I learned a lot about Rochester’s LGBTQ+ community from watching the documentary “Shoulders to Stand on” in class. Mainly, I learned about the Gay Liberation Front started at the University of Rochester in 1970. The Gay Liberation Front became so successful with Rochester community members that it was split into two groups. These two groups eventually came back together and formed the Gay Alliance.
The exhibition described in the article ‘Perversity to Diversity’ Exhibit Causes Controversy at University of Rochester took place in 1991. I began my research by simply googling the articles title. This did not bring up much. I added multiple words such as University of Rochester and LGBTQ exhibit to my google search. Again, I did not find the original article. I then searched both the Democrat and Chronicle and the Campus Times for the article or mention of the exhibit. I did not find anything about the exhibit. I remembered from the documentary we watched in class, “Shoulders to Stand on,” that the Gay Alliance came out with a newsletter called The Empty Closet, so I googled “Susan Jordan,” who was the author, and “The Empty Closet“. I discovered that she was one of the people featured in the documentary as one of The Empty Closet’s editors. This led me to believe that the article was written in The Empty Closet. Finally, I googled “The Empty Closet” and “Perversity to Diversity.” A PDF of The Empty Closet came up from the University of Rochester River Campus Libraries. The PDF was of the issue that contained the article I was looking for. In the top left corner the issue said April 1991. Therefore, the article and the exhibit both took place in 1991.
-PV