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With only a high school diploma, Katz began to investigate the history of homosexuality from the colonial era to his 1970s present. Investigating the way homosexuality had been listed in New York Public Library card catalogs, he traced how authorities portrayed homosexuality first as a sin, then as a "sickness," then, later, as a criminal act. In 1976, he set out to prove that LGBTQ people had their own history with the publication of his anthology Gay American History. It was "the bible of gay liberation for many years to come," Craig Rodwell, the owner of Oscar Wilde Bookshop, the first gay bookstore in the world, said in a newspaper interview at the time.Four years earlier, in 1972, a group of lesbians turned their 92nd Street apartment into the first-ever lesbian history archive, theHerstory Archives. While fledgling at first—early on, founders would stuff shopping bags with artifacts to present privately in homes, bars, women's groups and early gay churches—it stands today as a living museum, still open to the public.These archives and others are vital because they tell a different kind of gay history. Most mainstream LGBTQ history traces the rise of gay liberation to the Stonewall uprising, but the truth is more complex.
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