Brian Lair on WNYC.

Now for our first of two oral history segments this morning, and appropriate for this month of June,

this one goes back to the early years of pride.

There's a new digital exhibit on the 15-year struggle to pass a landmark New York

City gay rights law. So let's go back and find out what it was and why it took so long

and what it took to get it through the city council in the year, 1986, with my guest, Stephen Petrus, the curator of

the battle for intro to the New York City Gay Rights Bill, 1971 to 1986. That's the exhibit,

and director of public history programs at the LaGuardia and Wagner Archives at LaGuardia Community College,

and Alan Roscoff, a civil rights activist and a longtime leader in the LGBTQ plus and social

justice movements.

And he is president of the famous Jim Allo's Liberal Democratic Club, a citywide Democratic Party

club with a focus on progressive

LGBTQ plus issues. Alan and Stephen, welcome to WNYC today. Thank you so much for coming on.

Thank you for having us. Thank you, Brian. Nice to be here.

And we've got some clips from this oral history archive that are really fascinating. But just to start out,

Alan, you were involved in the bill, I see, which was the first such bill introduced in the U.S.

in 1971, but the 51st to be passed in the country, thanks to that 15-year leg. So can you

start us off in 1971 and what was introduced at that time?

And why then? There was a bill that guaranteed, well, ended discrimination based on employment,

housing, and public accommodations. It was introduced by its prime sponsor, Councilmember Eldon Klingen, who was a council member at Lodge in Manhattan,

and it was co-sponsored by Upper East Side Councilmember, Carter Burden, Westside, Ted Weiss, and Brooklyn Leonard Skullnick.

And we had early hearings on the bill.

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