12
Wednesday, March 23, 1988 / University Daily Kansan
New gay archives at Cornell to increase sexuality studies
The Associated Press
ITHACA, N.Y. — Cornell University is cataloging books, personal papers, videotapes and periodicals with names like "Mom Guess What!" and "Fag Rag," hoping its new gay archives will help bring the study of human sexuality out of the academic closet.
The materials, making up one of the nation's most extensive collections on homosexuality, are nearly all gifts from the Mariposa Education and Research Foundation, founded in 1979 by physiologist Bruce Voeller, who thought that universities were neglecting human sexuality.
the basic endowment for maintenance of the archives, $224,000, came from the estate of David Goodstein, a Cornell alumnus who became wealthy on Wall Street and later published the national gay magazine, "The Advocate," until his death in 1985.
The first materials arrived last month, and they are being stored in 103 acid-free cardboard boxes in the basement of Cornell's Olin Library. The collection, available for research this fall, eventually will include hundreds of items of dates to
World War II. University archivist H. Thomas Hickerson said that the school also intended to collect materials that dealt with other aspects of human sexuality.
The Mariiposa collection includes material from Anita Bryant's bruising battle with gay activists in 1978 over a proposed gay rights constitutional amendment in Florida.
"The militant homosexuals are at it again!" read one of Bryant's mailed appeals. It warned that passage of the amendment would help homosexuals legitimize their perversion and recruit children.
THE DEPARTMENT OF HEALTH EDUCATION
Olathe Ford-Suzuki
Just think of it as a 4x4 tanning booth.