LBGTQ+ meeting places
* John
John (b.1938) grew up in North Newark, in an Irish Catholic family. As a teenager, he participated in Newark's thriving gay social world, and this interview recounts bars, movie theaters, cruising spaces, and other important sites of gay life in the 1950s and 60s, before John left Newark in the late Sixties.Peggie Miller
My name is Peggie Miller. Living the majority of my life as a butch woman, I noticed how we tend to live in the shadows, usually among our own exclusively. Gay Men have been at the forefront of the Gay Liberation movement, honored in all types of media & have been more or less accepted into the mainstream of society for decades. Except for a few power lesbians, we the African American & other lesbians of color, particularly butch identified women tend to take a back seat. Until now! We are mothers, deacons, professionals, designers, artists, reverends, doctors, attorneys & more...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...
Venice Brown
Venice Brown earned her GED from Cape Fear Community College. She received her Cosmetology License from the College of Wilmington, North Carolina where she lives and works part-time at a hair salon and at Cape Fear College. She had a baby boy, Jasiah, who just turned four and co-parents with her girlfriend whom she has known since they were twelve years old. As Venice’s mom says, “Venice would give you the shirt off her back, but do not disrespect her friends.”Venice has spoken at the University of California – San Diego for The Nicholas Papadopoulos Endowed Lecture in Gay & Lesbian...