Keith Haring & Betty White get the “Forever” Treatment with New Stamps

The United States Postal Service shared good news with an announcement they’ll be honouring two LGBT+ icons with stamps in 2025: Keith Haring and Betty White.

As the name suggests, “Forever Stamps” can be used to mail a one-ounce letter regardless of when the stamps were purchased or used and no matter how prices may change in the future.

“This early glimpse into our 2025 stamp programme demonstrates our commitment to providing a diverse range of subjects and designs for both philatelists and stamp enthusiasts,” said Lisa Bobb-Semple, Stamp Services director for USPS, where “diversity” will no doubt be under fire under the incoming administration.

Keith Haring shot to fame in the 1980s with his iconic, graffiti-inspired drawings that became an instantly recognisable visual language. He devoted much of his work to social activism centred on the HIV/AIDS epidemic; Haring died of AIDS-related complications in 1990. He was just 31 years old.

The new “Love” stamp commemorates the artist with his now classic image, Untitled from 1985, depicting two figures holding up a heart. The stamp “celebrates the universal experience of love” with the “instantly recognisable” image, according to the Postal Service.

Betty White gets the “forever” treatment, as well – she’d lived nearly that long at her death just days shy of her 100th birthday in 2021.

White was a mainstay of television since her debut on local TV in Hollywood in the late 1940s. She was a popular guest on game shows before she revealed her comedy chops for a primetime audience on The Mary Tyler Moore Show, playing Sue Ann Nivens, the acerbic and sex-starved host of a local TV cooking show. She earned her gay bona fides as the lovable and clueless Rose Nyland on The Golden Girls.

White’s purple-hued portrait based on a 2010 photograph by Kwaku Alston captures the celebrity’s sly, “in on the joke” personality.

The actress was decidedly non-political over her career, but did weigh in on marriage equality in 2010 with some advice for readers.

“I don’t care who anybody sleeps with,” White told Parade Magazine. “If a couple has been together all that time – and there are gay relationships that are more solid than some heterosexual ones – I think it’s fine if they want to get married. I don’t know how people can get so anti-something. Mind your own business, take care of your affairs, and don’t worry about other people so much.”

10 Black LGBT+ heroes (already) honoured on stamps

Some LGBT+ Black heroes are getting special recognition with these commemorative stamps.

Alvin Ailey (1931-1989)

Alvin Ailey was an acclaimed dance choreographer on a global stage and his Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater continues on today. His dance piece “Revelations,” shown on the stamp, is considered the most widely-seen modern dance work in the world. It has been seen by more than 23 million people in 71 countries since 1960.

Josephine Baker (1906-1975)

This French stamp honours Josephine Baker, the performer born in St Louis who moved to France at the age of nineteen. Baker was a true hero for her work as an anti-Nazi spy and an activist against segregation in the United States, and she did it all while being one of the most successful dancer-singer-actresses in the world for her time – and being a mom of twelve.

James Baldwin (1924-1987)

James Baldwin was one of the greatest American writers, but due to the racism of the United States he spent much of his life living in Paris. His novels Go Tell It on the Mountain (1953) and Giovanni’s Room (1956) and his essay collection Notes of a Native Son (1955) were important works that dealt with themes of race, sexuality and class.

Angela Davis (1944-present)

Though Angela Davis is American, Uruguay is the country that honoured her with a stamp, commemorating her visit to the country in 2019. Davis is a prominent activist and academic who works for prison abolition and against racism, sexism and homophobia.

Billie Holiday (1915-1959)

Jazz and swing singer Billie Holiday, the singer of “Strange Fruit”, was bisexual and had a likely but unconfirmed relationship with actress Tallulah Bankhead. This is touched on in the 2021 film The United States vs Billie Holiday.

Barbara Jordan (1936-1996)

Barbara Jordan was the first woman and Black person to be elected to Congress from Texas. In 1976, she was also the first Black woman to deliver a keynote address at the Democratic National Convention. President Clinton said he wanted to nominate her to the Supreme Court but that her multiple sclerosis was too advanced by the time he got the chance. He awarded her the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 1994.

Alain Locke (1885-1954)

Philosopher and writer Alain Locke was an important figure of the Harlem Renaissance, an important period of Black history that was also very queer. He became the first African American Rhodes Scholar in 1907 and was a professor at Harvard University – until 1925 when he tried to get equal pay with white professors.

Bessie Smith (1894-1937)

Nicknamed “The Empress of the Blues”, Bessie Smith was a key figure in the Jazz Age. Not only was she a wildly popular blues singer in the 1920s and 30s as the highest-paid Black performer in the country, she was also very popular in her romantic life and was openly bisexual. 

Ma Rainey (1886-1939)

A friend, mentor and maybe more of Bessie Smith, Gertrude “Ma” Rainey was known as the “Mother of the Blues.” She was a popular blues singer and also openly bisexual, singing “Prove It On Me Blues” in 1928, referring to how the police couldn’t prove that she had had sex with a woman and had to release her. (Bessie Smith bailed her out.)

Ethel Waters (1896-1977)

Ethel Waters was a popular singer and actress with an illustrious career that broke boundaries. Waters was the second African American to be nominated for an Academy Award and the first to star on her own television show. While Waters was married three different times to men, she also had relationships with women, including with dancer Ethel Williams during the 1920s. They lived together in Harlem and were nicknamed “The Two Ethels.”

A Quick Look at Lesbians

This is the title of an article published in “The Twentieth Century” in the winter edition of 1962-3.

“Male homosexuals are persecuted in Britain, and their problems have been exhaustively discussed. Yet the problems – and the dangers – of feminine homosexuality have been curiously ignored. In the belief that it should be taken seriously and understood, we asked several experienced journalists to investigate. Two drew a blank. The third drew a picture of a “misty, unmapped world”.

This article led to the formation of the Minorities Research Group, which became the UK’s first lesbian social and political organisation. They went on to publish their own lesbian magazine called “Arena Three“.

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