In light of LGBT History Month, it’s crucial for us as a community to recognize the experiences of queer people who came before us — especially if it’s at the very college we attend. These experiences include struggles alongside success, highlighting a fight that we are still battling.

As the president of Pride Alliance, a student-run club that offers a safe and inclusive space for LGBTQIA2S+ students and allies, I devote meetings to ensuring our community feels a sense of pride by being together and having crucial conversations, such as acknowledging our community’s history to learn from it and move forward, considering that sometimes, history rhymes.

The first known Experience article regarding homosexuality on campus was published in November of 1978, just four years after Los Medanos College’s opening. It discussed the controversy around Proposition 6, the Briggs Initiative, which was aimed at keeping gay teachers out of the school system, saying, if passed, “the initiative would make it possible for school districts to fire teachers who openly advocate a homosexual way of life.”

As with anything, LMC students and faculty of the time had a variety of opinions on Prop 6. The English instructor Ross MacDonald strongly opposed it, claiming the proposition to be “a gut issue that feeds on ignorance and prejudice,” adding that Assemblyman John Briggs was using the political issue of homosexuality to become well-known.

Despite this 1978 Experience article being almost 45 years old, it seems painfully familiar of today’s paranoid “protect the children” witch hunt of teachers who identify as LGBTQ+ in states such as Florida, led by hypocritical self-serving politicians using queerness as a distraction for their own uselessness as public servants. The good news is that this 1978 proposition failed, as today’s versions of it hopefully will.

Moving into the 1980s, the campus’ queer community felt the need to form a club. After a failed first meeting in 1980 when only one person attended, the club began several years later in the early 1990s as the Gay, Lesbian and Bisexual Alliance (GLABA) with then LMC professor Jeffrey Mitchell Matthews as the club’s advisor. 

The alliance was advertised in an Experience article 29 years ago to have met in “a confidential place” — we now know that this meeting room was hidden away on Level 1 of the College Complex building. As a stark contrast evocative of the times, Pride Alliance now meets in the openly disclosed Unity Center.

Now, 2023 marks an abundance of successful progress for the queer community at LMC — and the year is not over yet. Historical events over the past summer, such as the inaugural raising of the pride flag in June and the selection of Dr. Pamela Ralston as the first openly lesbian LMC college president, are especially notable milestones for the college’s queer community significantly increasing our presence on campus this year.

LMC hosted its very first drag show for Coming Out Day on Oct. 11, where drag queens Dulce de Leche, La Chucha and Miss Rahni delighted a crowd that had longed for a drag show on campus for years.

Only two days after the drag show, queer keynote speaker Jethro Patalinghug made a splash as their drag persona “Virginia Please” at the Impact Conference on Oct. 13.

After the drag show, former Allies club president Akila Briggs said that a drag show on campus has been a long time coming, emphasizing how joyful it is to finally experience one after 10 years of wishing and trying. This is one testament to how far LMC has come in highlighting the LGBTQ+ community recently.

The Pride 365 Planning Committee, of which I am proud to be a part, will ensure that the queer community will be celebrated, not just during Pride Month, but year-round with a variety of events at LMC. We are not stopping with the drag shows, as we will continue making history at LMC, queering the campus one proud strut at a time.