• 1 As Daniel Marshall, Kevin P. Murphy, and Zeb Tortorici argue, “The gay and lesbian archival project (...)
• 2 For a discussion of the challenges of funding for LGBTQ community archives, see Diana K. Wakimoto, (...)
• 3 In Pennsylvania, our archival team has benefitted from the work of the LGBT Center of Central PA Hi (...)
• 4 Diana K. Wakimoto, Debra L. Hansen, and Christine Bruce, “The Case of LLACE,” 439. For critique of (...)

1Major urban centers like New York, Los Angeles, and San Francisco are established and rich sites for archival collection that centers on LGBTQ communities. With The Lesbian Herstory Archives, ONE Archives, and GLBT Historical Society, to name just three major organizations, these cities offer vibrant exhibitions built from priceless archival materials that both draw upon unique civic histories and contribute to broad historical understanding of national liberation movements and activism.1 For communities outside urban centers like Pennsylvania’s Lehigh Valley, archives and exhibits in major cities can be important destinations even as they seemingly confirm that LGBTQ history happens elsewhere, in coastal metropolises far from us. Of course, national movements depend upon regional activists to engage with the political platforms of leading organizations, to fight for LGBTQ causes at local levels, and to struggle for social change within their specific cultural milieus. In short, there is no national movement without regional activists who have unique stories to tell about LGBTQ history. Yet, too frequently, regional LGBTQ history is not a major focus either in university curricula or for local non-profit organizations as they provide essential direct services to our communities.2 Even as the late twentieth and early twenty-first century have ushered in a new focus on local archival projects,3 regional organizations often struggle to access funding for local historical projects, while universities provide LGBTQ studies courses that center Stonewall, marches in Washington, D.C., and the value of subcultural spaces on the coasts. As Diane K. Wakimoto, Debra L. Hansen, and Christine Bruce argue, historians need to focus more attention on LGBTQ activism, cultural production, and community formations outside of New York City and San Francisco. In their work with the Lavender Library, Archives, and Cultural Exchange, they argue that archives in smaller urban centers like Sacramento “provide new geographic focus for community archives research,” thereby expanding our understanding of LGBTQ activism, history, and community formations.4 As university faculty, staff, and archivists, we have the opportunity to address the need for stronger understanding of activism outside of major urban spaces by partnering with regional LGBTQ organizations and using our resources to help build strong local archives.

• 5 For information about the Central PA LGBT Center History Project, see https://centralpalgbtcenter.o (...)
• 6 Diana K. Wakimoto, Debra L. Hansen, and Christine Bruce, “The Case of LLACE,” 440-441. Also, see El (...)

2Our article focuses on the Lehigh Valley LGBT Community Archive in order to explore the value of regional projects that address local history. Throughout the past three years, archivists, community leaders, and faculty have used material from this regional archive to develop courses, exhibitions, and oral history projects that showcase urgent AIDS activism in the 1980s and 90s, the development of a local Pride Festival in the 1990s, and activists’ reflections of fights for liberation from 1969 to the present. Our archival projects are made possible by Bradbury-Sullivan LGBT Community Center (BSC). From the early days of imagining BSC, leaders placed archival collection at the center of their vision. Inspired by the powerful collection practices of Philadelphia’s William Way LGBT Community Center and the LGBT Center of Central PA,5 BSC began collecting material from local activists and partnered with Muhlenberg College’s library to preserve materials. While BSC maintains ownership of the collection, Muhlenberg College provides archival space and professional support for processing collections, creating finding aids, and digitizing materials. In this way, BSC “maintain[s] control over the communities’ records,” an important issue as historically “mainstream archival institutions marginalize” LGBTQ communities and institutional archivists “had little knowledge of gay archives or gay rights movements generally.”6 While collection, organization, and preservation has been the emphasis for the first three years, BSC and Muhlenberg College recognize the need to increase accessibility to community members; partnering with university faculty gives BSC the opportunity to activate the archives for multiple constituencies. As faculty and archivists can access institutional funding and provide staffing, they can support access to the archives without claiming ownership of it. Since 2018, collaborative courses and public-facing archival projects have enriched the value of the archives by giving students and community members pathways for engaging with regional contributions to national movements.

• 7 An oral history with Frank Whelan, a Le-Hi-Ho member and active supporter of the Lambda Center, dis (...)

4The Lehigh Valley LGBT Community Archive is housed within Muhlenberg College’s Trexler Library. The archives currently consist of twenty-two distinct collections from organizations, individuals, publications, oral histories, and bars. The archives showcase regional activists’ connection to larger national movements as they include materials from a local homophile organization, the region’s first LGBT community center, lesbian leaders in the regional chapter of N.O.W., AIDS organizations, and a variety of political groups that worked on anti-discrimination legislation, voters’ guides, and marriage equality. Our earliest materials are from Le-Hi-Ho, a homophile organization that formed three months before the Stonewall riots in 1969 by members who wanted to provide social opportunities beyond bars. Le-Hi-Ho members became political leaders in our region as they went on to create the Lambda Center, a short-lived community center and library. As political and social services organizations turned to focus on AIDS, the Lambda Center closed its doors.7 The archives contain materials from each of these organizations, thereby offering a strong account of how regional activists learned from LGBT publications and organizations in major urban centers like NYC and Philadelphia as they started homophile organizations, community centers, and political groups from 1969 through 1989s. In the 1990s, local activism increased a focus on legislation; organizations like the Pennsylvania Gay and Lesbian Alliance of Political Action (PA-GALA) and the Lehigh Valley Gay and Lesbian Task Force were particularly active as they lobbied for protections for LGBT people in employment and housing. PA-GALA focused on developing voting guides to support anti-discrimination ordinances and hate crimes legislation. Pride of the Greater Lehigh Valley also began in the 1990s. Educational organizations like Pennsylvania Diversity Network (PDN) launched in 2004 to offer training, information, and advocacy. The archival materials from these organizations show regional contributions to statewide battles for non-discrimination, hate crimes protections, and marriage equality. Today, BSC is actively engaged in collecting and celebrating the legacy of LGBT organizations in our region that laid the foundation for today’s cultural and political organizations.

• 8 For more information about the import of regional LGBTQ publications for building Toronto’s ArQuive (...)
• 9 For example, Stephen Libby, publisher of Gaydar (2004-2008) and current publisher of The Gay Journa (...)
• 10 Lambda Valley Monthly (unprocessed), The Dixie Dugan White Papers (unprocessed), LVCA 021, Lehigh V (...)

5The collections also contain large holdings associated with regional LGBTQ publications; like Toronto’s ArQuives and Los Angeles’ ONE Archives, our archives began with strong contributions from LGBT community members involved in producing regional publications.8 Because editors of regional LGBT magazines frequently served as photographers of community events, writers focused on local activism, and networkers determined to publish articles by area activists, they contributed rich materials to the archives beyond their publications.9 The Lehigh Valley LGBT Community Archive contains publications that document the evolution of our community across decades, including Lambda Valley Monthly [1985-1988], Above Ground [1994-1998], Valley Free Press/ Valley Gay Press [1998-2016], Gaydar [2005-2008], and Panzee Press [2007-2009].10 As a few publishers worked with activist organizations, they also donated materials from PA League of Gay and Lesbian Voters, PA-GALA, and PDN. One of the most recent accessions to the archives is papers from local activist Dixie Dugan White (1943-2020). Her work in the community spans the years of the materials that currently make up the archives and further supports the history of activism that has been so prevalent in the LGBTQ community since the late 1960s.

• 11 See https://factlv.org/ for more information about this organization.

8As leadership of BSC and Muhlenberg archivists began to look beyond the accumulated material that comprised the foundation of the collection, they started to reach out to organizations that have supported the LGBTQ community in the Lehigh Valley for decades, including F.A.C.T. Founded in 1986, F.A.C.T. is an all-volunteer organization that has provided “direct and educational” services and has raised millions of dollars to address the needs of people living with HIV/AIDS.11 In anticipation of the arrival of the materials at Trexler Library, Rachel Hamelers, Muhlenberg’s Teaching and Learning Librarian, and Susan Falciani Maldonado, Special Collections and Archives Librarian, proposed a course that would use F.A.C.T.’s collections to explore the Lehigh Valley history of the HIV/AIDS epidemic and accompanying activism. Hamelers had previously offered courses about national HIV/AIDS activism; with the addition of regional archival materials, she envisioned a course that would allow students to address how local organizations built from their counterparts in NYC and other major metropolises to address the specific needs of Lehigh Valley communities. Falciani Maldonado saw the opportunity to teach students about archival praxis and, most importantly, the role and history of archives within marginalized communities.

• 12 The course ran for the first time in the spring of 2019 and has become a regular offering.
• 13 David France, How to Survive a Plague: The Inside Story of How Citizens and Science Tamed AIDS (New (...)

9With this dual focus on the value of regional AIDS activism and LGBT archives, Hamelers and Falciani Maldonado created a course titled HIV and AIDS in the Lehigh Valley: Gathering Information on an Outbreak,¹² which was organized around the first fifteen years of the HIV/AIDS crisis in the U.S. Students, working in groups, were assigned a year between 1981 and 1995 from the emergence of the disease through the development of effective antiretroviral therapy. David France’s How to Survive a Plague, which primarily narrates the HIV/AIDS crisis from the perspective of those in coastal metropolises, was a core course text.13 France spends only a few pages describing a visit to middle America and his realization of how different the experience of a midwestern AIDS patient was from that of a New Yorker. This begs the core question of the class: what was the experience of people with AIDS, their friends, and families in the 1980s and 1990s in the Lehigh Valley?

• 14 Candida Affa, recorded classroom interview, Allentown, PA, February 6, 2019, Lehigh Valley LGBT Com (...)

11While increasing students’ primary source literacy was a learning goal of the course, the ability to work with archival materials and to learn to navigate the archives of local news outlets proved to be of particular value in two respects. First, students came to understand the value of regional historical research. By joining the faculty members in the discovery of how the HIV/AIDS narrative played out locally, they learned that “history can happen here, too,” as one student noted. Second, their research showed the power, spontaneity, and impact of regional activism in small urban centers. For example, students read about and listened to speakers describe the origins of F.A.C.T., which began with a friendly rivalry between the staff of two Allentown gay bars, Candida’s and Stonewall, as they created a summer event in 1986. Inspired by the Gay Games, organizers created the Summer Games at the nearby Rainbow Mountain Resort as a fundraising competition between the two bars. Raising over $25,000, organizers decided that they wanted to give funds to support individuals suffering from AIDS, but wanted the money to stay in the local community. Bar owner Candida Affa told the class about the origins of F.A.C.T.: “We wanted to give it to AIDS... but we didn’t exactly know who to give it to. So someone suggested that we keep it in the Lehigh Valley. And... in order to do that, we had to form an organization. We had a [colleague] from New Hope, who was a good friend of ours, come up, and he set the whole thing up.”14 The Summer Games would go on to become F.A.C.T.’s signature fundraising event for years to come, which the archives reveal in both the oral histories collections and in meeting notes and fliers about each summer’s activities (see image 1). In her recorded interview with students in the course, Affa emphasized both the fear that community members felt during the early years of the epidemic and the strong sense of community that was built as our regional LGBTQ community rallied to support people living with HIV/AIDS; her sentiments were echoed by other F.A.C.T. founding members who visited the course. By engaging with the records, photographs, and oral narratives of F.A.C.T., these undergraduates were able to learn about the power of a small local group of accidental activists who rose up to address the challenges faced by many in our community during the 1980s and 1990s.

• 15 “Le-Hi-Ho News,” September 1982, LGBT-001, Box 3, Folder 19, Joseph W. Burns Collection, LGBT Cente (...)
• 16 “Le-Hi-Ho News,” January 1983, LGBT-001, Box 3, Folder 19, Joseph W. Burns Collection, LGBT Center (...)
• 17 “Le-Hi-Ho News,” September 1982, LGBT-001, Box 3, Folder 19,Joseph W. Burns Collection, LGBT Center (...)
• 18 For information on a specific incident discussed by Le-Hi-Ho, see Dan Pearson, “Allentown Police Co (...)

12Students and faculty also examined the newsletters of Le-Hi-Ho, the first known LGBT organization in the region. Prior to the AIDS crisis, Le-Hi-Ho’s newsletter provided community members with information about the homophile movement and the gay liberation movement; writers and editors like Joseph Burns read gay publications from across the country and visited gay organizations and political events in NYC as well as other cities in order to give our community up-to-date information on relevant issues. Additionally, Le-Hi-Ho built a strong library of books about LGBT issues, which they housed at the Lambda Center. In the early 1980s, this information network was leveraged to share updates on the emerging AIDS crisis,15 including what was known of the disease, what was happening in the Lehigh Valley, and what to do if a person experienced symptoms. “Our newsletter tried to keep you informed,” stated the president of Le-Hi-Ho in the January 1983 issue, “especially of the dangerous AIDS epidemic.”16 The issue also included a nearly full-page discussion of recent research into the transmission of AIDS and the impact of the virus on the immune system as well as a section that advertised tickets for a Gay Men’s Health Crisis (GMHC) fundraiser in New York City. While AIDS is a huge focus in the newsletters from the 1980s, editors continued to report on civil rights legislation and activism within and outside or our region: articles include discussion of the Philadelphia City Council’s passage of an amendment to the city’s Fair Practices Ordinance, prohibiting anti-gay discrimination in housing, employment, and public accommodations;17 critical commentary on the growing Moral Majority; and critiques of police targeting of gay men for “lewdness.”18 Le-Hi-Ho newsletters reveal how regional activists maintained a focus on how organizers in NYC and Philadelphia were addressing the HIV/AIDS crisis and delivered news from major urban centers to the Lehigh Valley. The newsletters also positioned information about AIDS within a broader context of the need for legislation to protect the community from discrimination.

• 19 “Le-Hi-Ho News,” February 1983, LHH-001, Publications Box 1, Le-Hi-Ho Records Collection, Allentown (...)
• 20 “Le-Hi-Ho News,” March 1983, LGBT-001, Box 3, Folder 19, Joseph W. Burns Collection, LGBT Center of (...)

13Further, newsletters reveal that regional activists used strategies of organizations like GMHC to collect and share data from local communities. In February 1983, the first “local report” on AIDS was published in the newsletter, containing both national information and updates from Lehigh Valley hospitals and physicians.19 This report discussed how the “gay disease” was getting more media coverage now that it had been seen in women and children, and it suggests that because of the Lehigh Valley’s proximity to New York, educating oneself on the disease was crucial. The newsletter references an interview of a local doctor who had treated an AIDS patient from New York City. The report mentions that a more comprehensive list of doctors willing to work with gay and lesbian patients was being prepared, and it lists the doctors specializing in infectious diseases in the Lehigh Valley and hospitals currently working AIDS patients. An AIDS specialist from Philadelphia was booked to speak at the March 1983 Le-Hi-Ho meeting; the March 1983 Le-Hi-Ho newsletter talks about changes in rules for blood donation due to the AIDS crisis.20 For students, the newsletters showed the power of regional LGBTQ publications as they ensured access to new medical knowledge about the virus, collected data from local communities, and provided information about medical resources in the Lehigh Valley.

• 21 “Le-Hi-Ho News,” February 1983, LHH-001, Publications Box 1, Le-Hi-Ho Records Collection, Allentown (...)
• 22 Thompson, Larry, “‘The Gay Plague’—A Deadly Epidemic Stalks a Lifestyle,” The Sunday Call-Chronicle(...)

14As our community attempted to sift through limited information about AIDS, writers did promote the myth that risk for HIV/AIDS was limited to urban centers like NYC. The 1983 report states, “[g]ays who do not have sex in New York are not yet at much risk.”21 This erroneous message was often seen in the local newspaper, The Morning Call, as well as writers argued that anyone in the Lehigh Valley with the disease was from New York City and had not been infected locally.22 As students encountered claims like this one, they had the opportunity to think about how some members of LGBTQ communities outside of NYC and other urban centers initially responded to the virus. As instructors plan future iterations of the course, there will be greater opportunity to discuss the importance of understanding connectivity of human populations when supporting public health, which is once again relevant during the recent pandemic. Overall, the utilization of local materials in addition to narratives based on NYC and San Francisco allowed students to see how regional activists disseminated data gathered in major urban centers, worked to collect data from our region, and created organizations to meet the needs of regional populations. Students also were able to glimpse how information was communicated in the 1980s and 1990s, which was completely different from the internet-based world they inhabit today.

• 23 Articles include: Angela L. Di Veglia, “Activism, Accountability, Access: Archival Outreach and the (...)

15In the midst of this work, the class also read and discussed articles about ownership and agency in LGBTQ community archives writ large.23 Students learned about the challenges presented by having the archives of a marginalized community housed in a college or university that by its nature creates invisible barriers to access. They learned about the historical omissions of archives created by individuals in authority who decided whose stories were worth preserving. While working with the physical archives presented students with the opportunity to understand the mechanics of organization and to develop comfort with accessing and analyzing primary source information within the context of community archives, interacting with members of the local LGBTQ community in the classroom connected the students with survivors of the plague. When information was scant and insubstantial, when comfort in the face of ostracism was the only thing they could offer, these local activists established a support system for friends and acquaintances living with and dying from HIV/AIDS. Additionally, the instructors invited two Muhlenberg alumni to speak to the class about LGBTQ life and HIV/AIDS awareness on campus in the 1990s and 2000s. Speakers brought personal photographs that paid tribute to those they had lost; they became openly emotional in the classroom. To a person, the F.A.C.T. members who had lived through the worst of the epidemic told the students how important they feel their testimony is, and how much they appreciated the opportunity to tell young people today that, while manageable, the threat of HIV/AIDS still exists, and vigilance remains important.

• 24 Lehigh Valley’s development of Pride Festivals occurred much later than other cities in Pennsylvani (...)
• 25 PRIDE of the Lehigh Valley, Pride Guide 1998, June 1998, LGBT Publications, LVCA011, Box 2, Lehigh (...)
• 26 See “Platform for the March on Washington for Lesbian, Gay, and Bi Eqaul Rights andLiberation,” htt (...)

17The first exhibition of archival material focused on the early years of pride festivals in the Lehigh Valley with the aim of offering accessible narratives of 11 critical years in LGBT activism.24 While Pride festivals are celebrations, they also serve as an annual activist and informational event that informs community members about national movement work, regional struggles, and a variety of resources. For Lehigh Valley residents in the early 1990s, Pride festivals outside of our region were important destinations, as were major national protests. For example, PRIDE of the Lehigh Valley, the organization that founded the region’s first festival, began on the way home from the 1993 March on Washington for Lesbian, Gay and Bi Equal Rights and Liberation.25 Although a number of important LGBT activist organizations existed in the region, there was no annual event local to our community. This changed after the 1993 March when a group of Lehigh Valley residents took the three-hour drive to Washington, D.C. and were thrilled by the huge turnout to support a political platform that they believed should be shared widely back in eastern Pennsylvania. In particular, activists were invested in how our region might be rallied to support the first demand of March organizers: “We demand passage of a Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender civil rights bill and an end to discrimination by state and federal governments including the military; repeal of all sodomy laws and other laws that criminalize private sexual expression between consenting adults.”26 As we will address below in discussion of our oral history project, the PA League of Gay and Lesbian Voters had committed to promoting the PA Hate Crimes Bill and felt that grassroots activism in our region could activate a regional base to support both federal and state legislation. The question of how to bring large numbers of LGBT people in the Lehigh Valley to address legislation and other political issues was solved once activists joined other marchers in Washington, D.C.; riding high on the energy from the nation’s Capital, they came home eager to develop an annual Pride festival, which both allowed for regional political organizations to spread information to voters about major legislation and promoted the coalescence of the LGBT community outside of bars in a major public venue. In short, they wanted to bring home the political energy from the March and ignite the local LGBTQ community around national as well as state-specific activism.

• 27 Sophia Lezen, “‘Gay Pride Day’ is Official--County Executive and Allentown Council President Procla (...)
• 28 PRIDE of the Lehigh Valley, Pride Guide 1995, June 1995, LGBT Publications, LVCA011, Box 2, Lehigh (...)
• 29 “Smart Politics at Gay Pride Event,” The Morning Call, June 20, 2001.
• 30 PRIDE of the Lehigh Valley, Pride Guide 1998, June 1998, LGBT Publications, LVCA011, Box 2, Lehigh (...)
• 31 For example, the Pride Guide published in 2000 contains a scathing political advertisement for PA G (...)
• 32 PRIDE of the Lehigh Valley, Pride Guide 2003, June 2003, LGBT Publications, LVCA011, Box 2 Lehigh V (...)

18Our exhibit presents a clear timeline for the first decade of Pride festivals from 1994-2004, which clearly positions the festival’s origins within the 1993 national march in Washington, D.C. (see image 2). Building the exhibit from annual Pride Guides published for the festival, we also address how organizers documented local and national political milestones as well as the increasing appeal of the Festival for local residents. For example, the timeline documents that in 1997 the City of Allentown and Lehigh County declared June 22^nd to be “Gay and Lesbian Pride Day”; for the first time, a city in the Lehigh Valley flew a rainbow flag over city hall to recognize LGBT residents.27 City and county celebrations of Pride can be attributed to the growth of the Pride festival and the tireless activism of regional LGBT organizations. In its first year, the Pride festival drew over 1,000 attendees and by 1997 the festival tripled its number of attendees.28 By the fourth year of the festival, regional governmental representatives recognized a substantial voting bloc within the city and county and acted with the symbolic display of the rainbow flag to show support for the LGBT community. By the 8th annual festival, politicians frequented Pride gatherings; in 2001, mayoral candidates, the county executive, county commissioner, and city council members attended the festival to garner residents’ support.29 Pride Guides also connected attendees to national politics by republishing a letter from President Clinton in 1998 that expressed support for “Gay and Lesbian Pride Celebrations” across the nation and a letter from Vice President Al Gore in 2000 that focused on LGBT movements’ attention to the “fundamental [American] values of inclusion, opportunity, and respect for every individual.”30 Republication of these letters should not be seen as a naive celebration of their administration’s actions, especially as Guides also included material that directly challenged the Defense of Marriage Act and lobbied for marriage equality.31 While Pride Guides centrally focus on political change that benefits LGBTQ communities, they also reveal our regional community’s responses to major national events, including the War in Iraq. The theme for our regional Pride Festival in 2003, just months after the U.S. invaded Iraq, was “Peace Through Pride” in opposition to American militarism.32

• 33 Bob Wittman, “Gays Say Cramsey Betrayed Them—Allentown Council Hopeful Backed Anti-Bias Bill, Then (...)
• 34 PA-GALA’s work also attracted national political attention as members like Steve Black were selecte (...)
• 35 For discussion of the passage of amendments to the PA Hate Crimes Bill, see Linda K. Harris and Amy (...)
• 36 For an example of the connections between regional organizations advocating for Hate Crimes legisla (...)
• 37 Regional news coverage from this period showcases PA-GALA’s influence on regional representatives a (...)

22For Bradbury, Voters’ Guides were central factors in the ultimate passage of amendments to the PA Hate Crimes Bill in 2002 to include LGBTQ people as a protected class for a number of reasons. First, Voters’ Guides made it easy for LGBTQ people and allies to learn about candidates. Bradbury argues in her oral history that the reason most people do not vote is due to their desire to avoid making an error and voting for a candidate that will not represent their interests. Voters’ Guides addressed this problem and provided clear and accessible narratives about candidates, at times placing skull and crossbones graphics next to a candidate to indicate their poisonous political stances on civil rights for LGBTQ people (see image 4). Second, Guides gave readers information on their districts and where to vote in their communities. Bradbury states in her interview that many people don’t know their district and thus have a difficult time figuring out which candidates they should research. Further, she notes that many voters do not know how to find their voting centers in their communities. PA-GALA organizers solved this problem by listing the district and location of polls for each recipient of the Guide on labels attached to their mailings. They also set up phone banks to call recipients of the Guides, to remind them to vote, and to clarify their district information if needed. Third, the work of the League and PA-GALA organizers helped to create LGBTQ voting blocs in specific regions and across the state. As Bradbury notes, the goal of PA-GALA was to create LGBTQ super voters that could swing elections in the eastern part of the State; they were successful in this goal, as we will explore below in discussion of the Allentown Anti-Discrimination Ordinance. Finally, as the numbers of LGBTQ people and allies that received Guides increased, PA-GALA and other political organizations could pressure both elected officials and candidates to support statewide legislation as governmental officials and hopefuls began to see the power of the LGBTQ vote. Although the specific number of Guides printed and distributed in each election cycle is unclear, Bradbury recalls that she, Sullivan, and Black mailed thousands of guides and distributed thousands more to LGBT businesses, religious organizations like Metropolitan Community Churches, and bars each year. In one newspaper account, PA-GALA is noted to reach over 2,000 households in the Lehigh Valley and 38,000 households statewide.33 Thus, PA-GALA could produce political pressure from voters with phone bank sessions and mailings in eastern counties of the state. Because Guides focused intently on PA Hate Crimes legislation from 1994-2002, they steadily increased political pressure from constituents as they lobbied representatives and voted in candidates that supported such legislation.34 Thus, Guides are an important part of the political story about how PA Hate Crimes legislation was amended to include LGBTQ people and those perceived to be LGBTQ in 2002.35 While clearly other LGBTQ organizations across the state contributed powerfully to the passage of Hate Crimes legislation, including the Philadelphia-based Center for Lesbian and Gay Civil Rights on the eastern side of the state,36 PA-GALA’s work with Voters’ Guides and lobbying of political representatives both in our region and beyond is a key part of this larger story.37 Even though amendments to the Hate Crimes Bill were overturned in 2007, PA-GALA’s work with voters to support such legislation should not be overlooked.

• 38 For local reportage on the Philadelphia legislation and its aftermath, see Michael A. Ruane, “A Hom (...)
• 39 William Burton and Barry Loveland, Out in Central Pennsylvania, 138-140, 146-152.
• 40 See Mary Nancarrow, Oral History, October 9, 2013, LGBT Center of Central PA History Project, Dicki (...)
• 41 William Burton and Barry Loveland, Out in Central Pennsylvania, 140-146.
• 42 See Ron Devlin, “Now Out of the Closet, Gays Find Space,” The Morning Call, June 23, 1985.

24While PA-GALA organizers along with other statewide LGBTQ organizations successfully supported amendments to the statewide Hate Crimes Bill, they also effectively organized voters in the City of Allentown to push council members to amend their anti-discrimination ordinance to include LGBTQ people as well. Allentown LGBTQ activists, of course, were not the first in Pennsylvania to lobby for amendments to civic anti-discrimination ordinances. Following Philadelphia’s passage of anti-discrimination legislation in 1982 to protect lesbian and gay people from discrimination in housing, employment, and public accommodation,38 Harrisburg and York adopted 1983 ordinances that “forbade discrimination based on sexual preference.”39 According to Mary Nancarrow, a member of the Rural Gay Caucus and drafter of the Harrisburg ordinance, Harrisburg was the first city in the state to include gender identity in their anti-discrimination legislation.40 Lancaster followed suit passing an ordinance to protect gays and lesbians from discrimination in 1991 even though it could not be enforced due to county interference until 2001.41 Like activists in these cities, LGBTQ people in Allentown lobbied for amendments to the city’s anti-discrimination ordinance in the mid-1980s, but did not find enough government support for such amendments.42 In the late 1990s, PA-GALA picked up the work of earlier activists and focused their attention on adding Allentown to the list of cities with amended anti-discrimination ordinances; still, they wanted to move past limited protections for gays and lesbians in other cities’ legislation to include transgender people (as did Harrisburg in 1983). They began by endorsing city council candidates that vocally supported LGBTQ residents. And they were incredibly effective. In 2001 The Morning Call wrote about the impact of PA-GALA on local elections:

• 44 One example of this is PA-GALA’s political work to oust City Councilwoman Mary Cramsey as she ran t (...)
• 45 See Rabbi Eugene A Wernick, “Extend Rights in Allentown,” The Morning Call, March 29, 1998. Also, s (...)
• 46 See Ron Devlin, “Gay Right Focus of City Bill,” The Morning Call, March 21, 1998.
• 47 “Pennsylvania Human Relations Act: Local Suit Should Prompt State to State to Extend Anti-Discrimin (...)
• 48 “Pennsylvania Human Relations Act: Local Suit Should Prompt State to State to Extend Anti-Discrimin (...)

25By endorsing progressive Democratic candidates, they were a part of ousting conservative, anti-LGBTQ Democrats from council and priming civic governance for changes to city-wide policy.44 So, too, they focused on mayoral candidates that would support changes to the anti-discrimination ordinance. And PA-GALA was successful in combating homophobia, biphobia, and transphobia promoted by religious leaders by partnering with progressive and inclusive churches and synagogues as well as LGBTQ-friendly religious leaders in the Lehigh Valley.45 In partnership with Felix Molina, Vice President of the Puerto Rican Cultural Alliance and Chair of the Allentown Human Relations Commission, PA-GALA lobbied the Commission to propose amendments to the ordinance to include sexual orientation and gender identity as protected classes.46 PA-GALA members recruited Mara Keisling, who led SPARC (Statewide Pennsylvania Rights Coalition), to draft language for the revised ordinance to include both sexual orientation and gender identity. Importantly, according to Bradbury, Keisling’s language in the Allentown ordinance was then used as a model ordinance elsewhere in Pennsylvania. Keisling’s and PA-GALA’s Allentown ordinance contributed to renewed focus on adding gender identity to existing local legislation and inspired other municipalities to follow.47 Indeed, the Allentown ordinance sparked nationwide conversation as its passage resulted in an ultimately unsuccessful lawsuit brought by the Alliance Defense Fund, a national evangelical organization focused on overturning pro-LGBTQ legislation.48 With passage of amendments to the Allentown ordinance in 2002 and the failure of a referendum and lawsuit to overturn them, LGBTQ people were protected by law as people who should “enjoy the full benefits of citizenship and [be] afforded equal opportunities for employment, housing, and use of public accommodation facilities.” 

• 49 Eric Stein, Rethinking the Gay and Lesbian Movement (New York: Routledge, 2012), 193-195.

26We conclude with this story from our oral history collection to show how hyperlocal activism can have widespread repercussions for legislation across the state. The passage of amendments to a city ordinance revealed that long term political commitment to LGBTQ voter education, voter turnout, and vetting of candidates with detailed surveys and interviews can bear fruit in the form of legislation. And local ordinances not only speak to the residents of specific municipalities, but encourage residents in other regions to lobby their city councils for similar amendments or other forms of policy change. Allentown activists’ stories and regional archives more broadly can add important information to national narratives of LGBTQ civil rights battles. As Eric Stein notes, “an important goal of the gay and lesbian movement from 1950 to 1990 was the enactment of antidiscrimination laws and the elimination of discriminatory policies and practices at all levels of government”49; Allentown’s activists reveal how regional players contributed to this larger national story.

• 50 Eric Stein, Rethinking the Gay and Lesbian Movement, 167.
• 51 Dean Spade, Normal Life: Administrative Violence, Critical Trans Politics, and the Limits of Law (D (...)

27Today, scholars and activists freely debate the value of anti-discrimination and hate crimes legislation. As Eric Stein notes, “Gays and lesbians won hundreds discrimination cases…, but they also lost hundreds. The legal remedies available to gays and lesbians who experienced discrimination continued to vary greatly in different jurisdictions and in different aspects of social, cultural, and political life.”50 Scholars like Dean Spade trace this historical phenomenon in critiques of both Hate Crimes legislation and anti-discrimination ordinances as he argues that “pervasive discrimination” continues for trans and non-binary people, people of color, and LGB people “despite decades of official prohibitions of such behavior.”51 Still, Spade and Craig Willse maintain that there are benefits to such activism:

• 52 Dean Spade and Craig Willse, “Confronting the Limits of Gay Hate Crimes Activism: A Radical Critiqu (...)

28Beyond the direct services offered to victims of hate crimes, activism at the legislative level helps form a consensus about the rights of stigmatized groups to be protected from hateful speech and physical violence. When most popular rhetoric about “homosexuals” condemns us as immoral individuals and threats to public health, hate crimes activism can produce a counter-discourse asserting that homosexuals in fact deserve the status of protected minorities. In this sense, hate crimes activism seeks out a positive premise about a group that most people can agree with despite their distaste for the group, and capitalizes on that consensus to create a public space for speaking in favor of equality for that group.52

• 53 Dean Spade, Normal Life, 69, 68, 106-107.

29While activists and scholars continue to redefine political strategies for the contemporary moment, we affirm the value of regional archival studies for promoting greater understanding of the aims of earlier LGBTQ leaders and organizations in ways that Spade and Willse do here even as they call for a shift in political focus for the twenty-first century. And we affirm that strategies like Voters’ Guides will be useful for activists even as the focus of movement work shifts from anti-discrimination legislation and toward other key areas such as “resisting prison expansion and criminalization,” increasing the life chances of the most vulnerable in our communities by addressing discrimination in “schools, hospitals… tax systems, prisons, welfare systems, shelters, [and] group homes,” and “developing law and policy reform targets as campaign issues” that focus on the transforming the latter institutions.53