What can the passing of Hugh Hefner possibly mean to LGBT Americans? “Hef’s” world at the Playboy mansion in Los Angeles was a dazzling Sixties mash of hetero sex and consumerism, in another universe from the world of supposed gay “deviance” and “perverts” targeted by American culture, psychiatry and politics of the era. Playboy’s debut issue featuring Marilyn Monroe was in 1953, the year President Eisenhower signed an Executive Order that defined gays and lesbians as “sexual perverts,” banned from federal employment and civil equality for decades to come.
Archive activism for LGBT civil equality
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