Disclaimer: Any use of acronyms shorter than LGBTQ+ is historiographically purposeful, not intended to be dismissive or exclusionary.

One of my favorite lesbian history facts (what, doesn't everyone have favorite lesbian history facts?) is that in the 1970s, the most popular lesbian magazine was published out of...

...East Lansing, Michigan.

The 1970s are maybe the most interesting decade in LG(B)(T, sort of) history. (Well, maybe tied with the 2000s.) They saw the real creation of a Lesbian Community and a Gay [Male] Community--national in scope, anchored in local communities, and significantly influenced by NYC and LA.

I'm using Lesbian Community and Gay Community as proper nouns not to make some pseudo-Mary Daly allusion (and she's a transphobe anyway). Rather, I want to emphasize that they were, and are, specific subsets of the LGBT(Q+) population that largely endure today. First, developments in the 70s reified the split between lesbians and gay men. Second, both communities erased or very explicitly excluded many, many women who love women and men who love men, especially along racial, class, and AAB lines.

The explosion of the Stonewall Riot and similar riots in other parts of the country in the late 60s marked a massive shift in the LGBT (and I use the four-letter acronym on purpose) consciousness and movement. As I've discussed before on AH, earlier protests had been characterized by more of a "We're 'normal' people who fit into het society" vibe. After Stonewall, the attitude pretty much flipped to "We're here, we're queer, get over yourselves." Additionally, Stonewall--and just as important, the protest in its aftermath--were publicized nationally, and taken as a collective call to action by local LGB(T) populations.

So the roots of the formation of the Lesbian Community and Gay Community lay in the political movement, which also went a long way towards solidifying the split between the two. (I don't mean to paint a pre-Stonewall picture of a kum-bay-yah LGBT umbrella). In conjunction with the feminist movement, gay women began to see longstanding local difficulties with gay men as more systemic problems.

First, there was the exclusion from gay bars and other types of, let's call it 'gay infrastructure.' Second, there was the political angle. Lesbian issues are women's issues, but gay men could not accept that women's issues are lesbian issues. So even though the feminist movement also could not always accept that lesbian issues were women's issues, the idea of separate priorities especially related to feminism became entrenched.

The culture of the Lesbian Community and Gay Community diverged further, just like their political aims. The first part of lesbian culture I want to talk about is one that gets oddly sidelined in a lot of discussions about gay women, specifically: sex.

Lesbian magazines are stocked with ads for bars and clubs--Heather Murray reproduces an ad for an LA bar that promises "girls" four times, "dancing" four times, and "beer" four times. Also "Parties all the time" and a specific part theme of "Devils." Even more suggestively, the ad names a bunch of women who are longtime bar patrons, and in a way that suggests "hookup" rather than "hooker".

...And, yes, Seventh Circle sponsored a softball team. Some stereotypes are true. ;) But of course, in the context of a developing Lesbian Community, softball actually became another component/driver of it.

Another aspect of lesbian culture was the sort of weird relationship with 'political lesbianism'--kind of like what historians call "lesbian-like" in that their sexual orientation might have been heterosexual or murky (e.g. celibate nuns in the Middle Ages), but who formed communities around and consisting of women. Some political lesbians even suggested that if straight women could come to love other women in a way so deep it became romantic--a phenomenon with a strong historical record--why could it not also become erotic? Surely straight women could make themselves lesbian, right?

Another important element of lesbian culture was the result of what's called cultural feminism. Today I think the term conjures up things like the debate over Barbie dolls. In the 1970s, however, you're talking about the idea that there is some sort of 'feminine essence' that women share. And also in the context of the 1970s, this feminine essence generally took on a nurturing, Earth Mother kind of vibe. You definitely see the heirs of that idea flourishing today

Connected with the Earth Mother strand of lesbian culture was the role of specific music, especially folk music. This sort of continues today--I would say lesbians are a fairly strong part of the contemporary folk scene, but the stereotype of a contemporary folk artist (is contemporary folk well enough known to have stereotypes?) is not really a lesbian.

I'm pretty sure "lesbian" and "music" in the 1970s conjures up the spectre of the Michigan Womyn's Music Festival--and not because of the music. Unfortunately, it's a perfect illustration of the transphobia that ran and to some extent still runs through the Lesbian Community. By the rules of the concert festival, trans women could not participate but (heterosexual) trans men could.

Lesbian magazines didn't just help create a Lesbian Community; they were part of it. First, they illustrate the tension over money/class issues in lesbian culture. We're not talking about well-funded outfits like The Advocate. Lesbian Connection, Lavender Woman, and the like were pretty low rent, shoestring budget operations. On one hand, they pretty much begged for donations, suggesting their publishers' own dire financial straits. On the other, that kind of assumed a good portion of the readership had money.

This was an especially awkward/pasted over situation in the Lesbian Community as opposed to the Gay Community, because women made WAY less money than men for equivalent work, and we're not talking about women whose heterosexual marriages could semi-balance it out.

And on the other hand, some of that poverty was a semi-choice. As with the writing and producing of zines, and somewhat connected with the Earth Mother vibe, was a strong arts culture and women-specific business culture, especially bookstores. But these were not exactly lucrative jobs. (And then you have the whole "who could be supported by parents" factor).

I don't mean to suggest that this is ANYWHERE near a complete picture. And I apologize for not knowing enough/being confident enough in my bits of knowledge to write more about trans women. That's not kind or just of me. But even though I only answered like 9% of your question, I hope this post is enough to give you at least a taste of the Lesbian Community in a critical decade of its formation.

(P.S. Sorry it took me so long to get to answering it!)

This question is a little old but a good one so I'll take a stab at it since there is definately room to expand on what has been already brought up. My research focuses on the 1980s and 1990s, particularly around Alabama universities, so what follows will be focused on that. Also, before getting too far into the topic, I do want to address the issue of language. There is debate in this field about language and whether or not the term LGBTQ is appropriate for the period you discuss. For this reason I for the most part try to use the language that was used in the time. A final disclaimed is that much of this information is focused primarily on gay male spaces. Lesbians of course existed but, as sunagainstgold has already suggested, lesbians would often tend towards feminism and feminist spaces as the issues faced by gay men and lesbians were often different. These spaces were not entirely separate though, and gay men and lesbians would often come together on political issues, particularly outside of major cities.

Due to the focus on New York, Stonewall has often popularly been seen as THE event that catalyzed the modern gay rights movement. It was a major event to be sure, but hardly the only event to cause the community to mobilize in the way that it did. In Florida for example the Johns Committee (a committee of the state legislature established during the red scare and lavender scare dedicated to hunting down homosexuals due to the belief that they there a threat to national security) brought forward issues of homosexuality and caused many from the gay and lesbian communities or those allied with them to mobilize politically.

In Atlanta of 1969, a movie theater was raided which inspired people to form the Georgia Gay Liberation Front. Even in conservative areas such as the college town of Auburn, Alabama, a Gay Liberation Front group emerged in 1971 though it was mostly dedicated on socializing and I'm not aware of any major activist projects from them. However, the use of the gay liberation front name suggests that there was some knowledge of what was going on in cities like New York, as that is where the first Gay Liberation Front group was founded. Other developments from New York reached the South as well, such as pride festivals and parades.

Despite this burst of activism in the late 1960s and early 1970s, outside of a few neighborhoods in major cities like Greenwich Village in New York or the Castro in San Francisco, the gay community was still very much hidden to those that weren't looking for it. This was especially the case when one looks at places that were both outside of major cities and in the deep South. In the deep South, gay life was very much underground and based on knowing people at least as late as the early 1990s. People that moved to the area would meet others at cruising sites, locations for men to meet other men for the purpose of sex, that were described in publications for the gay community not unlike the Negro Motorists Green Book, a travel guide for African Americans published up until the 1960s that described safe places one could stay or find a meal when Jim Crow was the law of the land.

The South was then, as it is today, fairly conservative and often did not take kindly to gay activism and language. This even applied to some men that were themselves homosexual and engaged in cruising. In an oral history project I've seen one account of a gay man who had just come to Alabama from Chicago being chastised by a homosexual he met at a cruising site for using the term gay. There were gay bars in the south, though they were not always officially labeled as such, at least to the general public. None of this is to say that there were no activists present. Certainly the cities saw activism, but it often took a little while for major developments to reach the south. Atlanta saw its first pride activities in 1970. Birmingham, AL held its first pride festival later in the 1970s though it would not be until 1989 that Birmingham saw its first true pride parade.

One of the largest events to impact the gay community during the period you mention was the AIDS crisis which greatly impacting both straight and gay cultures. The rise of this disease that was often blamed on the gay community, leading to a sense of increased homophobia throughout the nation. In some places, such as New York and other major cities led to radical activism such as that of ACT UP and Queer nation. These groups were founded in New York, but rapidly spread to other major cities around the country. Queer Nation Atlanta for example was involved in protesting numerous Cracker Barrel restaurants when the restaurant chain was accused of homophobic hiring practices.Outside of cities though, the response was not always so radical. Some people would travel in order to take part in political action. For example some gay/lesbian students and their allies from Auburn University would visit Atlanta to collaborate with the Queer Nation chapter there.

This travel was not limited to political activism. Gay and lesbian networks existed around the state of Alabama. They communicated through gay newspapers, such as the Alabama Forum and any number of smaller newsletters that were occasionally put out by local groups such as Alpha Lambda Omega or the Tuscaloosa Lesbian Coalition. Networking would also happen over the phone. For those that existed in spaces without official gay bars or only had a bar with a single gay night (which was often unofficial and only known by the gay community and the bar's owners. These nights might have been officially marketed as "alternative night" and they played music by bands popular in the gay community such as Depeche Mode), gay people would regularly make the trip to the nearest city that had a dedicated gay bar.