The Advocate
Encyclopedia
The Advocate is an American LGBT
-interest magazine, printed monthly and available by subscription. The Advocate brand also includes a web site. Both magazine and web site have an editorial focus on news, politics, opinion, and arts and entertainment of interest to LGBT people. The magazine was established in 1967, and is the oldest continuing LGBT publication in the United States.
. The newsletter was inspired by a police raid on Los Angeles gay bar the Black Cat Tavern
. Richard Mitch (using the pseudonym "Dick Michaels") and Bill Rau (under the name "Bill Rand") joined PRIDE and, along with Aristide Laurent
and artist Sam Winston, transformed the newsletter into a newspaper titled The Los Angeles Advocate. The first issue bore a cover date of September 1967. By early 1968, PRIDE was struggling to stay viable and Mitch and Rau paid the group one dollar for ownership of the paper in February of that year. In 1969 the newspaper was renamed The Advocate and distributed nationally. By 1974, Mitch and Rau were printing 40,000 copies for each issue.
The newspaper attracted the attention of David Goodstein, an investment banker from San Francisco who bought the publication in 1974. Under Goodstein's direction, The Advocate transformed into a national news magazine covering events important to the GLBT community, including the gay rights movement
, art and culture. Goodstein also worked toward reducing sex-oriented advertisements in favor of more mainstream sponsors.
Goodstein and Dr. Rob Eichberg created "The Advocate Experience". Loosely based on the then-popular EST
(Erhardt Seminars Training), it was a two-weekend, all-day series of extensive self-realization workshops to bring self-acceptance, awareness and tolerance within the LGBT community
. Goodstein and Eichberg facilitated the workshops for much of their duration. Goodstein's later editorials remained strongly opposed to state intervention during the early years of the AIDS epidemic. He argued even though "our lifestyle can become an elaborate suicidal ritual, ...our safety and survival depends on each of us and our individual behaviour", as opposed to government public health
regulations.
Soon after Goodstein's death in 1985, the magazine was transformed from a tabloid-size newspaper format in two sections (with the second section carrying sexually explicit advertisements), to a standard magazine format, beginning with the October 1, 1985 issue. The magazine stopped carrying sexually explicit advertisements in 1992, with the launch of a newly created sister publication, Advocate Classifieds. The magazine changed hands through a series of mergers and acquisitions, and is published by Here Media
.
Starting in 2010, Here Media consolidated the distribution for The Advocate and Out
magazines. The Advocate print version continues to be published and is available enclosed with Out as a combination package via subscription.
In 2010 there were press reports of freelance writers not being paid for their work.
LGBT
LGBT is an initialism that collectively refers to "lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender" people. In use since the 1990s, the term "LGBT" is an adaptation of the initialism "LGB", which itself started replacing the phrase "gay community" beginning in the mid-to-late 1980s, which many within the...
-interest magazine, printed monthly and available by subscription. The Advocate brand also includes a web site. Both magazine and web site have an editorial focus on news, politics, opinion, and arts and entertainment of interest to LGBT people. The magazine was established in 1967, and is the oldest continuing LGBT publication in the United States.
History
The Advocate was first published as a local newsletter by the activist group PRIDE (Personal Rights in Defense and Education) in Los Angeles, CaliforniaLos Angeles, California
Los Angeles , with a population at the 2010 United States Census of 3,792,621, is the most populous city in California, USA and the second most populous in the United States, after New York City. It has an area of , and is located in Southern California...
. The newsletter was inspired by a police raid on Los Angeles gay bar the Black Cat Tavern
Black Cat Tavern
The Black Cat Tavern was an LGBT bar formerly located at 3909 W. Sunset Blvd. in the Silverlake section of Los Angeles, California.-History:The bar was established in November of 1966. Two months later, on the night of New Year's 1967, several plain-clothes police officers infiltrated the Black Cat...
. Richard Mitch (using the pseudonym "Dick Michaels") and Bill Rau (under the name "Bill Rand") joined PRIDE and, along with Aristide Laurent
Aristide Laurent
Aristide "A.J." Laurent was an American publisher and LGBT civil rights advocate...
and artist Sam Winston, transformed the newsletter into a newspaper titled The Los Angeles Advocate. The first issue bore a cover date of September 1967. By early 1968, PRIDE was struggling to stay viable and Mitch and Rau paid the group one dollar for ownership of the paper in February of that year. In 1969 the newspaper was renamed The Advocate and distributed nationally. By 1974, Mitch and Rau were printing 40,000 copies for each issue.
The newspaper attracted the attention of David Goodstein, an investment banker from San Francisco who bought the publication in 1974. Under Goodstein's direction, The Advocate transformed into a national news magazine covering events important to the GLBT community, including the gay rights movement
LGBT social movements
Lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender social movements share inter-related goals of social acceptance of sexual and gender minorities. Lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender people and their allies have a long history of campaigning for what is generally called LGBT rights, also called gay...
, art and culture. Goodstein also worked toward reducing sex-oriented advertisements in favor of more mainstream sponsors.
Goodstein and Dr. Rob Eichberg created "The Advocate Experience". Loosely based on the then-popular EST
Erhard Seminars Training
Erhard Seminars Training, an organization founded by Werner H. Erhard, offered a two-weekend course known officially as "The est Standard Training"...
(Erhardt Seminars Training), it was a two-weekend, all-day series of extensive self-realization workshops to bring self-acceptance, awareness and tolerance within the LGBT community
Sexuality and gender identity-based cultures
Sexuality and gender identity-based cultures are subcultures and communities composed of persons who have shared experiences, background, or interests due to a common sexual or gender identity. Among the first to argue that members of sexual minorities can constitute cultural minorities as well as...
. Goodstein and Eichberg facilitated the workshops for much of their duration. Goodstein's later editorials remained strongly opposed to state intervention during the early years of the AIDS epidemic. He argued even though "our lifestyle can become an elaborate suicidal ritual, ...our safety and survival depends on each of us and our individual behaviour", as opposed to government public health
Public health
Public health is "the science and art of preventing disease, prolonging life and promoting health through the organized efforts and informed choices of society, organizations, public and private, communities and individuals" . It is concerned with threats to health based on population health...
regulations.
Soon after Goodstein's death in 1985, the magazine was transformed from a tabloid-size newspaper format in two sections (with the second section carrying sexually explicit advertisements), to a standard magazine format, beginning with the October 1, 1985 issue. The magazine stopped carrying sexually explicit advertisements in 1992, with the launch of a newly created sister publication, Advocate Classifieds. The magazine changed hands through a series of mergers and acquisitions, and is published by Here Media
Here Media
Here Media Inc. is a public media and entertainment company exclusively targeting the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender demographic, formed in 2008 by the combination of Here Networks LLC and its publishing subsidiaries with PlanetOut Inc...
.
Starting in 2010, Here Media consolidated the distribution for The Advocate and Out
Out (magazine)
Out is a popular gay and lesbian fashion, entertainment, and lifestyle magazine, with the highest circulation of any gay monthly publication in the United States. It carries itself in a similar editorial manner to Details, Esquire, and GQ. Out was published by PlanetOut Inc...
magazines. The Advocate print version continues to be published and is available enclosed with Out as a combination package via subscription.
In 2010 there were press reports of freelance writers not being paid for their work.
Notable writers, present and past
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- Alison BechdelAlison BechdelAlison Bechdel is an American cartoonist. Originally best known for the long-running comic strip Dykes To Watch Out For, in 2006 she became a best-selling and critically acclaimed author with her graphic memoir Fun Home.-Early life:...
- Adam BlockAdam Block (journalist)Adam Parker Block was a San Francisco-based writer and music critic for The Advocate, for which he wrote a regular column entitled Block on Rock. He interviewed numerous pop stars as well as lesser known music artists, helping to raise awareness of the emerging queercore movement...
- Chaz Bono (pre-transition)
- Kate ClintonKate ClintonKate Clinton is a American comedian specializing in political commentary from a gay/lesbian point of view.-Early life:...
- Howard CruseHoward CruseHoward Cruse is an American alternative cartoonist known for the exploration of gay themes in his comics.Cruse was raised in Springville, Alabama, the son of a preacher and a homemaker. His earliest published cartoons were in The Baptist Student when he was in high school. His work later appeared...
- Benoit Denizet-LewisBenoit Denizet-LewisBenoit Denizet-Lewis is a narrative journalist and non-fiction writer living in Jamaica Plain, Massachusetts. He is a writer with the New York Times Magazine, where he often writes about outcasts and those living on the fringes of American culture. He is the author of two books published by Simon &...
- Gerard Donelan
- David FrancisDavid FrancisDavid Francis may refer to:*David "Panama" Francis, American drummer*David R. Francis, American politician*David Hywel Francis, known as Hywel Francis, Welsh politician*David Francis , former member of the USA Cycling team...
- Michael Joseph GrossMichael Joseph GrossMichael Joseph Gross is an American author and journalist.He has written extensively for publications such as The New York Times, Vanity Fair, and GQ. Gross is the author of the book Starstruck: When a Fan Gets Close to Fame, published in 2006 by Bloomsbury Publishing.Gross attended Williams...
- Allan GurganusAllan GurganusAllan Gurganus is an American novelist, short story writer, and essayist whose work is often influenced by and set in his native North Carolina. His writing has been compared to the work of William Faulkner and Eudora Welty, who also were identified with the American South.-Biography: Gurganus was...
- Tyler Helms
- Janis IanJanis IanJanis Ian is an American songwriter, singer, musician, columnist, and science fiction author. Ian first entered the folk music scene while still a teenager in the mid-sixties; most active musically in that decade and the 1970s, she has continued recording into the 21st century...
- Josh Kilmer-PurcellJosh Kilmer-PurcellJosh Kilmer-Purcell is an American writer. In 2006 Harper Perennial published I Am Not Myself These Days: A Memoir, a tragicomic account of Kilmer-Purcell's early days in New York City, living as an advertising art director by day and a drag queen named "Aquadisiac" by night...
- James KirchickJames KirchickJames Kirchick is a reporter, foreign correspondent and columnist. He is a fellow with the Foundation for Defense of Democracies in Washington; prior to this he was writer-at-large for Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty....
- Tony KushnerTony KushnerAnthony Robert "Tony" Kushner is an American playwright and screenwriter. He received the Pulitzer Prize for Drama in 1993 for his play, Angels in America: A Gay Fantasia on National Themes, and co-authored with Eric Roth the screenplay for the 2005 film, Munich.-Life and career:Kushner was born...
- Lance LoudLance LoudAlanson Russell "Lance" Loud was an American magazine columnist and new wave rock-n-roll performer. Loud is best known for his 1973 appearance in An American Family, a pioneer reality television series that featured his coming out, leading to his status as an icon in the gay community.-Early...
- Ryan Murphy
- Jasika NicoleJasika NicoleJasika Nicole is an American actress and illustrator from Birmingham, Alabama. She is most famous for portraying the character of Astrid Farnsworth in the TV series Fringe....
- Robert OpelRobert OpelRobert Opel was a photographer and art gallery owner most famous as the man who streaked during the 46th Academy Awards in 1974...
- Christopher RiceChristopher RiceChristopher Travis Rice is an American author. Rice has written five best-selling novels: A Density of Souls, The Snow Garden, Light Before Day, Blind Fall, and his latest book, The Moonlit Earth, which was published in April 2010 by Scribner.-Biography:Christopher Rice comes from a family of...
- B. Ruby RichB. Ruby RichB. Ruby Rich is an American scholar, critic of independent, Latin American, documentary and gay films, and a professor of Film & Digital Media and Social Documentation also known as "SocDoc" at UC Santa Cruz. She has also taught documentary film and queer studies during spring semesters at UC...
- Gabriel RotelloGabriel RotelloDouglas Gabriel Rotello is an openly gay American television documentary writer and producer, and the founder of OutWeek...
- Vito RussoVito RussoVito Russo was an American LGBT activist, film historian and author who is best remembered as the author of the book The Celluloid Closet ....
- Randy ShiltsRandy ShiltsRandy Shilts was a pioneering gay American journalist and author. He worked as a freelance reporter for both The Advocate and the San Francisco Chronicle, as well as for San Francisco Bay Area television stations....
- Michelangelo SignorileMichelangelo SignorileMichelangelo Signorile is a gay American writer, a national talk radio host whose program is aired each weekday across the United States and Canada. He is a political liberal, and covers a wide variety of political and cultural issues...
- Donald SpotoDonald SpotoDonald Spoto is an American celebrity biographer, Catholic theologian, and former monk. He is best known for his best-selling biographies of film and theatre celebrities such as Alfred Hitchcock, Laurence Olivier, Tennessee Williams, Ingrid Bergman, James Dean, Elizabeth Taylor, Grace Kelly,...
- Andrew SullivanAndrew SullivanAndrew Michael Sullivan is an English author, editor, political commentator and blogger. He describes himself as a political conservative. He has focused on American political life....
- Urvashi VaidUrvashi VaidUrvashi Vaid is an American activist who has worked for over 25 years promoting civil rights for gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender persons.- Political activism :...
- Bruce VilanchBruce VilanchBruce Vilanch is an American comedy writer, songwriter and actor. He is a six-time Emmy Award-winner Vilanch is best known to the public for his four-year stint on Hollywood Squares, as a celebrity participant; in the entertainment industry he is best known as head writer for the show...
- Kenji YoshinoKenji YoshinoKenji Yoshino is a legal scholar and the Chief Justice Earl Warren Professor of Constitutional Law at New York University School of Law. Formerly, he was the Guido Calabresi Professor of Law at Yale Law School. His work involves Constitutional law, anti-discrimination law, civil and human rights,...