The Newcomer is a historical documentary about a forgotten gay icon and the tragic circumstances which arrested the political and social progress he made for LGBT people in the 1980s.

While the culture wars inflamed by Anita Bryant and the religious right had a powerful impact on the march toward gay civil rights in the late 1970s and early 1980s, the AIDS epidemic was ultimately much more destructive to the movement.

The Newcomer focuses attention on that tragedy through the life and career of Richard Heyman, elected America’s first openly gay Mayor in Key West, Florida in 1983, the year the first cases of AIDS were diagnosed on the island.

The Newcomer is ultimately a timeless tale about the struggle between self- interest and the greater good.