Giving Compass' Take:

• Marc Gunther shares his thought on Making Gay History, a podcast by Eric Marcus who interview a collection of gay rights activists. 

• How do projects like this contribute to our culture? 

• Learn about persisting LGBTQ discrimination. 

Not all that long ago–during my lifetime, in any event–every institution of US society was arrayed against gay and lesbian Americans. Local police. Federal law enforcement agencies, including the FBI. Private employers. Educators. Hollywood, and the newspapers. Churches, of course, and synagogues who told gay people that they were sinners. Worst of all, perhaps, the psychologists and psychiatrists who told them they were perverts and deviants, and set out to cure them with shock treatment, drugs, castrations, and lobotomies.

Most of that is history, thank goodness, and the stories of people who made it so are told in a wonderful podcast called Making Gay History. Eric Marcus, an author and journalist, began work on the podcast in 2015, during the waning Obama years, but Making Gay History turns out to be perfectly suited for this dismal Trumpian moment: It is illuminating and inspiring, a welcome reminder that change happens, sometimes quickly, when people push hard enough for it.

The podcast features interviews with pioneers of the gay rights movement, some little-known or forgotten, including Phyllis Lyon and Del Martin, the co-founders of the Daughters of Bilitis, the first lesbian organization in the US; Frank Kameny, who fought an 18-year battle with the US government after being fired from his job at the US Army Map Service in 1957 for being a homosexual; and trans rights activist and Stonewall veteran Sylvia Rivera.

“These people fought for their rights at a time that was far more difficult than our own,” Marcus, 59, told me, when we spoke by phone. “They provided a roadmap. They set examples for us. Their stories are inspiring.”

Read the full article about Making Gay History by Marc Gunther at Nonprofit Chronicles.