Before the internet, America’s queer community relied on a sprawling network of often underground newsletters, newspapers, and zines to share information. The media movement started in large cities but would spread to places like central Pennsylvania through a number of pioneering outlets.
“Communication was really difficult because there were no mechanisms for getting in touch with people, finding people, or finding out what other people were doing. It was an out-in-the-wilderness kind of situation,” said Barry Loveland of the LGBT Center of Central Pennsylvania History Project, the group behind a new retrospective on queer midstate media. “That was the case in central Pennsylvania because it is a very spread out geography and not a very urban area. There was no real concentration of LGBTQ folks in one area.”
One of Pennsylvania’s first queer publications, Drum, emerged in the 1960s in the state’s largest city, Philadelphia. By 1975, The Gay Era was being published in Lancaster. In the 80s — an era of still limited acceptance — the Lavender Letter (an events calendar “for, by, and about lesbian women") launched in Harrisburg. The 90s brought newsletters serving the transgender community in the Lower Susquehanna Valley, while Studs, a magazine for Black lesbian women, arrived in Harrisburg in 2007.
Outlets like these are featured in the History Project’s new exhibit, “Spreading the News: A History of LGBTQ+ media, communications, and information sharing in Central PA.” The show starts June 21 at 1323 N. Front St. in Harrisburg and highlights decades of related barriers.
As the name suggests, information sharing spanned periodicals, LGBTQ-friendly guidebooks that helped visitors plan trips, and hotlines or “gay switchboards” providing support and resources to callers in places like State College, Lancaster, and Harrisburg.
“This was also a time when homosexuality was illegal,” Loveland told PA Local of early messengers and publishers in the U.S. “There were sodomy laws throughout the country. Anything considered promoting homosexuality was considered obscene or illegal. These publications were taking a chance sending information through the mail. Some actually got prosecuted and had to go to court.” (Editor's note: A case involving a Los Angeles-based magazine reached the U.S. Supreme Court in 1958.)
In the decades that followed, queer publications throughout the U.S. would cover everything from the anguish of the AIDS epidemic to the celebrations that followed the legalization of gay marriage nationwide.
The “Spreading the News” exhibit features texts, graphics, photographs, and copies of original publications. It also covers the communication changes brought on by the internet — an especially transformative tool for LGBTQ adults and youth.
“Through time and persistence, people really started to become inventive … building a community through all of that effort and paying a price for it in many cases,” Loveland explained of pre-internet publications. “More access to that kind of information would help activists work towards LGBTQ+ civil rights … and really develop that whole infrastructure.”
The LGBT Center of Central Pennsylvania History Project started in 2012. The archive covers a broad swath of the commonwealth — Carlisle, Lehigh Valley, New Hope, York, Gettysburg, and beyond. Dickinson College serves as its repository.
“Spreading the News” will be open to view in person from 5 p.m. to 8 p.m. for three months starting June 21.
—Tanisha Thomas, newsletter writer | 
