Search Results

Through these characters and the broad range of The Advocate’s intended audience, Bechdel is able to reflect on subjects of relevance to the gay community at large—like AIDS and associated activism—that often don’t make it into the strips of the fairly idyllic world of DTWOF. By analyzing Servants to the Cause, the chapter not only unravels its narrative structure and grassroots contexts, but also examines the production of the strip itself through drafts of the comic and letters that Bechdel exchanged with her editor at The Advocate. In this analysis and in research across the essay, the chapter draws upon grant-funded archival research of Alison Bechdel’s papers held in the Sophia Smith Collection at Smith College, Firebrand Book Records held in the Human Sexuality Collection at Cornell University, and periodicals collections at the Lesbian Herstory Archives and the ONE National Gay & Lesbian Archives. To connect Bechdel to the larger world of queer comics culture, the chapter considers the significance of The Advocate’s support of the field of queer comics, juxtaposed against large feminist publications like Ms., which often spurned women’s comics. This positive attitude creates a set of conditions through which not only Bechdel but other queer cartoonists flourish, particularly in the 90s, allowing them to make a living outside of the more conservative comics publishing world through self-syndication in queer periodicals.

Shilts comes “out” to his parents and family. Graduating from the University of Oregon, journalism jobs remained elusive for Shilts. Shilts begins work as a freelance writer for The Advocate, later hired as a full-time correspondent and relocates from Oregon to San Francisco. Shilts’s reporting covers some of the nation’s earliest gay rights efforts via state legislatures and courts, employment discrimination, parental rights, youth suicide, alcoholism/drug abuse, and social issues confronting LGBT individuals. Early stories on communicable and sexually transmitted diseases among gay men. Shilts clashes with David Goodstein, The Advocate’s publisher. Shilts meets his first lover, Daniel Yoder, while traveling the U.S. covering efforts to repeal non-discrimination laws in various cities, including Anita Bryant’s “Save Our Children” effort in Miami, Florida.

One of Shilts’s last interviews, with Steve Kroft from CBS’ 60 Minutes, considers his breakthrough role as a gay journalist. Shilts’s future plans for a book about alleged sexual abuse inside the Catholic Church, and his desire for a national column are revealed. Shilts’s last interviews and written words reflect the fleeting nature of his life as he attempts to promote his final book, Conduct Unbecoming. Shilts’s health continues to deteriorate until he dies at his Guerneville, California home on February 17, 1994. Shilts’s death wins nationwide notice and his funeral becomes the first-ever picketed by members of the controversial Westboro Baptist Church. Shilts’s friends, colleagues and his partner, Barry Barbieri, offer insight into his last months of life.