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‘I Will Never Lie About Being Gay Again’ Gay Activist who Came of Age Before Stonewall

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At StoryCorps in June 2015, Alexei Romanoff remembers an inspirational figure who helped him feel proud to be a gay man.
Jill Glaser/StoryCorps

StoryCorps, on NPR, featured Alexei Romanoff, an 82-year-old gay rights activist today.

Romanoff remembers growing up in New York in the 1950s before the Stonewall uprising. He recounts a mentor who taught him the value of gay pride — long before he organized demonstrations at a gay bar in Los Angeles, marched in pride parades or served as LA Pride’s Grand Marshal.

In the mid-1950s, faced with discriminatory housing practices, gay men would often lie and call their partners their brothers, Romanoff said. When he planned to move into a new apartment in New York City and was confronted by the landlord, his mind flashed to something Mother Bryant once told him.

“He said, ‘When you’re ready to leave this Earth, as I am, if you haven’t left your community in a better place than you found it, then you haven’t lived.’ And I wanted to live,” Romanoff said.

Romanoff took Mother Bryant’s lesson to heart.

“So I said, ‘He’s my partner and my lover’… And the landlord looks at me, says, ‘OK, here’s the key,’ ” he said. “I got goosebumps and I looked up and I said, ‘Thank you, Mother Bryant. I will never lie about being gay again.’ And I haven’t to this day.”

To help preserve stories like Alexei Romanoff’s, StoryCorps is asking listeners and readers to record LGBTQ elders in their communities. Find out more at Stonewall OutLoud.

StoryCorps is a national nonprofit that gives people the chance to interview friends and loved ones about their lives. These conversations are archived at the American Folklife Center at the Library of Congress, allowing participants to leave a legacy for future generations. Learn more, including how to interview someone in your life, at StoryCorps.org.

Read more and listen here.

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