janeybcarver

From Harvey Milk to Prop 8, in this week’s issue Alex Ross traces the history of the gay-rights movement, interlacing the movement’s milestones with his own memories and experiences as a gay man in America. Ross writes, “I am forty-four years old, and I have lived through a startling transformation in the status of gay men and women in the United States… Around the time I was born, homosexual acts were illegal in every state but Illinois. Lesbians and gays were barred from serving in the federal government. There were no openly gay politicians. A few closeted homosexuals occupied positions of power, but they tended to make things more miserable for their kind.” But, he writes, “Today, gay people of a certain age may feel as though they had stepped out of a lavender time machine…. Gay rights have made such rapid progress that there is an urge to look back and assess what has happened.” 

An Aerial View of D-Day

A panoramic view of the Omaha beachhead after it was secured, sometime around mid-June 1944, at low tide.

Victoria and Albert Museum for London Design Week by Stuart Haygarth

When World War I veterans returned from overseas, they were promised a cash bonus for their service — but they wouldn’t get their money until 1945. Desperate for relief, in 1932 a group of veterans from Portland, Ore., went to Washington to demand early payment. (via The Bonus Army: How A Protest Led To The GI BIll)