My friends and I have shared such stories over the years in order to mend, to move forward, and to achieve. What advice would you give your teenage self? How do you hope life will be different for the LGBTQ community 50 years from now? How has your life been different from what you imagined? So tell us: How have things changed for the LGBTQ community over the last 50 years? And Natalie Clifford Barney, the American playwright who moved to Paris in the early 1900s and hosted influential writing salons for more than 60 years. Josh Stuckey and Brent Johnson, founding members of the Rubi Girls, the drag queen troupe that has raised well over $1 million for HIV/AIDS and gay-related causes. Bob Brandt Jr., who championed health care for people living with HIV Mary Wiseman, the first openly gay person to be elected into office in Dayton and currently sitting on Montgomery County’s Court of Common Pleas Devin Dame and Gage Gatlyn, founders of the Gatlyn Dame Group, a resource for transgender, non-conforming gender persons and their allies. LGBTQ+ influencers in Dayton include Nancy Grigsby, founder of the Artemis Center which helps victims of domestic violence Dr. The committee needs help memorializing the people, places and things in and around the Gem City before, during and after the Stonewall Inn riots for their Voices Project, which will be preserved in Dayton Metro Library’s Local History archives. This month the Greater Dayton Her/History committee kicks off its campaign to preserve the stories of local LGBTQ mentors before they are lost to history.
Its had its own meeting places and pivotal moments that preceded today’s strong, committed, caring activists. The LGBTQ+ community in Dayton, as in similar communities across the nation, also faced harassment. I was oblivious to the events in New York that would make a profound change in the quality of my life … and the lives of thousands of others. In 1969 I was in high school, struggling with my own internal Stonewall without the benefit of acceptance or a supportive role model.