Groundbreaking gay magazine publisher Keith St Clare dead

Keith St. Claire, a groundbreaking editor and publisher LGBTQ+ Magazine Vanguard, He passed away at the age of 79.

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He passed away on March 25th in Richmond, Texas. Bay Area Reporter. He had been diagnosed with Alzheimer’s several years ago, his family said.

VanguardBased in San Francisco, it was originally published by an organization of the same name since 1965. The Vanguard Group supported youth, LGBTQ+ and others in the city’s Tenderloin area. St. Clair took over the magazine in 1966, and the following year the organization stopped operating.

St. Clair has been released Vanguard 12 years. The magazine was notable for its inclusiveness, friends and activists said.

“Keith St. Clair was a cutting edge pioneer and forced in the gay liberation rebellion,” said August Bernaticou, executive director of the LGBTQ History Project. Supporters By email. “By giving the oppressed and persecuted people a platform, Keith helped kickstart the blooming move. No one was talking about the hair fairy, transgender [people]drug dealer, bisexual, etc., when Keith was publishing. Vanguard. He gave faceless faces and gave Mute a voice. ”

St. Clair called himself the magazine “high scribbler” and called him a “media outlet for social change.” Reporter Note.

In the article LGBTQ History Project website, “What made Keith’s work amazing was the subject and his courage in publishing it at his current name and address. Keith was the liberation of the gays.

Born in San Antonio, St. Clair joined the Air Force at the age of 17, and was stationed in Japan for four years, before turning San Francisco home when he returned to the United States in 1966.

“He changed his name in California,” said his sister Laulalee Roark. Reporter. “His father and mother have ‘get him’ at all. He raised a young gay man in San Antonio and was bullied for being “not.” He was thin, neat and dramatic. ”

After Vanguard stopped publishing, St. Clair was still involved in many community projects. “He continued to work at community theaters and produced 186 episodes of a youth-run television programme distributed nationwide. Young ideasraising over 600 foster children,” Bernadicou wrote in his online article. This includes extensive interviews with St. Clair.

As a foster parent, “He abandoned him, took out the runaway kids and put them in his career,” Roark said. Reporter article.

Phyllis Fisher was a lesbian who had problems with her parents when she was a teenager, and recalled that she was “the only woman” when she became foster parents with St. Clair. “He took me when there was no one there,” she said. Reporter“He put his heart into the community.”

Additionally, St. Clair worked for the American Red Cross in Berkeley, California in the 1980s, Rourke said he supported survivors of the 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake. She believes he made a film for that film.

St. Clair also had a biological son, Michael Miller. Michael Miller met in 2019 and stayed in touch. “Keith believed in his reality and was against the practice,” Miller pointed out. Reporter. Speaking of St. Clair’s time as a foster parent, Miller said, “There were many doubts that gay people could do that. He certainly didn’t believe in the practice.”

Roark added that her brother “like everyone else, that was all he was. It was so beautiful that he had it.” She plans to donate his tapes Young ideas University of California, Los Angeles, Film and TV Archives.

In addition to Roark and Miller, the survivors include another sister, Melanie Sills. Miller’s wife, Crystal and her daughter. And many friends.