he hasn't won 4 consecutive World Self-Citation Championships by being a scrub, Jonathan

It does, this is also a strong contender. But "Lesbian and Gay" vs "Gay and Lesbian" as a naming conventions battle had already been hotly contested throughout much of the 70s, and it stands to reason that this is an extension of that.

I've yet to see someone offer any kind of citation for AIDS being the genesis of "Lesbian" being placed first. It's possible some individual orgs changed their names for this stated reason, but it is far from established fact. I've yet to see any evidence for anything besides Second Wave Feminism.

I've been tracking this for a few years now and who knows, maybe one day I'll make a huge Jon Bois-style deep dive video essay about it, because it's just so fascinating to me & there are so many different possible development paths into the initialism we all know today. We just don't know for sure.

You don't even really start seeing the emergence of formulations with "Gay" placed first until around 1984ish.

If you'd like to donate towards jail support + action costs: genderlib.org/donate