Haus of Phoenix Research Library

09/23/2026

In June 1947, a 26-year-old le***an secretary at RKO Pictures in Los Angeles sat down at her office typewriter during her downtime and started America's first le***an publication. Her boss had told her to look busy even when she had no work to do. She took him at his word.

Her name was Edythe Eyde. Most people know her as Lisa Ben, a pen name she chose because it's an anagram of "le***an." Her first choice had been Ima Spinster, but an editor talked her out of it. Their loss.

Eyde had grown up on a fruit ranch in Los Altos, California, the only child of parents who sent her to business school to learn secretarial skills and prepare for marriage. She moved to Los Angeles in 1945, fell in with a group of le***ans at her apartment building, and started going out to the city's underground le***an bars. She looked around at the magazine rack and noticed something. There were publications for everyone. There was nothing for her.

So she built one herself, on company time, on a company typewriter, using carbon paper to produce twelve copies per issue. She called it Vice Versa, subtitled "America's Gayest Magazine." It ran fourteen pages, hand-typed, no photos, no ads, no masthead, blue cover, stapled together. It included fiction, poetry, book and film reviews, and reader commentary. She wrote most of it herself. She never charged a cent for it. "I felt that it was a labor from the heart," she said years later, "and I shouldn't get any money for it."

Distribution was its own problem. She learned early on that mailing the copies was illegal since federal law banned sending homos*xual material through the post. So she delivered them by hand, passed them to friends, who passed them to other friends, who passed them to strangers at le***an bars. The magazine probably never reached more than 100 readers at its peak, but in 1947 those 100 readers were women who had never seen themselves in print before.

Vice Versa ran nine issues, from June 1947 to February 1948. It ended when RKO was sold and Eyde had to find a new job that didn't come with free time and a company typewriter. She went on to write for The Ladder, the publication of the Daughters of Bilitis, under the Lisa Ben name. She wrote gay-themed parody songs and performed them at le***an clubs and events across Los Angeles throughout the 1950s. In 1960, the Daughters of Bilitis released a 45 rpm record of her singing "Frankie and Johnnie" and "Cruising Down the Boulevard." She fought the city of Burbank in the 1970s over how many cats she could keep in her bungalow. She won.

In 2010, she was inducted into the National Le***an and Gay Journalists Hall of Fame. In 2015, at 94, she was the first recipient of the NLGJA's Lisa Ben Award for Achievement in Features Coverage.

She died later that same year. No obituaries were published. She invented q***r media and was ultimately neglected by it.

03/12/2026

In 1919, the U.S. Navy decided it needed to root out gay men in its ranks. Instead, it documented an entire q***r subculture and sparked a national scandal.

The chain of events became known as the Newport s*x scandal. Naval investigators in Newport, Rhode Island, believed sailors were having s*x with each other. So they launched a sting operation. Young enlisted men were ordered to go undercover, flirt with suspected gay sailors, have s*x with them, and then report back.

The investigators expected a handful of arrests. What they uncovered instead was a whole social world that most Americans had no idea existed.

Sailors described parties, private rooms in boarding houses, coded language, and a network of men who knew exactly where to find each other. One investigator wrote that certain men were known as “fairies.” Another report described men who preferred to be courted like women.

The Navy was shocked. They had stumbled into a culture with its own rules, signals, and social structure. Not just a few isolated acts, but an entire community.

The sting went far beyond normal policing. Sailors were ordered to have s*x with suspects to gather evidence. And they did. That detail did not sit well with Congress.

When news of the operation leaked, a Senate investigation followed in 1921. Lawmakers were less concerned about the existence of gay sailors than about the Navy ordering enlisted men to seduce other men as part of an official investigation.

One senator called the tactics “disgusting.” Another said the Navy had created the very behavior it claimed to be stopping.

The transcripts of that investigation accidentally preserved one of the earliest detailed records of gay life in the United States. They show men socializing, flirting, forming relationships, and building a shared identity long before the modern gay rights movement.

The Navy wanted to stamp it out. Instead, it wrote it down.

The Newport investigation was meant to prove that homos*xuality was rare and deviant. What it actually proved was something else entirely: that even in 1919, the q***r community was thriving.

01/25/2026

In 1969, San Francisco gay rights activists gathered outside the San Francisco Examiner to protest the newspaper's relentlessly homophobic articles and hateful coverage of the LGBTQ community.

The newspaper's response was to literally dump barrels of purple printer's ink from the building's windows onto the protesters below, drenching them in a humiliating display meant to disperse the demonstration. But instead of running away, the protesters did something brilliant.

They dipped their hands in the purple ink covering the sidewalk and pressed them against the building's walls, creating dozens of defiant handprints. That night, purple hands appeared on buildings, sidewalks, and storefronts throughout San Francisco's financial district - a middle finger to bigotry that became an iconic symbol of resistance.

01/24/2026

🚨 Read This Before Libraries Disappear:

1. If libraries disappear, free knowledge disappears with them.

2. They support lifelong learning, not just school.

3. Libraries help readers who can’t afford books.

4. They create a safe, quiet space to read and think.

5. Libraries strengthen the local community, not corporations.

6. Librarians help people find the right book at the right time.

7. Libraries preserve local history and culture.

8. They encourage kids to love reading early.

9. Libraries support students, job seekers, and researchers.

10. They reduce digital inequality with free internet access.

11. Libraries host free events, clubs, and workshops.

12. They promote critical thinking and curiosity.

13. Libraries are one of the last truly public spaces.

14. They support mental well-being through calm and focus.

15. Libraries keep communities educated and informed.

16. They are eco-friendly by sharing instead of buying.

17. Libraries evolve with ebooks, audiobooks, and tech.

18. They protect intellectual freedom.

19. Libraries bring people together without pressure to spend.

20. A strong library means a stronger, smarter community❤️

01/24/2026

12/13/2025

Her name was Judy-Lynn del Rey. And she became the most powerful editor in science fiction history.
Born in 1943 with achondroplastic dwarfism, Judy-Lynn grew up devouring science fiction in New York City's public libraries. At a time when the genre was dismissed as pulp fiction for teenage boys, she saw something else entirely: the future of storytelling.
She started at the bottom—an office assistant at Galaxy, the most prestigious science fiction magazine of the 1960s. Within four years, she was managing editor.
Then Ballantine Books came calling.
When she arrived at Ballantine in 1973, science fiction and fantasy were afterthoughts in publishing. Fantasy in particular was considered unsellable—unless you were Tolkien. Judy-Lynn thought that was nonsense.
Her first major move was audacious: she cut ties with one of Ballantine's bestselling authors, John Norman, whose "Gor" novels were popular but notoriously misogynistic. It was a risk. She didn't care.
Then came the gamble that changed everything.
In 1976, someone brought her an opportunity: the novelization rights to an upcoming space movie by a young director named George Lucas. Hollywood thought the film would bomb. Studio executives were skeptical. Most publishers passed.
Judy-Lynn said yes.
The Star Wars novelization sold 4.5 million copies before the movie even premiered.
She would later call herself the "Mama of Star Wars."
In 1977, she launched Del Rey Books—her own imprint, with her husband Lester editing fantasy while she oversaw everything else. Their first original novel was Terry Brooks's The Sword of Shannara. It became a phenomenon.
She didn't stop there.
Remember The Princess Bride? The original 1973 novel had flopped. It was headed for obscurity. Judy-Lynn rescued it, reissuing it in 1977 with a striking gate-fold cover and an aggressive marketing campaign. Without her intervention, there might never have been a movie.
She published the Star Trek Log series. She championed Stephen R. Donaldson's Thomas Covenant trilogy—convincing Ballantine to release all three books on the same day from a completely unknown author. Unprecedented.
She published Anne McCaffrey's The White Dragon—the first science fiction novel ever to hit #1 on the New York Times bestseller list.
And she did all of this while competitors called her imprint "Death-Rey Books"—because she was utterly dominant.
Between 1977 and 1990, Del Rey Books had 65 titles reach bestseller lists. That was more than every other science fiction and fantasy publisher combined.
Arthur C. Clarke called her "the most brilliant editor I ever encountered."
Philip K. Dick went further: "The greatest editor since Maxwell Perkins"—the legendary editor of Hemingway and Fitzgerald.
But here's what burns: the science fiction community never nominated her for a Hugo Award while she was alive. Not once. The men who ran the industry praised her in private and overlooked her in public.
In October 1985, Judy-Lynn suffered a brain hemorrhage. She died four months later, at 42.
Only then did the Hugo committee vote to give her the Best Professional Editor award.
Her husband Lester refused to accept it.
He said Judy-Lynn would have objected—that it was given only because she had just died. That it came too late.
He was right.
Judy-Lynn del Rey transformed science fiction from a niche hobby into a cultural force. She made fantasy into a mainstream publishing category. She bet on Star Wars when no one else would. She saved The Princess Bride from oblivion. She published the first #1 New York Times science fiction bestseller.
She did all of this standing 4'1" tall in an industry run by men who underestimated her at every turn.
The next time you pick up a fantasy novel, or watch a Star Wars movie, or quote The Princess Bride—
Now you know who made it possible.

12/09/2025

Fifty years ago, she was the queen of Philly nightlife, Jack Kelly’s girlfriend, and the city’s most famous transgender woman. Today, Rachel Billebault, once known around the world as Harlow, is finally ready to tell her story. 🔗 https://www.inquirer.com/life/a/harlow-philadelphia-trans-jack-kelly-20251206.html