More Input Please

My poor, unsuspecting, 21 year old but very optimistic and activist roommate asked me if I could help her out with a “teach-in” that she plans to do on Tuesday.  I asked her what the topic was and she threw a couple of ideas out, some of which I stopped cold (“if you don’t already know what code switching is, I can’t explain modern linguistics theory and the evolution of language between the right and left over the weekend, so talking about new speak is something that we can cover later”), others which I cautioned her might get out of control pretty quickly. 

Finally, we got it narrowed down to a specific topic with a relatively short time frame that I already had plenty of sources on and lots of knowledge about, which can be discussed in a relatively neutral manner while still being productive social discussion with input from both liberals and conservatives: portrayal and visibility of homosexuality in popular/political media in America/Western Europe from the 20th century until now.  

I have already bombed her with TONS of articles and information, given her the titles of Douglas Sirk’s movies and wished her the best of luck in actually finding any of them, dumped all five seasons worth of Kids in the Hall, Philadelphia, Boys Don’t Cry, and Soap into her lap, tried to find a decent condensed version of Angels in America (I’ve seen it on stage twice and I still don’t know if I understand it - it’s seven hours long, I don’t think she’ll be able to process it in less than 150 hours), found a copy of “The Celluloid Closet” online, failed to find a copy of “And the Band Plays On,” in either text or the HBO movie, given her a copy of “Mysterious Skin” with the caveat of “This is an excellent and sensitive portrayal of how childhood sexual abuse affected two different boys, but it is a VERY difficult movie to watch,” given her my copy of “The Anita Bryant Story”, and found an excellent selection of clips of news stories about AIDs from the early 1980s, explained Reagan’s silence and the deaths of Rock Hudson, Arthur Ashe, and the diagnosis of Magic Johnson and how this changed the conversation about both AIDs and LGBTQWTFBBQ visibility and rights, along with anti-homosexuality PSAs from the fifties and sixties and a collection of sermons by the late Jerry Falwell and his “Save our Children” campaign.  Good times!

But while I’m great at books, movies, and television, one of the things she’s looking for are print media/posters, and I’m less-well versed when it comes to that.  My google-fu is failing me because pretty much every GIS string I come up with starts with five pages of Pussy Riot photos.  So I call upon you, my social-justice tumblr folks, for help finding period (anywhere from 1890- the Pussy Riot stuff, because I already have plenty of that) posters/bumperstickers/pamphlets/handouts, etc. regarding homosexuality - both for Gay rights/recognition and against.  Thanks to the new reblog system that I hate, you can reblog my post and hope that I see the link, or you can send me suggestions via my ask box.  Thank you all in advance, and I can’t wait to see what floats up.

(Note: I’m not putting tags on this because, well, I’ve got a lot of other stuff going on in my life at the moment, but if you feel like forwarding the request to other folks at social justice or graphic design or history tumblrs, feel free: I just don’t have time/spoons to deal with some of the people who troll posts with the relevant tags)