LGBT Issues & History

Michael Arceneaux's new book, I Can't Date Jesus, is a collection of essays about his early years. Beyoncé, he says, taught him a valuable lesson: "Just be yourself and be very good at what you do."

The celebrated writer transitioned from male to female in 1972 at the age of 46. In 1989, Morris told Terry Gross that she had shed "a lot of the emotions and the experiences of both genders."

Sarah McBride was the first transgender person to speak at the political convention of a major party. Now she's the spokesperson for the LGBTQ rights organization the Human Rights Campaign.

Jones lost countless friends to the AIDS epidemic. He became an activist after Harvey Milk's assassination: "Meeting Harvey, seeing his death, it fixed my course." Originally broadcast Nov. 29, 2016.

Growing up, punk rocker Laura Jane Grace always felt conflicted about gender. She tells Fresh Air's Terry Gross that she felt like two "twin souls" were warring inside of her, fighting for control. "I thought that I was quite possibly schizophrenic," she says.

Nicole Maines, who is transgender, is a young woman who filed and won a discrimination lawsuit against her school district, after she was forbidden to use the girls' bathroom.

Kylar Broadus is a lawyer and activist and the first openly transgender person to testify before the U.S. Senate.

The co-founder of the first national lesbian-rights organization in the United States — and the country's first national lesbian magazine — died Aug. 27 at age 87. We remember her with a Fresh Air interview from 1992.

The strategy of going to the Supreme Court to challenge Proposition 8 was controversial within the gay-rights movement. Now, Jo Becker's new book is proving to be controversial as well.

Cucumber tells the adventures of a middle-aged gay man; Banana is a series of short stories. Russell T. Davies, who made Queer As Folk, says the titles came from a scientific institute in Switzerland.