This Week in Queer History
Every week, Kris Fitzgerald digs into the archives of LGBTQ+ history to uncover the moments, people, and movements that shaped queer life and culture. From landmark legal victories to unsung heroes, from underground parties to mass protests - This Week in Queer History celebrates the agency, resilience, and brilliance of queer communities across time.
History isn't just what happened. It's who we are.
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Episodes
108 episodes
Beyond The Parties: How Fire Island Created The Blueprint For Modern Queer Community
Fire Island. Say those two words and most people picture circuit parties and share houses. But the real story of this thirty-two-mile barrier island is so much bigger than the parties.In this episode, we explore how Cherry Grove became t...
He Was Dying of AIDS. He Won the Gold Medal Anyway.
In 1986, over 3,400 queer athletes marched into Kezar Stadium while the AIDS crisis raged and the government looked away. Tom Waddell — doctor, Olympian, and man already diagnosed with AIDS — threw a javelin and won gold. Forty years later, the...
The Secret Language That Kept Queer People Alive
In 1864, a German lawyer named Karl Heinrich Ulrichs did something no one had ever done before: he invented a word for himself. Not a diagnosis. Not a slur. A word rooted in ancient philosophy that said this is what I am, and I am not ashamed. ...
He Was the Best Doctor in the British Empire. They Had No Idea Who He Really Was.
In this episode, we meet Dr. James Miranda Steuart Barry, a brilliant British Army surgeon who rose to the second-highest medical rank in the Empire, performed one of the first successful Caesarean sections where both mother and child survived,...
Compton's Cafeteria Uprising: 60 Years of Fighting Back
Three years before Stonewall, a trans woman in San Francisco's Tenderloin threw a cup of coffee in a police officer's face. That moment ignited the Compton's Cafeteria Uprising, one of the earliest acts of collective queer resistance in America...
One Vote. That's All That Saved New Zealand's Gay Rights Bill.
On July 2, 1986, opponents of New Zealand's Homosexual Law Reform Bill moved to kill it entirely. The closure motion failed by one vote - 41 in favor of killing the bill, 42 against. One MP held strong. One week later, on July 9, 1986, Part 1 p...
America the Beautiful Was Written by a Lesbian - And They Erased Her
What if America's most patriotic song was a queer love story? On July 4, 1895, Katharine Lee Bates published a poem called "America" in a weekly newspaper. We know it today as "America the Beautiful." And the woman who wrote it was a lesbian wh...
The Mom Who Marched for Her Gay Son - and Changed Everything
On June 25, 1972, a schoolteacher from Queens named Jeanne Manford grabbed a piece of orange posterboard, wrote in marker that parents of gay children should unite in support of their kids, and stepped into the Christopher Street Liberation Day...
They Waited 56 Years. Then California Made History.
At 5:01 PM on June 16, 2008, the doors of San Francisco City Hall swung open and two women walked in. Del Martin was 87 years old. Phyllis Lyon was 84. They had been together for fifty-six years. And they were about to become the first same-sex...
A Straight Couple Gave LGBTQ+ People the Right to Marry
On June 12, 1967, the Supreme Court told sixteen states they couldn't ban love anymore. When Richard and Mildred Loving won their case against Virginia, they didn't just win the right to stay married - they handed us a legal blueprint we'd spen...
They Showed Up in Red Shirts - No Permission Required
In June 1991, three thousand LGBTQ+ people wore red shirts to Walt Disney World. No sponsors. No corporate blessing. No permission. Just community - coordinated through word of mouth, built on trust, and showing up at the most wholesome space i...
The Fashion Industry Lied About How Perry Ellis Died - Here's Why
On May 30, 1986, one of America's most influential fashion designers died at forty-six years old. His company said it was encephalitis. The newspapers printed it. And an entire industry exhaled - because nobody had to say the word AIDS. In this...
From Nixon's White House to Pride Parade: The Wild Story Behind Tales of the City
What if a newspaper column could teach America that queer people deserve happy endings? On May 24, 1976, Armistead Maupin's Tales of the City arrived in the San Francisco Chronicle - a serialized story about a boarding house full of gay men, le...
When the WHO Finally Admitted Being Gay Isn't a Mental Illness (1990)
On May 17, 1990, the World Health Organization endorsed the ICD-10 and quietly removed homosexuality from its list of mental disorders. It was, in the words of the activists who had fought for it, a seismic moment - the day a global institution...
They Burned the World's First Trans Clinic - And They're Doing It Again
On May 6, 1933, members of the German Student Union marched to the Institute of Sexual Research in Berlin - with a brass band. Like a parade. They stormed the building, seized tens of thousands of volumes, grabbed patient files and address list...
When Ellen Said "I'm Gay" and Changed TV Forever
On April 30, 1997, Ellen DeGeneres leaned into an airport PA microphone and said three words to 42 million people watching at home. In this episode, we go back to that night - the bomb threats, the pulled advertisers, the watch parties, the tea...
He Could Have Escaped - But Refused to Hide | Oscar Wilde's Trial
What happens when the most famous man in England is told his love is a crime? In 1895, Oscar Wilde stood in a London courtroom and called love between men "beautiful" and "noble," refusing to apologize, recant, or run. This is the trial that se...
The Drag Nuns Who Saved Lives When the Church Stayed Silent
In 1979, a group of queer activists in San Francisco put on nun habits as an Easter joke. Within a few years, they were saving lives.The Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence started as camp and irreverence, but when the AIDS crisis arrived an...
The Straight White Boy Who Accidentally Saved Gay Lives
Ryan White never asked to be the face of AIDS in America. He was a teenager from Kokomo, Indiana, who contracted HIV through a blood transfusion used to treat his hemophilia. He was thirteen years old. And when his school tried to bar him from ...
We Buried a Generation to Get This Drug. Don't Let Them Take It Back.
In 1996, a new class of HIV drugs changed everything. The protease inhibitors, combined with existing antiretroviral treatments, turned AIDS from a death sentence into a manageable chronic condition for people who could access them. The dying s...
A 19-Year-Old Dropout Who Helped Save Millions of Lives
A playwright. A bond trader. A college dropout. A teenager. These are the people who walked into the FDA in the late 1980s and early 90s and came out having redesigned how drugs get approved in America.This is Part 2 of "How Queers Saved...
How 1,500 Dying Activists Outsmarted the U.S. Government
In 1987, there was one approved AIDS drug in the United States. It cost $10,000 a year. And the government's message to the people dying while they waited for more options was essentially: be patient.ACT UP was not patient.This is...
Why Palm Springs Became Gay (It Wasn't the Pool Parties)
Palm Springs today looks like it was always a gay paradise. Sun-drenched streets, rainbow flags, elected queer mayors, world-famous events. But the real story is grittier, more complicated, and far more interesting than the Instagram version.
The Secret History of Gay Gyms (They Were Never Just About Fitness)
Before the apps, before the bars were safe, before there were queer community centers in most cities, there were gyms. And for generations of LGBTQ people, the gym was not primarily about fitness. It was about finding each other.This epi...
The Little Mermaid Was Always a Queer Story
You probably know "The Little Mermaid" as a fairy tale about a girl who wants to live on land. But look at who wrote it, and the story takes on a whole new meaning.Hans Christian Andersen wrote some of the most beloved fairy tales in his...