A collection of items about a gay liberation play, including 2013 reflections by the author (OutHistory's founder), reviews, and excerpts.

This feature explores the human production of the terms and concepts "heterosexual," "homosexual," and "bisexual," which are presented here as evidence of the construction of a historically specific social order or regime. This is the social-historical institution or system that divides people, identities, desires, acts, relationships, and groups into heterosexual, homosexual, or bisexual with profound subjective, objective, psychological, social consequences. The chronology includes scholarly works dating to the 1980s, when historians began to develop what is now called "critical heterosexual history," analysis that interrogates the historically specific discourses and institutions that comprise the hetero, homo, bi system. First published on OutHistory in 2014. Last edit: April 15, 2021.

Professor, trucker, and union organizer Anne Balay reflects on Matt Brim’s Poor Queer Studies: Confronting Elitism in the University (2020) in an original OutHistory feature.

This exhibit focuses on gay HIV-positive sex worker activist Daniel Charles Cockerline (1960-1995), who was involved in the founding of numerous sex workers’ rights organizations in Toronto, Ontario, from the early 1980s to the mid-1990s. The exhibit highlights his largely underrecognized contributions to the sex workers’ rights movement in Canada, including his production of some of the first HIV-prevention materials by and for sex workers. Published originally on OutHistory in 2025.

In 1965 Drum magazine called it “the first sit-in of its kind in the history of the United States.” To honor the fiftieth anniversary of this major act of LGBT resistance, Marc Stein presented reports of the sit-in at Dewey’s restaurant in Center City, Philadelphia, which began on April 25, 1965. Staged by three teenagers, it protested discrimination against "homosexuals,” “masculine women,” “feminine men,” and “persons wearing non-conformist clothing.”  First Published on OutHistory on April 20, 2015.

An exhibit on the discovery of documents related to the life and times of German Jewish sexologist Magnus Hirschfeld (1868-1935). Published originally on OutHistory in 2020.

An excerpt of Jonathan Ned Katz, Gay American History: Lesbians and Gay Men in the U.S.A. (T.Y. Crowell, 1976), 129-34, along with a bibliography and sample document.

In an 1893 note to a medical journal article on "erotopathia," or "morbid eroticism," Dr. Charles H. Hughes of St. Louis writes briefly but emotionally about Black males who "deport themselves as women." The doctor's excited language suggests that he finds his report stimulating. 

An exploration of the brief but significant life of African American educator Juliette Derricotte.

This exhibit features a 2002 oral history interview of Denver Mattachine activist Elver Barker by historian Peter Boag. It also includes a transcript of the Sixth Annual Convention of the Mattachine Society, which took place in Denver in 1959. Published originally on OutHistory in November 2025.