November 16, 2023
Dear parents of our Queer History elective students,
As the trimester concludes, I want to share an overview of what your child has been studying and discussing in Queer History. This has been one of the most engaged groups of students I’ve ever taught, and as a result we covered a lot more ground than I had anticipated we would.
For most of the trimester, each class period focused on a different era or topic from the history of LGBTQ people in America. We learned about Native American respect for transgender identity, female-assigned soldiers who passed as men during the Revolution and the Civil War, nineteenth-century romantic friendships, the pathologizing of homosexuality by “sexologists,” Harlem and other urban “gayborhoods,” the Lavender Scare during the early Cold War, pioneering queer activism through the Mattachine Society and the Daughters of Bilitis, Stonewall and the emergence of the Gay Liberation Front, Harvey Milk’s fight against Prop 6 and his subsequent assassination, the HIV/AIDS crisis and the controversial activism of ACT UP, the movement for marriage equality, and recent progress and setbacks in the push for transgender visibility and rights.
On a number of occasions, our curriculum highlighted individuals whose stories reflect larger themes in history. These figures included Christine Jorgensen, an early transgender advocate; Roy Cohn, the closeted anticommunist who destroyed the careers of countless homosexuals; Bayard Rustin, a civil rights strategist who organized the March on Washington; Oliver Sipple, the gay veteran who saved President Ford from assassination; Midge Costanza, the Carter aid who hosted the first meeting of LGBTQ leaders at the White House; and Edith Winsor, whose lawsuit expedited the legalization of same-sex marriage in America. We also examined cultural trends such as queer-coding in early Hollywood and Disney films, the gay influence on musical theater, and how LGBTQ people were depicted in sitcoms from the 1960s to today.
Along the way, we held deep and engaging conversations about the tensions between assimilating into the mainstream and modeling alternative ways to express yourself, between traveling along the gender binary and rejecting that binary altogether, and between convincing the wider society of your harmlessness and employing aggressive tactics to force society to pay attention to your suffering.
A few weeks ago, we welcomed a guest speaker, Jim Jorgenson, who is Dr. Jorgenson’s older brother. Jim shared with us his own story of realizing he was gay during childhood, his career as a Catholic priest in Seattle in the 1980s, his decision to come out publicly and accept the consequence of being dismissed from the priesthood, and his subsequent career supporting AIDS patients at the height of the epidemic. The students asked Jim insightful, wide-ranging questions, as Dr. and Mme. Jorgenson looked on with pride.
The final project for this elective involved selecting a contemporary public figure who is openly LGBTQ, listening to a podcast interview with this person, and then completing an in-depth analysis aimed at connecting this person’s narrative to the larger history and tensions of LGBTQ identity. The students did a great job with this project, and they each took their turn teaching the full class about their public figure and asking one another questions about their research.
I am grateful to have the opportunity every two years to teach this elective, and I thank all of you for the honor of teaching your children this fall. If you have any feedback or questions, please don’t hesitate to reach out.
With gratitude,
Mike Fishback