Will Roscoe (February 8, 1955) is an American activist, scholar, and author based in

San Francisco, California San Francisco, officially the City and County of San Francisco, is a commercial, Financial District, San Francisco, financial, and Culture of San Francisco, cultural center of Northern California. With a population of 827,526 residents as of ...

Early life

Will Roscoe was born on February 8, 1955. He grew up in

Missoula, Montana Missoula ( ) is a city in and the county seat of Missoula County, Montana, United States. It is located along the Clark Fork River near its confluence with the Bitterroot and Blackfoot rivers in western Montana and at the convergence of five ...

Gay activism

Roscoe helped found the Lambda Alliance at the

University of Montana The University of Montana (UM) is a public research university in Missoula, Montana, United States. UM is a flagship institution of the Montana University System and its second largest campus. Fall 2024 saw total enrollment hit 10,811, marki ...

, that state's first

LGBT LGBTQ people are individuals who are lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer, or questioning. Many variants of the initialism are used; LGBTQIA+ people incorporates intersex, asexual, aromantic, agender, and other individuals. The gro ...

organization in 1975. He served as an intern at the

National Gay and Lesbian Task Force The National LGBTQ Task Force (formerly National Gay Task Force; National Gay and Lesbian Task Force) is an American social justice advocacy non-profit organizing the grassroots power of the lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer (LGBT ...

in 1976, and the following year he formed the Oregon Gay Alliance, a statewide coalition of LGBT groups. After relocating to San Francisco in 1978, he organized a successful campaign to obtain

United Way United Way is an international network of over 1,800 local nonprofit organization, nonprofit fundraising affiliates. Prior to 2015, United Way was the largest nonprofit organization in the United States by donations from the public. Individual Un ...

membership for the Pacific Center for Human Growth in

Berkeley Berkeley most often refers to: *Berkeley, California, a city in the United States **University of California, Berkeley, a public university in Berkeley, California *George Berkeley (1685–1753), Anglo-Irish philosopher Berkeley may also refer to ...

, the first LGBT social service agency in the nation to receive that status. He subsequently worked with

Harvey Milk Harvey Bernard Milk (May 22, 1930 – November 27, 1978) was an American politician and the first openly gay man to be elected to public office in California, as a member of the San Francisco Board of Supervisors. Milk was born and raised i ...

in the "No on 6" campaign against the

Briggs Initiative California Proposition 6, informally known as the Briggs Initiative, was an unsuccessful ballot initiative put to a referendum on the California state ballot in the November 7, 1978 election. It was sponsored by John Briggs, a conservative st ...

. After attending the first Radical Faerie gathering in

Arizona Arizona is a U.S. state, state in the Southwestern United States, Southwestern region of the United States, sharing the Four Corners region of the western United States with Colorado, New Mexico, and Utah. It also borders Nevada to the nort ...

in 1979, he became colleagues with

Harry Hay Henry Hay Jr. (April 7, 1912 – October 24, 2002) was an American gay rights activist, communist, and union organizer, labor advocate. He cofounded the Mattachine Society, the first sustained gay rights group in the United States, as well as th ...

, co-founding Nomenus, which operates an LGBT retreat center in southern

Oregon Oregon ( , ) is a U.S. state, state in the Pacific Northwest region of the United States. It is a part of the Western U.S., with the Columbia River delineating much of Oregon's northern boundary with Washington (state), Washington, while t ...

. In 1995 he edited and published a selection of writings by Hay, who was also a foundational figure of the gay men's liberation movement. Roscoe also worked closely with the group Gay American Indians (GAI) on issues around the meaning of the term "

berdache ''Two-spirit'' (also known as ''two spirit'' or occasionally ''twospirited'', or abbreviated as ''2S'' or ''2E'', especially in Canada) is a umbrella term used by some Indigenous North Americans to describe Native people who fulfill a trad ...

Career as a writer

Roscoe was awarded the Margaret Mead Award for his first book, ''The Zuni Man-Woman''; it also won the

Lambda Literary Award Lambda Literary Awards, also known as the "Lammys", are awarded yearly by Lambda Literary Foundation, Lambda Literary to recognize the crucial role LGBTQ+ writers play in shaping the world. The Lammys celebrate the very best in LGBTQ+ literatur ...

for gay men's nonfiction. In 2003, he received a Monette-Horwitz Achievement Award for research and scholarship combating homophobia. His book ''Jesus and the Shamanic Tradition of Same-Sex Love'' received a Lambda Literary Award in 2005.

Selected publications

; Books * ''Jesus and the Shamanic Tradition of Same-Sex Love''. San Francisco: Suspect Thoughts Press, 2004. * ''Changing Ones: Third and Fourth Genders in Native North America''. Palgrave/St. Martin's Press, 1998. * ''Queer Spirits: A Gay Men's Myth Book''. Boston: Beacon Press, 1995. * ''The Zuni Man-Woman''. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1991. ; Edited volumes * ''Boy Wives and Female Husbands: Studies of African Homosexualities'', edited by Stephen O. Murray and Will Roscoe. St. Martin's Press, 1998. * ''Islamic Homosexualities: Culture, History, and Literature'', edited by Stephen O. Murray and Will Roscoe. New York: New York University Press, 1997. * ''Radically Gay: Gay Liberation in the Words of Its Founder'', by Harry Hay. Boston: Beacon: 1996. * ''Living the Spirit: A Gay American Indian Anthology''. New York: St. Martin's Press, 1988.

References

* Roscoe, Will. (2006, October 8). "Unsolved Mystery," Montana Standard, C1-2. Reprinted as "1917 Union Lynching Still Casts Pall in Butte," Helena Independent Record, October 15, 2006. * Mass, Lawrence D. (1990). "On the Future of Lesbian and Gay Studies: A Dialogue with Will Roscoe." In Homosexuality as Behavior and Identity: Vol. 2, Dialogues of the Sexual Revolution, 234-52. New York: Haworth Press, 1990.

External links

Official website by Will Roscoe
{{DEFAULTSORT:Roscoe, Will 1955 births Living people Writers from Missoula, Montana University of Montana alumni Radical Faeries members Writers from the San Francisco Bay Area Activists from the San Francisco Bay Area American gay writers Lambda Literary Award winners LGBTQ people from Montana Historians of LGBTQ topics American historians