In the mid-1980s — amid the Reagan administration’s lethal neglect of the AIDS epidemic and a increasingly vocal Christian “moral majority” who blamed homosexuality for a decline in “family values” — a homosexual splinter of the punk rock scene broke off and began to challenge societal disapproval of queerness through counter-cultural music, zines, art and film. This movement eventually became known as Queercore, and it now has a documentary dedicated to its history and lasting social impact.
The documentary is called Queercore: How to Punk a Revolution, and it stars queer directors Bruce La Bruce and John Waters; female musicians Beth Ditto, Kim Gordon and Peaches; queer performers Genesis P-Orridge, Justin Bond and Jayne County and many others.
A quick and dirty history of Queercore
Two queer creatives in specific —G.B. Jones and Bruce LaBruce – helped lay the groundwork for the Queercore scene through their zine J.D., a publication which sought to expose the “bourgeois-ification of the gay movement and the problematic sexual politics of punk” by sharing their own work and that of other disenfranchised queer creatives. Read more via Hornet