This Week in Queer History

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, lesbians, a trans landlady, and their straight friends, simply living their lives. In this episode, we celebrate the 50th anniversary of the moment that changed queer storytelling forever. The man who wrote it might be the last person you'd expect. Armistead Maupin grew up a self-described uptight, archconservative racist brat in Raleigh, North Carolina. He worked at a TV station managed by Jesse Helms. Richard Nixon invited him to the White House as a model young Republican. Then he moved to San Francisco in 1971, found a society where tolerance was valued above everything, came out publicly in 1974 - and started writing Tales. By 1988, he was standing on the steps of the North Carolina State Capitol denouncing Jesse Helms by name. That is a transformation story for the ages. This episode explores why Tales was so revolutionary: Anna Madrigal, one of the most significant transgender characters in American fiction, introduced decades before mainstream conversations about trans identity even existed - not tragic, not a spectacle, but the moral center of the entire story. Chosen family as a radical act. The serial format that had readers calling the Chronicle office demanding to know what happened next. And the long fight to bring it to television - HBO acquiring the rights in 1982 and then burying them, the 1993 PBS miniseries that became the highest-rated dramatic series in a decade, and the conservative groups that threatened to pull federal funding rather than let queer people simply live on screen. And it gets personal - because Tales is ultimately about what happens when you let yourself be changed by the people you meet, the places you live, the world you open yourself up to. Chosen family isn't just a theme. It's a survival strategy. And fifty years after a newspaper column dared to show queer people simply living, we're still finding our way to 28 Barbary Lane. Listen to more episodes: https://thisweekinqueerhistory.com [https://thisweekinqueerhistory.com] Stay in touch: https://thisweekinqueerhistory.com/subscribe [https://thisweekinqueerhistory.com/subscribe] Website: https://thisweekinqueerhistory.com [https://thisweekinqueerhistory.com] Send us Fan Mail [https://www.buzzsprout.com/2609297/fan_mail/new] Support the show [https://www.buzzsprout.com/2609297/support]

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 finally admitted that the science had been on our side all along. In this episode, we explore what that moment meant, what it cost to get there, and why it took 17 years after the American Psychiatric Association made the same call in 1973. This episode goes back to the beginning - to Richard von Krafft-Ebing and the 1886 psychiatric text that framed homosexuality as degeneracy, to the DSM listing it as a sociopathic personality disturbance in 1952, to the aversion therapies and lobotomies and brain surgeries performed on gay people in the name of treatment. And then it tells the story of the people who fought back: psychologist Evelyn Hooker, whose groundbreaking research showed no measurable difference in psychological health between gay and straight men; Frank Kameny and Barbara Gittings disrupting the APA's 1970 conference; and Dr. John Fryer testifying before the APA in a mask and voice modulator because he couldn't safely be himself at a psychiatric conference. The 17-year gap between the APA and the WHO isn't a footnote - it's the heart of the story. During that stretch, countries around the world continued to treat queerness as an illness, shaping who got healthcare, who got insurance, who could immigrate, who kept custody of their children. Classification isn't abstract. It's funding. It's policy. It's someone's life. Today that date is marked as IDAHOBIT - the International Day Against Homophobia, Biphobia, and Transphobia - observed in over 130 countries. But the work isn't done. Conversion therapy still exists, still harms people, still costs lives. The same impulse that once classified us as sick shows up today in new language and new legislation. This episode is about the difference between being fixed and being helped - and why that distinction is everything. Listen to more episodes: https://thisweekinqueerhistory.com [https://thisweekinqueerhistory.com] Stay in touch: https://thisweekinqueerhistory.com/subscribe [https://thisweekinqueerhistory.com/subscribe] Website: https://thisweekinqueerhistory.com [https://thisweekinqueerhistory.com] Send us Fan Mail [https://www.buzzsprout.com/2609297/fan_mail/new] Support the show [https://www.buzzsprout.com/2609297/support]

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 lists full of names and identities - and four days later, burned it all at Opernplatz in front of 40,000 people. In this episode, we tell the full story of what was destroyed that day, and why it matters more right now than it has in decades. The Institute of Sexual Research was extraordinary. Founded in 1919 by Magnus Hirschfeld, it housed the largest collection on human sexuality in the world. In its first year, staff conducted over 18,000 consultations for 3,500 people - many completely free. Five trans women were employed on staff. Dora Richter became one of the first people in history to receive full gender confirmation surgery there. The institute was pioneering gender-affirming care and hormone therapy decades before the rest of the world caught up. And its motto - through science to justice - wasn't just a slogan. They meant it. But the patient files seized during the raid were later used to round up gay men across Germany. The very institution built to protect queer people became a tool to hunt them. This episode traces how that happened, what was lost forever, and why only 35 items from the original collection of tens of thousands have ever been recovered. And then it connects the dots to right now - because the pattern hasn't changed. Book bans are up 63% in the United States. Kansas is seizing driver's licenses from trans people. The ACLU is tracking nearly 500 anti-LGBTQ bills in 2026. Where they burn books, in the end they also burn people. Heinrich Heine wrote that 113 years before it happened on the Opernplatz. This episode is about the safe spaces that save lives - and what it means to be the books that survived. Listen to more episodes: https://thisweekinqueerhistory.com [https://thisweekinqueerhistory.com] Stay in touch: https://thisweekinqueerhistory.com/subscribe [https://thisweekinqueerhistory.com/subscribe] Website: https://thisweekinqueerhistory.com [https://thisweekinqueerhistory.com] Send us Fan Mail [https://www.buzzsprout.com/2609297/fan_mail/new] Support the show [https://www.buzzsprout.com/2609297/support]

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 tears - and tell the full, honest story of what it cost to kick that door open. Because the story of "The Puppy Episode" is messier and more human than the legend. Ellen didn't become a cultural flashpoint overnight. She climbed through comedy clubs, sold vacuum cleaners, and built an act around finding the hilarious strangeness in everyday life. By 1986, Johnny Carson was inviting her to the couch after her Tonight Show debut - something he almost never did for a first-time performer. By 1994, she had her own sitcom on ABC. And by 1997, she and her writers were sitting across from Disney executives with the most terrifying pitch in network television history. This episode digs into what happened when a gay woman decided her character could simply be gay too - the GLAAD campaign, the celebrity guest stars, the local affiliate in Alabama that refused to air it, and the community watch parties that turned it into a collective coming-out moment for a generation. It also gets honest about what came after: the canceled show, the blacklisting, the years of depression, and a 2024 Netflix special that raised more questions than it answered about what accountability really looks like. And it gets personal. Because for so many of us, that night in 1997 was the first time we saw ourselves reflected back in a way that felt real. Not a punchline. Not a villain. Just a person telling the truth. We can hold gratitude for that moment and hold Ellen to a higher standard at the same time - and this episode explores why that ability to hold both things is actually what real community looks like. Listen to more episodes: https://thisweekinqueerhistory.com [https://thisweekinqueerhistory.com] Stay in touch: https://thisweekinqueerhistory.com/subscribe [https://thisweekinqueerhistory.com/subscribe] Website: https://thisweekinqueerhistory.com [https://thisweekinqueerhistory.com] Send us Fan Mail [https://www.buzzsprout.com/2609297/fan_mail/new] Support the show [https://www.buzzsprout.com/2609297/support]

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 sent queer people underground for seventy years, and the defiance that planted a seed we're still growing today. By early 1895, Wilde was untouchable. Two plays running in the West End, a reputation as the wittiest man alive. But behind the velvet and the wit, he was living a double life with Lord Alfred Douglas, and the walls were closing in. When the Marquess of Queensberry left a card accusing Wilde of "posing" as a sodomite, Wilde sued for libel. The trap closed. Within weeks, Wilde himself was in the dock, charged with gross indecency under the same vaguely worded law that would later destroy Alan Turing. Friends begged him to catch the evening boat to France. He stayed. Because running meant agreeing that love was something to hide. When asked about "the love that dare not speak its name," Wilde delivered one of the bravest speeches ever given in a courtroom. The gallery erupted in applause. The jury did not. He was sentenced to two years of hard labor at Reading Gaol. This episode explores what silence costs, not just the person being silenced, but everyone around them. Kris shares a deeply personal story about his own family, the grandfather who never knew, and the grandmother who crossed the line at the very end. It is a story about choosing truth over safety, about the people who refuse to hide, and about the seeds they plant for the rest of us. Listen to more episodes: https://thisweekinqueerhistory.com [https://thisweekinqueerhistory.com] Stay in touch: https://thisweekinqueerhistory.com/subscribe [https://thisweekinqueerhistory.com/subscribe] Website: https://thisweekinqueerhistory.com [https://thisweekinqueerhistory.com] Send us Fan Mail [https://www.buzzsprout.com/2609297/fan_mail/new] Support the show [https://www.buzzsprout.com/2609297/support]