Gay Men

Rodney Gilbert

 Rodney Gilbert (July 27, 1967 - November 8, 2017) was the founder and CEO of Yendor Productions, a Newark-based firm that consults, develops, and produces arts education programming and events. Yendor Productions was founded in 2003 to meet the challenges for the under served artists and communities. Mr. Gilbert has worked in professional theatre for over thirty years. He was a graduate of the University of the Arts in Philadelphia, where he earned a BFA.  He served the arts community through acting instruction for various institutions and organization as one of the leading teaching artists...

Louie Crew Clay

 Louie Crew Clay is a pioneering activist who founded the gay Episcopal group Integrity USA in 1974 and co-founded the LGBT caucus of the National Council of Teachers of English in 1975, among numerous other achievements. In this interview, we focus on his life in Newark, where he moved in 1989 to teach English at Rutgers University-Newark. You can read more about his life and work in his most recent book, Letters from Samaria (2015), and his Wikipedia page, from which we take the following biography. See also Louie’s richly-documented website, as well as his online photo album, with an...

Peter Savastano

Peter Savastano was born and raised in Newark, New Jersey where he lived and worked for most of his adult life. He holds a Ph.D. in Religion and Society from Drew University. An anthropologist of religion, consciousness, sexuality and gender, Dr. Savastano is academically and personally interested in the role that religion and/or spirituality plays both for better and for worse in the formation of queer identity, subjectivity and practice. He is Associate Professor of Anthropology at Seton Hall University.





Both photos taken at Rutgers-Newark...

Arnie Kantrowitz

 Arnold (Arnie) Kantrowitz, a 1961 B.A. alum of Rutgers University-Newark, was a pioneering activist for LGBT equality in the United States. He served as vice president of New York City's influential Gay Activists Alliance, founded in 1970 in the wake of the Stonewall uprising, and in 1985 co-founded the Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation in response to antigay coverage of the AIDS crisis by New York City tabloids. GLAAD, still today the leading advocate for fair and accurate representation of LGBT people in the media, counts among its early successes an effort to persuade New York...

James Credle

James Warren Credle (1945-2023) is a retired American academic administrator, counselor, and Veterans and LGBT rights activist. Born in Mesic, North Carolina, he was one of 14 children born during the time of Jim Crow. His mother was a dayworker and his father worked part-time as a carpenter. Credle and his siblings worked through high school to supplement the family income. He worked in fields picking cotton, potatoes, corn, and cabbage. He later worked in a crab factory. His family were members of Mount Olive Baptist Church where he sang in the choir. James graduated from the all-black...

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