Queer Serial: Lgbtq+ American History

13/12/2025

“What is camping?” 💅 One of my favorite discoveries in the archives during Mattachine research.

From my presentation at for the Mattachine Society’s 75th anniversary. You can watch the entire event now on my YouTube!

11/12/2025

Big thanks to for inviting me out to speak about the 75th anniversary of Mattachine! What an honor to get in my little court jester top and present these flouncy little c0mmunists to you. (Second slide: get the shoes, baby!) Thanks to my sister Joey Cain, early Radical Faerie and friend of Harry Hay, for including me in the event, along with our girl Will Roscoe and Jim Van Buskirk. The house was full, we had big laughs, and big applause for the founders of America’s first successful gay org.

You can watch the entire event now on YouTube!

11/12/2025

Big thanks to for inviting me out to speak about the 75th anniversary of Mattachine! What an honor to get in my little court jester top and present these flouncy little c0mmunists to you. (Last slide, get the shoes, baby!) The house was full, we had big laughs, and big applause for the founders of America’s first successful gay org.

Here are some clips from my presentation. You can watch the entire event now on YouTube!

19/11/2025

https://youtu.be/X1Hs0oJKluw?si=e9xwb_wY9wz-YwJ0

An exploration of the how, why, whom and ongoing influence of the ground breaking organization that helped to birth today's LGBTQIA community and initiated t...

11/11/2025

Today is the 75th anniversary of the Mattachine Foundation. In 2 days, we’re celebrating the original Mattachinos at . Join us!

Here is some cute 8mm footage legendary Mattachino Randy Wicker took of his boyfriend at the Golden Gate Bridge sometime in the 1960s. Mattachine formed in LA, but transformed & thrived in the Bay Area. We’ll talk about it Thursday! See ya soon, SF! 💕

10/11/2025

Join us! Thursday! We’re celebrating the 75th anniversary of the Mattachine Foundation (before it was the Mattachine Society). I have the honor of telling the story of these early gay activists—the original crew of homophiles!—alongside some fabulous Mattachine experts. I covered this story in some of Q***r Serial’s first episodes. Will be fun! 💥

24/08/2025

Happy birthday, Marsha! She’s 80 today, a legend forever. Here’s her celebration with friends 35 years ago today! (Explore these photos & more in the Wicker/Johnson Papers.) What a thrill to see so many friends of Marsha sharing photos from her collection today, and hosting multiple events this week in her honor. She’s still here celebrating with us! 💐🥳💞

27/07/2025

me & my sister at the Wicker/Johnson Papers Party!! 🥳

26/07/2025

Thanks to everyone who made the Wicker/Johnson Papers Party such a fabulous night! This party was years in the making and I couldn’t have pulled it off without director of the National History Archive Lou McCarthy and all of our volunteers, Greg and the volunteers at , everyone with for the documentary .oconnor .rainey, for a million things , everyone who has helped me put the pieces of this archive together like .riemer .nyc , a button collector named The Grape and countless other people who answered my questions, of course for sharing history from Hotel Wicker years ago or I might ever have known to look, and the entire extended gay family for sharing their stories with me, and most of all, Randy Wicker for trusting me with this collection 🩷

I’ll be posting more about the event soon. I’m still coming down off the high of so much joy in that space. Thank you to the WOW 100+ people who came through to see the exhibit, many of whom packed in to watch an extended trailer of our documentary about the archive. I’m so excited to share the story of this gay family with you!! 🏡

21/07/2025

You’re invited to join our celebration years in the making! Randy & I met in 2019 to record an interview for my podcast. That’s when our archiving began, when he sent me on my way with copies of his annual Xmas letter and a vinyl record of an interview he did on the radio in 1966. Over nearly 50 years in his apartment, he documented the lives of his extended gay family, including longtime roommate Marsha P. Johnson. Next week, we’re celebrating the completion of the Randy Wicker & Marsha P. Johnson Papers, which I’ve been processing over these past several years. And all while a documentary crew filmed and helped us preserve Randy’s massive collection of footage of the gay world through his lifetime.

All are invited to our celebration of Randy & Marsha’s papers becoming available to researchers at the LGBT Community Center National History Archive. This collection preserves their work as activists, and the lives of their extended gay family of lovers, friends, street people, activists, Uplift Lighting employees, and residents of Hoboken’s legendary “Hotel Wicker” apartment. Join us in celebrating the lives of this q***r family!

We’re showing ephemera, photos, & films from the archive—and footage shot for the documentary currently in production, which I’m directing with Viridian Coast Studios producer Jim Mauro! And he preserved all of Randy’s films dating back to 1959. I’m so grateful for his huge part in this archive, and so excited to celebrate our work. This event will be filmed as part of our documentary!

RSVP, or just show up: wickerjohnsonparty.eventbrite.com

xo
Devlyn 🧚🏼

27/06/2025

Season 5 is the story of Boise’s ‘gay panic’ hysteria, a summer in which people all over town turned on each other in an effort to w**d out all homosexuals. I became fascinated with this true story while reading John Gerassi’s famous book on the subject, and as I kept digging, found an even larger tale surrounding the book itself.

This scandal was reported on in a 1967 CBS special on homosexuality that I covered in Q***r Serial s3 episode 7. But s5 is wholly her own spin-off, 9 episodes detailing the true story of a gay “grooming” panic that happened long before Ron DeSantis & Anita Bryant—and was also a tactic used to gain power by fanning the flames of q***r fear.

q***rserial.com/gaypanic

ok happy pride! Thx for indulging me as I share my episode catalogue again for those folks interested in learning a bit more about how we got here. 🏳️‍🌈🏳️‍⚧️

26/06/2025

I was ready to wrap the pod after 3 seasons when my friend Will Roscoe, an incredible historian on Two-Spirit people, came to me with an idea. He had recorded hours of interviews with Harry Britt, the successor Harvey Milk chose in case he were to be assassinated. Britt was timid but passionate, perhaps on the spectrum and questioning his gender. Why did Harvey choose him? Roscoe was there when it all happened—he was present at the White Night Riots and saw the rise of Milk’s constituency under Britt’s careful leadership. There was so much anger, joy, and desperation to survive. Season 4 might feel like a sequel to the MILK movie, because so much significant history happened in San Francisco after the credits rolled on that story. I’m honored to be telling it with Will. He wrote a beautiful script and I dove into the audio archives, together making a Q***r Serial sister series.

Check out the 7-episode series, and bonus conversations with White Night Rioters and other influential q***r leaders from this era.

q***rserial.com/harrybritt