Early gay rights activist Arnie Kantrowitz dies
Arnie Kantrowitz, the early New York-based gay rights activist who wrote a classic queer memoir, taught one of the earliest gay studies college courses in the nation, and was a founding member of GLAAD, died January 21 from complications of COVID-19, according to his life partner, Dr.
Lawrence Mass. He was 81. Mr. Kantrowitz's memoir, "Under the Rainbow: Growing Up Gay," was published in 1977. "We shared the sacrament of honesty, our coming out.
Together we were something significant. We were a part of history, and we knew it," he wrote in his memoir, alluding to all the queer people who ran out of the closet in the tumultuous liberating years after the Stonewall riots in 1969.
While Mr. Kantrowitz lived only two blocks away from the Stonewall Inn and noticed the remnants of a crowd nearby, "it seemed like nothing to me, so I retreated home," he wrote.
