Badpuppy's Editor Starts Today

Jack Nichols, author and pioneering gay journalist, starts today as Badpuppy's Executive Editor. "Gay Today," says William Pinyon, now Managing Editor of the world's leading gay website, "will be a major hub for gay information. Information is knowledge and knowledge is power. Nichols has proved himself many times in media, starting as early as 1961, the year he co-founded America's first militant gay activist group, The Mattachine Society of Washington."

In 1969, Nichols and his late comrade and lover, Lige Clarke, became Executive Co-Editors of GAY, the nation's first gay weekly newspaper. In that same year the couple were New York's first correspondents for The Advocate. Their Stonewall-era columns and Nichols' essay introducing 1972 now appear in the Advocate's 25-year coffee table history of the gay and lesbian movement, Long Road to Freedom.

Unspeakable: The Rise of the Gay and Lesbian Press in America, a definitive 50-year history details Nichols' many contributions as journalist and editor. Rodger Streitmatter, Ph.D., a professor of journalism at American University (Washington,D.C.) calls Nichols "one of the most eloquent and prolific writers in the history of the gay press."

"It feels great to have jumped from newspaper print to the most prestigious gay site in cyberspace, says the veteran editor. The moment I saw the Badpuppy logo-- the two puppies, you know--I knew I was at home."

Geraldo Rivera (1972) interviews Jack Nichols and Lige Clarke

Nichols began as Assistant to the Washington, D.C. Bureau Chief of the New York Post. His earliest gay writings--in the mid-1960's-- were strong assaults on the psychiatry's labeling of homosexuality as an illness, a label finally rejected in 1973 by the American Psychiatric Association. During the 1960's Nichols worked with two men, one who helped sharpen his strategies: Mattachine co-founder Franklin E. Kameny, Ph.D., and the other, Lige Clarke, who expanded his spirited approaches. Uncensored columns, co-written with Clarke in the outrageous sex review, SCREW, were the first to appear in an otherwise rampantly straight publication, and it was there that Nichols and Clarke co-authored "the first call to arms" written directly after the Stonewall rebellion. Five years before, Nichols had also initiated the earliest public picketing demonstration by a gay organization: the White House, April 17, 1965. Three women and seven men took part.

Geraldo Rivera (1972) interviews Jack Nichols and Lige Clarke

In 1964 Nichols organized East Coast inter-denominational dialogues between homosexuals and the clergy, leading in 1966 to his part as a delegate to the National Council of Churches, the first major meeting of gays, lesbians and clergy. He was also a representative in 1966 at the first national meeting of gay/lesbian organizations at Kansas City. Nichols' new book, The Gay Agenda: Talking Back to the Fundamentalists (Prometheus Books)-- 8th on the December Lambda Book Report's bestseller list-- reflects the unembarrassed verve Badpuppy's new editor brings to gaytoday.badpuppy.com.