This collection comprises records of Dignity/USA and its predecessors, regions, and chapters, from the organization's founding in 1969 until the early 1990s. The materials relating to the organization's national office include correspondence, minutes, motions, and work papers of the organization's Board of Directors and Board of Consultors (later renamed House of Delegates). The records also contain extensive correspondence files of Dignity officers, including James Bussen, Paul Diederich, Robert Fournier, Tom Sena, Frank Scheuren, and Paul Weidig; the files for Joseph Killian (also known as Joe Gilgamesh), the first elected president of Dignity, are particularly extensive. The national office subject files contain correspondence, reports, press releases, notes, copies of magazine and newspaper articles, and other materials relating to Dignity's day-to-day operations, its efforts to obtain validation for gays and lesbians from the Roman Catholic hierarchy, and its relations with similar groups from other religious denominations and with secular groups in search of civil rights for gays and lesbians. Many of the letters in both the correspondence and subject files vividly illustrate the internal conflict many gay and lesbian Roman Catholics suffered, as they searched for a support system to help them to integrate their sexual orientation with being Catholic. The collection contains extensive records, including minutes, motions, information packets, work papers, programs, and publicity, relating to Dignity's biennial National Conventions. Records for the regions and chapters into which Dignity was divided mirror in format, content, and arrangement those of the national office. The materials relating to the Los Angeles chapter, always the largest in the organization, which acted as a de facto headquarters until the creation of the national office, are particularly extensive. The collection also preserves extensive records relating to Dignity's full-page advertisement in Newsweek magazine for April 27, 1987, in response to the Vatican's October 1986 Letter to the Bishops of the Catholic Church on the Pastoral Care of Homosexual Persons, including correspondence with both Newsweek and Time (which refused to publish the advertisement), and favorable and unfavorable replies. The newspaper clippings include articles from the mainstream religious and secular press, as well as from the gay media. The materials also include a collection of photographs and slides documenting meetings and conferences of Dignity, as well as officers and other Dignity activists during the period 1970-1985 in particular. The newsletter files include copies of most of the newsletters published by the national office, as well as near-complete runs of many regional and chapter newsletters, and issues of the quarterly Insight, published by Dignity's New York chapter.