The LGBT community has changed over the last four decades, as has Philadelphia Gay News’ role in engaging with it.
When the paper started as a monthly publication in 1976, it reported national, state and local news with equal emphasis. How else would a gay person living in Philadelphia at the time hear about a man arrested in North Carolina for having consensual sex with his same-sex partner, or that the U.S. Supreme Court soon after ruled it was constitutional for a state to prohibit private same-sex acts?
Since then, mainstream media has picked up its coverage. In 2015, people were as likely to read about decision day in Obergefell v. Hodges, the Supreme Court case that affirmed marriage equality, in PGN as in The New York Times. The difference? PGN focused the story on the Philadelphia perspective, with reporters attending rallies at Independence Hall and the National Constitution Center.
As a community newspaper, PGN not only has an interest in the LGBT story, but the story of LGBT Philadelphia and how the city touches national narratives. In celebration of PGN’s 40th anniversary, the paper is taking a look back at themes that emerged in its coverage of the LGBT community through the years.
Visibility: 1976-1986
The early stories of PGN highlighted LGBT people partly as a way of introducing those in the community to each other and also chronicled the community’s introduction to the broader world.
One story from December 1977 detailed a press conference at which the Community Alliance of Philadelphia, a group for gay business professionals in the city, “announced its formation to straights.” Earlier that year, Ed Rendell toured six gay bars as part of his campaign for district attorney and, after he won the November election, he promised gay people a “friend in the D.A.’s office.” It showed the importance of increased visibility in gaining political allies.
From 1976-77, the paper followed Richard Aumiller, an openly gay professor at the University of Delaware who was dismissed soon after he began advising the gay campus group. The American Civil Liberties Union took Aumiller’s case, and the university ultimately dropped its defense in the wrongful termination. Duke University hired Aumiller in September 1977.
Trans people appeared in PGN throughout the first decade of the paper. Paula Grossman, a music teacher from Plainfield, N.J., who was fired because of her sex-change operation, was highlighted in April 1979 for privately publishing a 74-page book called, “A Handbook for Transsexuals.” A month later, PGN covered Jenell Ashlie, a trans art teacher fired from a Delaware County school. A U.S. District Court judge ordered the Chester-Upland School District to reinstate her.
After Gov. Dick Thornburgh took office in 1979, he signed a proclamation declaring June 24-30 as Gay Pride Week in Pennsylvania. The document said it served as a “reaffirmation of the state’s commitment to the principles of equal treatment under the law for all citizens.” He was the first Republican governor to officially recognize his state’s gay residents. State representatives voted 180-14 to condemn Thornburgh for the proclamation, and by the end of 1979, Dr. Ethel Allen, a longtime supporter of gay rights, was fired as secretary of the commonwealth. Several supporters thought her role in getting Thornburgh to sign the controversial Gay Pride proclamation was a factor in the firing.
Philadelphia made good on the promise of upholding equality. In August 1980, the Gay Community Police Liaison Committee formed. The city then passed a gay-rights bill in 1984. It protected people from discrimination based on sexual orientation in employment and public accommodation.
PGN showed how Philadelphia’s LGBT community also worked to become a visible part of the national LGBT community. In July 1977, 2,300 people went to the now-defunct club Second Story for a roast of Anita Bryant, a vocal supporter of antigay legislation. They raised $10,800 to contribute to the gay-rights campaign in Miami. More than $3,000 was raised the following year at a Philadelphia fundraiser to fight Prop. 6, a California initiative that would have severely curtailed gay rights in public schools.
Community: 1986-1996
Nearly every front page of PGN in the mid-’80s to early-’90s was dedicated to the AIDS epidemic. Nationally, the paper covered the Coalition for Leadership on AIDS, which included activists from Pennsylvania. At a march the group organized in Washington, D.C., in June 1987, 64 of the 350 demonstrators were arrested. PGN also included a several-page news analysis of the Third International Conference on AIDS in Washington that summer.
Stories on the effectiveness of AZT and trials for an experimental drug called lymphokine appeared frequently. There were also several stories on engaging churches in the black community to help spread the word about preventing infection.
In early 1987, Philadelphia City Councilman John White Jr. met with members of the state Council for Sexual Minorities to discuss AIDS outreach in the black community.
“He said you can’t get into the black community with white representatives,” Harrisburg activist Rodger Beatty told PGN at the time.
It seemed the tragedy of a quickly spreading, little-known virus worked to bring people together in the community. Gay men, a particularly hard-hit population in the early epidemic, especially rallied around each other.
The Hill of Hope Association set up an AIDS memorial in May 1987 in Fairmount Park.
“A lot of people never get a chance to say goodbye to their people,” said Gary Ermelin, project coordinator for the memorial.
The voices of people affected by AIDS grew louder, especially after President Ronald Reagan made his first public acknowledgement of the disease in Philadelphia. Reagan was at Franklin Wyndham Plaza for the 200th anniversary of the College of Physicians.
“Six years ago the world had never heard of AIDS,” he said, calling the malady “public-health emergency number one.” But Reagan added, “All the medicine in the world won’t change the fact that prevention is better than cure. We must remember that medicine cannot replace morality.”
He concluded by saying the biggest priority in fighting AIDS was funding research.
PGN followed the AIDS money trail throughout the second decade of the paper’s existence. Delaware did not fund AIDS efforts as aggressively as New Jersey, Pennsylvania or even Philadelphia.
Delaware Gov. Michael Castle earmarked $41,700 for AIDS funding in 1988 after the state Department of Health and Social Services sought $74,800. New Jersey Gov. Thomas Kean proposed a 1988 budget with $21.9 million for AIDS, five-and-a-half times more than the $4 million reserved for AIDS efforts in 1987. Pennsylvania’s 1988 budget included $3.3 million for AIDS, an increase from $350,000 in the first budget proposal for that year.
Philadelphia Mayor Wilson Goode proposed at least $500,000 for AIDS work in the city’s 1988 budget, with $177,000 set aside to establish the AIDS Activities Coordinating Office.
By the end of 1991, community organizing had so well plugged into funding opportunities that Pennsylvania gave the OK to opening a 43-bed AIDS hospice in Germantown. Betak AIDS Care Facility opened at 7141 McCallum St.
Activism: 1996-2006
Following the mobilization of LGBT people and organizations around resources for those affected by AIDS, PGN ramped up coverage of activism in the community. The fight for domestic partnerships in Philadelphia and marriage in the nation got a lot of ink.
In the Jan. 3, 1997 issue, PGN ran a front-page story about City Councilman John Street’s efforts to block an executive order by Mayor Ed Rendell that called for domestic partnership benefits for city employees.
“Gays, lesbians and their allies sent postcards, wrote letters and made phone calls and testified at a city council public hearing,” the article reported, calling Street’s action a unifying force for LGBT activists working at the time in Philadelphia.
The next week’s issue featured interviews with Kevin Vaughan, the out head of the Philadelphia Commission on Human Relations, and Leah Chaplin, the out director of contract administration for the city office of housing. They were the first to apply for domestic-partner benefits. Chaplin wanted leave and health benefits for her partner of 17 years. Vaughan was seeking leave benefits for his partner of six-and-a-half years.
Philadelphia ultimately issued domestic-partner benefits to its employees. And, in a mark of the powerful activism happening at the time, Street decided to get on board with the benefits. In the April 16, 2004 issue, PGN again put Street on the front page. This time, it was for his decision as mayor to appeal a Commonwealth Court ruling that said the city did not have the authority to offer domestic-partnership benefits. Street told PGN he’d continue to enforce the benefits while the appeal went to the state Supreme Court. In December 2004, the state’s highest court upheld Philadelphia’s ordinance offering benefits to domestic partners.
At the same time, Massachusetts was looking beyond domestic partnerships and aiming for marriage for same-sex couples. PGN’s coverage shows that as early as 1997, there was a national debate swirling around marriage equality. An article from Jan. 17 that year reported that nationwide controversy surrounding same-sex marriage prompted the ACLU of Delaware to begin a Gay and Lesbian Civil Rights project.
Issues from the late-’90s-on were filled with stories of same-sex couples seeking marriage in Hawaii and Massachusetts. A lot of the coverage came from the Associated Press, which speaks to the trend of LGBT issues making it to the mainstream press.
PGN printed articles throughout 2004 following the quest to marry of Julie and Hillary Goodridge in Massachusetts, culminating in May 2004 when same-sex couples were legally able to marry in that state.
Defending victories: 2006-2016
The years 2015 pushed marriage to its ultimate conclusion at the U.S. Supreme Court in June.
PGN frequently ran maps illustrating states that allowed civil unions or full marriage, and those that had a constitutional ban on marriage between same-sex couples versus the ones that were challenging marriage bans in court.
The May 23, 2014, front page of PGN featured a five-photo spread of Philadelphians celebrating the Pennsylvania court decision that affirmed marriage equality, and Gov. Tom Corbett’s decision not to appeal the ruling.
The July 3, 2015, issue was packed with marriage coverage. The decision in Obergefell v. Hodges, which affirmed marriage equality nationwide, fell just in time with PGN’s advanced coverage of the 50th anniversary of the Annual Reminders, an early gay-rights protest at Independence Hall that began July 4, 1965.
The theme of coverage could be summed up in this quote from Chris Bartlett, executive director of the William Way LGBT Community Center: “Let’s enjoy this sweet moment of success and celebration and then take the energy and passion we have used with such effect to continue to pursue the path of full equality.”
The last decade in PGN’s coverage has encompassed a tempered optimism in the LGBT community. Successes have been lauded in the paper, but with an ever-present reminder to guard against attacks to the rights that have been hard won.
In 2009, PGN ran frequent front-page articles covering the introduction of a nondiscrimination law that would include protections for people based on sexual orientation and gender identity. A nondiscrimination law was a major suggestion in the state Council for Sexual Minorities in the 1970s, but was never brought up for a vote.
“It’s time for us in the legislature to take a stand against this kind of discrimination,” said Rep. Dan Frankel of Allegheny County when he introduced House Bill 300 in March 2009. He said the bill “would bring our state in line with several of our neighbors who already offer these basic protections.”
PGN ran an article Jan. 17, 1992, highlighting the New Jersey legislators who “voted in overwhelming majority to add protections from discrimination based on ‘affectational or sexual orientation’ to the state’s law against discrimination.”
Pennsylvania still lacks these protections. The current iteration of the nondiscrimination bill is called the Pennsylvania Fairness Act, but it remains stalled in committee in the Republican-controlled legislature.
Some of the most recognizable reporting from the last decade comes from Tim Cwiek. Steadily over the years, he’s been covering Nizah Morris, a trans woman found with a fatal head wound after a Center City courtesy ride from Philadelphia police in 2002.
In 2014, Cwiek won an investigative reporting award from the Society of Professional Journalists, a national organization. His reporting is ongoing, with oral arguments in an open-records dispute scheduled for April 7.
Another recognizable piece of coverage spans the last two years. PGN editor Jen Colletta steadily covered the gay-bashing case against Kathryn Knott, Kevin Harrigan and Philip Williams, all of Bucks County. The three were convicted of attacking a gay couple in Center City in 2014. Harrigan and Williams took plea deals that involved community service; Knott went to trial and received a jail sentence.
Colletta won a Keystone state press award for an editorial she wrote that took a deep dive into the public perception of Knott’s character, especially in the LGBT community, and how that impacted her case.