stair stuff. include ug. er but other than that, we -- we hank you all for coming today. thank you. [captioning performed by national captioning institute] [captions copyright national cable satellite corp. 2016] americane watching history tv, all we can come it every weekend on c-span tv. to join the conversation like us on facebook at c-span history. >> george washington university professor chat he teaches a class about the origins of the gay rights movement. he describes how participants found common ground. with other groups fighting against the status quo of american cold war society.

he also talks about different groups within the gay rights movements which is focused on more specific issues, like removing the ban on lesbians and gays from holding governmental jobs. his class is about one hour. professor heap: so welcome back to class. today our topic is going to be gay and lesbian liberation. i want to spend a bit of time setting that up for you and we will move right into discussion of some of the issues. for the last couple weeks we have been talking about the ways that cold war conformity gave rise to new forms of sexual and social order in the first decade or two after the second world war. we talked about how the cold war conformity established a white suburban, middle class heterosexuality as the domestic ideal and norm in america, and how nuclear families came to be

the kind of central calling card of american normalcy. that in turn of course, as we have discussed before, left a lot of other people outside that norm, especially those left behind in american cities, including people of color, and those who are choosing not to get married in what was the most marrying generation in american history. namely lesbians and gay men, but not exclusively so. those groups, as we talked about before, came to be seen as socially and sexually deviant, as threats to american family and democracy, and should be excluded from society and the abundance of the postwar economic order. now we are moving into the late 1960's and early 1970's to look at some of the rebuttals to those notions of cold war

conformity and normativity. there are an array of social and cultural movements that arise in the 1960's and 1970's to challenge this notion that white middle-class suburban heterosexuality is the ideal american identity. those included the civil rights and later a more radicalized black power movement, the antiwar movement and protests against vietnam, the counterculture, women's liberation and the feminist movement. today we are to start out by looking at the emergence of the gay liberation movement and the challenges that it offered to the established cold war order. by the end of class, i hope we have figured out four major things -- one that we have a pretty good idea what the gay liberation movement was.

although i am calling it gay and lesbian liberation, it was initially referred to as the gay liberation movement and was believed to encompass both gay men and women's ideas and wishes. we will also have a better sense of when the gay liberation movement began, how we might position it in american history. it sought to liberate, and what the achievements and shortcomings of the movement were. those are going to be our main focal points for today. how i want to start is by asking you, if you had to take a moment in history based on your ratings readings or from your understanding of gay and lesbian politics, when would you say the

gay and lesbian liberation movement began? if you had to pick one movement. so, the late 1960's, early 1970's. is there some particular moment in time you would attach the movement to? >> stonewall riots. professor heap: to the stonewall riots? so the stonewall riots are seen as a kind of mythical beginning of the gay and lesbian liberation movement. already by 1972, and these are riots occurred in 1969. he began on friday, june 27 in 1969 as a kind of uprising that arose when the new york police department raided a gay

nightclub in greenwich village known as the stonewall inn. they were ostensibly cracking down on nightclubs in the city that didn't have the proper licenses to sell liquor to their audiences. -- audiences, or their consumers. and for some reason on this particular night in june 19 to of 1967, that patrons did not want their establishment to be rated. -- raided. although the customers were not being arrested in any large numbers, they were being turned out of the club. they began to fight back. the stonewall uprising encompassed three nights of uprisings in greenwich village. the first night of the initial arrests of the crackdown, and then people reassembled on two

subsequent evenings to protest the actions of the police and to make a stand about oppression against gay and lesbians consumers in american cities. at the time this occurred, it wasn't a very notable activity. it happened at about 2:00 a.m. or 3:00 a.m. on friday night into saturday morning. it was too late to appear in the saturday's newspaper, but made its way into the sunday newspaper. the new york times thought it was so important they buried it on page 33. and the new york daily news put it on page 30. time wasines at the four policemen hurt in village raid. ,nly if you begin to read according to the times, that hundreds of young men went on a rampage in greenwich village shortly after 3:00 a.m. yesterday after 4 playing close

-- for policemen raided a bar that was well known for its homosexual clientele. the times reported that after they were turned out of the club, the young men threw bricks, garbage, and a parking meter at the officer, who had a search warrant to investigate report of illegal liquor sales. they estimated that about 200 young a man were turned out of the bar. as the uprising went on, the crowd grew close to 400, in a melee that the times reported lasted about 45 minutes. the new york daily news reported very similarly and briefly about the events and noted also that the same bar had been raided the week before and had not provoked any controversy or uprising, but for some reason the second time people had fought back. the daily new provides us with

one of our few contemporary news images of what happened at the stonewall inn, and who was rioting. i apologize, this is not as quite as clear as it might be. it suggests to us that the audience was a little bit different, for those participating were different than of those portrayed by the new york times. we have in this image not just a picture of hundreds of young men, although there are not hundreds in this photo. but they are primarily young man. unlike the characterization in the times, in this image from the new york daily news, we see young men of color who have been completely written out of "the times" account. in the background you can see a

group of african-american men. in between the two policemen we see the face of what appears to be a latino young men. an. and in the image that appears in the more extensive coverage that the village voice offered in its july 3 issue, we see the presence of transgender or cross-dressing individuals and young street hustlers and a variety of other people who had been written out of the accounts. what is not physical in these accounts is the kind of legendary lesbian who supposedly through the first punch at stonewall, according to the myths that circulated about these events and became especially prominent in the 1980's as it began to be re-mobilized as a way of uniting lesbian and gay politics as a political movement again.

what occurred here was fighting back against police discrimination and harassment, and an attempt to parlay it into a broader and social political movement. rioting continued far into the that first night. by the next day, when the windows of stonewall had been boarded up, graffiti begin to appear on the windows proclaiming gay power, and marking this is a place that would come to have a substantial place in gay and lesbian political memory as a kind of origin point for the gay liberation movement. but what is it usually recognize today when people talk about stonewall is that this was not the first revolutionary movement

in gay and lesbian politics. it was not the first time that anybody called for a revolution, as the gay liberation activists would do in the subsequent weeks. already in march of 1969, an activist in san francisco named leo lawrence, the editor of a magazine published by the society for individual rights, had called for the homosexual revolution of 1969, which he said would be a chance for a gay men and lesbians to join the black panthers and other radical groups to come out in large numbers and challenge the broader social order. nor was it the first time that gay men and lesbians fought back against the police and perceived harassment.

we know of at least two other times that this happened on the west coast. in 1959 in los angeles historians tell us that drag queens and street hustlers that hung out at cooper's doughnuts and were frequently harassed by los angeles police department fought back after police arrested 3 people, helping them pelting them with donuts and coffee cups. in august of 1966 at san francisco's, cafeteria, when the management called the san francisco police to crack down on what they perceived to be behaving transgender individuals in the cafeteria, that the transgender individuals fought back when police arrived to arrest them as well. and yet, even before those

events we had other street protests against discrimination against lesbians and gay men. we have talked before about the emergence of what historian david johnson has categorized as "the lavender scare," the purge of gay men and lesbians from the federal government's workforce in the 1950's and 1960's. in washington, a group of gay and lesbian activists, known as the madison society of washington began to assemble to discrimination and lobby for for access to jobs in the federal workforce. they began also by 1965 to exchange a series of pickets in washington dc. the first of these pickets happened in april of 1965, and

was prompted somewhat unusually and unexpectedly by a new york times article that had announced the establishment of labor camps for men convicted of homosexual crimes in cuba. so you might ask yourself, why is the mattachine society going to protest these labor camps in cuba? and why do they think a good way to protest them is holding a picket in front of the white house? which they did on saturday, april 17, 1965, the first organized picket of the federal government, which was attended by seven men and three women. it is not large, but the first time to take up signs and picket josh pick up picket signs and margin front of the white house. picket signs and march

in front of the white house. this movement was led against the cuban government by calling on the same cold war anti-communist rhetoric that had often been used against gay men or lesbian who were thought to be similar to to american democracy. and they picketed with signs for instant that said "russia, cuba, and the united states unite to persecute homosexuals." they compared it with -- to what purging of them from the federal civil service. over time they begin to picket more widely in washington. they picketed in front of the pentagon, in front of the civil service commission. which is pictured here on the front of the latter, a lesbian publication. and they begin to call attention to the federal government's attacks on gay men and lesbians.

but that version of gay protest is a little bit different from the version and the visual representation of gay protests that would come in the post stonewall period. what i would like to get us to do is to talk about, if we look letter" and of "the compare it to the gate liberation front poster from 1970, what are some of the differences we can see in the way that the gay and lesbian movement is representing itself? back, if you wait just a moment. >> [indiscernible] they were a lot more aggressive and straightforward.

there was more power close to the earlier times. aggressive, but not powerful. professor heap: the gay liberation front image gives you a sense of more powerful outrage? we have fists instead of picket signs. you said it gives a sense of giving a bigger and more boisterous movement. which might be the case. although there are -- as historian richard meyer tells us, there are only 17 people who showed up to take the photograph for this image. the gay liberation front, which had emerged as a self-proclaimed revolutionary organization after stonewall, had a membership of about 150 people at the time and

they only managed to get about 17 to show up to take the picture for this image. there are probably a few other people left out of this image on "the ladder." so the number is not all that different, but we have a different display of them. they are filling the frame more fully in the image for the gay liberation front. they seen, even though there may not be that many more people actually there, they seen to be a larger number of people. is there anything else that you notice that is similar or different? here in the middle. >> in the reading, it talked about in "the ladder," the woman was wearing a skirt and the men were wearing suits, and they were conforming to gender identity to make it seem like they were with society. -- that they were

saying they were not different, and not this crazy group. they were actually just normal. about theheap: what gay liberation front image? >> i don't remember exactly what it said, but they are ducting to the hippie lifestyle. men have longer hair and they are not really conforming to the gender identity they are supposed to be. professor heap: we see a generational divide in the gay-rights movement. in the image from "the latter", because these are only separated for about five years. only see older professional men -- we see older professional men and women who are testing gender conforming attire. the society had a rule that women to wear skirts or dresses

when they appeared in public protest. and men had to wear coat and tie. it was about presenting themselves as respecting gender conforming individuals to claim a sense of a level of respectability and not call attention to them being different, to call attention to their similarities. where as the younger crowd in the gay liberation front, we have less gender specific clothing. the men and women are dressed in much more similar fashion. they are much more casual in attire. and they seem to be refuting the notion that they have to conform gender norms or expectations. anything else that you notice? what about the wording on the cover in the poster? what do you notice that is similar or different about that? >> in the second poster, the

wording and also the image invokes a sense of community. it talks about sisters and brothers, they are happy to be there. they have their arms around each other and it looks like a tight knit community with more of a family vibe. whereas the other one is much more professional with the professionalhe they were told to wear. professor heap: we have a more communal effect in the gay liberation front image, asking people to join them and to join their sisters and brothers because this is a family. there are several different women at the front of this image. richard meyer points out that this is an idealized notion of what people wanted the movement to look like. and that the movement is an incredibly male-dominated movement, both in the numbers of membership and leadership at the time. it is a kind of utopian idea of

what gay liberation might look like. what about on the first image "the latter" on this image talks mophileome a file -- ho groups. we have a difference in any. they are calling themselves homophile groups, which many societies developed to sort of distance themselves from the sexual connotations of homosexuality and the medicalized ideas that characterized it as deviance, medically and psychologically. they have taken that kind of greek terms, homo meaning same, and philia -- anyone goes with it means? love.

they are focused on love of people of the same sex. homophile rather than homosexual , they are calling attention to the same kind of love you note is being displayed by the gay liberation front. but they are doing it as a way of distancing themselves from accusations of abnormality. whereas the gay liberation front is embracing those accusations of abnormality and finding the kind of revolutionary possibility for overturning broader social orders. again, we have this notion of the homophile groups picketing in a nation's capital. we have invited properly conforming activists who are playing a particular role, primarily rebutting the kind of discrimination that gay activists saw coming to them from the federal government.

and their exclusion from federal employment. in the gay liberation front poster, we have a call to action, come out. and gay men and lesbians are being heralded to make themselves known visibly, to make their identities known. and to see that as a kind of political tactic. we talked about how in the early 20th century, gay men and women came out then as well, but they were coming out into the gay community in the same way that a debutante came into society. by the late 1960's and early 1970's, they have taken that formulation and are now saying, out, but they mean, come out to the public. transform this simple act of pride of coming out of the

a form of self affirmation and an opportunity to build community and to challenge a wide array of social inequities that the gay liberation front is recognizing. in fact, the gay liberation front is playing on, and building on all of the lessons the other array of social and cultural movements from this period are developing. the antiwar movement, the civil rights and black power movement, women's liberation movement, they are taking the best aspects of those and building upon them. they are also situating themselves in alliance with those groups and are transforming american society not simply as claims to help lesbians and gay men avoid discrimination and oppression, but an opportunity to transform american society more broadly.

the organization, and activists within the organization begin to conceive of their activism as a way of overturning traditional american social structures. carla j, an activist who edited an important collection of gay liberation documents called "out of the closet" wrote in her introduction that "we perceive our oppression as a class struggle, and our oppressor as white middle-class male dominated heterosexual society, which has relentlessly persecuted and murdered homosexuals and the what -- and lesbian since the oppressor has had power". conceiving it in the way that many left movements did as an anti-capitalist movement.

here we see a lesbian liberation but from the 1970's that says "we will never get it under capitalism." because gay liberation and lesbian liberation, like many other leftists movements at the held people in their place, that oppressed people. that required the kind of cold war conformity, the traditional stay-at-home mom and nuclear family as a way of supporting the booming american economy. that limited some people from participating in that economy in shore up a social power, a political power and cultural power of white male heterosexuals. lesbian liberation was saying the only way to achieve liberation is to escape from

capitalism. lesbian feminists would offer a variety of ways of doing that, including developing their own cultural products that they marketed to each other through lesbian periodicals and newspapers, that they are sometimes willing to give away rather than make money in order to refute the norms of capitalism. and finding freedom for sexual sexual and self-expression through in anti-capitalist enterprise. a liberation front also teamed up with the antiwar movement, the anti-vietnam war movement and saw themselves as part in parcel of that movement, and saw that adding to the liberation of gay men and lesbians. so that rather than fighting to end the ban on gay men in the

military, which has been a more recent focal point of the gay-rights movement, the gay liberation front decided to capitalize on the fact that gay men were excluded from the military, and saw in that a kind of political strategy for fighting the war. they offered slogans such as "send the troops to bed together," or "soldiers, make each other, not war." a kind of variation of make love, not war, but exporting the soldiers to make out with each other, not to fight war. or perhaps in a slogan that will suck cocke bleeped, to beat the draft. that if you did not want to go

to war you could be gay. that was the best strategy to get out of four. they also went on the counterculture. they got together at public leases and were just groovy and cool. the gay liberation front started america,ay in gathering in new york central park and los angeles griffith were tens of thousands of women and men gather to be gay. in spring of 1970 and subsequent years. they also will upon the black power movement and feminism. the black we see power recast as the gay liberation emblem, and the gay liberation front very often marched in solidarity with

groups like the black panther party and saw themselves as an integral part of a larger --ement of oppressed my more my minorities seeking to overthrow what they size a destructive social order. following black power assertion that black is beautiful, they gave liberation front increasingly insisted that gay is good. they are adopting the same kind black power,f black is beautiful, gay power and the gay liberation front says that gay is good. they began to think of themselves as a revolutionary that sought gay and sexual liberation more generally. you can see on the right, this image from new york university, leaning towards black power, women's power, all power to the people. it is thought of as part of this wed movement of social groups

who are not endeavoring just to get rights for gay and lesbians, but endeavoring to transform american society more broadly. said our struggle reflects the struggles of other revolutionary groups and the oppression of others such as blacks, chicanos, american indians and women. the women's movement and radical feminism probably played one of the most central roles in the early years of gay liberation by providing them with some of arest targets for social and structural reform. a lesbian activists wrote in a 1970 essay, " gay is good, that as women and men from the earliest time have been in revolt against the sexual structure and nuclear family

structure". they begin to say it is the nuclear family and gender roles down progressng and that gay and lesbian liberation offers a unique opportunity to work with women's liberation and feminism to overturn this social order. it isnt on to say, difficult for me to understand, pay attention to the groovy language. " it is difficult to understand how you can have each other any man woman relationship, how you can relate to each other in spite of your sexual, it must be awfully difficult to talk to each other when the women is oppressed and the man-ish trained to express and vice versa. do straight men and women talk to each other, or does the man talk and woman not approvingly?

his love possible between heterosexual, or it is all a case of women posing, and men writing the poetry of romantic illusions to these walking stereotypes?" she is taking the popularly held deviant, it is somehow isressive and abnormal and instead calling into question the norms of heterosexuality. it may beesting that heterosexuality that is ultimately more oppressive and abnormal than homosexuality. she even questions, is it possible for men and women to truly love each other when these kind ofes traditional gender norms that privileged men over women, and encourage women to submit to downplayt least to

their own emotions and needs and desires in the face of male desire. this kind of attack on gender conformity carried over as well into the embracing of alternatives gender markers within the gay liberation movement. we had this brief moment in the late 60's and early 1970's where a kind of androgynous male, and gazeome cases female figures are used to market the ofement to a larger variety people and to challenge the social order. in this photo on the right from "life magazine" internet close a that they did on gay culture in 1971, we see sort of bouffant men in glam rock attire, in the middle we have the gay liberation fist that is

also drawing upon black power, and suggesting that this is the kind of a pity me of -- a pity me of gay power on the left. it is being advertised by this kind of psychedelic comic gay probably playing on stereotypes. homosexuality being associated butterflies, as the spanish slang is used to characterize gay men in that way. it is embracing this non-gender conforming images as the kind of place where power can be found within the movement, and for the social and sexual order can be overthrown. it is not just sort of gender conformity that is under attack, gave liberation also believes that marriage should be done

away with and it is a problematic activity. this is counter to recent trends which have embraced the call for legalizing same-sex marriage. during this kind of revolutionary marriage -- in the 1970's. carl whitman wrote in his gay manifesto that marriage is a prime example of ace -- of a straight institution fought with role-playing. a contract which smothers old people, places impossible demands on those people. gaugingle must stop their self-respect by how well they mimic straight marriages. he goes onto say the game liberation can offer new w

about seeking relationship. we are all looking for a feeling of belonging and being needed, but these needs can be met through a variety of living conditions. it seems we need to get away exclusiveness, property attitudes toward each other, a mutual pack against the rest of the world. thes rebelling against notion of monogamy and lifetime thinking about your spouse as your property, or someone you have control over or own. he says we need to get away from promise about the future, which we have no right to make, and which prevents us from or makes us feel guilty about growing. this is more of the groovy language of the day. we should not promise relationships into the future because we are going to grow,

expand and explore new horizons. let's not make these promises that we cannot keep that will make us feel bad about ourselves. says that marriage, one of the problems with marriage is rules, rulese which do not reflect us at the moment but are inherited through mimicry and inability to find a quality area and relationships. he sees gay and lesbian relationships as an opportunity to redefine the relationship between two individuals with more at gala terrien, or what he calls a quality area and existonships that do not within a more structured, byner rise, male, female, masculine roles. challenging the ,otion of the nuclear family arguing that homosexuality is not an abnormality, but a natural capacity in everyone

that has been suppressed by the nuclear family, and by society. claimed that gay is good for all of us. havertificial categories y a sexiston us b society, the found -- the family is a primary need in which it is created and forced. our understanding of sexism is aemised on the idea that in free society, everybody will be gay. here differentiating between gay and homosexual. he is saying that the categories of heterosexual and homosexual have been created by society and placed upon all of us and reinforced by traditional family structures, and that the family mechanism that reinforces the

notion that there is something different about heterosexuality and homosexuality and that --ues heterosexuality oval over homosexuality. he is suggesting that gay is good for all of us. so that gayness becomes a sign of sexuality freed from hierarchical assumption of male supremacy and from the nuclear family. becomes, in his figuration, the way to move beyond a heterosexual and homosexual binary. challengeis radical to the social structure that is that are beinge enacted by black power, by feminism, by the counterculture, and other movements. so far, all we have really seen is the way that those playoff philosophically or ideologically in the manifestoes and ideas

that people are involving. in fact, we have already talked about how some of these things in the revolutionary groups are looking for in the late 1960's and early 1970's, a refusal to go to war, a refusal to marry have become undone by more recent gay and lesbian political movements where the right to serve in the military, and the right to get married have become valorize conceptions. it is pretty clear that gave liberation failed to overturn the social structure, in the same way that a lot of other movements failed to have major impacts. spend aant to do is little bit of time talking about some of the early achievements that gave liberation did manage 1970's,ve in the early and some of the shortcomings of the movement that were already becoming clear and that

period. among other things, the call to come out and make oneself physical and to take a public and political role in american society, have the effect on transforming gay visibility in the united states and of energizing the political activism that continues up to .his day by 1973, there were over 800 gay and lesbian organizations that had been formed in the united states. in just a four year. d or so. by the end of the decade, the numbers reached into the thousands. these included political organizations, but other community organizations, and gay bars, gaye churches, synagogues, health

clinics, community centers, travel agencies, newspapers, a whole array of services that were building roles within the community. any more concrete example, by 1973, gay activists had managed to condense the american psychological association to remove homosexuality from the diagnostic as the typical manner where it had been previous -- previously invented as a mental disorder. we are talking about it arriving riod ofcold war pe homosexuality being a mental illness that could be treated. gay activists are rebutting that notion and are successful in getting the american psychological association to remove homosexuality from its are it mental illnesses by the mid-1970's, gay and lesbian -- openly gay and

lesbian political activists began to be elected into office. most famously, in 1977 harvey milk is elected to the board of supervisors in san francisco. the equivalent of their city council. even before him, kneeling novel had been elected into the first in the state of massachusetts. kathy was elected to the ann .rbor, michigan city council we began to see publicly, elected, and publicly endorsed gay and lesbian officials. by 1970 five, activists in washington and elsewhere are able to convince the u.s. civil service commission to lift its ban on the employment of gay men and lesbians in the federal government. those are all very concrete things of gay and lesbian liberation.

although they have become more mainstream activities. other developments that we can see arising from gay liberation also give us some sense of the shortcomings of the movement. here we see, in these two images, one from "life" magazine and another from a unknown photographer, the gay liberation parade. on the left from 1971, the gay liberation parade in new york. , and they continue today. we used to call them gay liberation day, or gay freedom day. i think san francisco. her first with as gay freedom day. most people call it gave pride day. inhave had a slight change the nomenclature and in the meeting of the movements. they were originally held -- the

first one was held in 1970's. the fact that they are held in late june is no accident. it is an commemoration of the stonewall uprising. the first one is held in new york, it quickly spread throughout the rest of the country. they are meant to symbolize freedom, and they serve as a political march initially. the gay freedom day parade in new york, the first one started en greenwich village near th site of the stonewall in. they march into the city, ending up in central park. there are these political events that march through the streets with people yelling out, "come out".ome people are joining the march as they move into the heart of the core of new york, and into central park where they held political rallies.

it was certain political rallying points. have think about what they become today, they gave pride movement, or the gay pride parades now in new york, they start somewhere up near central park on 5th avenue, and they march down the city and into the gay neighborhoods, and gay nightlight district and have become less sort of political rallying points. they usually still hold a vertical rally on the day preceding the march, and more for the mass consumer events that embrace gay pride, what have done away with the kind of valence of the marches. it has done away with gave liberation fronts, or attacks on capitalism. it has become all about their capitalizing on lesbian and gay and building up that aspect of the economic tower of the gay and lesbian community.

image, see, in the lower the development of the lesbian liberation front -- or the lesbian feminism liberation that is similar to other problems with gay liberation, it did not always address the needs of everyone in its midst. carla j noted that the movement also included struggles within , because we are by no means a homogeneous group. "the movement reflects our struggles with each other, and gay men oppress gay women. white gaze oppress black gays, and straight looking gays "ppress transvestites. she signaled this need for gave liberation, which is our own chauvinism, our own sexism, our

own racism, as well as our oppression by stray society. groups like that lesbian feminist liberation began to separate out from gay liberation because they do not feel that addressed. are being -based field at the men in the movement are oppressing them and are not paying attention to women's needs within the movement. activists of color also begin to separate out from the movement, as do activists that we would consider to be transgender today who feel that they are not being properly represented. the gay liberation front itself basically dissipates and falls away in the early 1970's. it is replaced, not just by lesbian feminist movements, and other splinter groups, but it is replaced by organizations, like in new york the gay activists alliance, which is an

exclusively male organization which no longer sees itself in being involved in sort of transforming the social order, but rather its focus primarily on discrimination against gay men for their sexuality. it is not seeing themselves engaged in broader, social struggles. we see this and one of their most famous activities from 1971. again reported in "life" magazine. he pioneered a new political movement, or practice called the defend uponey public officials, or media officials to harass them into doing what they want them to do. zapfirst and most famous was a protest at city hall in new york city for marriage rights in 1971. they are already by 1971, this

radical attempt to transform american culture and society, and to challenge the normalcy of marriage is being undermined and gay activists are now embracing heterosexual marriage, or marriage in general as a model for their inclusion into society. are moving away from this radical revolutionary movement that they had pioneered in earlier years. begin again next week talking about some of the other radical political movements that challenged the social order in the 1960's and 1970's. >> join us every saturday evening at 8:00 p.m. and midnight eastern as we join students in college classrooms to hear lectures on topics ranging from the american revolution to 9/11.

lectures and history are also available as podcasts. visit our website c-span .org/history/podcast, or download them from itunes. >> with the supreme court back in session, we have a special webpage to help you follow. supremen.org, select court in the right-hand top of the page. once there you will see the calendar for this term, a list of all current justices and with supreme court video on demand, watch oral arguments that we have aired and recent c-span appearances by supreme court justices at c-span.org. >> next on american history tb, peter, author of the earth is sleeping. he talks about what he argues are three big myths of the wars that have been perpetuated in popular culture.

the buffalo bills center of the west hosted this hour-long program. >> this is a remarkable opportunity for us here at the center of the west tonight. what we know, or what we think we know about the indian wars of the american west is mostly wrong. for more than a century, movies and novels, comics books and serious art, pseudo-scholarly studies and popular culture have spun clouds of myths about the violent collision between native americans and the ongoing irrepressible unstoppable westward march of the new american nation. the earth is weeping is a remarkable piece of scholarship and a darn good read. oneon has declared it to be

of the top 10 nonfiction works of 2016. here are clustered and sitting cloud two,ward, red but also the story of standing bear, the chief who wrote out of his village to talk with soldiers who had come to completely surrounded. he is holding forth the peace medal he was giving a wild before by president linking in washington. dead in his saddle .y a trooper also there was she to valley. this was years before little bighorn. told his troops to attack on lewis winter night, ofilton was the grandson

alexander hamilton. tying the stories together into a master narrative of the american west requires the best work of a skilled historian. is the author of 16 books of american history, notably on the civil war, now the indian wars. his works have been book-of-the-month club selections and has won numerous procedures awards. peter is not a professional historian. he was a distinguished career service foreign officer until quite recently, writing the claimed history, even as he served his country across troubled spots across the world. peter and his wife antonia have come to cody for this presentation, the very first public event for "the earth is

weeping". it is with great pleasure that we welcome my friend peter cousins. [applause] peter: i would like to thank you for the introduction and for inviting me and for all that has gone into making this presentation a possibility. and to the buffalo bills center for your wonderful hospitality. begin, two years ago, maybe two and a half years ago i was struggling to put this book together. i was thinking about places i would like to speak, places i thought would be appropriate venues for presenting this book.

the first venue that came to mind was the buffalo bills center of the american west. i have not yet had the pleasure of tim's friendship, but it was a place i most wanted to talk. this was particularly gratifying for me this afternoon to be here. i would like to start my presentation with a moment from the movie. can anybody tell me what this scene is, and from what will be? oh wow that was great. exactly. "littlethe moment in big man" where you see dustin hoffman in one of his incarnations where he is a reluctant and perplexed army scout watching george armstrong satisfiedclearly self

pre-himself before writing off to the battle of the little bighorn. this picture has taken on an allegorical meaning for me. perplexedlf as the young dustin hoffman.