Excerpt from With Equal Pride: Gay Lesbian Studies at Ucla

The homosexual contribution to culture has been so well hidden that even those of us who were gay or lesbian often thought that we, and perhaps a few friends, were the only homosexuals who ever existed. The homosexual subject matter in literature and in life, from Sappho and Plato to Shakespeare and Marlowe, to E. M. Forster, Virginia Woolf, Thomas Mann, James Baldwin, and Lorraine Hansberry was generally glossed over or obfuscated in the classroom and outside it. If by chance we discovered on our own the homosexuality of a luminary of the past, it was not easy to find out more about that person even through books.

I remember coming upon a wonderful book, by chance, in the English Reading Room: Sex Variant Women in Literature by Jeannette Foster. It was 1963 and I was a second year graduate student. Words such as homosexual, gay or lesbian had never been mentioned in any of my classes outside of an undergraduate course in abnormal psychology. It is no wonder then that before I dared to take that book off the shelf I looked over my shoulder to make sure no one was watching and could observe my interest in such forbidden subject matter. I think most of us lesbian and gay students didn't dare to check out such a book, because we were afraid of the funny looks we might get if a book had an obvious homosexual title. I never did check the book out, though I read most of it over the course of the year, always standing up in the stacks, and ready to return the book quickly to its place on the shelf should anyone be heading in my direction.

An exhibit such as this one on topics of lesbian and gay studies helps to combat such fear, which has only recently begun to be alleviated. Its salutary effect on gay and lesbian students is obvious. It serves to acquaint them with their historical past, to teach them of the contributions of gays and lesbians to culture, to lessen their worries about being who they are. Such an exhibit also has a salutary effect for heterosexual students. It disabuses them of myths, it provides an education in reality, it challenges the ignorance that reveals itself in homophobia.

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