When was glaad started

What a difference 25 years makes. Not only are media representations of gays plentiful, they are almost overwhelmingly positive, which is perhaps why GLAAD curiously removed the above sentence from its website. The entertainment industry, for many years a "celluloid closet" in the words of the late gay film historian Vito Russo , is exuberantly pro-gay.

Being gay isn't just OK these days, it's positively cool. From Broadway to Hollywood, the message is one of uncompromising acceptance of gay people. The list of celebrities and television shows affirming a gay-positive message is endless, from Lady Gaga and her mantra of "Born This Way" to hit television shows like Modern Family and Glee. Meanwhile, popular television journalists like CNN's Anderson Cooper and NBC News' Pete Williams face no barriers for being openly gay, a far cry from what it was like to work in the news industry just half a generation ago.

The media's reaction to NBA player Jason Collins' coming out on the cover of Sports Illustrated has been almost exclusively supportive; just witness the hostility heaped upon Howie Kurtz, who was fired by The Daily Beast for a blog post in which he erroneously stated that Collins "didn't come clean" over his previous engagement to a woman. As far as the mainstream media, movies, television, and popular music -- the monitoring of which is GLAAD's raison d'etre -- goes, homosexuality has gone from the love that dare not speak its name to the love that won't stop talking.

Simply put, gays have won the culture war. Social historians can debate when exactly this happened. Rather than being attributable to one instantaneous incident, however, today's mainstream acceptance of homosexuality came about gradually, assisted by the fact that most people today personally know someone who is openly gay.

While the Stonewall Riots of may seem like a long time ago, in the full sweep of American history, no other social movement has progressed so far and so fast as that of gays. That gays won the culture war may seem paradoxical in light of the fact that, in most states, they still cannot get married or obtain civil unions something which the Supreme Court is unlikely to change in its pending decision.

The victory might also come as cold comfort to gays living in the 29 states where they can be fired due to their sexual orientation. But full legal equality is inevitable, as polls show overwhelming majorities of young people do not hold the same prejudices against homosexuals as their parents' and grandparents' generations.

Moreover, such prejudices are practically impossible to find among members of the elite news media and cultural tastemakers whom GLAAD was formed to influence; on the contrary, even the slightest deviation from a strictly-defined "pro-gay" consensus can ruin a career see, for instance, Miss California Carrie Prejean, who endured a torrent of abuse for stating her belief, shared at the time by at least half the country, that marriage should be limited to heterosexuals. Moreover, the terms on which the topic of same-sex marriage is debated today indicates a more imperceptible change in favor of gays.

The New York and Los Angeles chapters merged in , with other city chapters joining soon thereafter. Functioning as one of its primary strategic programs, the Media Monitoring and Response Committee collected materials regarding LGBT defamation in the media, used email mailing lists to inform the LGBT community, and organized campaigns against people and institutions spreading anti-LGBT views.

All requests for permission to publish or quote from manuscripts must be submitted in writing to the ONE Archivist. Permission for publication is given on behalf of ONE National Gay and Lesbian Archives at USC Libraries as the owner of the physical items and is not intended to include or imply permission of the copyright holder, which must also be obtained. The collection is open to researchers. There are no access restrictions. Collection Contents.

Media Monitoring and Response Committee records. Administrative and outreach records. The Institute offers courses on tailoring pro-LGBT messaging to different audiences, using social media to spread pro-LGBT content, and incorporating other activist skills into media.

The report blamed the Trump administration for this shift. Then-Presidential candidate and former Vice President Joe Biden suggested that male prisoners who identify as female should be housed with female prisoners, and vice versa.

Then-candidate and U. In addition to opposition from conservative publications and organizations, GLAAD has received criticism from liberal and left-leaning observers.