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Liana Wilcox\/San Francisco Public Press<\/p>\n\n\n\n
A notable LGBTQ+ collectible: the \u201cLesbian Money\u201d stamp. Activists for a century have added subversive messages to cash.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
06.23.2023 (sfpublicpress.org)<\/p>\n\n\n\n
| by MEL BAKER<\/a><\/strong> | <\/p>\n\n\n\n <\/a><\/a><\/a><\/a><\/a>When we report a story, it can involve numerous interviews, sources speaking on background or deep dives into government or corporate records. But sometimes it\u2019s amazing what a small object can reveal.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n Like the rubber stamp recently discovered by Liana Wilcox, producer of the San Francisco Public Press\u2019 podcast \u201cCivic<\/a>,\u201d when she was helping her mother clear a storage area.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cI was with my mom going through some of her keepsakes and found a stamp that read \u2018Lesbian Money.\u2019 My mom told me that she found it in our old church\u2019s basement,\u201d Wilcox said, adding that she feared the rubber stamp had a sinister connotation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cI immediately thought it was some sort of exclusionary practice, but that didn\u2019t feel right considering the church we went to, the First Congregational Church of San Francisco, called themselves \u2018open and affirming,\u2019\u201d she said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Wilcox mentioned the stamp during one of our staff meetings, and I said \u201cOh, no that was a way we tried to raise awareness about the LGBT community back in the old days.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n As a young gay activist and budding journalist in Salt Lake City in the early 1980s, I vaguely remembered stamps like that one. I reached out to a dear friend to see if she remembered lesbian money. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Becky Moss is a longtime LGBTQ+ community organizer in Salt Lake City. She and I co-hosted the radio show \u201cConcerning Gays and Lesbians\u201d in Utah in the early \u201980s. Moss said activists around the U.S. were stamping bills to show the financial power and size of the greater queer community back in the late 1970s. <\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cSeparatist lesbian communes would stamp all of their bills before coming into town for supplies,\u201d she said. \u201cBut I remember it being more widespread than that, it was really a nationwide thing.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n A number of sources trace the first \u201cGay$$\u201d and \u201cLesbian Money\u201d stamps \u2014 sometimes marked with a pink triangle \u2014 as having originated in San Francisco in the mid 1970s. The pink triangle was used by the Nazis in Germany to identify gay men in concentration camps and was co-opted as the symbol of the early gay movement before the rainbow flag mostly supplanted it. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Wherever the money stamping started, by 1986 it had drawn the ire of the Reagan Administration. The U.S. attorney for the Northern District of Illinois issued a cease-and-desist order to lesbian and gay bar owners<\/a> in Chicago who were stamping all the bills coming through their businesses to the tune of $5 million a year. Government officials said the campaign violated federal law against defacing currency. But the legal action foundered at least in part because it was nearly impossible to determine who was responsible \u2014 anyone could stamp bills, anywhere. The Treasury Department also determined that most of the bills were still \u201cfit for circulation.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n Money stamping campaigns grew quickly to the point that finding some kind of queer stamp on currency was fairly common in the 1980s. It made an impact in an era when LGBTQ+ representation in film, television and the press were rare. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Money stamping campaigns were also used to counter discrimination against people with HIV and AIDS in the 1980s. One campaign out of Utah unfolded when Moss visited a restaurant in a suburb of Salt Lake City in the late 1980s. <\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cMy sister, who had AIDS, and I were at a restaurant in Bountiful, Utah,\u201d she said. \u201cAfter the meal, the staff threw our plates in the garbage.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n The Salt Lake City branch of ACT-UP, the AIDS activist organization, decided to use an \u201cAIDS Money\u201d stamp to fight such blatant discrimination against those perceived to be infected with HIV.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cThey all went to the restaurant and bought things like pie or french fries and then paid for them with the stamped money,\u201d Moss said. \u201cThe activists made the point that the owner would now have to throw away all the plates used to serve them or stop the practice.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cAIDS Money\u201d stamps remained part of the nationwide effort to raise awareness through the 1980s and \u201990s. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Becky\u2019s sister Peggy Moss Tingey died of complications from AIDS in March 1995, just nine months after her young son Chase died from the virus. Both passed away just before the HIV protease drug cocktail was starting to become available. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Recent money stamping campaigns included \u201cI grew hemp\u201d stamps, promoting marijuana legalization, placed on $1 bills near George Washington\u2019s portrait. The idea was taken up by groups advocating for the Second Amendment \u2014 \u201cgun owners money\u201d \u2014 and even campaign finance reform, with the Ben and Jerry\u2019s Foundation organizing \u201cstamp money out of politics<\/a>\u201d stamps in 2012.<\/p>\n\n\n\n A campaign in 2016 used large stamps to place Harriet Tubman\u2019s face over the $20 bill portrait of Andrew Jackson, after the Trump Administration overruled the Treasury Department\u2019s plan to replace Jackson with Tubman by 2020.<\/p>\n\n\n\n While the LGBTQ+ movement used stamping to great effect, it was by no means the first to spread the word by customizing currency.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Before World War I, British suffragettes stamped pennies with the words, \u201cVotes for Women<\/a>.\u201d Only a handful of the coins still exist. But just as the U.S. Treasury Department declined to withdraw bills with \u201cLesbian Money,\u201d the British banking system declined to take the low-value marked pennies out of circulation. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Without suffragettes breaking the first chain of patriarchal thinking by winning the right to vote, there would have been no LGBTQ+ rights movement. Discrimination against women \u2014 sexism \u2014 is the basis of hatred of different sexual orientations and gender identities.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Both the British women who had to strike each penny 13 times \u2014 engraving their words letter by letter \u2014 and those who inked rubber stamps over and over again used their spending power to wear down conspiracies of silence, one tiny message at a time.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Mel Baker is the producer and a contributor to The San Francisco Public Press radio program\/podcast Civic. He has worked as a national network and Bay Area broadcaster for many decades. From early training in National Public Radio\u2019s newscast unit, to stints in the newsrooms of KGO radio and KTVU-TV, and as a news anchor and reporter at KALW and other Bay Area stations, he has embraced the responsibility of broadcast media to \u201cenlighten and inform\u201d the community.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Liana Wilcox\/San Francisco Public Press A notable LGBTQ+ collectible: the \u201cLesbian Money\u201d stamp. Activists for a century have added subversive messages to cash. 06.23.2023 (sfpublicpress.org) | by MEL BAKER | When we report a story, it can involve numerous interviews, sources speaking on background or deep dives into government or corporate records. But… Continue reading ![\"The](\"https:\/\/www.sfpublicpress.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/06\/IMG_1013-Edited-771x514.jpg\")
<\/figure>\n\n\n\nCampaign Against Discrimination<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
Other Stamping Activism<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
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ABOUT MEL BAKER<\/a><\/h3>\n\n\n\n