Gay community news boston
Digital Transgender Archive
Gay Community News at Defining GCN
MHS Event
Co-sponsored with The History Project
Loie Hayes
Gordon Gottlieb
Russ Lopez
Moderated by Richard Burns
This is a hybrid event. FREE. The in-person reception starts at and the program will begin at
Register to attend online
Register to attend in person
In , a small community of gay men and lesbians founded "Gay Society News," a local Boston newsletter to report on LGBTQ+ events. That community-driven newsletter grew into a major newspaper with an international readership. Join us to explore the arc of GCN's history and its influence on Queer activism.
Hybrid Event
The in-person reception starts at and the program will commence at
Masks are optional for this event.
The virtual program begins at PM and will be hosted on the video conference platform, Zoom. Registrants will receive a verification message with attendance information.
Gay Community News at The queer outlet that went from Boston to the world
Field Guide to Boston
Even ardent consumers of homosexual Boston media might not have taken much perceive of the five-page mimeographed publication that made its debut on June 17, Called the Gay People Newsletter, it listed a handful of local events including a softball game and a meeting about trans issues, the device numbers of local LGBTQ organizations, and the several TV and radio shows that covered gay and lesbian issues (including “Gay Way Radio” on WBUR).
But within a year, GCN became Gay Community News, tripled in size, and featured news stories, commentaries, personal ads and letters to the editor that provide a glimpse of what queer life was like in New England in the immediate post-Stonewall era. The paper would enjoy a year sprint. Many of its staff members and contributors became leaders of major LGBTQ organizations. Now, The History Project and the Massachusetts Historical Society are exploring GCN’s legacy with a three-part series of inhabit and virtual events called Gay Community News at
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Introduction to Gay Community News
Founded in by a group of eight lesbians and gays in Boston, Gay Community News (GCN) was initally conceived as a newsletter to increase awareness of events and programs across the lgbtq+ community in Boston. As the first issue, in , states:
There has been a long-standing ask for in the Boston gay collective for improved communication between the various gay organizations and the gay individual. The lack of coverage in the "straight" squeeze has added to this issue of getting necessary information to our community…The Gay Community Newsletter is meant as a means to solve this problem. The purpose will be to list all of the events and information of interest to the gay community in one publication.
By the second issue, however, GCN staffers were already desiring a more robust publication and they upgraded from a two-page mimeograph to an eight-page, offset printed newsprint. In under two years the paper expanded distribution and coverage significantly, becoming a regional voice for the gay collective across the Northeast. The impact of the paper