New UCI Archive Shows How Truly Gay (and L, B & T) Orange Country Truly Is and Was

Orange County isn't exactly San Francisco, West Hollywood or Palm Springs when it comes to a thriving LGBT community, but we will always have Laguna Beach, which was a gay mecca for years before gays were priced out, and nearby Belmont Shore in Long Beach. There's also now a local LGBT Archive at UC Irvine's Langson Library, which hosts a reception and invites the public to come check it out Thursday.

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"The collections document gay rights activism in Orange County starting in 1971 and reveal how community activists came together in conservative 1970s Orange County to organize services such as crisis hotlines and to fight against a state ballot measure in 1978 that would have encoded discrimination against gays and Lesbians," reads the invite to Thursday's 4 p.m. event.

The archive was made possible thanks to "a generous donation" from Brad Brafford and Barbara Muirhead, according to library officials. On view are the personal papers of prominent activist Brafford, political organizer Patricia Callahan and transgender community activist Patric A. Magee.

The records of the Gay and Lesbian Community Services Center of Orange County--a.k.a. The Center OC in Garden Grove that Brafford helped found in 1972, making it one of the country's oldest--is also part of the archives. For more information on the reception and the archive, visit: http://partners.lib.uci.edu/events/2012-documenting-lgbt.html or http://www.lgbtrc.uci.edu/programsoctimeline.php.

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