Queer Nation

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Queer Nation was founded in March 1990 in New York City, USA by activists from ACT-UP. The four founders were outraged at the escalation of anti-gay and lesbian violence on the streets and prejudice in the arts and media. One of the four was a victim of anti-gay violence.

On March 20, 1990, sixty queers gathered at the Gay, Bisexual and Transgender Community Center in New York's Greenwich Village to create a direct-action organization. The goal of the unnamed organization was the elimination of homophobia, and the increase of gay, lesbian and bisexual visibility through a variety of tactics.

The direct-action group's inaugural action took place at Flutie's Bar, a straight hangout at the South Street Sea Port on April 13, 1990. The goal: to make clear to patrons that queers will not be restricted to gay bars for socializing and for public displays of affection. More visibility actions like this one became known as "Queer Nights Out."

Although the name Queer Nation had been used casually since the group’s inception, it was officially approved at the group's general meeting on May 17, 1990.

Queer Nation's popular slogan "We're here. We're queer. Get used to it." was adopted and used by many in the LGBT community. Aside from its militant protest style, as opposed to the more reformist gay rights organizations such as the Human Rights Campaign or the Log Cabin Republicans, Queer Nation was most effective and powerful in the early 1990s in the USA, and used direct action to fight for gay rights. They also worked with AIDS organization ACT-UP as well as WHAM! and were the birthplace of Queer Action Figures. Even though never officially disbanded, most sources agree that Queer Nation no longer exists. However, a television program of the same name with a focus on gay current events and issues is regularly aired in New Zealand.

Queer Nation is credited with starting the process of reclaiming the word queer, which, previously, was only used in a pejorative sense and Queer Nation's use of it in their name and slogan was at first considered shocking. Ten years later, queer is almost an ordinary word, used casually in the name of gay-supportive and relatively mainstream television programs such as Queer Eye for the Straight Guy and Queer as Folk.

Queer Nation is also linked to several controversial incidents in which closeted public figures were outed as gay or lesbian. Queer Nation's reasoning was that ending this "hypocrisy" benefited gays as a group because it let them know there actually were gay people in influential places, and promoted gay rights by forcing the outed and the organizations they belonged to take a stance on issues concerning gays. Many in the gay community did not agree with Queer Nation's radical tactics and favored a more assimilationist course of action.

Other slogans used by Queer Nation include "Two, Four, Six, Eight! How Do You Know Your Kids Are Straight?" and "Out of the Closets and into the Streets".

Here are some of Queer Nation's first actions:

April 20, 1990 Queer Nation members show up en masse at Macy's department store where Olympic gold medalist Greg Louganis is promoting a new swimsuit line. Queers arrive with WHEATIES cereal boxes with swimmer’s picture pasted on front, to recall the time the cereal maker rejected Louganis as a spokesperson, ostensibly because he is gay.

April 26, 1990 Responding to the 120% increase in violence against queers, Queer Nation climbs to the roof of Badlands, a Greenwich Village bar and hangs a 40-foot banner that reads: "Dykes and Fags Bash Back!"

April 28, 1990 A pipe bomb explodes in Uncle Charlie’s, a Greenwich Village gay bar, injuring three. In protest, Queer Nation mobilizes 1000 queers in a matter of hours. Angry marchers fill the streets, carrying the banner “Dykes and Fags Bash Back.”

May 12, 1990 The inauguration of "Queer Shopping Network." Members of Queer Nation travel from New York City to the Newport Mall in Jersey City with leaflets offering information about queers, safe sex tips, and a list of famous queers throughout history. The leaflets are titled "We're here, we're queer and we'd like to say hello!"

Contents

[edit] Queer Nation in other locales

Queer Nation chapters were founded in dozens of other cities, including San Francisco, Seattle, Boston, Chicago and Toronto.

Queer Nation-San Francisco was active from the spring of 1990 to about 1993. In the fall of 1990 the group helped organize a protest against a visiting televangelist who vowed to "exorcise the demons" from San Francisco on Halloween [1]; in spring 1992 the group demonstrated against the filming of Basic Instinct in the city [2]. An offshoot, the Street Patrol, was a neighborhood safety patrol in the Castro District, outliving QN-SF itself by a year.

[edit] See also

[edit] External links

[edit] Outside Reading

"The Case For and Against Queer Nation," pp.256-66, Johansson, Warren & Percy, William A. Outing: Shattering the Conspiracy of Silence. Harrington Park Press, 1994.

Family Values: Two Moms and Their Son by Phyllis Burke. New York: Random House, 1993. ISBN 0-679-42188-2. In this nonfiction book, the author recounts her struggle to adopt her domestic partner's son, a drama that is set against a backdrop of Queer Nation actions in San Francisco in 1990-1992.

News articles:

Queer Nation also refers to:

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