Founded as a collectively-run, local newsletter, early in the struggle for gay liberation, it was soon expanded into a major newspaper with an international readership.
The newspaper's influence was such that it enjoyed a "national reach that was considered the movement's 'paper of record' throughout the '70s, and whose alumni at one point occupied so many leadership roles around the country that they were called the 'GCN mafia'".
An article entitled "Gay Revolutionary", published in 1987, led to claims from the conservative right that the newspaper promoted a "homosexual agenda" to destroy heterosexuality and traditional values.
[1][4] In less than a year, Gay Community News developed from a two-page mimeograph to an eight-page, tabloid-style newsprint, and moved its office to 22 Bromfield Street.
Gay groups have attempted to overcome this problem by newsletters to their members, but this has led to duplicated efforts with vast portions of the community left uninformed events until after they have passed."
They claimed their motive was to scare Boston voters into repealing Proposition 21, a state tax-limiting measure which would lay off or freeze hiring of firefighters.
[9] The group of arsonists were ultimately held responsible for the destruction of more than $50 million worth of property, and at the time, the arson case was considered to be the largest in state or federal history.
[12] “Membership” was defined very broadly, and local readers and members of the queer community were encouraged to assist in the paper’s production.
Unlike most others in its genre, the paper did not solicit advertisements from gay bars, which was a popular source of revenue for queer newspapers at the time.
[15] The newspaper's editors had requested that Swift write an article as satirical proof of the so-called "gay agenda" that conservative right-wing Christians were establishing.
Thirty years after the article's publishing date, conservative religious groups continue to quote "Gay Revolutionary", but omit the crucial first line of the piece, "This essay is an outré, madness, a tragic, cruel fantasy, an eruption of inner rage, on how the oppressed desperately dream of being the oppressor."
[4] Although the verdict came in 1980, The Bromfield Street Educational Foundation continued to spend subsequent years advocating on behalf of prisoners who were denied copies of the Gay Community News and other LGBTQ publications.