# GLAAD Founded in **1985 in New York City** as the **Gay & Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation** in direct response to defamatory and stigmatizing AIDS coverage in the *New York Post* and other tabloid press. GLAAD's founding crisis was the explicit demand that mainstream media stop framing AIDS-as-divine-punishment, but its mission rapidly expanded to a full media-watchdog and representation-advocacy operation. ## What GLAAD Does GLAAD operates on three interlocking fronts: 1. **Media monitoring and accountability** — the annual *Where We Are on TV* report, the *Studio Responsibility Index* (rating movie studios on LGBTQ representation), and rapid-response pressure on outlets that publish anti-LGBTQ content 2. **Newsroom resource** — the *GLAAD Media Reference Guide* is the de facto style guide that most major American newsrooms use for terminology around sexual orientation and gender identity 3. **Direct organizing and advocacy** — including the annual *GLAAD Media Awards* (since 1990), which became a major Hollywood-and-music-industry event and a platform for LGBTQ creators ## Significance GLAAD's longest-running campaign — to make American media coverage of LGBTQ people **routine, accurate, and non-sensational** — is arguably the most important single explanation for the speed of public-opinion change on LGBTQ rights between roughly 1995 and 2015. Polling on same-sex marriage flipped from ~25% support in the mid-1990s to ~60% support by the time of [[Obergefell v. Hodges]] (2015), a shift demographers attribute substantially to cumulative exposure to LGBTQ characters in television and film. In 2013 GLAAD dropped the "Gay & Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation" expansion and now uses the acronym alone, in recognition that its scope had expanded beyond gay-and-lesbian advocacy to include bisexual, transgender, and broader LGBTQ representation work. --- ## See Also - [[Queer Liberation Ecosystem]] - [[Queer Liberation Timeline]] - [[Resistance Hub]]