LGBTQ&A

Throughout his decades-long career, Bob Mackie has designed costumes and gowns for some of the most legendary names in entertainment history: Cher, Marilyn Monroe, Judy Garland, Whitney Houston, Carol Burnett, and Elton John, among many others. He joins LGBTQ&A to talk about his longtime (and still ongoing) collaboration with Cher, the infamous Gone With The Wind curtain dress from The Carol Burnett Show, and gay life in Hollyw...

Randy Wicker talks about joining the Mattachine Society in 1958, one of the first gay rights groups in the U.S. He also talks about leading what's considered the first pro-gay protest in the U.S., the 1966 "Sip-in" at Julius' in New York City, and sharing his home with Marsha P. Johnson.

The Randy Wicker and Marsha P. Johnson Archive: https://queerserial.com/randywicker

Pay It No Mind - The Life and Times of Marsha P. Johnson dire...

Mark Segal moved to New York City in May of 1969 and a month later found himself at The Stonewall Inn as the now-infamous police raid began.

"The police came in, pretended that they were doing their duty, got their pay off," he says. "The difference here was they barged in, they threw people up against the wall, they extorted money from some of the older people, they harassed the drag queens. It was pretty violent.&q...

Laverne Cox talks about being on the cover of Time magazine ten years ago, the pressure she's faced as one of the most visible members of the trans community, and how the Bostock v. Clayton County Supreme Court case with Aimee Stephens impacts all LGBTQ+ people.

LGBTQ&A is an independent, listener-supported podcast. Please consider joining our ⁠Substack⁠ as a paid Subscriber to help support our work.

LGBTQ&A is hosted a...

Rep. Barney Frank served in the U.S. House of Representatives from 1981 to 2013. He talks about being one of the first members of Congress to come out, how the AIDS crisis forced Congress to act, and the current state of the LGBTQ+ Rights Movement. Plus, his "Trophy Husband", Jim Ready, drops by to say hello.

LGBTQ&A is an independent, listener-supported podcast. Please consider joining our ⁠Substack⁠ to help support...

(This interview contains explicit sexual content.) Gigi Raven Wilbur talks about learning that they were intersex in college, the transformational power of BDSM in their life, and how they're feeling living in Texas right now among the current onslaught of anti-trans legislation.

LGBTQ&A is an independent, listener-supported podcast. Please consider joining our Substack to help support our work.

This is a part of our speci...

Martha Shelley talks to poet Audre Lorde in an episode of her radio show, Lesbian Nation. This was originally recorded in 1972 and is a part of Martha's archive at the Lesbian Herstory Archive.

Martha is a pre-Stonewall activist who got her start in the 1960s with the Daughters of Bilitis. Click here to listen to our new sit-down interview with Martha that aired last week.

This is a part of our special series, The LGBTQ+ Elders...

Martha Shelley began her life as a gay activist before the Stonewall uprising. She talks about joining the Daughters of Bilitis, co-founding the Gay Liberation Front, the first pride march, and her memoir, "We Set The Night On Fire".

LGBTQ&A is an independent, listener-supported podcast. Please consider joining our Substack as a paid Subscriber to help support our work.

This is a part of our special series, The LGBTQ+...

Mia Yamamoto talks about her work as a criminal defense attorney, the racism she faced growing up as a Japanese-American after World War II, and coming out as trans later in life.

LGBTQ&A is an independent, listener-supported podcast. Please consider subscribing to our Substack in order to help support our work.

This is a part of our special series, The LGBTQ+ Elders Project. Click here to listen to our interview with Duane Mi...

Bob "Rose" Levine talks about his first trip to Cherry Grove in 1955, being a part of the original drag "Invasion of the Pines" in 1976, and how the AIDS crisis changed Fire Island in the 1980s.

LGBTQ&A is an independent, listener-supported podcast. Please consider joining our Substack to help support our work.

This is a part of our special series, The LGBTQ+ Elders Project. Click here to listen to our inter...

Ma-Nee Chacaby talks about learning that she was Two-Spirit as a kid, her rural upbringing, and the challenges of being an out indigenous lesbian in Thunder Bay, Canada in the 1980s. Ma-Nee is the author of A Two-Spirit Journey: The Autobiography of a Lesbian Ojibwa-Cree Elder. (Note: This episode discusses domestic violence.)

"Put love in front of you when you get up in the morning and it'll guide you to a beautiful place...

Sandy Stone talks about working with the lesbian separatists of Olivia Records, why the attacks on the trans community today mirror the attacks from the 1970s, and the moment that led her to write "The Empire Strikes Back: A Posttranssexual Manifesto"—an essay that became a founding document of trans studies.

You can learn more about Girl Island, the documentary that's in the works about Sandy's life here: girlisl...

Joan Jett Blakk (a.k.a. Terence Alan Smith) talks about her historic 1992 presidential campaign, why the AIDS crisis influenced her run, and what it was like to be an out gay teenager in the '70s. 

"They still ask the same questions that they asked in the '90s. 'Drag queens run for president in America?' I'm like, 'Well, they told us anybody could run for president. Anybody.' So, okay, we'll mak...

Duane Michals has never followed the rules. The pioneering photographer, now 92 years old, says, "Because I didn't learn the photo rules it was very easy for me to abandon them. You're either defined by the medium...well, I redefined the medium."

Duane talks about discovering his love for photography in the 1950s, not looking down on commercial work, his half-century-long relationship with his partner, and why tal...

Hi! We're coming back! On February 27th! And we're continuing our special series, The LGBTQ+ Elders Project. I can't wait for you to hear it.

For more info, come check out our Substack.

Do you know an amazing elder and want to hear from them on the show? Come find me on Substack or social media (@jeffmasters1) and let me know. I'd love to hear all about them.

Ok, I'm off to finish editing the first episode. Lo...

When Amy Ray first started playing music with her Indigo Girls bandmate, Emily Saliers, her "head felt like it was going to explode". She remembers thinking, "This is amazing. Not, we sound amazing. But this feels amazing. It was always about, This feels amazing."

They've been playing together for over 35 years now and it's their music that the queer community (and Greta Gerwig in the new Barbie movie) c...

Darcelle XV (Walter Cole), the world's oldest drag queen, died on March 23, 2023. She was 92.

Since 1967, Darcelle has been performing and running the Portland drag venue, Darcelle XV Showplace, which was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 2020. I had the opportunity to speak with Darcelle and her friend and collaborator, Poison Waters (Kevin Cook) a few weeks before her death.

This is part of our special ser...

Dr. Charles Silverstein died this week at the age of 87. Best known for making the 1973 presentation before the American Psychiatric Association that led to the removal of homosexuality from the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual’s list of mental illnesses, he was also a co-author of the landmark book The Joy of Gay Sex.

More than simply a sex manual with graphic drawings (though there was plenty of that), The Joy of Gay Sex, first ...

Shatzi Weisberger died this week at the age of 92. A lifelong activist, Shatzi was a fixture at marches and protests here in NYC and was affectionately known as The People’s Bubbie. "I was a political lesbian for many years. I just loved being around lesbians...one of my earlier demonstrations was here in New York City and we did a die-in along with other people lying on the ground. And I started to cry because I felt that I was in...