Phil Donahue interviewed a gay man before Stonewall on TV & was an LGBTQ+ ally thereafter

President Joe Biden presents the Medal of Freedom to Phil Donahue
Photo: Wikimedia Commons

Following the death Phil Donahue over the weekend, LGBTQ+ fans are saluting the late journalist and talk show host for his pioneering coverage of gay rights and the AIDS epidemic on daytime TV.

On Monday, NBC’s Today first broke the news that the 88-year-old eight-time Daytime Emmy Award winner and 1980 Peabody Award recipient had died Sunday night following a long illness.

In addition to being a TV trailblazer, Donahue was also a longtime LGBTQ+ ally. As he told fellow talk show icon Oprah Winfrey in a 2002 interview, within a year of launching The Phil Donahue Show at Dayton, Ohio, TV station WLWD in late 1967, the host invited “a real, live homosexual” to be a guest on his show. That 1968 episode aired prior to…

Read full story, and more, from Source: Phil Donahue interviewed a gay man before Stonewall on TV & was an LGBTQ+ ally thereafter

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