Growing up in the conservative Lebanon County of central PA, Barbara Darkes attended grade school through the beginning of her pre-law college career without experiencing any attraction to women. It was at her summer job at the local YMCA during...

Louie Marven moved to central Pennsylvania from his hometown of Wappingers Falls, New York to attend Messiah College in 2003 and has lived in the Harrisburg area ever since. The school’s conservative values and prohibition of “homosexual behavior...

Cindy Lou Mitzel was born in April of 1942 in York County, Pennsylvania as the youngest in a big family. Growing up, Cindy knew that she felt attraction towards women but married a man just after graduating from high school and had three children...

Dr. Eric Selvey was born and raised in Harrisburg, PA. He attended optometry school in Philadelphia, but returned to the Harrisburg area after graduating. In his interview he discusses his relationship with his mother and grandmother — and coming...

Lori Hatch-Rivera was born in Rockville Central, New York on Long Island in 1958. After Lori’s family moved to South Florida, Lori enrolled into what is now Palm Beach Atlantic University and graduated in 1989 with a degree in...

Daniel Maneval was born in Williamsport, Pennsylvania on October 3, 1947. In this interview, Daniel speaks frankly about his experiences growing up as an only child, about the homophobic violence he has experienced, and the gay organizations he...

Lorraine Kujawa was one of the co-founders of the Lavender Letter in Harrisburg during the late seventies and eighties. The Lavender Letter was created to provide events for the lesbian community to attend in Pennsylvania. She started the...

In this oral history, Anonymous_001 starts off discussing his family life. He states that his family life was not the best but not the worst, however after his mother left and his father developed borderline personality disorder, he decided to...

Benjamin Dunlap was born in Lancaster County Pennsylvania on December 23, 1957. He was born to a family with a mother, father, and sister ten years older than him. Throughout his life he was highly involved with LGBT community life and in...

John Barns was born in Perry County, Pennsylvania. He comes from a family of farmers and is Pennsylvania Dutch. He grew up on a farm, joined the military during Vietnam, and then worked for the Pennsylvania government for 30...

Sabrina Valente was born in Baltimore, MD and lived most of her childhood and adolescence in Littlestown, PA in Adams County. She attended Eastern University for an undergraduate degree in Biblical Studies and Wagner College for a Master’s degree...

Mark Segal is a gay rights activist, author, and journalist for the Philadelphia Gay News. In this interview, Mark discusses his political involvement in the gay rights movement in Pennsylvania in the ‘60s and ‘70s. Particularly, he focuses...