August 31: Creating Our Own Spaces, Fighting for Our Right to Serve
- 2 days ago
- 3 min read
AUGUST 31
🏳️🌈 THIS DAY IN LGBTQ+ HISTORY
August 31: Creating Our Own Spaces, Fighting for Our Right to Serve
LGBTQ+ history is not only about gaining acceptance from the world around us. Sometimes our history is about creating spaces of our own, where queer people can gather, build community, explore identity, and exist without having to conform to somebody else's expectations.
August 31 reminds us of both sides of that journey: the power of creating queer community and the fight against institutions determined to keep LGBTQ+ people out.
🏳️🌈 1979: THE RADICAL FAERIES BEGIN
On August 31, 1979, gay rights pioneer Harry Hay, along with John Burnside, Don Kilhefner, and Mitch Walker, helped organize a gathering known as the Spiritual Conference for Radical Fairies at the Sri Ram Ashram near Benson, Arizona.
The gathering became recognized as the birthplace of the Radical Faeries, a movement that encouraged gay men to explore community, spirituality, identity, nature, creativity, and a way of living outside traditional expectations of masculinity and heterosexual society.
This was more than another political organization.
It represented something different.
What happens when LGBTQ+ people stop defining ourselves through what society thinks we should be and begin defining ourselves on our own terms?
The Radical Faeries created spaces where queer identity itself could be celebrated, explored, and connected to community.
That mattered.
Because liberation isn't only about changing laws.
It's also about having somewhere you can simply be.
✊🏾 SOMETIMES WE HAVE TO BUILD OUR OWN TABLE
Throughout LGBTQ+ history, queer people have created our own spaces because mainstream society often refused to make room for us.
We created bars.
Community centers.
Ballrooms.
Social clubs.
Churches and spiritual communities.
Political organizations.
Chosen families.
Publications.
Support groups.
And eventually digital communities.
These spaces became places where LGBTQ+ people could find something many had been denied elsewhere:
belonging.
That tradition continues today.
Creating safe LGBTQ+ spaces isn't separating ourselves from society. Sometimes it is how marginalized people find the strength, community, and confidence necessary to go back out and change it.
🇺🇸 1994: KEITH MEINHOLD & THE RIGHT TO SERVE
August 31 also represents another major chapter in LGBTQ+ history: the long fight to serve openly in the United States military.
On August 31, 1994, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit ruled in the case involving Keith Meinhold, a Navy servicemember who had publicly disclosed that he was gay during a 1992 television interview.
The Navy attempted to discharge him.
The court concluded that the military could not discharge Meinhold merely because he had stated that he was gay; under the policy then at issue, the government needed more than his statement alone.
The case became part of the much larger battle over whether LGBTQ+ Americans should have to hide who they were simply to serve their country.
🏳️🌈 IMAGINE HAVING TO CHOOSE
Your career.
Or your truth.
Your military service.
Or your identity.
Your livelihood.
Or your ability to openly acknowledge the person you love.
For generations of LGBTQ+ service members, those weren't hypothetical questions.
They were reality.
Even after the implementation of "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" in the 1990s, gay, lesbian, and bisexual service members could still face discharge if their sexual orientation became known under circumstances covered by the policy.
"Don't Ask, Don't Tell" would remain in place until its repeal took effect in 2011.
The struggle took decades.
🏳️🌈 2007: WORKPLACE PROTECTIONS MOVE FORWARD IN KANSAS
Another August 31 milestone came in 2007, when Kansas Governor Kathleen Sebelius issued an executive order prohibiting discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity in state government employment.
It represented another step toward a principle LGBTQ+ advocates had been demanding for generations:
Your ability to do your job should determine your employment, not who you love or how you identify.
AUGUST 31 IS ABOUT BELONGING
Look at the connection between these moments.
1979: LGBTQ+ people create a space where queer identity and community can exist on their own terms.
1994: A gay service member fights against losing his military career simply because he publicly acknowledges being gay.
2007: Sexual orientation and gender identity receive additional workplace protection within Kansas state government.
Different battles.
Different generations.
But underneath all of them is the same question:
DO LGBTQ+ PEOPLE HAVE THE RIGHT TO BELONG?
In our workplaces?
In our military?
In our communities?
In spiritual spaces?
In public life?
And most importantly, can we belong without hiding who we are?
Our history says we didn't wait for everybody else to answer that question.
Sometimes we fought our way into the room.
Sometimes we challenged the policy.
Sometimes we changed the law.
And sometimes...
we built our own room.
That is why knowing our history matters.
That's legacy.
I Am Me Inc has been telling you for years, WE'VE BEEN HERE!!
Know Your history!
Respect the legacy!
Keep building the future!
Comments