Fellowship and Fun
The Coalition organizing events focused on promoting fellowship and fun, like those highlighted below, is noteworthy. Education and advocacy are necessary, but this work is emotionally and physically draining. The creation of spaces for relaxation and socialization among Coalition members shows efforts by the group to cultivate community, prioritize fun, and nourish queer joy. Queer joy is an act of resistance.
Film Screenings were a popular activity for the coalition, and appear to have served as a way to gather in community, and ask "tough questions" and look for answers together.
Maurice Film Screening
Maurice is a 1987 film based on the novel written by E.M. Forster in 1913, and published posthumously in 1971. The film, a British romantic drama, features two young men who fall in love while attending Cambridge University in the early 1900s. The film’s happy ending is almost unheard of in stories of queer love during this time period.
Tongues Untied Film Screening
Tongues Untied is a 1989 documentary by Marlon Riggs highlighting the experiences of Black gay men living in the United States. This flier produced by the Coalition to advertise their screening of the film calls Tongues Untied controversial and compelling.
Tough Questions: Film Screening and Discussion
This flier advertises an event held in April 1990, jointly organized by the G/L/S Coalition, Social Action Committee, Women’s Center, and Readings in Liberation Theology. The event featured two days of community-viewing of four films: The Life and Times of Harvey Milk, Pink Triangles, Before Stonewall, and Torch Song Trilogy.
This invitation is addressed to Mr. Roy Heller, inviting him to a party held in New Haven in 1988. The image on the front of this party invitation is a 12th-13th century Italian mosaic, depicting Genesis 19:15-26. As Lot and his family flee Sodom; his wife looks back at the city being destroyed. The text on the right side of the image, written in French, tells what is said to have happened next: “The wife of Lot turned into a statue of salt." Based on the text on the inside of the invitation the creator of the invitation appears to be using satire to reclaim the biblical story of Sodom and Gomorrah, a text traditionally weaponized against queer folks by Christians.
