Religion
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"Mother" to many; transgender rights advocate
Downey, CA
Guest interviewer Rain Valdez recorded Karina Samala’s oral history for OUTWORDS in 2022. Rain Valdez is an actress, writer, producer, and out and proud Filipino...
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Immigrant, Young Adult fiction author
East Rochester, NY
Alex Sanchez was born in Mexico City in 1957 to a German-Mexican father and a Cuban mother. At age five, his family moved to Austin,...
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Montana Legislator, Activist, and Oral Historian
Missoula, MT
Diane Sands was born March 23, 1947 in St. Ignatius, Montana. Her family was among the few white families on a Native reservation, and both...
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co-founder, ACT UP NY; founder, Housing Works
NYC, NY
Eric Sawyer was born in 1954 in Binghamton, New York. Although his parents had little money and even less in the way of social standing,...
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Stonewall witness, publisher, Philadelphia Gay News
Philadelphia, PA
Mark Segal was born in Philadelphia, and raised in the only Jewish household in his public housing project. As a child, he learned of friends...
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farm boy, teacher, fisting educator
Tajique, NM
Guy Seiler was born in Wichita, Kansas in 1955, the fourth of nine children in a German Catholic family, and raised on a wheat farm...
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transgender Buddhist teacher
Elmsford, NY
Hoshina Seki was born in 1941 in New York City. Three years earlier, her father, a Jōdo Shinshū Buddhist minister, had founded the New York...
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early human rights activist and LGBTQ ally
Miami, FL
Ruth Shack was born in 1931, and grew up on Long Island, New York. In 1953, after dropping out of college – she told her...
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Gay Liberation Front / Lavender Menace activist; writer
Portland, OR
Martha Altman (later Shelley) was born on December 27th, 1943, in Brooklyn, New York, to Jewish parents of Russian and Polish descent. At 17, she...
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Staten Island preservationist; former minister
Staten Island, NY
Legacy of Voices is an oral history project created in 2008 by Lara Spotts and Brian O’Donnell, inspired by their realization that to better understand...
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gay mental health reformer; author, The Joy of Gay Sex
New York, NY
Charles Silverstein was born in Brooklyn, NY in 1935, and grew up in what he describes as a very typical Jewish family of that era:...
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rural gay bar owner
Gun Barrel City, TX
Michael Slingerland was born in 1950 in Greeley, Colorado. The youngest of three boys, Michael lost his mom when he was an infant. When Michael...
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artist, bisexual lesbian
Tucson, AZ
Penelope Starr was born in 1945 in New York, NY. As the daughter of two eccentric artists – her mother a jeweler and her father...
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coast guard physician, anti-DADT activist
Olympia, WA
Alan Steinman was born in Newark, Ohio on February 7, 1945. He graduated from MIT in 1966 and went on to receive his M.D. from...
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trans academic, filmmaker, and artist
San Francisco, CA
Susan Stryker was born into a White working-class family in Fort Sill, Oklahoma on July 7, 1961. Her father was an army Sergeant, and his...
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artist, storyteller; gay marriage trailblazer
Eureka Springs, AR
Zeek Taylor was born in the Arkansas Delta in 1946, and raised in the small town of Marmaduke, where his mother was a hairdresser and...
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