The Gay Rub

Octavia Butler’s prescience is being applauded due to her 1993 novel “Parable of the Sower.” It’s set in the years 2024 and 2025, depicts mass fires in California, and an “ultra-conservative president who promises to ‘make America great again.’” Butler’s grave marker quotes from this novel:
“All that you touch, you change. All that you change, changes you.
The only lasting truth is Change. God is Change.”
In an interview, Butler reflected on her work, stating, “I didn’t make up the problems. All I did was look around at the problems we’re neglecting now and give them about 30 years to grow into full-fledged disasters.”
We are proud to include this rubbing in The Gay Rub collection.
Octavia E. Butler,1947-2006
Marker location: Mountain View Cemetery and Mausoleum, Altadena, Los Angeles County, California, USA

Very sad news about last night’s theft of the plaque honoring the 32 LGBTQ people killed in the Upstairs Lounge fire. The memorial plaque was initially rubbed in 2012 and then again ten years later in 2022 with historian Robert Fieseler, who had this to say  “It took 30 years of community groundswell, plus eight years of direct action on the part of the Metropolitan Community Church of New Orleans, for that beautiful plaque to appear—bearing the names of the 32 souls lost so unjustly to an act of criminal arson. It took only a few minutes for someone to efface and delete those efforts towards public visibility. I call on the offending person, no doubt acting out of ignorance, to return this vital symbol for LGBT+ Americans—and then, please, open your heart and mind by searching the words ‘Up Stairs Lounge gay bar.’”  We encourage everyone to read Fieseler’s book Tinderbox: The Untold Story of the Up Stairs Lounge Fire & The Rise of Gay Liberation.
The Gay Rub is pleased to have two rubbings of this important q***r marker that might not be in public again.

It's such an honor to see a piece of this collection come to life on different ways. Thank you for our "GAY IS GOOD" collaboration tee to support .