When someone mentions the state of Alabama in the 1980s and ’90s, thoughts might turn to George Wallace’s last term as governor, the retirement and death of Bear Bryant, Bo Jackson or Charles Barkley playing at Auburn, or maybe Gov. Guy Hunt’s ethic conviction. Something the average person would probably not conjure images of: an LGBTQ newspaper. But that’s exactly what the Alabama Forum was. Published from 1981 until 2002, its archives now are held at The University of Alabama, where 245 monthly issues have been digitized.

The first issue, dated January 1981, is a cheaply put-together typescript edition, but the newspaper quickly adopted a more professional-looking, two-color format. (By the mid-1990s, there were issues that offered full-color layouts.) What is notable from the beginning is its fairly sophisticated perspective on social life and politics. Even in that initial homemade-looking issue, the content opens with a poem by “Bubba,” then has information on a lawsuit in Oklahoma, moves to an editorial about then-President Ronald Reagan, offers a listing of bars and events in the state, and remarks on an Alabama congressman’s appointment to a committee by Strom Thurmond. Browsing issues throughout UA’s archives, we see that this was not a half-baked publication full of empty rhetoric and unfounded accusations. Though no names are included in the early mastheads, we also see that it was published originally by the advocacy group Lambda, Inc., in Birmingham.

By the 1980s, activism within and from the LGBTQ community had become more visible. After the 1969 Stonewall Rebellion, the 1970s were a time of growing awareness of LGBTQ issues, and though the South’s most visible changes that decade came in the areas of race relations and gender roles, an growing awareness of what was then called “gay rights” extended to our region as well. As an example, in Birmingham, Lambda was founded in 1977. By the time the modern “culture wars” erupted, The Alabama Forum offered a perspective that was uncommon during the last decades of the twentieth century.

Further reading:
“In Montgomery, Alabama, a ‘Stonewall’ Rebellion that Didn’t Make LGBT Headlines,” from The Daily Beast
This news article tells the lesser-known story of a police raid on a club called Hojon’s in the early 1980s.