It might sound hyperbolic to say that community can save your life, but that was the experience of some members of Kalamazoo’s Lavender Morning. Founded in 1979, the lesbian group, which organized dances and published a newsletter, included women whose families ostracized them for being gay.
Ann Arbor lawyer and writer Cynthia Bostwick says she discovered the group in the 1980s when she walked into Pandora Books for Open Minds, a store owned by River Artz-Iffland that served as a hub for the lesbian community.
“I stumbled into Pandora at a time when I was having my first relationship with a woman, the woman I’m married to now, and discovered Lavender Morning and promptly went back to my hometown in Paw Paw and opened a post office box so that I could get Lavender Morning without my mother knowing,” Bostwick said. She was about 24 years old.
“My mother was a feminist, but she very much believed in the ‘Lavender Menace’ idea of feminism,” Bostwick added.
Bostwick spoke to WMUK at a Lavender Morning reunion last fall at People’s Church in Kalamazoo. She talked about what happened when her mother found out about her sexual orientation, why she believes the Lavender Morning “saved lives” and how things have changed for LGBT people since the 1980s.