
The All Virtual Arizona LGBTQ+ Museum highlights the culmination of over 55 years of all volunteer collecting, archiving, preserving Phoenix, Tucson, Yuma, Flagstaff, Nogales, Casa Grande and other Arizona communities, along with many cities & events in other states those past LGBTQ+ generations traveled to. The effort began the summer of 1967 with the last of its founders passing in the 2010's. The museum remains as the worlds first All Virtual Gay LGBTQ+ Museum. Those comprehensive historic Gay LGBTQ+ collections require minimal effort to perpetuate.
It was amist the blurring backdrop of anti-war, anti-goverment suppression, Gay Rights and Civil Rights protests out in the streets around them that the summer of 1967 was both magical and at times tragic for a small group of local young teen boys that were just coming of age. Starting out at first on their bikes they all began collecting discarded Tucson and Phoenix related LGBTQ+ posters, announcements, event brochures, items, memoribilia, bar & event related t-shirts. The few boys with cameras began taking photographs of LGBTQ+ venues and events. Trash cans behind Gay Bars, Gay friendly restaurants, and private clubs and homes were full of rich LGBTQ+ historcial treasures in the early mornings after Gays, Lesbians, Drag Queen & Cross Dressers as they were then called had met, partied, danced, and laughed just a few hours before under the cover of the darknes of nightime. Back then, in 1967 all were known by those who hated them in one word... HOMOSEXUALS.
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