Gay Sunshine — 1970 Vintage Gay Liberation Newspaper Tee

In August 1970, barely a year after the Stonewall uprising, a group of gay activists in Berkeley, California, published the first issue of Gay Sunshine: A Newspaper of Gay Liberation.

And this wasn't exactly your typical community newsletter.

Priced at just 25 cents, the inaugural 20-page issue featured provocative essays, poetry, political commentary, underground comics, and a striking cover illustration by artist John Perry.

The message was fairly simple: Gay people were tired of hiding, tired of being treated like criminals, and tired of having straight society tell them how to live.

And they weren't particularly interested in asking nicely anymore.

Published by the Gay Sunshine Collective, the newspaper emerged during an extraordinary period of political upheaval, when the antiwar movement, women's liberation, Black Power, and the newly energized gay liberation movement were all challenging the American establishment.

In 1971, writer and activist Winston Leyland took over the publication, eventually transforming it into the Gay Sunshine Journal, an influential showcase for gay literature, art, sexuality, and political thought.

Over the following decade, its pages featured interviews and contributions involving some of the most important queer literary figures of the twentieth century, including William S. Burroughs, Allen Ginsberg, Christopher Isherwood, Jean Genet, and Gore Vidal.

Not bad for a little underground newspaper that started in Berkeley.

Gay Sunshine continued publishing into 1982, leaving behind an extraordinary record of the early gay liberation movement and a generation that helped transform what it meant to be openly homosexual in America.