Introduction to Gay Community News
Founded in 1973 by a group of eight lesbians and gays in Boston, Gay Community News (GCN) was initally conceived as a newsletter to increase awareness of events and programs across the gay community in Boston. As the first issue, in 1973, states:
There has been a long-standing need in the Boston gay community for improved communication between the various gay organizations and the gay individual. The lack of coverage in the "straight" press has added to this problem of getting necessary information to our community…The Gay Community Newsletter is meant as a means to solve this problem. The purpose will be to list all of the events and information of interest to the gay community in one publication.
By the second issue, however, GCN staffers were already desiring a more robust publication and they upgraded from a two-page mimeograph to an eight-page, offset printed newsprint. In under two years the paper expanded distribution and coverage significantly, becoming a regional voice for the gay community across the Northeast. The impact of the paper grew in this early period as hunger for LGBTQ+ publications and news was fed and supported by the gay liberation movement. In 1978, just five years after its establishment, GCN membership voted to become a national newspaper, expanding its focus to national and global issues and mobilizing community networks to distribute issues throughout the country.
In 1979 the paper began a protracted struggle to gain nonprofit status and secure its administrative and financial structures. Attempts to incorporate under “Gay Community News” continued to be rejected, which GCN members attributed to the inclusion of “Gay” in the corporation name, until 1984 when they finally succeeded using the name “Bromfield Street Educational Foundation.” At this point GCN was structured with three decision-making bodies: board of directors, paid staff, and membership which was open to anyone who attended at least three meetings.
Throughout GCN’s first ten years, its coverage continued to grow in scope and quality – the Village Voice even recognized it as the “movement's paper of record.” But in summer of 1982, the office as 22 Bromfield was engulfed in flames, resulting in the destruction of equipment and early records of the paper. The fire also destroyed the offices of Fag Rag, which rented the back room of GCN’s space, and Glad Day Books, a gay book store that rented space across the hall. The fire has been linked to a group of firemen and policemen who were responsible for a number of arsons across Boston in the early 1980s.
Gay Community News 10th Anniversary Flyer side by side with a card for the Arson Squad. From the Gay Community News Collection at The History Project.
As early as 1982, GCN began reporting on the AIDS epidemic, sharing resources, information, and support as the epidemic spread. As part of this effort to inform and advocate for people with AIDS, GCN also provided AIDS-related information and free issues of the paper to incarcerated people—a population whose access to specialized healthcare and information was often actively repressed.
By 1991, GCN, having never missed a weekly issue, was the oldest national gay newspaper in continuous publication. At that time, there was a paid staff of ten and dozens of volunteers publishing the 20-page paper. As the media and political landscape evolved, the paper began facing financial difficulties and the collective was forced to respond. In July 1992, GCN halted publication to restructure the collective and reshape its editorial focus. By April 1993, GCN resumed publishing as a bimonthly 28-to-32-page tabloid. The first issue in this format was produced for and distributed at the 1993 March on Washington for Lesbian, Gay and Bi Equal Rights and Liberation—one of the country’s largest demonstrations with an estimated 1 million people in attendance. Before publishing the 1993 issue, GCN moved to a basement office at 25 West Street to reduce costs and again in 1995 into an office at the Boston Living Center at 29 Stanhope Street. In 1999, GCN ceased publication, with its final issue published with the masthead “The National Queer Progressive Quarterly.”
Cover of the 1993 special issue, with a cartoon by Alison Bechdel, published after the collective restructured. From the Gay Community News Collection at The History Project.
During a critical period in the lesbian and gay liberation movement, GCN grew to be a nationally respected source of LGBTQ+ news and information where men and women worked collectively towards a liberatory politic. Its critical and often controversial coverage, which moved beyond more narrowly defined gay or lesbian issues, was a catalyst for political debate within the LGBTQ+ community. Alongside the paper, the collective also supported projects including The Prison Project, OutWrite, the Queer Progressive Organizing School, and Off-the-Page.
The Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual, and Transgender Prisoner Project was started in 1975 by GCN staffer Mike Riegle who began responding to letters sent by incarcerated people with free GCN subscriptions. The project quickly expanded with volunteers and staffers sending prisoners books, newspapers, and resources alongside providing legal reference, publishing letters and texts, and maintaining classifieds for prisoner pen pals. In 1977 the Bromfield Street Educational Foundation and the National Gay Task Force (now the National LGBTQ Task Force) successfully sued the federal prison system for the right of prisoners to receive LGBT+ publications. Beginning in 1981, a regular prisoners column was published in GCN.
GCN became the sole sponsor of OutWrite, an annual conference featuring LGTBQ+ writers, in 1993 after the former sponsor, OUT/LOOK magazine, dissolved. Moving from San Francisco to Boston in the same year, GCN sponsored the conference until 1999. GCN also established Off-the-Page in this period, a semi-monthly reading and writing series that invited gay and lesbian writers to give free readings of their work at local restaurants. In 1997, GCN organized the Queer Progressive Organizing School in response to what they perceived as an increasingly conservative gay rights movement. The gathering, which took place in Craigville, Massachusetts, brought together 35 activists from the Boston area.
Since the collective’s disbandment, GCN’s staffers and volunteers have gone on to become leaders in the LGBTQ+ movement—as Amy Hoffman points out in her introduction to the “Content, Controversy, and Coverage” panel linked on the “GCN at 50” page. Major LGBTQ organizations, from the National LGBTQ Task Force to the New York LGBT Community Center and the Los Angeles LGBT Center, were at one time headed by GCN alums. And throughout the 1980s and ‘90s, these same alums contributed significantly to AIDS service and activism. To this day, GCN writers, staffers, and community members continue to impact contemporary LGTBQ+ organizing and culture through playing active roles in political and cultural movements.
GCN Headquarters
GCN operated at 6 different addresses over the decades, a reflection of the struggle faced by the alternative and gay press. 22 Bromfield Street was one of the most important GCN locations as it grew into a nationally distributed newspaper; here it shared the building with the significant LGBTQ+ bookstore Glad Day Books and Fag Rag maintained their offices in a backroom of GCN. It was also here where these three businesses were the site of an arson attack in 1982, which destroyed many of the records and equipment of GCN. The arson was later to be attributed to a group of former Boston firefighters who set numerous fires in the early 1980s. Photographs of the aftermath of the arson are viewable in the collection and video exists online.
