Much has been written this year about the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence and much has been written during the past few decades, including full biographies, about the queer (at least, queer-adjacent) lives of three who served in George Washington’s Continental Army: Deborah Sampson, Casimir Pulaski, and Baron von Steuben. This piece provides…
A Heartfelt Farewell to Margaret Katherine Flowing Johnson
Margaret Katherine Flowing Johnson November 14, 1940 – January 20, 2026 On her birth certificate, she was Margaret Katherine. To her origin family, she was Midge. To her partner Marcia’s family, she was Margaret. For a brief moment, she was almost Honey. To most who knew her in the St. Louis region for the last…
Whitney Wisker-Brooks, Out Progressive Lesbian, Running For House Seat in Rural Missouri
Whitney Wisker-Brooks, 38, an out progressive lesbian, is running for the House District 116 (HD 116) seat in the Missouri General Assembly. She is a Democrat. District 116 covers approximately the southern half of St. Francois County and the northern half of Madison County. (The St. Francois County Courthouse in Farmington, where 400 gathered at…
New Doc Short Explores the Videotaped History of the Queer Midwest in the 1980s-90s
A Newsweek cover forty years ago declared a “video generation,” with young and old and black and white Americans eager to record birthdays, weddings, and other significant events in their lives. There is no identifiable LGBTQ person included on that cover, but queer people in the 1980s were as eager as everyone else to document…
Precious Names and Places: The Central West End and LGBTQ+ St. Louis
For as long as I can remember, grounding myself in history has provided steady footing. Even an evening at a new restaurant requires a quick Google search to learn the who, what, when, where, and why of the establishment’s history. In the period between 1990 and 1997 when I lived in St. Louis (South County,…
Flowing: “A Kick-Ass Activist”
I met Flowing Johnson in 1994 through the St. Louis chapter of the (then-called) Gay, Lesbian, and Straight Teachers Network (GLSTN), which I started that summer. She and I were teachers – community college math for her and high school social studies for me. In her mid-50s at the time, Flowing had long ago developed…
Thirty Years Ago: AMC’s Michael Delaney Pointed to a Pink Triangle
When my mother worked at the hometown Walmart when I was a boy in the 1970s, one rule was chiseled in granite: “Do not call me at work, ever — unless the house is on fire or somebody’s dying!” Mom practiced what she preached, so it was a shock thirty years ago this month when…
Coming to Left Bank Books: Poet and Activist Steven Reigns
Former St. Louisan Steven Reigns (he graduated from Parkway South in 1994), now an LA-based poet and activist, is not afraid of spending time with life’s unavoidable finale – death. He founded the Gay Rub Project in 2011, a collection of rubbings of LGBTQ+ historical markers and monuments, including many gravestones. The Gay Rub Project…
A “Quieter History”: Katie Batza’s AIDS in the Heartland
University of Kansas women’s, gender, and sexuality studies professor Katie Batza claimed some of the terrain of research into LGBTQ healthcare infrastructures and socio-medical responses to LGBTQ patients with her 2018 book Before AIDS: Gay Health Politics in the 1970s, published by the University of Pennsylvania Press. She’s annexed more of the territory of health…
Supporting Our Supporters: The Missouri Historical Society and LGBTQ+ History
In 1994, the editor of the quarterly magazine of the Missouri Historical Society (MHS), then called Gateway Heritage, had to push hard to bring to publication an article I had written about Rev. Carol Cureton, the Metropolitan Community Church of Greater St. Louis, and the impact the twenty-seven-year-old out lesbian and the nascent “homosexual church”…
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