intrigue-posthaste-please:

I’m watching that documentary “Before Stonewall” about gay history pre-1969, and uncovered something which I think is interesting.

The documentary includes a brief clip of a 1954 televised newscast about the rise of homosexuality. The host of the program interviewed psychologists, a police officer, and one “known homosexual”. The “known homosexual” is 22 years old. He identifies himself as Curtis White, which is a pseudonym; his name is actually Dale Olson.

So I tracked down the newscast. According to what I can find, Dale Olson may have been the first gay man to appear openly on television and defend his sexual orientation. He explains that there’s nothing wrong with him mentally and he’s never been arrested. When asked whether he’d take a cure if it existed, he says no. When asked whether his family knows he’s gay, he says that they didn’t up until tonight, but he guesses they’re going to find out, and he’ll probably be fired from his job as well. So of course the host is like …why are you doing this interview then? and Dale Olson, cool as cucumber pie, says “I think that this way I can be a little useful to someone besides myself.”

1954. 22 years old. Balls of pure titanium.

Despite the pseudonym, Dale’s boss did indeed recognize him from the TV program, and he was promptly fired the next day. He wrote into ONE magazine six months later to reassure readers that he had gotten a new job at a higher salary.

Curious about what became of him, I looked into his life a little further. It turns out that he ultimately became a very successful publicity agent. He promoted the Rocky movies and Superman. Not only that, but get this: Dale represented Rock Hudson, and he was the person who convinced him to disclose that he had AIDS! He wrote the statement Rock read. And as we know, Rock Hudson’s disclosure had a very significant effect on the national conversation about AIDS in the U.S.

It appears that no one has made the connection between Dale Olson the publicity agent instrumental in the AIDS debate and Dale Olson the 22-year-old first openly gay man on TV. So I thought I’d make it. For Pride month, an unsung gay hero.

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cryism:

im truly interested why ridiculously wealthy liberal celebrities here are still upheld as revolutionaries, and their actions at lavish award ceremonies are reblogged thousands of times and discussed as some ultimate acts of subversion, natalie portman says all the nominated directors are male and thats some SHE DID THAT moment, while she is a literal supporter of a settler colonialist state of israel which recently jailed ahed tamimi, a palestinian teenage girl for slapping a soldier who trespassed on her property 

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antiblackness:

“sex positivity” was a mistake. it’s not being utilized in a way that lets people (especially young girls, people of color and lgbt people) have proper access to information about sex and STDs, consent, or rape culture but instead it just promotes a “fuck whoever you want whenever you want and never think about the consequences!” mindset. it leads to a lot of minors making god awful decisions and then regretting them later with nothing they can do about it. it leads to “being open about your kinks is progressive!!!!” which in turn ends up with men pressuring women into violent sex and saying that if she was a #Real sex positive feminist, then she’d have sex with him how he wants her to.

sex positivity should’ve been used to promote education of safe sex, to lessen stigma around sex (especially between sga and trans individuals), to give sex workers a voice, to spread proper information about STDs and prevention and treatment, and to teach about rape culture and consent. but as with most movements like this all it ended up being was a red lipstick and black heels “fuck the patriarchy” type thing while doing literally nothing progressive! and of course i’m not saying there’s nobody who does this, but with the way the sex positivity movement has gone, i doubt these people have the energy to try and have a loud enough voice in a community spewing the opposite of the message that should be gotten across.

(Source: antiblackness-archive)

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