Advocate NL 6/29/26

Hello and Happy Monday, folks! Audience Editor Edgar Ramirez, back in your inbox.

Sunday marked the anniversary of the Stonewall uprising, which had extra meaning this Pride Month. If you'll recall, LGBTQ+ advocates secured a legal victory just a few months ago that required the Trump administration to permanently restore the Pride flag at the Stonewall National Monument, after removing it earlier this year. Christopher Wiggins gave us an in-depth look on a video series launched by Lambda Legal this month that documented the fight.

While Stonewall is among the most well-known events in LGBTQ+ history, Atlanta was also at the forefront of the fight in 1969 -- started in part by a screening of an Andy Warhol movie.

Known as the Lonesome Cowboys raid, Smithsonian Magazine labeled the event “the Stonewall of the South that history forgot,” and that can be felt on the very ground where it took place, Samantha Allen writes.

LGBTQ+ advocacy in the American South marched to the beat of its own drum, both in Atlanta and in more sparsely populated areas, even if the narrative structure does not seem as concise as a thrown brick sparking a revolution, Allen writes.

“We developed our own organizing in the South in ways that made sense to us in places that were super rural, with smaller populations, just as successfully, if not more successfully, in other, like, larger urban spots,” Joshua Burford, co-executive director of Invisible Histories, a community-based archive focused on the South, tells Allen.

“And so Stonewall gets in the way of a lot of conversations in some cases. It is an important moment — let’s not say it wasn’t — it just wasn’t the only one.”

Goes to show there's still a lot of queer history to discover!

Thanks folks, we'll be back in you inbox tomorrow!

How a 1969 screening of an Andy Warhol film became the ‘Stonewall of the South’

courtesy

Gay Jewish lawmaker running to replace Nancy Pelosi chased from San Francisco Trans March

Gabrielle Lurie/San Francisco Chronicle via Getty Images

Ousted Kentucky Republican lashes out with gay porn jab after Fox News reporter’s question

on Cherry/Getty Images

Clavicular’s audience is extremely paranoid he may have kissed a trans woman on stream

Christian Vierig/Getty Images

Kansas anti-trans law forced her license to say male. Then a cop questioned it and she was charged

Mark Reinstein / Shutterstock

Ohio pastor who called LGBTQ+ books a ‘health risk’ sentenced for child sex crimes

WKRC/Local12

Florida congressmen target transgender girl competing in Irish dance championship

Tom Williams/CQ-Roll Call, Inc via Getty Images

Anti-LGBTQ+ Florida lawmaker caught Claude-handed using AI to draft legislation

Tom Williams/CQ-Roll Call, Inc via Getty Images

Robin Byrd, New York’s fairy godmother of sex-positive television, finally gets her close-up

HBO Documentary Films

The most popular 'Drag Race' winner in every state across America

MTV; YouTube (@trixie); MLM IMAGES Los Angeles/Shutterstock