality was considered a liability to the civil rights movement, Rustin always remained in the background. With A. Philip Randolph as the front man, Rustin organized the 1963 March on Washington, which culminated with King’s “I Have a Dream” speech. Within a year of the march, the Civil Rights Act of 1964 was passed. Although Rustin did not conceal his orientation, it remained relatively unknown until the 1980s when he testified before the New York City Council in support of a proposed gay rights bill.

American Profile: Harvey Milk, 1970s

The first openly gay man to be elected to public office in California, Harvey Milk implored gay men and lesbians to come out to their parents and friends. Only then, Milk argued, could the community broaden its political base and fight the conservative backlash that threatened the gains made by the fledging gay rights movement. Chief among Milk’s targets was the well-funded “Save Our Children” campaign headed by singer Anita Bryant. The campaign aimed to overturn recently enacted local ordinances that had made discrimination based on sexual orientation illegal in a number of cities.

American Profile: Dr. John Fryer, 1972

Fryer was the gay psychiatrist who agreed to participate in the panel discussion, “Psychiatry, Friend or Foe to the Homosexuals” at the 1972 American Psychiatric Association (APA) convention. Fryer agreed to speak only if he could wear a mask and wig and disguise his voice. The following year, APA delisted homosexuality as a mental illness. At the time, homosexuality was considered an illness that could be “cured” by treatments that ranged from psychoanalysis to institutionalization to shock therapy. Despite the “de-listing,” these “treatments” were not universally, nor immediately, rejected by mental health practitioners. Dr. Fryer did not reveal his identity until 1994. 

American Profile: Kate Bornstein, 2000s

Writer, performer, and activist Kate Bornstein has been on the vanguard of the American transgender movement since the 1980s. Her writings, which include My Gender Workbook: How to Become a Real Man, a Real Woman, the Real You, or Something Else Entirely, have helped to empower a generation of transgender people and raise public awareness of the transgender experience.

Being Me in America conveys several important messages:

• LGBT history is a microcosm of American history.
• Personal identity is shaped by societal values and attitudes.
• America’s identity has always depended on LGBT people.
• Being LGBT in America has been, and continues to be, a struggle for the freedom to be who you are.
• LGBT history, though distinctive, overlaps with the history of other marginalized and oppressed groups.
• LGBT Americans do not enjoy the full rights of their citizenship.

Exhibit Elements

Places and Spaces: A 360-degree multi-media experience takes visitors across the country, through time, and up and down the economic ladder, putting them into the places and spaces where LGBT people have found community.

Me In America! America In Me! An uplifting film celebrates extraordinary and ordinary LGBT American people, taking visitors into all areas of American life: a factory floor, an art gallery, a school bus, a combat mission in Iraq, a local fire department, a football field, a TV newsroom, a Bible study group, and the halls of Congress where LGBT people are shaping America and America is shaping LGBT people. Despite attacks upon their physical, emotional, and spiritual lives, LGBT individuals have persevered in their quest to discover, define, and defend their true identities as people and as Americans. 

Gallery Theme: Self

Being Me is about how we identify ourselves—coming to terms with “me.” This is a process that may be complicated if we see our self as an outsider, one at odds with “normal” society. Commonly referred to as “coming out” by contemporary LGBT people, this process can be marked by one defining moment or many smaller moments (stepping out and stepping back in) and may involve being out to some but not to others.

Coming-out stories have been told by and recorded from the entire spectrum of gender and sexual identities. Stories come from every corner of America, shared by people of all religions, classes, and occupations. Being Me introduces a diversity of voices, many of which reappear in other sections of the Here I Am exhibit. 

Story Element: A Name for Me

Told in both historical and contemporary voices, these stories illustrate the fluidity of the lexicon of gender identity and sexual orientation: the labels homosexual, heterosexual, straight, gay, lesbian, and transgender. These labels have changed from era to era, in terms of their very existence in the language and their emotive power as sources of stigma and acceptance, pain and pride. 

Story Element: Becoming Aware

How do I know that I am gay, lesbian, bisexual, or transgender? How do I know that I am not alone? Most of us are born into heterosexual families and have heterosexual neighbors and schoolmates by whom gender and sexual orientation are taken for granted. We live in a society where heterosexuality is perceived as the norm. The stories here reveal that self-awareness has always been an unfolding process, one that depends on communication: reading, listening, observing, and searching. 

Story Element: The Subjectivity of ”Normal”

These stories speak to the complex nature of defining, and distinguishing between, gender and sexual identity. They underscore our presumptions about each other and our personal concepts of normalcy: the heterosexual person who believes homosexuality is a choice curable by therapy, prayer, or by an act of will; the gay man who thinks a bisexual man or woman is being dishonest and should make a choice to be either homosexual or heterosexual; and those who assume that transgender individuals are always gay. But by accepting that genders and sexualities fall along a wide spectrum—persistently defying rigid categories—we can address many of our misconceptions. 

Exhibit Element: “Coming Out” Booth

We’ve all got one (even if we are not in the LGBT community). A coming out story!

Visitors are invited to share their own coming out stories in a small private recording booth. Using a touch-screen interface, visitors record their stories, opting to speak extemporaneously in response to a set of questions, or have a companion interview them. Once recorded, the stories may be added to the Museum’s digital archives, if the visitor so elects. Some stories, after archival review, may appear in the exhibition hall.

A Place to Pause and Reflect

The three-dimensional exhibit space will integrate objects with media and interactive technologies to produce immersive experiences, some of which visitors can customize to their age, learning style, and interests. Mobile technologies will “push” photos, text, video, audio, and interactive content out to visitors as they move through the space. These technologies will also provide unique opportunities for social interaction and dialogue among visitors both on and off the museum site.

However, to balance the media-intensive experience, an architecturally unique space will be designated for contemplation—a “no-tech” area where visitors can pause and reflect: What does this experience mean to me? What connects us as individuals, families, communities, and society? Where do we go from here to strengthen those bonds?