“And Then I Danced: Traveling the Road to LGBT Equality.”

Philly is in the headlines again, this time it’s a bit more personal. The publisher of the Philadelphia Gay News, has just published his memoir, titled “And Then I Danced: Traveling the Road to LGBT Equality.”

Mark Segal has been a gay activist from the age of 18. Now, 46 years later, he’s chronicled that journey in his new book. He says it started after the raid on the Stonewall Inn in 1969.

“Various people did speeches, and what developed from that event was the an organization called Gay Liberation Front, and Gay Liberation Front was the first ‘in your face’ gay organization in history. And we changed the world on LGBT issues,” said Segal.

And his activism never stopped. One of his most recent accomplishments was the opening of the John C. Anderson Apartments for gay seniors. As for where the title of the book came from:

“I get invited to dance at the White House with the man I love. That’s an amazing change in 46 years,” said Segal.

About Mark:

Mark Allan Segal (born 1951) is an American journalist. He is the president of the National Gay Newspaper Guild and the founder and publisher of Philadelphia Gay News. Segal is originally from Mount Airy, Philadelphia and attended Germantown High School and Temple University.^[5]

In 1972, after being thrown out of dance competition for dancing with a male lover, Segal crashed the evening news broadcast of WPVI-TV, an act that became known as a “zap” and that he helped popularize. He repeated the action during many other television broadcasts.

In 1975, he went on a hunger strike on behalf of the passage of a law to guarantee equal rights for homosexuals. In 1988, he had a televised debate with a Philadelphia city councilman, Francis Rafferty, about Gay Pride Month. He was a friend of the pioneering gay activist Barbara Gittings. (source: wikipedia)