Gay History

September 1

 

1813

Mary Grew (September 1, 1813 – October 10, 1896) was an American abolitionist and suffragist whose career spanned nearly the entire 19th century. She was a leader of the Philadelphia Female Anti-Slavery Society, the Pennsylvania Anti-Slavery Society, and the Pennsylvania Woman Suffrage Association. She was one of eight women delegates who were denied their seats at the World Anti-Slavery Convention in 1840. An editor and journalist, she wrote for abolitionist newspapers and chronicled the work of Philadelphia’s abolitionists over more than three decades. She was a gifted public orator at a time when it was still noteworthy for women to speak in public. Her obituary summarized her impact: “Her biography would be a history of all reforms in Pennsylvania for fifty years.” Mary Grew and her life partner Margaret Jones Burleigh were inseparable beginning in their mid-30s. Their circle of abolitionists included Cyrus M. Burleigh, Mary’s co-editor at the Philadelphia Freeman. In 1855, when Cyrus was dying of tuberculosis, Margaret married him. He died one month later; Margaret settled his affairs and she and Mary set off on a tour of New England. Within six months they were signing their letters “Mary & Margaret.” They lived together the rest of their lives and are buried side by side at Woodlands Cemetery in Philadelphia.

 

1864, Ireland

Sir Roger Casement (September 1, 1864 –August 3,1916) is born in Kingston, Ireland. A former British diplomat, he joined the Irish nationalists. Casement was captured and tried for treason. At his trial, the fact he is gay is used as further evidence of his evil ways and he is hanged. Described as the “father of twentieth-century human rights investigations,” he was honored in 1905 for the Casement Report on the Congo and knighted in 1911 for his important investigations of human rights abuses in Peru. He then made efforts during World War I to gain German military aid for the 1916 Easter Rising that sought to gain Irish independence. Casement’s remains laid in state at Arbour Hill in Dublin for five days during which time an estimated half a million people filed past his coffin. After a state funeral, the remains were buried with full military honors in the Republican plot in Glasnevin Cemetery in Dublin with other Irish republicans and nationalists. The President of the Republic of Ireland, Éamon de Valera, who in his mid-eighties was the last surviving leader of the Easter Rising, attended the ceremony along with an estimated 30,000 others.

 

1937

Actress, writer, comedian Mary Jean “Lily” Tomlin (September 1, 1939) is born. She is an American comedian, writer, singer, and producer, and an openly lesbian feminist. Tomlin was the 2003 recipient of the Kennedy Center’s Mark Twain prize for humorists. Tomlin began her career as a stand-up comedian and performed Off-Broadway during the 1960s. Her breakout role was performing as a cast member on the variety show Rowan & Martin’s Laugh-In from 1969 until 1973. She most recently starred on the Netflix series Grace and Frankie as Frankie Bernstein. Her performance as Frankie garnered her three consecutive nominations for the Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Lead Actress in a Comedy Series in 2015, 2016 and 2017. Her signature role was written by her wife (then partner), Jane Wagner, in a show titled The Search for Signs of Intelligent Life in the Universe which opened on Broadway in 1985 and won Tomlin the Tony Award for Best Lead Actress in a Play.

 

1939, Germany

The German invasion of Poland begins WWII. Thousands of gay men are called to military service in Germany yet over 20,000 civilians are convicted under Paragraph 175 for homosexuality. More than 7,000 servicemen are also convicted and sent to prison. Those who weren’t killed in the concentration camps were forced to return to the front. Gay men had to wear the pink triangle as indication their homosexuality.

 

1939

The first openly gay judge in the United States was Stephen M. Lachs (born September 1939) is born. He appointed by Governor Jerry Brown to the Los Angeles County Superior Court in 1979-1999. Before leaving office in 1981, Brown appointed three more gay and lesbian judges to the California courts, including the nation’s first openly lesbian judge, Mary C. Morgan, who served on the San Francisco municipal court.

 

1943

Mia F Yamamoto (born September 1, 1943) is a Los Angeles-based criminal defense attorney, and civil rights activist. Mia is a transgender woman of Japanese American descent, born in the Poston War Relocation Center during World War II. Yamamoto was born in Poston, Arizona in a Japanese American internment camp during World War II. Her mother was a registered nurse and her father was a lawyer. Her family’s experiences in the camp, and her father’s subsequent exclusion from the then Whites-only Los Angeles County Bar Association were early factors that shaped Yamamoto’s view on the legal system and race relations. Having been born “doing time” due to her race, she developed a sensitivity to clients who found themselves facing convictions and harsh punishments that they otherwise might be able to avoid, had they been white. Yamamoto knew from an early age that her body did not match her identity but did not know how to express her inner turmoil. While struggling with her gender identity she decided to enlist in the Army and served from 1966 to 1968. She was awarded the National Defense Service medal, Army Commendation Medal, and Vietnam campaign medal. She married Kimberlee Tellez on September 2, 2015.

 

1949

Leslie Feinberg (September 1, 1949 – November 15, 2014) was an American butch lesbian and transgender activist, communist, and author. Her writing, notably Stone Butch Blues (1993) and her pioneering non-fiction book, 1996’s Transgender Warriors, laid the groundwork for much of the terminology and awareness around gender studies and was instrumental in bringing these issues to a more mainstream audience. Feinberg described herself as “an anti-racist white, working-class, secular Jewish, transgender, lesbian, female, revolutionary communist.” Feinberg’s widow, Minnie Bruce Pratt (born September 12, 1946), wrote in her statement regarding Feinberg’s death that Feinberg did not really care which pronouns a person used to address her: “She preferred to use the pronouns she/zie and her/hir for herself, but also said: ‘I care which pronoun is used, but people have been respectful to me with the wrong pronoun and disrespectful with the right one. It matters whether someone is using the pronoun as a bigot, or if they are trying to demonstrate respect.” Feinberg’s last words were reported to be “Hasten the revolution! Remember me as a revolutionary communist.”

 

1959, Paraguay

Radio host Bernardo Aranda is assassinated. 108 gay men were arrested for the alleged murder and their names were publicly released. “108” became a slang term for homosexuality in Paraguay.

 

1961, Czechoslovakia

Czechoslovakia decriminalizes sodomy

 

1961, Hungary

Hungary decriminalizes sodomy.

 

1961, Rome

The Vatican declares that anyone who is “affected by the perverse inclination” towards homosexuality should not be allowed to take religious vows or be ordained within the Roman Catholic Church.

 

1964

The first photograph of lesbians appears on the cover of lesbian magazine The Ladder, showing two women from the back, on a beach looking out to sea. The Ladder was the first nationally distributed lesbian publication in the United States. It was published monthly from 1956 to 1970, and once every other month in 1971 and 1972. It was the primary publication and method of communication for the Daughters of Bilitis (DOB), the first lesbian organization in the US. It was supported by ONE, Inc. and the Mattachine Society with whom the DOB retained friendly relations. The name of the magazine was derived from the artwork on its first cover, simple line drawings showing figures moving towards a ladder that disappeared into the clouds. The first edition of The Ladder appeared in October 1956, edited by Phyllis Lyon (born November 10, 1924), who co-founded the Daughters of Bilitis in 1955 with Del Martin (May 5, 1921 – August 27, 2008), both of whom had journalism experience. Many of its contributors used pseudonyms or initials. Lyon edited The Ladder as “Ann Ferguson” for the first few months but dropped the name as a way of encouraging their readers not to hide. In 1963, Barbara Gittings (July 31, 1932 – February 18, 2007) took over editing The Ladder, giving it a more politically urgent stance, and by adding “A Lesbian Review” under the title of the magazine. The line drawings on the cover were replaced with photographs of lesbians to make them more visible. The first woman who appeared in a photograph on the cover in May 1964 was an unnamed model. The first woman who allowed her name to be printed was from Indonesia who had sent her picture and a letter explaining how isolated she was. In 1975, Arno Press released a nine-volume compilation of The Ladder in hardback as part of their series Lesbians and Gay Men in Society, History, and Literature with a short foreword by Barbara Grier (November 4, 1933 – November 10, 2011). Speaking to journalist and historian Rodger Streitmatter about The Ladder, Grier commented that “no woman ever made a dime for her work, and some … worked themselves into a state of mental and physical decline on behalf of the magazine.”

 

1969, Germany

West Germany repeals its laws prohibiting homosexual acts between consenting adults. It’s interesting to note that this change didn’t affect lesbians as West German sex laws had never acknowledged the existence of lesbians.

 

1970

Del Whan taught the first gay studies class at the University of Southern California, titled “Social Movement: Gay Liberation.” It evolved into USC’s first student group, The Gay Liberation Forum. USC approved it as a student organization in 1975. The name was changed to Gay Student Union. 

 

1972

Jude Patton is (as of this publication) an 80 year old trans man who has been out and open for all of his life. He began hormonal transition in December 1970 and underwent a series of sex confirmation surgeries between September 1972 and September 1973 at Stanford University. Patton established Renaissance Gender Identity Services and wrote/published one of the very first newsletters, Renaissance, ever written by a open trans man. Patton is an educator, counselor, advocate and activist, holds professional licenses as an LMFT and LMHC and as a Physician Assistant in Psychiatry. His focus for the past 15 years has been on LGBTQ+ aging with an emphasis on transgender aging. In 2020 he coedit-ed and published the first two volumes of a planned ongoing book series about trans and gender non-conforming elders, TRANScestors, Navigating LGBTQ+ Aging, Illness and End of Life Concerns.

 

1977

The Log Cabin Republicans club is formed in Southern California (originally called “Gay Republicans”). Log Cabin Republicans was founded as a rallying point for Republicans opposed to the Briggs Initiative which attempted to ban homosexuals from teaching in public schools. In addition to sanctioning the termination of openly gay and lesbian teachers, the proposed legislation authorized the firing of those teachers that supported homosexuality. On October 22, 2016, the board members of LCR voted not to endorse the Republican nominee for President, Donald Trump. In defiance, the LCR statewide chapters of Colorado, Georgia, and Texas, along with the LRC countywide chapter of Orange County, California and the LCR city chapters of Houston, Los Angeles, Miami and Cleveland voted to endorse Trump. In Florida, at least one report claimed Trump was able to cut into the vote margin in heavily Democratic Broward County, Florida with the help of the local chapter of Log Cabin Republicans. Since 1977, LCR has expanded across the United States and has 34 chapters, representing 26 states and the District of Columbia.

 

1978

The Gay Bob doll makes its debut in stores across the nation. He had a pierced ear and his box was shaped like a closet.

 

1979

New Jersey decriminalizes private consensual adult homosexual acts.

 

1980

John Boswell’s Christianity, Social Tolerance, and Homosexuality debuts in bookstores. John Eastburn Boswell (March 20, 1947 – December 24, 1994) was an historian and a full professor at Yale University. Many of Boswell’s studies focused on the issue of religion and homosexuality, specifically Christianity and homosexuality. All of his work focused on the history of those at the margins of society. His first book, The Royal Treasure: Muslim Communities Under the Crown of Aragon in the Fourteenth Century, appeared in 1977. In 1994, Boswell’s fourth book, Same-Sex Unions in Pre-Modern Europe, was published, but he died that same year from AIDS-related complications. Boswell was a Roman Catholic, having converted from the Episcopal Church of his upbringing at age 15. He remained a daily-mass Catholic up until his death, despite differences with the church over sexual issues. Although he was orthodox in most of his beliefs, he strongly disagreed with his church’s stated opposition to homosexual behavior and relationships. He was partnered with Jerome Hart for some twenty years until his death. Hart and Boswell are buried together at Grove Street Cemetery, New Haven, Connecticut.

 

1982

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention uses the term AIDS for the first time in September 1982 when it reported that an average of one to two cases of AIDS were being diagnosed in America every day.

 

2011, Lichtenstein

The law recognizing same-sex registered partnerships goes into effect.

 

2013, Japan

Yodogawa, a ward within the city of Osaka, is the first government in Japan to officially support LGBT inclusion.

 

2017, U.K.

Janet Gulland (1936??-September 1, 2017) was a Fellow of the Royal Aeronautical Society and Director of Market Research at BAe Weybridge. Gulland took some of her first steps on this path when she won a Fulbright Scholarship as a research assistant in engineering at Brown University in Rhode Island. In April 1956 at Oxford University she was awarded a certificate in Research Assistantship for 1956-1957, working in the Wind Tunnel Department. In February 1968, she was elected an Associate Fellow of the Royal Aeronautical Society. She worked in management in market intelligence and planning in the Aircraft Group Marketing Department at Kingston where she led a team of six military aircraft market analysts and coordinated market research on military derivatives of commercial aircraft. In 1994, Janet was proposed for Fellowship of the Royal Aeronautical Society by Sir George Edwards, supported by Sir Peter Masefield and was elected a Fellow in October the same year. She promoted women in aviation throughout her career and kept a collection of articles documenting any progress made in encouraging women into engineering. Outside of work, Gulland won multiple British Moth Boat championships and Scottish-danced well into her eighties. Janet was with her partner Sue for 50 years. 

 

September 2

  

1894, UK

Annie Winifred Ellerman (2 September 1894 – 28 January 1983) is born in Kent, England. Writing under the name Bryher, she was an early feminist and a major figure of the international set in Paris in the 1920s, using her fortune to help many struggling writers. With her lesbian lover Hilda Doolittle (H.D.) (September 10, 1886 – September 27, 1961) and Scottish writer Kenneth Macpherson, she launched the film magazine Close Up which introduced Sergei Eisenstein’s work to British viewers. From her home in Switzerland, she helped to evacuate Jews from Hitler’s Germany, and then became a popular historical novelist.

 

1907

Evelyn Hooker (September 2, 1907 – November 18, 1996) is born. She published the first ever scientific findings that homosexual men are no less well-adjusted mentally than heterosexual men. The American Psychological Association said about her in honoring her with a 1991 award: “When homosexuals were considered to be mentally ill, were forced out of government jobs, and were arrested in police raids, Evelyn Hooker courageously sought and obtained research support from the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH) to compare a matched sample of homosexual and heterosexual men. Her pioneering study, published in 1957, challenged the wide-spread belief that homosexuality is a pathology by demonstrating that experienced clinicians using psychological tests … could not identify the non-clinical homosexual group. This revolutionary study provided empirical evidence that normal homosexuals existed, and supported the radical idea then emerging that homosexuality is within the normal range of human behavior … Her research, leadership, mentorship, and tireless advocacy for an accurate scientific view of homosexuality … has been an outstanding contribution to psychology in the public interest.”

 

1950

Harvey Robert Levin (born September 2, 1950) is an American television producer, legal analyst, celebrity reporter, and former lawyer. He is the founder of the celebrity news website TMZ and the host of OBJECTified which airs on the Fox News Channel. Levin appeared as an event speaker for the National Lesbian and Gay Journalists Association in April 2010 in which he publicly confirmed his self-identification as gay. He discussed his fear of losing his career if someone were to find out, which led to Levin compartmentalizing his personal and professional lives. Levin’s longtime partner is Andy Mauer, a Southern California chiropractor. The two own multiple properties together, sharing joint-deed listings since the late 1990s and early 2000s. Levin has been named to Out magazine’s “Power 50” list as one of the most influential voices in LGBT America. 

 

1956

Elizabeth A. Birch (born September 2, 1956) is an American attorney and former corporate executive who chaired the board of the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force from 1992 to 1994. Birch was the worldwide director of litigation for Apple Computer and general counsel for its Claris subsidiary until 1995. She served as the Executive Director of the Human Rights Campaign from January 1995 until January 2004. In 2000, Birch became the first leader of an LGBT organization to address a national political convention when she gave a prime-time speech at the Democratic National Convention. In 2004, Birch launched Birch & Company, a consulting firm, with offices in Washington, D.C. and New York. Birch ran Rosie O’Donnell‘s production company, KidRo Productions, Inc. and oversaw O’Donnell’s For All Kids Foundation until 2007. She had a relationship with Hilary Rosen, former chief executive of the Recording Industry Association of America. They adopted twins, a boy and a girl, in Texas. The couple separated in 2006.

 

1967

First issue of The Advocate is published. It was a small newspaper under the name The Los Angeles Advocate. The Advocate focuses on news, politics, opinion, and arts and entertainment of interest to lesbians, gay men, bisexuals and transgender (LGBT) people. The magazine is the oldest and largest LGBT publication in the United States and the only surviving one of its kind that was founded before the 1969 Stonewall Riots in New York City.

 

2005

Brokeback Mountain premiers at the Venice Film Festival. It’s one of the first major motion pictures with worldwide distribution to focus on same-sex love as the main storyline. It is an American neo-western romantic drama film directed by Ang Lee and produced by Diana Ossana and James Schamus. Adapted from the 1997 short story of the same name by Annie Proulx, the screenplay was written by Ossana and Larry McMurtry. The film stars Heath Ledger, Jake Gyllenhaal, Anne Hathaway, and Michelle Williams, and depicts the complex emotional and homosexual relationship between Ennis Del Mar and Jack Twist in the American West from 1963 to 1983. The film was nominated for eight Academy Awards, the most nominations at the 78th Academy Awards, where it won three—Best Director, Best Adapted Screenplay, and Best Original Score.

 

2013

Diana Nyad (born August 22, 1949), an out lesbian, is the first person to swim the 110 miles from Cuba to Florida without a shark cage. She’s an American author, journalist, motivational speaker, and long-distance swimmer. On her fifth attempt and at age 64, she became the first person confirmed to swim from Cuba to Florida without the aid of a shark cage, swimming from Havana to Key West. Nyad has said a factor in her determination while swimming was her anger about, and her desire to overcome sexual abuse she experienced as a child.

 

September 3

 

1792, France

The head of Princess Lamballe (8 September 1749 – 3 September 1792) is displayed on a stick and paraded before the imprisoned Marie Antoinette (2 November 1755 – 16 October 1793). The two were thought to be lovers. Princess Lamballe was married at the age of 17 to Louis Alexandre de Bour-bon-Penthièvre, Prince de Lamballe, the heir to the greatest fortune in France. After her marriage, which lasted a year, she went to court and became the confidante of Queen Marie Antoinette. She was killed in the massacre of September 1792 during the French Revolution.

 

1929, UK

Laurence Maurice Parnes (3 September 1929 – 4 August 1989) was an English pop manager and impresario. He was the first major British rock manager, and his stable of singers included many of the most successful British rock singers of the late 1950s and early 1960s. A flamboyant gay man, Parnes’ approach was to select and then groom handsome young men who would be attractive to a teenage audience. Parnes retired in 1981 and died from meningitis in London in 1989 at age 59.

 

1969

The American Sociological Association issues a public declaration, condemning “oppressive actions against any persons for reasons of sexual preference” and endorses rights of homosexuals and other sexual minorities. It is the first national professional organization to voice support of gay and lesbian civil rights.

 

1971

In Minnesota, Jack Baker (born 1942) and Mike McConnell (born 1942) are the first same-sex couple to be legally married when Jack changed his first name to Pat and the marriage license was granted. John “Jack” Baker and James Michael McConnell filed for a marriage license in Minnesota. The clerk of the Hennepin County District Court, Gerald Nelson, said he had “no intention of issuing a marriage license,” that would “result in an undermining and destruction of the entire legal concept of our family structure in all areas of law.” In mid-August 1971, Baker and McConnell took up residence in Blue Earth County and applied to the District Court in Mankato for a license to marry which was granted once the waiting period expired. Rev. Roger Lynn, a Methodist minister, solemnized their marriage on September 3rd. They were the first legally married couple and remain together to this day.

 

1972

The first New Orleans gay pride event called Southern Decadence is held. Southern Decadence is an annual six-day event held by the gay and lesbian community during Labor Day Weekend, climaxing with a parade through the French Quarter on the Sunday before Labor Day.

 

1980

Toronto Mayor John Sewell endorses George Hislop (June 3, 1927 – October 8, 2005), gay candidate for alderman in the municipal election, and causes media uproar about “gay power politics” taking over city hall. Hislop does not win election. However, he was one of Canada’s most influential gay activists. In an obituary notice, Eye Weekly referred to Hislop as “the unofficial mayor of the Toronto gay community”.

 

1988

The first national U.S. Latina Lesbian conference is held in Los Angeles.

 

September 4

  

1939, UK

The day after Britain declares war on Germany, Alan Turing (23 June 1912 – 7 June 1954) registers for the military. Turing was highly influential in the development of theoretical computer science, providing a formalization of the concepts of algorithm and computation with the Turing machine, which can be considered a model of a general purpose computer. Turing is widely considered to be the parent of theoretical computer science and artificial intelligence. He made a major breakthrough in deciphering the German Enigma code which helped the Allies win WWII. After the war, Turing worked at the National Physical Laboratory, where he designed the ACE, among the first designs for a stored-program computer. In 1948 Tu-ring joined Max Newman‘s Computing Machine Laboratory at the Victoria University of Manchester, where he helped develop the Manchester computers and became interested in mathematical biology. He wrote a paper on the chemical basis of morphogenesis and predicted oscillating chemical reactions such as the Belousov–Zhabotinsky reaction, first observed in the 1960s. Turing was prosecuted in 1952 for homosexual acts, when by the Labouchere Amendment, “gross indecency” was a criminal offence in the UK. He accepted chemical castration treatment with DES as an alternative to prison. Turing died in 1954, 16 days before his 42nd birthday by suicide from cyanide poisoning. In 2009, following an internet campaign, British Prime Minister Gordon Brown made an official public apology on behalf of the British government for “the appalling way he was treated.” Queen Elizabeth II granted him a posthumous pardon in 2013. The Alan Turing Law is now an informal term for a 2017 law in the United Kingdom that retroactively pardoned men cautioned or convicted under historical legislation that outlawed homosexual acts. Turing’s story is caught in the film Imitation Game.

 

1957, UK

The Wolfenden Report is published in England which recommends “that homosexual behavior between consenting adults in private should no longer be a criminal offense.” It recommends that private consensual sex acts between men aged 21 or older be decriminalized. The Report of the Departmental Committee on Homosexual Offences and Prostitution (better known as the Wolfenden report, after Lord Wolfenden, the chairman of the committee) was published in Britain after a succession of well-known men, including Lord Montagu (October 20, 1926- 2015), Michael Pitt-Rivers (May 27, 1917-1999) and Peter Wildeblood (19 May 1923 – 14 November 1999), were convicted of homosexual offences.

 

2012

The Democratic Party becomes the first major U.S. political party in history to publicly support same-sex marriage on a national platform at the Democratic National Convention.

 

2017, Canada

Canada has discreetly granted asylum to 31 gay men from Chechnya working with the NGO Rainbow Railroad, a clandestine program unique in the world. In April, Justin Trudeau and the Canadian government strongly condemned persecution of homosexuals in Chechnya. Canada is not the only country to accept gay refugees from Chechnya and other countries in the region. France has accepted at least one person, as has Germany, and two are in Lithuania. An undetermined number of individuals have traveled to European Union countries on tourist visas, and then applied for refugee status. So far, the United States has done nothing.

 

September 5

  

1954, UK

Violet Ellen Katherine Jones pretends to be a man so she may marry Joan Lee in the Catholic Church. Rev. D. Clark performs the ceremony. Rev. Clark informs the Bishop of his suspicions. The couple is caught and taken to court where they admit to making false statements on their marriage license. They’re fined £25.

 

1967

The television series N.Y.P.D. was the first television series in America to air an episode with a gay theme. It was entitled “Shakedown.” The police track down a man blackmailing gay men, prompting several suicides.

 

1969

Unitarian Universalist minister James Stoll (January 18, 1936 – December 8, 1994) is the first ordained minister in the U.S. or Canada to publicly come out. He did so at the annual Continental Conference of Student Religious Liberals on September 5, 1969 at the La Foret Conference Center near Colorado Springs, Colorado. He led the effort that convinced the Unitarian Universalist Association to pass the first-ever gay rights resolution in 1970. He founded the first counseling center for gays and lesbians in San Francisco. In the 1970s he established the first hospice on Maui. He was president of the San Francisco chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union in the 1990s. He died at the age of 58 from complications of heart and lung disease exacerbated by obesity and a life-long smoking habit.

 

1970, Columbia

Columbia “decriminalizes” “homosexual behavior,” changing it from a felony to a misdemeanor. The maximum penalty is reduced to “only” three years.

 

1987, Netherlands

The Homomonument, a pink granite triangle memorial to LGBT victims of the Nazis, is dedicated in Amsterdam. The Homomonument is a memorial in the center of Amsterdam, the capital of the Netherlands. It commemorates all gay men and lesbians who have been subjected to persecution because of their homosexuality. Opened on September 5, 1987, it takes the form of three large pink triangles made of granite, set into the ground so as to form a larger triangle, on the bank of the Keizersgracht canal near the historic Westerkerkchurch. The Homomonument was designed to “inspire and support lesbians and gays in their struggle against denial, oppression and discrimination.” It was the first monument in the world to commemorate gays and lesbians who were killed by the Nazis. Later, similar monuments were realized in a number of cities all around the world.

 

1991

ACT UP activists unfurl a giant condom at the home of N.C. Senator Jesse Helms who opposed sex education and AIDS research funding. Helms wrote the law barring HIV+ people from entering the U.S. That law was repealed in 2012.

 

2007

Transgender principal Genna Suraci starts the school year at the Port Ewen, N.Y. Career & Technical Center uneventfully, like any other school year. Over the summer, she’d officially transitioned from Gary to Genna. The school apparently took in stride their transsexual leader’s transition. Student Kaitlyn Walker, 17, was quoted in the New York Times saying, “It doesn’t matter what happened, it’s the person inside. It’s the same person. It doesn’t really matter if you change the outside.”

  

September 6

  

1860

Jane Addams (September 6, 1860 – May 21, 1935), known as the “mother” of Social Work, was a pioneer American settlement activist/reformer, social worker, public philosopher, sociologist, author, and leader in women’s suffrage and world peace. She co-founded, with her early partner Ellen Gates Starr, the first settlement house in the United States, Chicago’s Hull House that would later become known as one of the most famous settlement houses in America. In an era when presidents such as Theodore Roosevelt and Woodrow Wilson identified themselves as reformers and social activists, Addams was one of the most prominent reformers of the Progressive Era. She helped America address and focus on issues that were of concern to mothers, such as the needs of children, local public health, and world peace. In her essay Utilization of Women in City Government, Jane Addams noted the connection between the workings of government and the household, stating that many departments of government, such as sanitation and the schooling of children, could be traced back to traditional women’s roles in the private sphere. Thus, these were matters of which women would have more knowledge than men, so women needed the vote to best voice their opinions. She said that if women were to be responsible for cleaning up their communities and making them better places to live, they needed to be able to vote to do so effectively. Addams became a role model for middle-class women who volunteered to uplift their communities. She is increasingly being recognized as a member of the American pragmatist school of philosophy and is known by many as the first woman “public philosopher in the history of the United States. In 1889 she co-founded Hull House, and in 1920 she was a co-founder for the ACLU. In 1931 she became the first American woman to be awarded the Nobel Peace Prize and is recognized as the founder of the social work profession in the United States. Generally, Addams was close to a wide set of other women and was very good at eliciting their involvement from different classes in Hull House’s programs. Throughout her life Addams had significant romantic relationships which offered her the time and energy to pursue her social work while being supported emotionally and romantically. From her exclusively romantic relationships with women, she would most likely be described as a lesbian in contemporary terms, similar to many leading figures in the Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom of the time. She “shared her life for 40 years” with her beloved companion Mary Rozet Smith (December 23, 1868 – February 22, 1934).

 

1882

John Powell (September 6, 1882 – August 15, 1963) is born in Richmond, Virginia. A world-renowned concert pianist and composer, his partner in life was fellow composer Daniel Gregory Mason (November 20, 1873 – December 4, 1953.

 

1935 -New York University professor Dr. Louis W. Max tells a meeting of the American Psychological Association that he has successfully treated a “partially fetishistic” homosexual neurosis with electric shock therapy delivered at “intensities considerably higher than those usually employed on human subjects.” Max’s presentation is the first documented instance of aversion therapy to “cure” homosexuality.

 

1963

Bayard Rustin (March 17, 1912 – August 24, 1987) appears on the cover of LIFE Magazine with A. Philip Randolph as the organizers of the March on Washington. Rustin, who is openly gay, is fully supported by Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

 

1971

The annual convention of the National Organization for Women passes a resolution acknowledging “oppression of lesbians as a legitimate concern of feminism.”

 

2005 – The California legislature becomes the first to pass a bill allowing same-sex marriage. Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger vetoes the bill. The same thing happens in 2007.

 

2015, Guatemala

Out lesbian human rights activist Sandra Moran (born April 29, 1960) is voted into Guatemalan congress. Sandra Moran joined Guatemala’s human rights movement as a high school student, and later merged her activism with music, playing with the revolutionary music band, Kin Lalat. During much of Guatemala’s civil war, Sandra lived in exile—in Mexico, Nicaragua and Canada—and participated in solidarity work for Guatemala. Sandra is Guatemala’s first openly gay member of Congress.

 

2018, India

On this day, consensual gay sex was legalized in India by their Supreme Court.

  

September 7

 

1969

Openly gay and HIV-positive Olympic champion ice-skater Rudy Galindo (born September 7, 1969) is born. He is an American figure skater who competed in both single skating and pair skating. As a single skater, he is the 1996 U.S. national champion, 1987 World Junior Champion, and 1996 World Bronze medalist. As a pairs skater, he competed with Kristi Yamaguchi and was the 1988 World Junior Champion and the 1989 and 1990 U.S. National Champion. In 1996 he came out as gay in Christine Brennan‘s book Inside Edge: A Revealing Journey Into the Secret World of Figure Skating which was published shortly before he won his national title that year. He is the first openly gay skating champion in the U.S. His autobiography Ice-breaker, co-written with Eric Marcus (born November 12, 1958), was published in 1997. In 2000, Galindo announced he was HIV positive.

 

1981

Larry Kramer (born June 25, 1935– May 27, 2020) and two friends put up a banner at the Fire Island dock that read “Give to Gay Cancer.” They raised only $124. Kramer is an American playwright, author, public health advocate, and LGBT rights activist. He began his career rewriting scripts while working for Columbia Pictures, which led him to London where he worked with United Artists. There he wrote the screenplay for the 1969 film Women in Love (1969) and earned an Academy Award nomination for his work. Kramer introduced a controversial and confrontational style in his novel Faggots (1978) which earned mixed re-views and emphatic denunciations from some in the gay community for Kramer’s one-sided portrayal of shallow, promiscuous gay relationships in the 1970s. Kramer witnessed the spread of Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome (AIDS) among his friends in 1980. He co-founded the Gay Men’s Health Crisis(GMHC) which has become the world’s largest private organization assisting people living with AIDS. Kramer grew frustrated with bureaucratic paralysis and the apathy of gay men to the AIDS crisis and wished to engage in further action than the social services GMHC provided. He expressed his frustration by writing a play titled The Normal Heart, produced at The Public Theater in New York City in 1985. His political activism continued with the founding of the AIDS Coalition to Unleash Power (ACT UP) in 1987, an influential direct action protest organization with the aim of gaining more public action to fight the AIDS crisis. ACT UP has been widely credited with changing public health policy and the perception of people living with AIDS (PWAs), and with raising awareness of HIV and AIDS-related diseases. Kramer was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize for his play The Destiny of Me (1992), and he was a two-time recipient of the Obie Award. He was 84.

 

2001, Canada

The world’s first 24-hour LGBT TV network called Pride-Vision TV is launched in Canada. It is now called OutTV. Owned by Headline Media Group, it was Canada’s first 24-hour cable television channel targeted at LGBT audiences. It was also the second LGBT-focused channel to be established in the world after the Gay Cable Network in the U.S. which shut down in 2001.

 

September 8

 

1907

Gertrude Stein (February 3, 1874 – July 27, 1946) and Alice B. Toklas (April 30, 1877 – March 7, 1967) meet in Paris for the first time and stay together until Stein’s death in 1946. Gertrude was an American novelist, poet, playwright, and art collector. Born in the Allegheny West neighborhood of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, and raised in Oakland, California, Stein moved to Paris in 1903, and made France her home for the remainder of her life. She hosted a Paris salon, where the leading figures of modernism in literature and art, such as Pablo Picasso, Ernest Hemingway, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Sinclair Lewis, Ezra Pound, and Henri Matisse, would meet. Alice was an American-born member of the Parisian avant-garde of the early 20th century.

 

1975

Vietnam veteran Sgt. Leonard Matlovich (July 6, 1943 – June 22, 1988) appears on the cover of TIME magazine stating, “I am a homosexual.” Leonard Matlovich was the first gay US service member to come out. When he died, he was buried without a name and known only as Gay Vietnam Veteran. His epitaph reads: ‘When I was in the military, they gave me a medal for killing two men and a discharge for loving one.’

 

1983

The Ninth US Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco rules that federal immigration authorities cannot prevent lesbians and gay men from entering the country purely on the basis of their sexuality.

 

2008

Rachel Maddow (born April 1, 1973) becomes the first openly gay anchor of a major prime-time news program in the United States as host of The Rachel Maddow Show on MSNBC. In 1995 Rachel Maddow became the first openly gay or lesbian American to win an international Rhodes scholarship. In 2001, she earned a Doctor of Philosophy in politics at the University of Oxford. Her dissertation is titled HIV/AIDS and Health Care Reform in British and American Prisons. Maddow splits her time between Manhattan, New York and West Cummington, Massachusetts with her partner, artist Susan Mikula (born 1958). They met in 1999 when Maddow was working on her doctoral dissertation. Maddow has dealt with cyclical depression since puberty. In a 2012 interview, she stated, “It doesn’t take away from my joy or my work or my energy but coping with depression is something that is part of the everyday way that I live and have lived for as long as I can re-member.”

 

2012, Puerto Rico

Ana Ima Rivera Lassen (born 1955) becomes the third woman, first Black woman, and first openly lesbian person to be the president of the Puerto Rican Bar Association of lawyers. She has received many awards and honors for her work in the area of women’s rights and human rights, including the Capetillo-Roqué Medal from the Puerto Rican Senate, the Martin Luther King/Arturo Alfonso Schomburg Prize, and the Nilita Vientós Gastón Medal. She is a practicing attorney and serves on the faculty of several universities in Puerto Rico; she currently serves on the advisory council to the Program for Equality and Gender Equity of the Puerto Rican Judicial Branch.

 

September 9

  

1898

John Beverley Nichols (9 September 1898 – 15 September 1983) was an English author, playwright, journalist, composer, and public speaker. He wrote over 60 books and is best remembered for his books about his homes and gardens, the first of which was Down the Garden Path (1932). He was gay and is thought to have had a brief affair with a famous war poet, Siegfried Sassoon (8 September 1886 – 1 September 1967). Nichols’s long-term companion was actor and director Cyril Butcher (31 July 1909 – 23 February 1987).

 

1980, Canada

Metro Toronto Council, the governing body of greater Toronto area, refuses to pass Metro Bill of Rights which includes sexual orientation, and substitutes a weaker declaration about being an equal opportunity employer.

 

1985

In the New York City borough of Queens, parents launch a school boycott after the city allows a second grader with AIDS to attend classes.

 

1992

The Lesbian Avengers stage their first public action in the New York City borough of Queens when right-wingers attempt to suppress a multicultural “Children of the Rainbow” curriculum for elementary school children. The Lesbian Avengers  was founded in New York City by Ana Maria Simo, Sarah Schulman, Maxine Wolfe, Anne-christine D’Adesky, Marie Honan, and Anne Maguire as “a direct action group focused on issues vital to lesbian survival and visibility.” Dozens of other chapters quickly emerged world-wide, a few expanding their mission to include questions of gender, race, and class. On their first action, the Lesbian Avengers targeted right-wing attempts to suppress.

 

2019 Bosnia and Herzegovina

Bosnia and Herzegovina’s first pride event was held on this day in the capital Sarajevo.

 

September 10

 

1886

Hilda Doolittle (September 10, 1886 – September 27, 1961) is born. H.D., as she was called, befriended Sigmund Freud during the 1930s and became his patient in order to understand and express her bisexuality. H.D. married once and undertook a number of relationships with both men and women. She was unapologetic about her sexuality and thus became an icon for both the LGBT rights and feminist movements when her poems, plays, letters and essays were rediscovered during the 1970s and 1980s. Her lover was Annie Winifred Ellerman (2 September 1894 – 28 January 1983) who wrote under the name Bryher.

 

1978, Canada

A visit by anti-gay Anita Bryant to London, Ontario sparks a protest demonstration outside London Gardens Coliseum.

 

1981, Canada

Gays of Ottawa (GO) celebrates its tenth anniversary with the official opening of a community center at 175 Lisgar Street. The reception is attended by mayor Marion Dewar, Gordon Fairweather, head of Canadian Human Rights Commission, and MPP Michael Cassidy, leader of the Ontario provincial New Democratic Party.

 

1997

The U.S. Senate thrashes GLBT civil rights twice in one day, passing the so-called “Defense of Marriage Act” denying the right to federally recognized marriages to same sex couples. The Senate also defeats the “Employment Non-Discrimination Act” which would have barred job discrimination based on sexual orientation.

 

2002, South Africa

In Du Toit v Minister of Welfare and Population Development, the Constitutional Court of South Africa rules that same-sex couples must be allowed to adopt children jointly.

 

September 11

  

1885, UK

1928. H. Lawrence (11 September 1885 – 2 March 1930) is born in Nottinghamshire, England. He was an English novelist, poet, playwright, essayist, literary critic and painter. His collected works represent, among other things, an extended reflection upon the dehumanizing effects of modernity and industrialization. Some of the issues Lawrence explores are sexuality, emotional health, vitality, spontaneity, and instinct. A heavily censored abridgement of his book Lady Chatterley’s Lover was published in the United States by Alfred A. Knopf in 1928. This edition was posthumously re-issued in paperback both by Signet Books and by Penguin Books in 1946. Lawrence’s fascination with the theme of homosexuality, which is overtly manifested in Women in Love, could be related to his own sexual orientation.

 

1948

Jewelle Gomez (born September 11, 1948) is an American author, poet, critic and playwright. She lived in New York City for 22 years, working in public television, theater, as well as philanthropy, before relocating to the West Coast. Her writing—fiction, poetry, essays and cultural criticism—has appeared in a wide variety of outlets, both feminist and mainstream. Her work often intersects and addresses multiple ethnicities as well as the ideals of lesbian/feminism and issues. She has been interviewed for several documentaries focused on LGBT rights and culture. She is currently employed as Director of Grants and Community Initiatives for Horizons Foundation, the oldest lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender foundation in the U.S. She formerly served as the President of the San Francisco Public Library Commission. She and her partner, Dr. Diane Sabin (born 1952), were among the litigants against the state of California suing for the right to legal marriage. Diane is the Executive Director of the Lesbian Health & Research Center (LHRC) at the University of California, San Francisco. Her early work was in production of lesbian musical performers as well as the San Francisco Pride stages.

 

1961

KQED in San Francisco broadcasts The Rejected, the first made-for-television documentary about homosexuality on American television. The documentary was made for under $100 and features experts speaking about homosexuality from their various fields’ perspectives. Each expert dispels a negative stereotype in her or his segment, giving positive and normalizing view of homosexuality. The program is well received by viewers and critics. The Rejected was produced for KQED by John W. Reavis. It was later syndicated to National Educational Television (NET) stations across the country. The 60-minute film received positive critical reviews.

 

1976

A California Appeals court upholds lewd conduct convictions of two men arrested for “kissing in public” in a parked car at a freeway rest stop. Both are ordered to register as sex offenders

 

1993

The film And the Band Played On premieres. It was based on a 1987 book by San Francisco Chronicle journalist Randy Shilts (August 8, 1951 – February 17, 1994). The book chronicles the discovery and spread of the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) and acquired immune deficiency syndrome (AIDS) with a special emphasis on government indifference and political infighting, specifically in the United States, to what was then perceived as a specifically gay disease. Shilts’ premise is that AIDS was allowed to happen: while the disease is caused by a biological agent, incompetence and apathy toward those initially affected allowed its spread to become much worse. The film stars Lily Tomlin, Richard Gere, Alan Alda, Matthew Modine, and Anjelica Houston. It was dedicated to notable people with AIDS and survivors of the epidemic.

 

September 12

 

1857, UK

The word gay which appears in a pictured cartoon in Punch magazine is used to refer to prostitution. It arrived in English during the 12th century from Old French gai, most likely deriving ultimately from a Germanic source. In English, the word’s primary meaning was “joyful,” “carefree,” “bright” and “showy,” and the word was very commonly used with this meaning in speech and literature. For example, the optimistic 1890s are still often referred to as the Gay Nineties. The title of the 1938 French ballet Gaîté Parisienne (“Parisian Gaiety”), which became the 1941 Warner Brothers movie The Gay Parisian also illustrates this connotation. It was apparently not until the 20th century that the word was used to mean specifically “homosexual,” although it had earlier acquired sexual connotations. The word may have started to acquire associations of immorality as early as the 14th century but had certainly acquired them by the 17th. By the late 17th century it had acquired the specific meaning of “addicted to pleasures and dissipations,” an extension of its primary meaning of “carefree” implying “uninhibited by moral constraints.” A gay woman was a prostitute, a gay man a womanizer, and a gay house a brothel. The use of gay to mean “homosexual” was often an extension of its application to prostitution: a gay boy was a young man or boy serving male clients. Similarly, a gay cat was a young male apprenticed to an older hobo, commonly exchanging sex and other services for protection and tutelage. The application to homosexuality was also an extension of the word’s sexualized connotation of “carefree and uninhibited,” which implied a willingness to disregard conventional or respectable sexual mores. Such usage, documented as early as the 1920s, was likely present before the 20th century although it was initially more commonly used to imply heterosexually unconstrained lifestyles, as in the once-common phrase “gay Lothario.” A passage from Gertrude Stein‘s Miss Furr & Miss Skeene (1922) is possibly the first traceable published use of the word to refer to a homosexual relationship. Bringing Up Baby (1938) was the first film to use the word gay in apparent reference to homosexuality. By the mid-20th century, gay was well established in reference to hedonistic and uninhibited life-styles and its antonym straight, which had long had connotations of seriousness, respectability, and conventionality, had now acquired specific connotations of heterosexuality. In the case of gay, other connotations of frivolousness and showiness in dress (“gay apparel”) led to association with camp and effeminacy. This association no doubt helped the gradual narrowing in scope of the term towards its current dominant meaning, which was at first confined to subcultures. Gay was the preferred term since other terms such as queer were felt to be derogatory. Homosexual is perceived as excessively clinical since the sexual orientation now commonly referred to as “homosexuality” was at that time a mental illness diagnosis in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM). The sixties marked the transition in the predominant meaning of the word gay from that of “carefree” to the current “homosexual.”

 

1889, France

Film star Maurice Chevalier (September 12, 1888 – January 1, 1972) is born in Paris. He was a French actor, cabaret singer and entertainer. His trademark attire was a boater hat which he always wore on stage with a tuxedo. He was in a long-term relationship with his valet, Felix Paquet.

 

1946

Minnie Bruce Pratt (born September 12, 1946 in Selma, Alabama) is an American educator, activist and essayist. She is a professor of Writing and Women’s Studies at Syracuse University in Syracuse, New York, where she was invited to help develop the university’s first Lesbian/Gay/Bisexual/Transgender Study Program. In 1977, Pratt helped found WomonWrites, a Southeastern lesbian writers conference. Pratt lives in Syracuse, New York. She is the widow of author and activist Leslie Feinberg who died in November 2014. Feinberg and Pratt married in New York and Massachusetts in 2011.

 

1964

Chip Kidd (born September 12, 1964) is born. He is an author, editor, and graphic designer and is best known for the iconic covers of the novels Jurassic Park and Batman: Black and White.

 

1970

Lola, the Kinks song about transvestism, enters the Billboard Top 40 where it stays for 12 weeks.

 

1992

American actor Anthony Perkins(April 4, 1932 – September 12, 1992), known for his role as Norman Bates in the Psycho movies, dies from AIDS-related complications. He had exclusively same-sex relationships until his late 30s, including with actors Rock Hudson (November 17, 1925 – October 2, 1985) and Tab Hunter (July 11, 1931 – July 8, 2018); artist Christopher Makos (born 1948); dancer Rudolf Nureyev (17 March 1938 – 6 January 1993); composer/lyricist Stephen Sondheim (March 22, 1930); and dancer-choreographer Grover Dale (born July 22, 1935). Perkins has been described as one of the two great men in the life of French song-writer Patrick Loiseau (June 8, 1949).

 

2017

Edie Windsor (June 20, 1929 – September 12, 2017) dies. She was an LGBT rights activist and a former technology manager at IBM. She was the lead plaintiff in the Supreme Court case United States v. Windsor which successfully overturned Section 3 of the Defense of Marriage Act and was considered a landmark legal victory for the same-sex marriage movement in the United States. Windsor met Thea Spyer, a psychologist, in 1963 at Portofino, a restaurant in Greenwich Village. In 1967, Spyer asked Windsor to marry, although it was not yet legal anywhere in the United States. In 1977, Spyer was diagnosed with progressive multiple sclerosis. The disease caused a gradual, but ever-increasing paralysis. Windsor used her early retirement to become a full-time caregiver for Spyer. Windsor and Spyer entered a domestic partnership in New York City in 1993. Registering on the first available day, they were issued certificate number eighty. Spyer suffered a heart attack in 2002 and was diagnosed with aortic stenosis. In 2007, her doctors told her she had less than a year to live. New York had not yet legalized same-sex marriage, so the couple married in Toronto, Canada on May 22, 2007, with Canada’s first openly gay judge, Justice Harvey Brownstone presiding. An announcement of their wedding was published in the New York Times. Spyer died from complications related to her heart condition on February 5, 2009. On September 26, 2016, Windsor married Judith Kasen at New York City Hall. At the time of the wedding, Windsor was age 87 and Kasen was age 51. Her courage granted same-sex married couples federal recognition of our marriages and removed remaining state barriers to marriage equality. Edie led her fight with dignity and grace and those of us who are beneficiaries of her fight are forever touched by her.

 

September 13

  

1931, Denmark

Lili Elbe (28 December 1882 – 13 September 1931), possibly intersex and the recipient of the first sex-reassignment surgery, dies. She married Gerda Gottlieb in 1904 in Denmark, a marriage that the King of Denmark invalidated in 1930 in Germany. Lili died of post-surgical complications as her body rejected her new uterus. The film The Danish Girl is based on her story. In 1932, Man Into Woman, the Story of Lili Elbe’s Life was published.

 

1975, Canada

A large gay rights march sponsored by Coalition for Gay Rights in Ontario calls for reinstatement of John Damien who had been fired as a judge for the Ontario Jockey Club because he was gay. Protestors call for the inclusion of sexual orientation in human rights code. 

 

1977

Soap premieres on ABC with then unknown Billy Crystal playing Jodie Dallas, one of TV’s first prominent and sympathetic gay characters.

 

1995, Canada

The Celluloid Closet premieres at the Toronto International Film Festival. It is a 1995 American documentary film written and directed by Rob Epstein (born April 6, 1955) and Jeffrey Friedman (born August 24, 1951). The film is based on Vito Russo’s (July 11, 1946 – November 7, 1990) book of the same name first published in 1981 and on lecture and film clip presentations he gave from 1972 to 1982. Russo had researched the history of how motion pictures, especially Hollywood films, had portrayed gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender characters. The film was given a limited release in select U.S. theatres, including the Castro Theatre in San Francisco, in April 1996, and then screened on HBO.

 

1996

The U.S. Congress defeats a bill that would ban employment discrimination against lesbians and gay men.

1996

Lili Reinhart (born September 13, 1996) is born. The Riverdale star came out as a “proud bisexual woman” in June 2020 while urging fans to attend a Black Lives Matter solidarity event organized by members of the LGBTQ community. “Although I’ve never announced it publicly before, I am a proud bisexual woman,” Reinhart wrote on Instagram while providing information about the rally. “And I will be joining this protest today. Come join.”

 

2001

On Pat Robertson’s 700 Club, Jerry Falwell says feminists and gays and lesbians were responsible for the 9/11 attacks.

 

2004, Australia

The Gay and Lesbian Kingdom declares war on the Australian government for its failure to recognize same-sex marriages. They form a micro-nation and, under the Unjust Enrichment law, demand territorial compensation. While there was no military action, it did cement the Kingdom’s assertion that they exist as an independent country. The Gay and Lesbian Kingdom of the Coral Sea Islands (also known as The Gay Kingdom of the Coral Sea – for example on postage stamps) was established as a symbolic political protest by a group of gay rights activists based in Australia. Declared in 2004 in response to the Australian government’s refusal to recognize same-sex marriages, it was founded on Australia’s external over-seas Territory of the Coral Sea Islands, a group of uninhabited islets east of the Great Barrier Reef. It is an expression of queer nationalism.

 

September 14

  

1306, France

Philip IV orders the arrest of two Knights Templar because they exchanged an obscene kiss” that pretty much covered their entire bodies.

 

1876, France

Jeanne or Jean Bonnet was born in Paris but moved to San Francisco with their family as part of a French theatrical troupe. By the time Bonnet was fifteen, he was in trouble for fighting and petty thievery and was placed in the Industrial School, San Francisco’s first reform school. As an adult, Bonnet was arrested dozens of times for wearing male clothing, an illegal act that got him frequently mentioned in the press. Bonnet “cursed the day she was born a female instead of a male,” according to newspaper accounts. He was quoted as declaring, “The police might arrest me as often as they wish. I will never discard male attire as long as I live.” Bonnet spent much of his time on Kearny Street and made a fairly good living by catching frogs and selling them to French restaurants in downtown San Francisco. In 1875 he began visiting brothels, convincing the women to leave prostitution and form an all-female gang. Together they supported themselves by shoplifting. One of these gang members was Blanche Buneau or Beunon who had just arrived from Paris. Bonnet and Blanche moved to McNamara’s Hotel in San Miguel, just outside of San Francisco, to keep Blanche safe from a threatening ex-lover. On the evening of September 14, 1876, Bonnet was lying in bed waiting for Blanche when a shotgun blast came through the window, killing him instantly. It was eventually determined that the shot was meant for Blanche and was the act of either a jealous lover or a pimp wanting to kill Blanche as “an example to the other girls.” Unfortunately, neither theory was ever proven. The women of San Francisco’s red-light district came out en masse for Bonnet’s funeral.

 

1934

Katherine “Kate” Murray Millett (Sept. 14, 1934- September 5, 2017) is born. Kate was in her mid-30s and an unknown sculptor when her doctoral dissertation at Columbia University, Sexual Politics, was published by Doubleday and Co. Her core premise was that the relationship between the sexes is political, with the definition of politics including, as she once said, “arrangements whereby one group of persons is controlled by another.” After teaching briefly at the University of North Carolina, she pursued her art career in Japan and then New York, where she took a job at Barnard College teaching English literature. In 1965 she married the Japanese sculptor Fumio Yoshimura, but she rejected many traditional ideas of marriage and eventually came out as a lesbian. Her autobiographical work Flying, published in 1974, told of the dizzying fame Sexual Politics had brought and her reaction to it. Sita, in 1977, dealt with her sexuality. She is survived by her spouse Sophie Keir.

 

1953

Alfred Kinsey’s Sexual Behavior in the Human Female goes on sale reporting that “2 to 6% of females, aged 20-35, were more or less exclusively homosexual in experience/response.”

 

1954

David Michael Wojnarowicz (September 14, 1954 – July 22, 1992) is born. He was an American painter, photographer, writer, filmmaker, performance artist, songwriter/recording artist and AIDS activist prominent in the New York City art world. On October 11, 1992, David Robinson received wide media attention when he dumped the ashes of his partner, Warren Krause, on the grounds of the White House as a protest against President George H. W. Bush’s inaction in fighting AIDS. Robinson reported that this action was inspired by Wojnarowicz’s 1991 memoir Close to the Knives which imagined “what it would be like if, each time a lover, friend or stranger died of this disease, their friends, lovers or neighbors would take the dead body and drive with it in a car a hundred miles an hour to Washington D.C. and blast through the gates of the White House and come to a screeching halt before the entrance and dump their lifeless form on the front steps.” In 1996, Wojnarowicz’s own ashes were scattered on the White House lawn.

 

 1970

In New York City, Gay Activists Alliance stages the first of an orchestrated campaign of “zaps” in protest of continuing police harassment. They heckle Mayor John Lindsay as he enters the Metropolitan Opera House for its opening night gala.

 

1979, Canada

In Smeaton, Saskatchewan an education arbitration board orders teacher Don Jones reinstated to the job from which he was fired for being gay.

 

1986

Leslie Blanchard dies from AIDS in the arms of his partner of ten years, Miguel Braschi, in New York. Braschi’s name is not on the lease of their apartment so he is not protected by rent control. In 1989 the New York Court of Appeals case Braschi v Stahl Associates Co decided that the surviving partner of a same-sex relationship counted as “family” under New York law and was thus able to continue living in a rent controlled apartment belonging to the deceased partner. In a subsequent appeal, the court found that a “more realistic, and certainly equally valid view of a family includes two adult lifetime partners whose relationship is long term and characterized by an emotional and financial commitment and interdependence.” Application of this standard allowed Braschi to be considered a family member and prevented his eviction from the apartment. The decision represents the first time a court in the United States granted any kind of legal recognition to a same-sex couple.

 

1989

ACT UP led a noon protest of 350 people in front of the New York Stock Exchange, targeting Burroughs Wellcome and other companies that it felt were profiteering from the epidemic by their high pricing of the AIDS drug AZT, which was unaffordable to most people living with HIV. The demonstration was planned to coincide with those held in San Francisco and London that day. As a result of these demonstrations, Burroughs Wellcome lowered the price of AZT by 20 percent four days later.

  

September 15

  

1932

Ann Bannon (pseudonym of Ann Weldy, born September 15, 1932) is born. She is an American author who, from 1957 to 1962, wrote six lesbian pulp fiction novels known as The Beebo Brinker Chronicles. The books’ enduring popularity and impact on lesbian identity has earned her the title “Queen of Lesbian Pulp Fiction.” Ann Bannon retired from teaching and college administration at California State University, Sacramento in 1997.

 

1969

Gay Power, New York’s first gay newspaper and the first publication to emerge from the post-Stonewall movement, publishes its premiere issue. Gay Power was a biweekly newspaper edited by John Heys. It covered the culture and politics of the New York gay scene through a very personal vision. Each issue featured psychedelic covers and centerfolds and one of its covers was created by Robert Mapplethorpe. The newspaper also contained illustrations by Touko Laaksonen, better known as Tom of Finland as well as regular contributors as Arthur Bell, Taylor Mead, Charles Ludlam, Pudgy Roberts, Bill Vehr, Pat Maxwell, Clayton Cole and regular columns from all of the active gay activists groups, from the most conservative Mattachine Society to the most radical Gay Liberation Front.

 

1980, Canada

A Toronto Board of Education subcommittee to look into establishing a liaison between the Board and the gay and lesbian community caves from pressure from fundamentalist Christian groups, and votes to disband. It was the committee’s very first meeting.

 

1988

ACT UP protests New York’s MoMA’s exhibit of graphic photos of people with AIDS by photographer Nicholas Nixon who was neither gay nor had AIDS. “The artist makes people with AIDS look like freaks.”

 

1992

Homosexuality is removed from the International Statistical Classification of Diseases by the World Health Organization.

 

1996

The European Parliament calls for an end to “all discrimination against homosexuals… and/or inequality of treatment concerning homosexuals” in every country of the European Union.

 

2011, Australia

“X” became the gender option for intersex people on their passports while transgender people continue to choose between “male” and “female.”

  

September 16

1730, Amsterdam

Navy Chief of Detectives Laurens Hospuijn (? – September 16, 1730) is executed for sodomy in Amsterdam. He was strangled and thrown into the water with a 100-pound weight.

 

1994

At the insistence of the U.S., the United Nations suspends the International Lesbian and Gay Association (ILGA) from observer status because of allegations that ILGA’s members include groups that promote pedophilia. It is not.

 

1994

Richard A. Heyman (1935 – September 16, 1994) dies. He was mayor of Key West, Florida from 1983 to 1985 and from 1987 to 1989. He was one of the first openly gay public officials in the United States. Under his leadership, the City of Key West passed a resolution to make it illegal for employers to fire staff who had HIV/AIDS. Heyman died of AIDS-related pneumonia on September 16, 1994 at the age of 59. His papers are held at the Cornell University Library in Ithaca, New York. The Richard A. Heyman Environmental Pollution Control Facility in Key West was named in his honor. In 2010, a documentary about Richard Heyman’s first term as mayor, directed by John Mikytuck, entitled The Newcomer, was released. Heyman’s long-time partner was artist John Kiraly.

 

2013, Israel

Israeli couple, Yuval Topper-Erez, a transman, and his husband Matan, became the first to be jointly recognized as biological fathers.

 

2019

A Little Late with Lilly Singh premiered on on this day making Singh the first late-night host to ever publicly identify as bisexual.

 

September 17

 

 

1480, Spain

The Spanish Inquisition is established as a court for the detection of heretics, although its true purpose remains somewhat obscure, but between 1000 and 1600 people were charged with the crime of sodomy. During the 350 years of the Spanish Inquisition, the total number of “heretics” burned at the stake totaled nearly 32,000.

 

1778

Friedrich von Steuben (September 17, 1730 – November 28, 1794) arrives in Valley Forge to offer his expertise to the Continental Army. Von Steuben had been forced out of the Prussian military due to homosexual scandals. He is considered the father of the United States military. He was a gay man who wrote the Revolutionary War Drill Manual and introduced drills, tactics and discipline to the rag-tag militia which resulted in victory over the British. He has a statue at Valley Forge and another in Lafayette Park in Washington, D.C. Towns, buildings and a college football field have been named after him; there is even an annual Steuben Day Parade held in his honor every September in cities such as New York and Chicago (in Ferris Bueller’s Day Off, Ferris lip syncs Wayne Newton’s Danke Schoen during Chicago’s Steuben Day Parade). No foreigner besides Marquis de Lafayette has been so adored in America as von Steuben. The one fact that seems to be left out is that von Steuben was known to “have affections to members of his own sex” and was even identified as a “sodomite,” which is rumored to be the reason he left Prussia for France where he ultimately met Ben Franklin. Upon arriving at Valley Forge, von Steuben was immediately accepted by Washington who recognized his military genius. Steuben single-handedly turned a militia, consisting mostly of farmers, into a well-trained, disciplined, professional army that was able to stand musket-to-musket combat with the British. Washington and the Continental Army officially adopted von Steuben’s methods and renamed them Regulations for the Order and Discipline of the Troops of the United State, known in military circles today simply as The Blue Book.

  

1948

Ruth Fulton Benedict (June 5, 1887 – September 17, 1948) dies. She was an American anthropologist and folklorist. Benedict held the post of President of the American Anthropological Association and was also a prominent member of the American Folklore Society. Benedict taught her first anthropology course at Barnard college in 1922 and among her students was Margaret Mead (December 16, 1901 – November 15, 1978). Benedict was a significant influence on Mead. She was her sometimes lover and lifelong friend . Mead and Ruth Benedict are considered to be the two most influential and famous anthropologists of their time. One of the reasons Mead and Benedict got along well was because they both shared a passion for their work and they each felt a sense of pride at being a successful working woman during a time when this was uncommon. They were known to critique each other’s work frequently; they created a companionship that began through their work, but which also was of an erotic character. Both Benedict and Mead wanted to dislodge stereotypes about women during their time and show that working women can be successful even though working society was seen as a man’s world. In her memoir about her parents With a Daughter’s Eye, Margaret Mead’s daughter implies that the relationship between Benedict and Mead was partly sexual. In 1946, Benedict received the Achievement Award from the American Association of University Women. After Benedict died of a heart attack in 1948, Mead kept the legacy of Benedict’s work going by supervising projects that Benedict would have looked after and editing and publishing notes from studies that Benedict had collected throughout her life.

 

1972

M*A*S*H premieres on CBS introducing the world to Cpl. Max Klinger, televisions first on-going heterosexual cross-dressing character.

 

1976, Canada

Toronto gay activist Brian Mossop is expelled from the Communist Party of Canada for being openly gay and advocating homosexuality.

  

September 18

 

2018

The man who founded both the first gay bookstore and the first gay mail-order service in the United States was Edward Sagarin (September 18, 1913 – June 10, 1986), author of The Homosexual in America, the first non-fiction, insider account of the American LGBTQ community. Writing under the pseudonym Donald Webster Cory, he was one of the first to proclaim that gay people constituted a minority group similar to African Americans and Jews. His book politicized so many young men and women who went on to become LGBTQ activists that Cory has been dubbed the “father of the homophile movement.” Leveraging the names and addresses of the thousands of men and women who wrote praising his book, Cory founded the Cory Book Service in 1952, the first independent business devoted exclusively to selling books on LGBTQ topics. By identifying, reviewing, and selling gay fiction and nonfiction, the Cory Book Service not only encouraged and popularized LGBTQ literature, it was one of the first national LGBTQ organizations. Its mailing list was instrumental in the founding of ONE magazine, the major homophile periodical of the 1950s. In April 1953, Cory expanded his successful mail-order service to open The Book Cellar, the first bookstore tailored to the gay market. Gore Vidal and other gay authors occasionally did book signings at the bookstore. Cory described it as a “small but very personal place” that he hoped would become both a local and national destination. While The Book Cellar lasted only a few years, the Cory Book Service developed a wide and loyal following, reaching more than five thousand subscribers under its successor organization The Winston Book Club. It inspired over a dozen similar LGBTQ mail-order book services, including the Guild Book Service (by H. Lynn Womack), the DOB Book Service (by the Daughters of Bilitis), and the Dorian Book Service (by Hal Call). Hal Call of the San Francisco-based Mattachine Society was the first to turn his Dorian Book Service into a successful storefront bookstore. In March 1967, Call partnered with Bob Damron and Harrison Keleinschmidt (a.k.a. J. D. Mercer) to open the Adonis Bookstore in San Francisco’s Tenderloin neighborhood, around the corner from the Club Turkish Baths and Compton’s Cafeteria. It featured books, magazines, paintings, physique art, gay greeting cards, records, sculptures, novelties, and gifts. Promotional material touted it as a “gay supermarket.”

 

2017

Richard Allen Grenell (born September 18, 1966) is an American diplomat, political advisor, and media consultant who served as Acting Director of National Intelligence in President Donald Trump’s Cabinet in 2020, making him the first openly gay person to serve in a U.S. cabinet-level position. Grenell was a U.S. State Department spokesperson to the United Nations during the George W. Bush administration. Following his State Department tenure, he formed Capitol Media Partners, a political consultancy; he also was a Fox News contributor. On this day, Trump nominated Grenell as the U.S. Ambassador to Germany. His tenure in Germany was controversial due to his association with the far right and a perceived lack of professionalism. Grenell is a registered Republican. His longtime partner is founder of chemoWave Matt Lashey.

 

1980, Canada

The Toronto Board of Education adopts a policy banning discrimination based on sexual orientation while adding a clause forbidding “proselytizing of homosexuality in the schools.”

 

1981

The film Mommie Dearest opens, simultaneously glorifying and condemning gay icon Joan Crawford.

  

September 19

  

1551, France

Henri III (19 September 1551 – 2 August 1589) is born at Fontainebleu, France. He was the King of the Polish-Lithuanian Common-wealth from 1573 to 1575 and King of France from 1574 until his death. He was the last French monarch of the House of Valois. Reports that Henry engaged in same sex relations with his court favorites, known as the mignons, date back to his own time. On August 1, 1589, Henry III lodged with his army at Saint-Cloud, preparing to attack Paris, when a young fanatical Dominican friar, Jacques Clément, carrying false papers, was granted access to deliver important documents to the king. The monk gave the king a bundle of papers and stated that he had a secret message to deliver. The king signaled for his attendants to step back for privacy. Clément whispered in his ear while plunging a knife into his abdomen. Clément was then killed on the spot by the guards.

 

1964

Organized by activist Randy Wicker (born February 3, 1938), a small group picketed New York City’s Whitehall Street Induction Center after the confidentiality of gay men’s draft records was violated. Randy Wicker, Renee Cafiero, other activists, and representatives of the New York League for Sexual Freedom picket the Whitehall Induction Center in protest of the Military’s anti-gay and lesbian policies. This action has been identified as the first gay rights demonstration in the United States.

 

1970, Sydney, Australia

John Ware and Christabel Poll, founders of the newly formed Campaign Against Moral Persecution, Inc. (CAMP, Inc.) become the first gay man and the first lesbian, respectively, to come out in the country’s history when an interview featuring them is published in the newspaper The Australian.

 

1988

Greg Louganis (born January 29, 1960) is injured during the Seoul Olympics. His head struck the springboard during the preliminary rounds, leading to a concussion. He completed the preliminaries despite his injury. He then earned the highest single score of the qualifying round for his next dive and repeated the dive during the finals, earning the gold medal by a margin of 25 points.

 

2003, Belize

Same-sex sexual activity is banned with a 10-year jail sentence if caught.

 

September 20

  

356 BC

Alexander the Great, King of Macedonia (356 BC—323 BC) is born. He is considered one of the greatest military geniuses of all time. Alexander was born in 356 BC in Pella, the ancient capital of Macedonia. He was the son of Philip II, King of Macedonia, and Olympias, the princess of neighboring Epirus. Alexander spent his childhood watching his father transform Macedonia into a great military power, and watching him win victory after victory on the battlefields throughout the Balkans. Historians believe he was gay; the American Library Association’s list of GLBT historical figures includes Alexander the Great.

 

1890, Germany

Dr. Erwin Gohrbandt studied medicine at the Military Medical Academy and graduated in 1917. He worked at the Charité Universitätsmediz in Berlin. In Berlin in 1931, he did the initial operations on the first two transsexuals to have sex reassignment surgery. Dr. Gohrbandt later becomes a decorated surgeon-general in the Luftwaffe.

 

1917, France

Bisexual American painter Romaine Brooks (May 1, 1874 – December 7, 1970) had a three-year affair with Russian ballerina Ida Rubinstein (September 21,1883 – September 20, 1960) and had painted portraits of her during that time. One was the “Weeping Venus “which was featured on this day at the opening of Expo Centre Pompidou Metz.

 

1971

John Singer (October 21, 1944 – June 5, 2000), later known as Faygele ben Miriam, and fellow activist Paul Barwick (born 1946) apply for a marriage license in Seattle. Singer was a U.S. activist for LGBT rights, and a gay marriage pioneer, filing one of the first gay marriage lawsuits in American history after being denied a marriage license at the King County Administration Building in Seattle, Washington in 1971. The case, Singer v. Hara, was the best-known gay marriage case in the state of Washington until Andersen v. King County in 2006. Barwick served three years in the U.S. Army during the Vietnam War, working as a military policeman. Later, he became an emergency dispatcher for the Washington State Patrol. He attended Olympic College in Bremerton. He currently lives in San Francisco, California, his residence for the last 30 years.

1973

In their so-called “battle of the sexes,” tennis star (and still closeted-at-that-time lesbian) Billie Jean King (born November 22, 1943) defeats Bobby Riggs in straight sets, 6-4, 6-3, 6-3, at the Houston Astrodome.

 

1958

The New York chapter of Daughters of Bilitis is formed by a group of lesbians including Barbara Gittings (July 31, 1932 – February 18, 2007). They meet at the offices of the Mattachine Society of New York. The chapter is the first lesbian organization on the East Coast.

  

1980

Bruce Mailman (1939-June 9, 1994) opens the Saint disco in New York City, heralding what many gay New Yorkers remember as the zenith of the clone era. He was an East Village entrepreneur, Off-Broadway theatre-owner and founder of The Saint and New St. Marks Baths. In 1979, he bought the building that would become the New Saint Marks Baths at 6 St. Marks Place. He sought to provide a cleaner environment for a gay bathhouse than had been the case prior. He claimed it was the largest bathhouse in the world. In 1981 he bought the neighboring 8 St. Marks with hopes of doubling the size. In 1980 he bought the Fillmore East and converted it to The Saint nightclub. Both institutions would run into trouble with the advent of the AIDS crisis. Mailman died of AIDS in 1994.

 

1996

President Bill Clinton announced his signing of a bill outlawing same-sex marriage but said it should not be used as an excuse for discrimination, violence or intimidation against gays and lesbians.

 

1996, Saudi Arabia

Twenty-four Filipino workers receive the first 50 lashes of their 200-lash sentence for alleged “homosexual behavior.” Despite protests from Amnesty International, the government goes ahead with the sentence and later deports the workers.

 

2010, Peru

LGBT activist Alberto Osorio was found murdered in his apartment in Lima. Eight similar crimes against LGBT individuals in Peru occurred in the same year.

 

2011

The U.S. military’s “Don’t Ask Don’t Tell” policy is officially repealed. It had been in effect since 1993.

 

2013

Cassidy Lynn Campbell, 16, becomes the first transgender public school homecoming queen in the U.S., at Marina High School in Huntington Beach, CA.

 

September 21

  

1948

Historian and professor John D’Emilio (September 21, 1948) is born. He is professor emeritus of history and of women’s and gender studies at the University of Illinois at Chicago. He had taught at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro. He earned his Ph.D. from Columbia University in 1982. He was a National Endowment for the Humanities fellow in 1997 and a Guggenheim fellow in 1998. D’Emilio served as Director of the Policy Institute at the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force from 1995 to 1997. In 2005 he was inducted into the Chicago Gay and Lesbian Hall of Fame. He received the Bill Whitehead Award for Lifetime Achievement from Publishing Triangle in 2013. Jim Oleson, his partner since the early 1980s, died at their home in Chicago on April 4, 2015.

 

1955

In San Francisco four lesbian couples, including Phyllis Lyon (born November 10, 1924 – April 9, 2020) and Del Martin  (May 5, 1921 – August 27, 2008), founded the Daughters of Bilitis, the first homophile organization exclusively for women. Forty-nine years later, Lyon and Martin would become the first same-sex couple ever to marry legally in the United States when San Francisco begins issuing licenses. Their marriage would be subsequently annulled by the California Supreme Court, along with more than 4,000 other couples’ marriages, in its ruling that Mayor Gavin Newsom was exceeding his authority by determining that it was unconstitutional to deny these couples marriage licenses. On June 16, 2008, after 55 years in love, Lyon and Martin married again, legally.

 

1982

The Oklahoma Supreme Court awards custody of two boys to their divorced gay father, declaring homosexuality isn’t in itself grounds for ruling a parent unfit.

 

1993

Actress Amanda Bearse (born August 9, 1958) comes out while co-starring on the television series Married with Children.

 

1996

President Bill Clinton signs the Defense of Marriage Act, banning federal recognition of same-sex marriage and defining marriage as “a legal union between one man and one woman as husband and wife.”

 

1998

Will & Grace, the first prime-time program to feature openly gay lead characters, premiers.

 

2003, Canada

Soldier’s Girl, a film based on a true story about solider in love with a transsexual woman, is nominated for an Emmy.

 

2009

Openly transgender Michelle Poley wins an Emmy as part of the CNN Election Center team.

 

2010

Dan Savage (born October 7, 1964) and husband Terry Miller up-load their first It Gets Better video on YouTube. Dan is an American author, media pundit, journalist, and activist for the LGBT community. He writes Savage Love, an internationally syndicated relationship and sex advice column. In 2010, Savage and his husband, Terry Miller, began the It Gets Better Project to help prevent suicide among LGBT youth. He has also worked as a theater director, sometimes credited as Keenan Hollahan.

  

September 22

 

1676

Governor Edmond Andros of New York issues an order extending the 1665 sodomy law of New York into what is now Pennsylvania and Delaware.

 

1928

The Chicago Defender, one of the pre-eminent African American newspapers, runs an ad for a new record by Ma Rainey (1886-1939) called Prove It on Me Blues. The lyrics are unmistakably about women-loving-women.

 

1938

Reverend Magora E. Kennedy (born September 22, 1938) is born in Albany, New York. She was educated at Boston University and Yale Divinity School in New Haven, Connecticut and began her career as a lecturer, teacher and historian teaching African History/Herstory and God/Goddess, King/Queen connection. She is a Black lesbian and Chaplain of the National Stonewall Rebellion Veterans Association.

 

1975, Canada

Doug Wilson, a graduate student in education at University of Saskatchewan, is prevented from practice teaching in Saskatoon because he was publicly active in the gay movement. The president of the university calls it a “managerial decision.”

 

1975

Oliver Sipple (November 20, 1941 – February 2, 1989), a gay man and former U. S. Marine and Vietnam veteran, prevents a gunshot fired by Sara Jane Moore from hitting President Gerald Ford, in San Francisco. The subsequent public revelation that Sipple was gay turned the news story into a cause célèbre for LGBT rights activists, leading Sipple to unsuccessfully sue several publishers for invasion of privacy.

 

2000

The Backstreet Café in Roanoke, V.A. was attacked by a man named Ronald Gay who specifically said he was on a mission to kill gay people. The 55-year-old drifter opened fire at the bar killing one man, Danny Lee Overstreet, and wounding six others.

September 22, 2019

Billy Porter becomes the first openly gay Black man to win the Emmy for best lead actor in a drama series. He came out as HIV+ on May 19, 2021.

 

September 23

Bisexuality Day and Bisexual Awareness Week

 

1965, India

Indian prince Manavendra Singh Gohil (born September 23, 1965), believed to be the only openly gay royal in the world, was born. His family disowned him when he first came out in the media in 2006. He has since been welcomed back. The Prince is the founder of an HIV/AIDS prevention charity. He runs another charity, The Lakshya Trust, which works with the LGBT community.

 

1970

Ani Difranco (born September 23, 1970) is born. She becomes an articulate, intelligent, out bisexual punk folksinger with her own record label, Righteous Babe Records, in an industry dominated by multinational corporations. She’s proud that she not only writes and publishes her own songs, but also produces her own recordings, creates the artwork, and releases them.

 

1970

On the CBS Television series Medical Center, a medical researcher announces, “I am a homosexual.” Although his “condition” is portrayed as unfortunate, the program is acclaimed as the first sympathetic treatment of a gay man in an American TV drama.

 

1984

First Folsom Street Fair takes place, organized by the San Francisco BDSM and Leather Fetish community.

 

1999

First Celebration of Bisexuality Day, sponsored by BiNet, to recognize bisexuality, bi history, and the bi community.

  

September 24

  

1482, Switzerland

Richard Puller von Hohenberg is burned at the stake along with his servant Anton Matzler in Zurich. They are accused of having a homosexual relationship.

 

1731, The Netherlands

Twenty-two men are strangled and burned in a mass execution in Zuidhorn under the charge of sodomy.

 

1981, Canada

In Toronto, a Provincial Court judge acquits Don Franco of charges of keeping a common bawdyhouse in his own home. Police had burst in on Franco while he was having a three-some in 1979.

 

1981, Canada

Out of the Closet: A Study of Relations Between the Homosexual Community and Police, commissioned by Toronto city council, is released by Arnold Bruner, the author of the report. It recognizes the gay community as legitimate part of community and calls for a permanent police/gay dialogue committee.

 

1992

The Kentucky Supreme Court rules that the state’s anti-sodomy laws violate the rights to privacy and equal protection as guaranteed by the state constitution.

 

2003, Egypt

Sixty-two men are arrested for homosexuality. They’re charged with “habitual practice of debauchery” and face up to three years in prison.

 

2004, Canada

Nova Scotia becomes the sixth of Canada’s provinces or territories to have legal same-sex marriage.

 

2007, Iran

Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad claims Iran has no homosexuals while speaking at Columbia University.

  

2020

Boystown, the historic gay neighborhood in Chicago will now be known as Northalsted after calls from certain groups that it should be named something more inclusive. The Northalsted Business Alliance announced Wednesday it was eliminating the use of “Boystown” in its marketing campaigns to be more inclusive of all genders despite the fact that most of the area’s businesses are gay male orientated.

 

September 25

 

1791, France

In France, the new law code, enacted as part of the French Revolution, effectively decriminalizes sodomy by including no mention of sex between consenting adults.

 

1949, Spain

Pedro Almodóvar Caballero (born September 25, 1949) is a Spanish film director, screenwriter, producer and former actor. He came to prominence as a director and screenwriter during La Movida Madrileña, a cultural renaissance that followed the death of Spanish dictator Francisco Franco. His first few films characterized the sense of sexual and political freedom of the period. Almodóvar is gay and has been with his partner, actor and photographer Fernando Iglesias, since 2002. Almodóvar often casts him in small roles in his films.

 

1976

Three volunteer members of the Mississippi Gay Alliance are arrested in Smith Park in Jackson, charged with loitering. The U.S. Civil Rights Commission label the incident as part of a pattern of police harassment.

 

1984

Over 5800 Pages of J. Edgar Hoover’s personal war on Sex Deviate gays is released. He waged an unrelenting war against gays even though he was gay himself and lived with his lover Clyde Tolson for decades.

 

2004

California governor Arnold Schwarzenegger signs AB 2900, a bill to unify all state anti-discrimination codes to match the California Fair Employment and Housing Act.

 

2010, Germany

A homosexual-specific Holocaust memorial plaque is unveiled at the NatzweilerStruthof concentration camp. The plaque reads In Memory of the Victims of Nazi Barbarity Deported Because of Their Homosexuality.

2019

Mattel launched the world’s first line of gender-neutral dolls which they marketed as Creatable World. These is a customizable doll line offering endless combinations all in one box so that kids may create their own characters. Extensive wardrobe options, accessories and wigs allow kids to style the doll with short or long hair, or in a skirt, pants, or both. For more information, please visit www.CreatableWorld.com.

 

September 26

 

1915

Argenio Fanucci is imprisoned in Seattle, WA, for the crime of carnal knowledge.

 

1957

Leonard Bernstein’s ground-breaking musical West Side Story (later made into the film by the same name) opens on Broadway. The musical is a modern remake of the classic Romeo and Juliet by playwright William Shakespeare. Historians describe Bernstein as bisexual and some conjecture that Shakespeare was gay.

 

1965

In San Francisco, thirty people picketed Grace Cathedral to protest punitive actions taken against Rev. Canon Robert Cromey for his involvement in the Council on Religion and the Homosexual, an alliance between LGBT people and religious leaders.

 

1970

In Los Angeles, Gay Liberation Front demonstrators persuade bar owners to allow gay patrons to hold hands.

 

1973, Canada

Toronto’s Club Baths opens at 231 Mutual Street. It is the first of modern gay-operated bathhouses in Canada.

 

1975

The Rocky Horror Picture Show opens in Los Angeles.

 

1992

Amid a bitterly contested campaign in Oregon for and against Measure 9, an anti-gay rights initiative, a lesbian and a gay man are killed when local skinheads throw a Molotov cocktail into their apartment in Salem.

 

2000, South Korea

Hon Seok-Cheon (born February 3, 1971) comes out as gay and is fired from his acting role on the children’s television program Popopo. In 2008 he hosted a television program called Coming Out about the lives of lesbians and gay men.

 

2013, Mexico

Boys on the Road, the first gay travel TV program in Latin America, premieres on E! Entertainment.

 

September 27

1907, Ohio

John Leonell, 23, and Tom McLaughlin, 28, die by suicide in an Ohio hotel room, locked in each other’s arms.

 

1970

Chicago Gay Alliance separates from the local Gay Liberation Front (GLF), declaring in a position statement that GLF’s political agenda is too broad to be effective in the struggle for gay and lesbian civil rights.

 

1974

The National Gay [later “and Lesbian”] Task Force and other lesbian and gay activists persuade major consumer advertisers to withdraw commercials from a Marcus Welby, MD, episode about a high school boy who is raped by a male teacher. Their achievement is hailed as the first successful protest against alleged defamation of gay men on American television.

 

1994, Canada

Real Menard (born May 13, 1962), a Montreal representative of the Bloc Quebecois, becomes the second MP to come out when he tells reporters that he is “speaking for the community” to which he belongs when he protests the televised statements of another member of Parliament, Roseanne Skoke of Nova Scotia, among which is the claim that “this [gay and lesbian] love, this compassion, based on an inhuman act, defiles human-ity, destroys family … and is annihilating mankind.”

 

2013

New Jersey Superior Court rules that same-sex couples be allowed to marry.

 

September 28

 

1292, Ghent (in present-day Belgium)

John, a knife maker, is sentenced to be burned at the stake for having sex with another man. This is the first documented execution for sodomy in Western Europe

 

1877

The first lesbian marriage takes place in Nevada when Sarah Maud Pollard, as Samuel M. Pollard, married Marancy Hughes in Tuscarora, Elko County, Nevada Territory. Sarah Pollard was born in 1846 in New York, the daughter of a middle-class merchant family. After working in a shoe factory in Massachusetts and sewing shirts in New York, she headed west to Colorado in the 1870s. She caused a stir because of her masculine appearance. Around 1876 she moved to Nevada and took up wearing male clothing in order to find work. She began calling herself “Sam.” She met young Marancy Hughes, born in 1861 in Missouri, and actively courted her. Hughes’ family hated Pollard and the couple eloped on September 28, 1877. They were happily married for six months until Marancy broke the secret. The small silver-mining town of Tuscarora, Nevada was transfixed by the story. The matter ended up in court and after Marancy testified, a dramatic reunion took place. Stories about the troubled marriage were carried in newspapers across the country (even appearing in a New Zealand paper. The couple broke up two more times before Marancy moved on to a marriage with a man in 1880. Sarah moved to Minnesota to start a new life by 1883, working by herself on a farm. The story of her successful farming career again made national newspapers, which noted she wore a bloomers-type outfit while plowing. By the 1890s she met a woman named Helen Stoddard, a schoolteacher who was born in 1864 in Vermont. In later census records Helen was listed as her partner or companion. Sarah died in 1929 and Helen paid for her arrangements at a local funeral home, the owners puzzling over the relationship of the two women.

 

1947

Author Margaret Wise Brown’s (May 23, 1910 – November 13, 1952) classic children’s book Goodnight Moon is published. In the summer of 1940 Brown began a long-term relationship with Blanche Oelrichs (October 1, 1890 – November 5, 1950) (nom de plume Michael Strange), poet/playwright, actress, and the former wife of John Barrymore. The relationship, which began as a mentoring one, eventually became romantic, and included cohabitating at 10 Gracie Square in Manhattan beginning in 1943. As a studio, they used Cobble Court, a wooden house later moved to Charles Street. Oelrichs, who was 20 years Brown’s senior, died in 1950.

 

1975

Serbian Prime Minister Ana Brnabić’s (28 September 1975) partner Milica gave birth to a boy in 2019. Brnabic is therefore believed to be the first prime minister in a same-sex couple whose partner gave birth while the prime minister was in office. She has served as the Prime Minister of Serbia since 2017. She is the first woman and first openly gay person to hold the office. In 2019, Brnabić was ranked by Forbes magazine as the 88th most powerful woman in the world and as the 19th most powerful female political and policy leader.

 

2011, Strasburg

The European Parliament in Strasburg passes a resolution against discrimination based on sexual orientation.

 

SEPTEMBER 29

 

1926

The Captive, a melodrama about a young woman seduced by an older woman (her “shadow”), creates a sensation on Broadway for its lesbian undertones.

 

1948

Rope, an Alfred Hitchcock film with a gay subtext, opens in theaters. Based on the play of the same name by Patrick Hamilton and adapted by Hume Cronyn, it was inspired by the real-life thrill kill murder of 14-year-old Bobby Franks in 1924 by gay University of Chicago students Nathan Leopold and Richard Loeb.

 

1973

63. H. Auden (21 February 1907 – 29 September 1973) dies in Vienna at age 63. He was an English-American poet whose work was noted for its stylistic and technical achievement, its engagement with politics, morals, love, and religion, and its variety in tone, form and content. From around 1927 to 1939 Auden and Christopher Isherwood maintained a lasting but intermittent sexual friendship while both had briefer but more intense relations with other men. In 1939 Auden fell in love with Chester Kallman and regarded their relation as a marriage; this ended in 1941 when Kallman refused to accept the faithful relation that Auden demanded. The two maintained their friendship, and from 1947 until Auden’s death, they lived in the same house or apartment in a non-sexual relation, often collaborating on opera libretti such as The Rake’s Progress for music by Igor Stravinsky.

 

1991

California Governor Pete Wilson vetoes AB 101, a gay and lesbian employment rights bill, inciting what some call Stonewall II, a month of marches and angry protests across the state.

 

1992

Actor, singer, and songwriter Paul Jabara (January 31, 1948 – September 29, 1992) dies from AIDS related complications at the age of 44. Jabara wrote Donna Summer’s Last Dance from Thank God It’s Friday, Barbra Streisand’s song The Main Event/Fight (1979), and co-wrote the Weather Girls hit It’s Raining Men with Paul Shaffer. Paul Jabara won both Grammy Award for Best R&B Song and the Academy Award for Best Original Song for Last Dance in which he also played the role of Carl, the lovelorn and nearsighted disco goer.

 

2004, Sierra Leone

FannyAnn Viola Eddy (1974–September 28, 2004) was an activist for lesbian and gay rights in her native Sierra Leone and throughout Africa. In 2002, she founded the Sierra Leone Lesbian and Gay Association, the first of its kind in Sierra Leone. She traveled widely, addressing the United Nations and other international groups. In April 2004, she advocated the passing of the Brazilian Resolution at the UN in Geneva. Eddy was murdered on September 29, 2004, when a group of at least three men broke into the office of the Sierra Leone Lesbian and Gay Association in central Freetown, gang-raped her, stabbed her, and eventually broke her neck. Eddy left behind a 10-year-old son and girlfriend Esther Chikalipa. In 2008 the FannyAnn Eddy Poetry Award was named in her honor.

 

2006

Closet case Florida Republican congressman Mark Foley (born September 8, 1954) resigns after Instant Messages of a sexual nature between him and underage male congressional pages are revealed.

 

2006

GLAAD files and wins a lawsuit on behalf of Rhode Island to allow out-of-state same-sex couples to marry in Massachusetts, the only state in the country in which same-sex marriage is legal.

 

2012

California becomes the first state to ban gay conversion therapy on minors to “cure” them of their homosexuality.

  

SEPTEMBER 30

  

1924

Truman Capote (born Truman Streckfus Persons, September 30, 1924 – August 25, 1984) is born. He was an American novelist, screen-writer, playwright, and actor, many of whose short stories, novels, plays, and nonfiction are recognized as literary classics, including the novella Breakfast at Tiffany’s (1958) and the true crime novel In Cold Blood (1966) which he labeled as a nonfiction novel. At least 20 films and television dramas have been produced of Capote novels, stories, and plays. Capote was openly homosexual. One of his first serious lovers was Smith College literature professor Newton Arvin. Although Capote seemed never really to embrace the gay rights movement, his own openness about homosexuality and his encouragement for openness in others makes him an important player in the realm of gay rights nonetheless. Capote died in Bel Air, Los Angeles, on August 25, 1984, age 59. According to the coroner’s report, the cause of death was liver disease complicated by phlebitis and multiple drug intoxication. He died at the home of his old friend Joanne Carson, ex-wife of late-night TV host Johnny Carson on whose program Capote had been a frequent guest. Gore Vidal responded to news of Capote’s death by calling it “a wise career move.”

 

1935

Johnny Mathis (born September 30, 1935) is born. A beloved velvet-voiced jazz and pop singer, Johnny would come out to his public in an interview for Us magazine in June 1982.

 

1959, Paraguay

The first public action for gay rights takes place after the Paraguayan government arrests hundreds of gay men without warrant and tortures them for being gay.

 

1983

New York State sues a West 12th Street co-op for trying to evict Dr. Joseph Sonnabend for treating AIDS patients. He later receives $10,000 and a new lease.

 

2000, Australia

Swedish athlete Kajsa Bergqvist (born 12 October 1976) wins the Olympic Bronze Medal for high jumping. She comes out as lesbian in 2011.

August 1

 

1819

American author and novelist Herman Melville (August 1, 1819 – September 28, 1891) is born in New York City. He was an American novelist, short story writer, and poet of the American Renaissance period. His best-known works include Typee (1846), a romantic account of his experiences in Polynesian life, and his whaling novel Moby Dick (1851). His novella Billy Budd, left unfinished at his death, was published in 1924. Despite his marriage and children, recently scholars have begun to examine the homosexual undertones of Melville’s work and question the sexuality of the author.

 

1863

Walt Whitman (May 31, 1819 – March 26, 1892) wrote to Lewis K. Brown, “Your letters and your love for me are very precious to me, and I give you the like in return.” Whitman was an American poet, essayist, and journalist. A humanist, he was a part of the transition be-tween transcendentalism and realism, incorporating both views in his works. Whitman is among the most influential poets in the American canon, often called the father of free verse. His work was very controversial in its time, particularly his poetry collection Leaves of Grass, which was described as obscene for its overt sexuality.

 

1936, Algeria

Fashion icon Yves Saint-Laurent (1 August 1936 – 1 June 2008) is born in Oran, Algeria. After working under Christian Dior, Laurent assumed control of Dior’s house of fashion in 1957 upon Dior’s death. While his homosexuality was widely known in the fashion world, it was not until 1991 that Laurent spoke publicly about it.

 

1939

Frances V. Rummell (a.k.a Diana Frederics) (1907-1969) published an autobiography called Diana: A Strange Autobiography. It was the first explicitly lesbian autobiography in which two women end up happy together. Rummell was an educator and a teacher of French at Stephens College. This autobiography was published with a note saying, “The publishers wish it expressly understood that this is a true story, the first of its kind ever offered to the general reading public.”

1961

Sixteen men attend the first meeting of the Mattachine Society in Washington D.C. at the Haywood-Adams Hotel. The FBI learned of the meeting and began tracking the group.

 

1966

Three years before Stonewall, gay and transgender customers rioted at Compton’s Cafeteria in San Francisco in response to continued police harassment. It was one of the first recorded LGBT-related riots in United States history, preceding the more famous 1969 Stonewall Riots in New York City. It also marked the beginning of transgender activism in San Francisco. The 1960s was a critical time period for sexual, gender, and ethnic minorities—social movements which honed in on civil rights and sexual liberation came into fruition, and even churches such as the Glide Memorial Methodist Church in San Francisco, began reaching out to the transgender community. Still, many police officers resisted this change and continued to abuse and ostracize transgender people. This simultaneous rise in support for transgender rights on one side, and the unwillingness to accept these new ideas on the other, created the strain that would fuel the riot at Compton’s Cafeteria in the summer of 1966 in which a transgender woman resisted arrest by throwing coffee at a police officer. Drag queens poured into the streets, fighting back with their high heels and heavy bags.

 

1976

UCLA releases a study that finds that lesbian mothers’ sexual orientations do not influence the sexual orientations of their children.

 

1981, Canada

Vancouver Mayor Mike Harcourt, fulfilling an election promise, proclaims Gay Unity Week.

 

1983

The U.S. House of Representatives holds hearings on the government’s response to AIDS. They conclude that the Reagan administration has been negligent and that funding has been inadequate.

 

1988

New York governor Mario Cuomo blasts the Republican-controlled state senate during a news conference for excluding sexual orientation from a hate-crimes bill. “Gays make a stronger case than anybody in terms of need for this legislation, based on episodes – ugly, cruel, violent, dangerous episodes.”

 

1988

The Library Board of Trustees votes to allow the book Annie on My Mind by Nancy Garden to remain on the shelves of the Rockingham County, N.C. libraries. The book is about a lesbian relationship between two seven-teen-year-olds.

 

1991, UK

The first issue of Queer Reality, a magazine produced by the UK organization OutRage, is published.

 

1992

UCLA researchers Dr. Laura Allen and Dr. Robert Gorski publish their findings in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences that the anterior commissure, a group of nerve cells in the brain, is larger in gay men than in women or heterosexual men.

 

1995, Zimbabwe

After refusing to allow the Gay and Lesbian Association of Zimbabwe to exhibit at a human rights book fair, President Robert Mugabe opens the fair with an attack on lesbians and gay men, saying they are alien to African traditions and that he doesn’t believe “they have any rights at all.”

 

1996

Representative Jim Kolbe (born June 28, 1942) of Arizona becomes the fourth congressman and second Republican to come out after an e-mail campaign launched by San Francisco activist Michael Petrelis and others who protest his support of the Defense of Marriage Act. He divorces his wife in 1992. In 2013, he marries his partner Hector Alfonso. In 2013, Kolbe was a signatory to an amicus curiae brief submitted to the Supreme Court in support of same-sex marriage during the Hollingsworth v. Perry case.

 

2001, Germany

Angelika and Gudrun Pannier, dressed in black tuxedos and white bow ties, exchanged rings and sealed Germany’s first legal homosexual union with a kiss. The new Partnership Law allows inheritance and health insurance rights but does not give gay partnerships the same tax privileges as heterosexual marriages.

2005

The California Supreme Court rules that country clubs must offer gay members who register as domestic partners the same discounts given to married ones, a decision that could apply to other businesses such as insurance companies and mortgage lenders.

 

2006

The American Academy of Pediatrics journal publishes “Consensus Statement on Management of Intersex Disorders,” recommending new approaches, emphasizing caution with using surgeries. Intersex people are individuals born with any of several variations in sex characteristics including chromosomes, gonads, sex hormones, or genitals that, according to the UN Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights, “do not fit the typical definitions for male or female bodies” Such variations may involve genital ambiguity and combinations of chromosomal genotype and sexual phenotype other than XY-male and XX-female.

 

2008

Carla Barbano and Joy Spring, of Middletown, NY, were among the first out-of-staters married in Provincetown, Massachusetts. A state study estimated that more than 30,000 out-of-state gay couples, most from New York, wed in Massachusetts over the next three years, boosting the state’s economy by $111 million.

 

2009, Israel

A masked gunman kills two and injures 15 at the gay youth center in Tel Aviv. The next day 20,000 people hold a spontaneous rally against homophobia in Tel Aviv. President Shimon Peres was one of the speakers. The killer was indicted in 2013.

 

2011

The Suquamish tribe of Washington legalizes same-sex marriage following a unanimous vote by the Suquamish Tribal Council. At least one member of a same-sex couple has to be an enrolled member of the tribe to be able to marry in the jurisdiction. The Suquamish are a Lushootseed-speaking Native American people, located in present-day Washington in the United States. They are a southern Coast Salish people. Today, most Suquamish people are enrolled in the federally recognized Suquamish Tribe, a signatory to the 1855 Treaty of Point Elliott. Chief Seattle, the famous leader of the Suquamish and Duwamish Tribes for which the City of Seattle is named, signed the Point Elliot Treaty on behalf of both Tribes. The Suquamish Tribe owns the Port Madison Indian Reservation. 

 

August 2

  

1924

Gay African American author James Baldwin (August 2, 1924 – December 1, 1987) is born in Harlem. He was a best-selling author and a respected voice in both the Civil Rights movement and, as an openly gay man, the movement for gay rights as well. Baldwin challenged both the racial (Fire Next Time, 1963) and sexual (Giovanni’s Room, 1956) stereotypes of his day. He argued against mandatory heterosexuality in society. By the time of his death, Baldwin had written over twenty books including essays, fiction, drama, and poetry.

 

1983

Conservative Republican ex-Congressman Robert Bauman (born April 4, 1937) comes out and urges the American Bar Association to support gay rights legislation. Three years earlier he had been arrested for soliciting a 16-year-old male prostitute and lost his bid for re-election as a result. He wrote an autobiography, The Gentleman from Maryland: The Conscience of a Gay Conservative which was published in 1986.

 

1984

Barbara Deming (July 23, 1917 – August 2, 1984) dies on this day. She was an American feminist and advocate of nonviolent social change. At sixteen, she had fallen in love with a woman her mother’s age, thereafter she was openly lesbian. She was the romantic partner of writer and artist Mary Meigs (April 27, 1917 – November 15, 2002) from 1954 to 1972. Their relationship eventually floundered, partially due to Meigs’s timid attitude and Deming’s unrelenting political activism. In 1976, Deming moved to Florida with her partner artist Jane Verlaine. Verlaine painted, did figure drawings and illustrated several books written by Deming. Verlaine was a tireless advocate for abused women. Deming openly believed that it was often those whom we loved that oppressed us, and that it was necessary to re-invent non-violent struggle every day. It is said that she created a body of non-violent theory, based on action and personal experience, that centered on the potential of non-violent struggle in its application to the women’s movement. In 1975, Deming founded The Money for Women Fund to support the work of feminist artists. Deming helped administer the Fund with support from Mary Meigs. After Deming’s death in 1984, the organization was renamed as The Barbara Deming Memorial Fund. Today the foundation is the “oldest ongoing feminist granting agency” which “gives encouragement and grants to in-dividual feminists in the arts (writers, and visual artists).”

 

1986

Attorney Roy Cohn (February 20, 1927 – August 2, 1986), one of history’s best known gay Jews who was both homophobic and anti-Semitic, dies of complications from AIDS in Bethesda, Maryland. He had assisted Senator Joseph McCarthy during the House UnAmerican Activities hearings. Earlier in 1986, Cohn had been disbarred by the State of New York for unethical and unprofessional conduct. At one point, Barbara Walters served as his beard. He was also known for being a U.S. Department of Justice prosecutor at the espionage trial of Julius and Ethel Rosenberg and later for representing Donald Trump during his early business career.

 

1987

Arizona governor Evan Meecham announces during a radio call-in show that students at Arizona State University do not have the right to organize a gay and lesbian student organization. He said the existence of such organizations is a cause of homosexuality.

 

1988

The Madison, Wisconsin Common Council approves a bill to provide sick time and bereavement benefits to city employees who designate a family partner, and rejects a proposal forbidding discrimination against non-traditional families in public accommodations.

 

1988

The Ft. Collins, Colorado City Council votes to allow voters to decide if sexual orientation should be added to the city’s anti-discrimination code. It fails. It was opposed by hate-monger Rev. Pete Peters who advocated capital punishment for homosexuals.

 

1988

Ronald Balin ( 1935-August 2, 1988) dies of complications from AIDS at age 53. He had been the founder of the Washington D.C. chapter of The Mattachine Society and was among the first group to picket in front of the White House in 1965.

 

1995

U.S. President Bill Clinton signs Executive Order 12968 which bans discrimination based on sexual orientation as it establishes uniform policies for allowing government employees access to classified information. It was the first time a U.S. president signed an executive order that contained the words “sexual orientation.”

 

1999

The Gill Foundation announces that activist Donna Red Wing (1951 – April 16, 2018), who had been a field director for The Human Rights Campaign and a senior consultant for The Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation, would be joining its staff as director of the OutGiving Project. In the early 1990s Red Wing headed up Oregon’s Lesbian Community Project where she led efforts to defeat the state’s Measure 9, a ballot initiative that would have amended the Oregon constitution to ban gay-inclusive civil rights laws. Red Wing was executive director of One Iowa from 2012 to 2016 after having worked for numerous national organizations. She had served as national field director at both GLAAD and the Human Rights Campaign, and policy director at the Gill Foundation. She was co-chair of the Obama for America 2008 LGBT Leadership Council and Howard Dean’s outreach liaison to the LGBT community when he ran for the Democratic presidential nomination in 2004. It was during the Dean campaign that the Christian Coalition called her “the most dangerous woman in America,” a description she reportedly wore with pride. Red Wing was “fearless, passionate and no-nonsense,” and “a true activist by heart.” She was a “force for civil rights and human rights in all areas.” Red Wing, a native of Massachusetts, is survived by her wife and partner for more than 30 years, Sumitra.

 

2001

The Minuteman Council, comprised of 330 Scout troops and 18,000 Boy Scouts in Greater Boston, one of largest Boy Scout councils in Massachusetts, agrees to allow gay scoutmasters under a new “don’t ask-don’t tell” policy despite the national organization’s ban on homosexuals.

August 3

  

1916, UK

Sir Roger Casement (September 1, 1864 – August 3, 1916) was hanged for treason, specifically for a German/Irish plot during World War I to bring an uprising to Dublin. The evidence against him had been so weak that there were pleas from all over the world asking for clemency, including from U.S. President Woodrow Wilson. To stop the demands, the British government released entries from Casement’s diary showing that he was a homosexual. As a result, calls for a reprieve came to an abrupt halt, and he was executed. In 1965 Casement’s remains were returned to Dublin and afforded a state funeral; they were then re-interred in Dublin.

 

1954

The body of William T. Simpson, 27, an Eastern Airlines flight attendant, was found in North Miami, Florida. Four days later two suspects were arrested and charged with first-degree murder. They told police they shot him in self-defense after he made a pass at them. This caused a homophobic panic that led to police harassment of gay men and lesbians in the city for the following month. The murderers were eventually convicted of a lesser charge of manslaughter and sentenced to 20 years in prison.

 

1973, Canada

The first issue of Gay Tide is published by GATE in Vancouver.

 

1982

Twenty-eight-year-old gay Atlantan Michael Hardwick (born 1954) is arrested on sodomy charges after police show up, enter his home, and find him in bed performing fellatio on a male companion. The police were trying to serve a warrant for a minor traffic violation. The case set up the federal sodomy laws (Bowers v. Hardwick) which was repealed in 2003.

 

1982

Nyla Rose (born August 3, 1982) is an American actress and professional wrestler signed to All Elite Wrestling, where she held the AEW Women’s World Championship. She also starred in the 2016 Canadian television series The Switch. Rose became the first openly transgender wrestler in history to sign with a major American promotion, in 2019. She is also the first trans wrestler to win a title in a major American promotion when she won the AEW Women’s World Championship the following year.

 

1988

After ignoring the first six years of the AIDS epidemic, and with a recommendation of a 13-member President’s Commission on the HIV Epidemic, President Ronald Reagan reluctantly bans discrimination in the workplace. Vice President George Bush fully endorses the commission’s recommendations.

 

2003

The Episcopal Church’s House of Deputies further paved the way for the Rev. V. Gene Robinson (born May 29, 1947) to become the church’s first openly gay elected bishop, approving him on a 2-1 vote. Robinson was elected bishop coadjutor in 2003 and succeeded as diocesan bishop in March 2004. Before becoming bishop, he served as Canon to the Ordinary to the VIII Bishop of New Hampshire.

 

2007

A ruling striking down as unconstitutional Oklahoma’s refusal to recognize adoptions by same-sex couples was upheld by the 10th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals.

 

2011, France

Rudolf Brazda (26 June 1913 – 3 August 2011) dies at the age of 98. He was the last known homosexual holocaust survivor, having spent nearly three years in Buchenwald concentration camp where he was branded with the distinct pink triangle that the Nazis used to mark gay men. After the liberation of Buchenwald, Brazda settled in Alsace, northeastern France, in May, 1945, and lived there for the rest of his life. Although other gay men who survived the Holocaust are still alive, they were not known to the Nazis as homosexuals and were not deported as pink triangle internees. At least two gay men who were interned as Jews, for instance, have spoken publicly of their experiences.

 

2017

David J. Glawe (born January 13, 1970) was confirmed on August 3, 2017, by the U. S. Senate and sworn in by President Trump. He became the highest ranking out gay official in United States history as the Under Secretary for Intelligence at the Department of Homeland Security. He reported directly to both the Secretary of Homeland Security and the Director of National Intelligence. On June 28, 2017, during his televised Senate confirmation hearing, he introduced his husband and two children. On June 1, 2020, David Glawe became the president and CEO of the National Insurance Crime Bureau.

 

August 4

  

1826

Thomas A. McKenny writes a letter describing the men-women of the Chippeway tribe. “…so completely do they succeed, and even to the voice, as to make it impossible to distinguish them from the women.”

 

1875, Denmark

Danish singer, actor, storyteller and playwright Hans Christian Andersen (April 2, 1805 – August 4, 1875) dies at age 70. Andersen authored, among many other works, The Little Mermaid, The Ugly Duckling, The Emperor’s New Clothes and The Princess and the Pea. Many believe that rather than being heterosexual or homosexual, Andersen had romantic feelings for both genders but probably remained celibate his whole life.

 

1921, UK

The British House of Commons votes 148 to 53 to penalize lesbians in the same way as male homosexuals. The bill is sent to the House of Lords where it is rejected.

 

1982, France

In France, the age of consent for same-sex acts is lowered from 21 to 15, the same as for heterosexual acts.

 

1983

The 8th Annual National Reno Gay Rodeo opens despite threats that snipers would shoot at spectators, and claims by the Pro-Family Christian Coalition that the event was an orgy riddled with disease and that gays are un-American. 20,000 people attended the opening ceremonies.

 

1987

The Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors votes unanimously to expand the use of involuntary detention for people with AIDS who knowingly expose others to infection. The vote was in response to a man who gave blood knowing he was infected with HIV.

 

1987

Governor Mario Cuomo of New York announces a program establishing anonymous confidential HIV testing as an effort to get an idea of the prevalence of HIV infection in New York.

 

1988

A sold-out gospel show organized by Dionne Warwick and Rev. Carl Bean draws 6,500 people and raises $150,000 for the Los Angeles Minority AIDS Project. Performers included Al Jarreau and Patti LaBelle.

 

1993

Gay Rights National Lobby (GRNL) executive director Steven Endean (August 6, 1948 – August 4, 1993) dies of AIDS related illnesses. GRNL and the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force (NGLTF) were among the earliest organizations to engage in lobbying legislators for lesbian and gay rights. Steve Endean is credited with establishing the Human Rights Campaign Fund (now the Human Rights Campaign) in 1980 and served as its first Executive Director. In 1971, Endean founded the Minnesota Committee for Gay Rights (later Gay Rights Legislative Committee), and became the first gay and lesbian rights lobbyist in Minnesota a year later. In the 1970s, he served as co-chairman of the Board of Directors of the National Gay Task Force.

 

1995

U.S. President Bill Clinton signs an executive order forbidding the federal government from denying security clearances on the basis of a person’s sexual orientation. Administration spokespersons advise reporters, however, that individuals ought still be denied clearance if they are in the closet and fear exposure to family or friends.

 

2007

Accountant Keith Durbin became Tennessee’s first out gay elected official by winning a seat on the Nashville City Council.

 

2007, Italy

Rome marks the opening of its first “Gay Street” with flags, banners and pro-tests amid a row over a male couple who claimed they were detained by police for kissing near the Colosseum. Campaigners welcomed a 325-yard zone in the center of the city, filled with shops and bars, as an area where gays can “feel at ease,” after days of heated debate in predominantly Roman Catholic Italy over the kissing incident.

 

2010, Mexico

Mexico’s Supreme Court upholds the constitutionality of same-sex marriage in an 8-2 vote

 

2010

Chief U.S. District Judge Vaughn Walker (born 1944) served as a United States District Judge of the United States District Court for the Northern District of California from 1989 to 2011. Walker presided over the original trial in Hollingsworth v. Perry, where he found California’s Proposition 8 to be unconstitutional because it violates the 14th Amendment’s equal protection clause and is unconstitutional. On September 29, 2010, Walker announced he would retire and return to private practice. He retired at the end of February 2011. On April 6, 2011, Walker told reporters that he is gay and has been in a relationship with a male doctor for about ten years. He was the first known gay person to serve as a United States federal judge, though he did not publicly confirm his sexual orientation until after retiring from the federal bench.

 

2010

California’s Proposition 8 is declared unconstitutional in federal district court.

 

2019

After a performance of The Prom at Broadway’s Longacre Theatre, Broadway’s first-known onstage wedding occurred on that stage; it was between two women. After a performance of the show on Saturday, Armelle Kay Harper, a script coordinator on the show, and Jody Kay Smith (an actor and singer who recently worked with The Prom’s musical director) said their “I dos.” The ceremony, for which audience members were invited to stay to witness and become a part of history, was officiated by The Prom’s co-book writer Bob Martin.

 

August 6

  

390, Italy

Valentinian, Arcadius, and Theodosius wrote to the Roman city vicar that they cannot tolerate Rome “being stained any longer by the contamination of male effeminacy…” They call for death by fire.

 

1637

The Plymouth, Massachusetts court finds John Allexander and Thomas Roberts guilty of “often spending their seed one upon the other” though they are not charged with sodomy. Both were severely whipped, and Alexander was branded on the shoulder and banished from the colony. Although the colony had made sodomy punishable by death the previous year, it required penetration that was not proven in this case. On August 6, 1673 Plymouth Colony convicted two men of “Lewd Behavior and Unclean Carriage.” John Allexander [was] found to have been “formerly notoriously guilty that way,” alluring others.  He was sentenced by the Court to be severely whipped, and burnt in the shoulder with a hot iron, and to be perpetually banished from New Plymouth. Thomas Roberts was severely whipped and returned to his master. Though Allexander and Roberts had long histories of sodomy in Plymouth, they were spared capital punishment. Allexander, a property-owning man, and Roberts, an indentured servant, not only violated sexual morals, but also transgressed class distinctions. Their punishment, banishment for Allexander and the denial of future land ownership for Roberts, was approximately the same as that of people who participated in illicit sexual acts between men and women.

 

1862

Albert Cashier (December 25, 1843 – October 10, 1915) enlists in the 95th Illinois Infantry and is assigned to Company G of the Union Army. Jennie Hodgers adopted the identity of a man before enlisting and maintained it for most of the remainder of her life. She became famous as one of a number of women who served as men during the Civil War, although the consistent and long-term commitment to the male identity has prompted some contemporary scholars to suggest that Cashier was a trans man. In 1911, a physician discovered the secret during a hospital stay but did not disclose the information. On May 5, 1911, because Cashier was moved to the Soldiers and Sailors Home in Quincy, Illinois. During this stay, Albert was visit-ed by many of fellow soldiers from 95th Regiment. Cashier was moved to the Watertown State Hospital for the Insane in March, 1914. Attendants at the Watertown State Hospital discovered that Albert was female during a bath, at which point –at age 70 – Cashier was made to wear women’s clothes again after fifty years. Cashier’s tombstone reads “Albert D. J. Cashier, Co. G, 95 Ill. Inf.” Cashier’s birth name of Jennie Hodgers was discovered nine years later. A second tombstone with both names was placed beside the original.

 

1868

Florida revises its sodomy law, making sodomy punishable by up to 20 years in prison.

 

1885, UK

British Parliament votes to make homosexual acts a criminal offense.

 

1913, Germany

Dr. Magnus Hirschfeld (May 14, 1868 – May 14, 1935) was an outspoken advocate for sexual minorities. He crusaded for the repeal of sodomy laws in Germany and founded two organizations for homosexuals, one of which was the Scientific Humanitarian Committee. On this day he spoke at the International Medical Conference in London and met with British gays to discuss forming a London branch of the Scientific Humanitarian Committee. Hirschfeld was a German Jewish physician and sexologist educated primarily in Germany. He based his practice in Berlin-Charlottenburg. Historian Dustin Goltz characterized the Scientific Humanitarian Committee as having carried out “the first advocacy for homosexual and transgender rights.”

 

1928

Andy Warhol (August 6, 1928 – February 22, 1987) is born. He was an American artist, director and producer who was a leading figure in the visual art movement known as pop art. His works explore the relationship between artistic expression, celebrity culture, and advertising that flourished by the 1960s, and span a variety of media, including painting, silk-screening, photography, film, and sculpture. Some of his best known works include the silkscreen paintings Campbell’s Soup Cans (1962) and Marilyn Diptych (1962), the experimental film Chelsea Girls (1966), and the multimedia events known as the Exploding Plastic Inevitable (1966–67). Warhol’s lovers included poet John Giorno (born December 4, 1936), photographer Billy Name (February 22, 1940 – July 18, 2016), production de-signer Charles Lisanby (January 22, 1924 – August 23, 2013), and Jon Gould. His boyfriend of 12 years was Jed Johnson (December 30, 1948 – July 17, 1996) whom he met in 1968 and who later achieved fame as an interior designer.

 

1930

Author and GLBT historian Martin Duberman (born August 6, 1930) is born on this date. He is an American historian, biographer, playwright, and gay rights activist, and Professor of History Emeritus at Herbert Lehman College. In 1968, he signed the “Writers and Editors War Tax Protest” pledge, vowing to refuse tax payments in protest against the Vietnam War, and was jailed, as a member of REDRESS, for a sit-in protest on the floor of the U.S. Senate. His numerous essays The Black Struggle, The Crisis of the Universities, American Foreign Policy, and Gender and Sexuality have been collected in two volumes of his essays: The Uncompleted Past and Left Out: The Politics of Exclusion, 1964-1999. He came out as a gay man in an essay (December 10, 1972) in The New York Times. A founder and keynote speaker of the Gay Academic Union (1973), he later founded and served as first director (1986-1996) of the Center for Lesbian and Gay Studies at the CUNY Graduate School. In 1997 he edited two volumes, A Queer World and Queer Representations containing selections from the Center’s conferences. He was also a member of the founding boards of the National Lesbian and Gay Task Force, Lambda Legal Defense Fund, and Queers for Economic Justice. Duberman’s most recent novel, Jews Queers Germans, was published by Seven Stories Press in March, 2017.

 

1936, UK

Mark Weston (born Mary Louise Edith Weston, March 30, 1905 – January 29, 1978), nicknamed “the Devonshire Wonder,” was one of the best British field athletes of the 1920s. He was a national champion in the women’s javelin throw and discus throw in 1929 and won the women’s shotput title in 1925, 1928 and 1929. At the 1926 Women’s World Games he finished sixth in the two-handed shot put, where the final result was a sum of two best throws with the right hand and with the left hand. On this day, the interview article The Girl who Became a Bridegroom is published. Weston had a genital abnormality and was assigned as female at birth and raised as a girl. In April–May 1936, Weston underwent a series of gender changing operations at the Charing Cross Hospital. He changed his first name to Mark, retired from competitions and later worked as a masseur. In July, 1936, Weston married Alberta Matilda Bray and they had three children. Following his example, his elder sibling Harry (previously Hilda) also changed his gender and name in the 1930s. Harry hanged himself during a depression in 1942. Mark Weston died in the Freedom Fields Hospital in Plymouth in 1978.

 

1938

Out actor and director Paul Bartel (August 6, 1938 – May 13, 2000) is born in Brooklyn, New York. After working as a unit director for Roger Corman, Bartel broke out on his own, directing horror/camp classics such as Deathrace 2000 (1975) and Eating Raoul (1982).

 

1948

Stephen Robert “Steve” Endean (August 6, 1948 – August 4, 1993) is born. He was an American gay rights activist, first in Minnesota, then nationally. He was born in Davenport, Iowa, and came to Minnesota to attend the University of Minnesota from 1968-1972, majoring in political science. In 1971, Endean founded the Minnesota Committee for Gay Rights (later Gay Rights Legislative Committee), and became the first gay and lesbian rights lobbyist in Minnesota a year later. Along with the Minnesota Committee for Gay Rights and Democratic legislators, Endean opposed trans-inclusion and public accommodations in a statewide gay rights bill, giving as their reason the belief that the bill would not pass with such inclusion. In the 1970s, he served as co-chairman of the Board of Directors of the National Gay Task Force (later NGLTF). In 1978, he became the director of the Gay Rights National Lobby. In 1980, he started the Human Rights Campaign Fund (later just HRC) and served as its first Executive Director. In 1985, Endean was diagnosed with AIDS. After this, increasing health problems led to semi-retirement. In 1991, he created the National Endorsement Campaign, an effort to get straight political leaders and media figures to endorse LGBT rights. Also in 1991, he published his memoir, Into the Mainstream. In 1993, he was present in a wheelchair at the Minnesota State Capitol when the Legislature passed the Minnesota Human Rights Act, which banned LGBT discrimination in housing, employment, and education. Endean died of AIDS-related complications on August 4, 1993.

 

1957

James Edward McGreevey (born August 6, 1957) is an American politician and member of the Democratic Party who served as the 52nd Governor of New Jersey from 2002 until his resignation in 2004. In early 2002, McGreevey was criticized for appointing his secret lover, Israeli national Golan Cipel, as homeland security adviser even though Cipel lacked experience or other qualifications for the position. Cipel resigned but threats from his lawyers about sexual harassment lawsuits prompted McGreevey to announce on August 12, 2004, that he was gay and would resign the governorship, effective November 15, 2004. This made McGreevey the first openly gay governor in United States history. His partner is financier Mark O’Donnell (born 2005).

 

1992, Canada

The Ontario Court of Appeals issues a ruling that voided the Canadian military’s ban on gays and lesbians.

 

1994

The Japanese-American Citizens League votes 50-38 at its meeting in San Francisco in favor of supporting same-sex marriage.

 

August 7

  

1885, England

The Labouchere Amendment is passed in England. Section 11 of the Criminal Law Amendment Act 1885, commonly known as the Labouchere Amendment, made “gross indecency” a crime in the United Kingdom. In practice, the law was used broadly to prosecute male homosexuals where actual sodomy (meaning, in this context, anal intercourse) could not be proven. The penalty of life imprisonment for sodomy (until 1861 it had been death) was also so harsh that successful prosecutions were rare. The new law was much more enforceable. It was also meant to raise the age of consent for heterosexual intercourse. It was repealed by the Sexual Offences Act 1967, which partially decriminalized homosexual behavior. It was used in 1895 to convict Oscar Wilde which sent him for two years’ hard labor in prison.

 

1931

Clyde Hicks (September 5, 1910 – December 5, 1993) of North Carolina was stationed in Hawaii, arrested on sodomy charges and sentenced to six years in prison. He was transferred to Alcatraz where he was put into solitary confinement for passing a note to another man. He was released in 1935. He died in Durham, North Carolina, on December 5, 1993.

 

1981

Black and White Men Together members begin weekly demonstrations outside the Ice Palace, a popular disco in New York City, in protest of the club’s allegedly racist door policies. The National Association of Black and White Men Together, Inc. (NABWMT) – a multiracial organization for all people – has a network of chapters across the United States focused on LGBT and racial equality. It was founded in May, 1980, in San Francisco as a consciousness-raising organization and support group for gay men in multiracial relationships. NABWMT has two major goals: combating racism within the LGBT community and combating homophobia in the general public. Its founder was Michael Smith.

 

1986

Katie Sowers (born August 7, 1986) is an American football assistant coach. She was an offensive assistant coach with the San Francisco 49ers from 2017 to 2021. Sowers began her American football career playing in the Women’s Football Alliance. Upon her retirement, Sowers joined the National Football League in 2016 as a coach for the Atlanta Falcons training camp. Before the start of the 2017 NFL season, Sowers came out publicly as a lesbian and became the first openly LGBT coach in the National Football League. Sowers was refused a volunteer coaching position at Goshen College in 2009 because of her sexual orientation; in 2020 the president of the college apologized to her for rejecting her. In 2021, she became the first female and first openly gay offensive assistant in a Super Bowl.

 

1986

A law prohibiting insurance companies in Washington, D.C. from discriminating against people who test positive for HIV goes into effect.

 

1987, UK

Over 100 gay men and lesbians gather at Piccadilly Square in London for a kiss-in to protest at Piccadilly Circus in defiance of the Sexual Offences Act, which decriminalized private sex acts between consenting adults but left public displays of same-sex affection a misdemeanor.

 

1987

Whispers, a gay bar, opens in Saginaw, Michigan. The owners soon faced challenges such as rocks thrown through the windows, derogatory terms spray painted on the building, bomb threats, death threats, and vandalism of patrons’ cars. The owner was forced to close because of the attacks.

 

1987

Ronald Reagan did not say the word AIDS until this day in 1987. By then, 37,000 Americans had been diagnosed and 21,000 Americans had died.

 

1988

Rallies are held in 21 American cities for Free Sharon Kowalski day. Kowalski was severely disabled in a car accident in 1983. Her parents barred her lover, Karen Thompson, from visiting her, but Karen sued and won. In re Guardianship of Kowalski, 478 N.W.2d 790 (Minn. Ct. App. 1991) is a Minnesota Court of Appeals case that established a lesbian‘s partner as her legal guardian after Sharon Kowalski became incapacitated. Because the case was contested by Kowalski’s parents and family and initially resulted in the partner being excluded for several years from visiting Kowalski, the gay community celebrated the final resolution in favor of the partner as a victory for gay rights.

 

1989

Under the headline “Peek-a-Boo,” New York’s Outweek magazine publishes a list of 66 celebrities and public figures who are allegedly gay but closeted. The article marks the beginning of controversial “outing” by some gay activists.

 

1992

A New York City federal judge rejects a request to dismiss a lawsuit against three Drug Enforcement agents for an anti-gay assault against two men. DEA attorneys argue that the bias-related portions should be dismissed because the constitution does not forbid anti-gay harassment or discrimination.

 

1994

Two daily newspapers in York, Pennsylvania repeal a policy of refusing to run same-sex personal ads one week after the policy was implemented.

 

1994, Australia

Victoria police raided the Tasty Nightclub in Melbourne, strip-searching and brutalizing 463 patrons. On this day in 2014, exactly twenty years later, the Victoria Police formally apologize.

 

1995

African American transgender hairstylist Tyra Hunter (1970 – August 7, 1995) dies due to withheld medical care after a hit and run accident. Paramedics in Washington, D.C. began treating the injured Tyra when they discovered that she was a pre-op trans woman. They withdrew medical care and made transphobic remarks. The ER staff at DC General Hospital subsequently provided dilatory and inadequate care. Evidence shows Tyra would have survived had the medical care not been withdrawn. On December 11, 1998, a jury awarded Hunter’s mother, Margie, $2.9 million after finding the District of Columbia, through its employees in the D.C. Fire Department and doctors at D.C. General, liable under the D.C. Human Rights Act and for negligence and medical malpractice for causing Tyra’s death.

 

1996

The Northampton County (North Carolina) board of commissioners vote to pass a resolution describing homosexuality as incompatible with community standards.

 

1998

The U.S. House of Representatives votes 227-192 to prevent unmarried couples, including same-sex couples, from adopting children in Washington, DC.

 

2003

Hate-monger Rev. Jerry Falwell announces that he is putting aside everything to devote his time to the passage of a constitutional ban on gay marriage.

 

2003, Singapore

Singapore’s Gay Pride event is expanded to three days. The event was named Nation 03. This was the final year that the event was held in Singapore. The government officially banned the Pride celebration.

 

2007, Iran

Iran banned a leading daily newspaper for the second time within a year for publishing an interview with a woman alleged to be a lesbian activist.

 

2020, Poland

Three LGBT activists were protesting the anti-LGBT policies of President Andrzej Duda by hanging pride flags off statues of Christ at the Basilica of the Holy Cross, the astronomer Copernicus and the famous Warsaw mermaid statue. Polish police charged them with desecrating monuments and “offending religious feelings.” President Duda said LGBT rights was more harmful than communism.

 

August 8

 

1922, Austria

Rudolf “Rudi” Gernreich (August 8, 1922 – April 21, 1985) is born. He was an Austrian-born American fashion designer whose avant-garde clothing designs are generally regarded as the most innovative and dynamic fashion of the 1960s. He purposefully used fashion design as a social statement to advance sexual freedom, producing clothes that followed the natural form of the female body, freeing them from the constraints of high fashion. He consciously pushed the boundaries of acceptable fashion and used his designs as an opportunity to comment on social issues and to expand society’s perception of what was acceptable. Gernreich became a U.S. citizen in 1943. He met Harry Hay (April 7, 1912 – October 24, 2002) in July 1950, and the two became lovers. They were founding members of the early activities of the Society. In 1951 Gernreich was arrested and convicted in a police homosexual entrapment case, which was common in Southern California at that time. In 1953, Gernreich met Oreste Pucciani (April 7, 1916 – April 28, 1999), future chair of the UCLA French department, who was a key figure in bringing Jean-Paul Sartre to the attention of American educators. Oreste Pucciani (April 7, 1916 – April 28, 1999) was also a pivotal figure in the gay rights movement. The two men kept their relationship private as Gernreich believed public acknowledgment of his homosexuality would negatively affect his fashion business. Oreste Pucciani, Gernreich’s partner for 31 years, endowed a trust in their name for the American Civil Liberties Union in 1988.

 

1924, Germany

Die Freundin magazine (The Girlfriend) was a popular Weimar-era German lesbian magazine published from 1924 to 1933. The magazine was published in Berlin by the Bund für Menschenrecht (translated variously as League for Human Rights or Federation for Human Rights and abbreviated as BfM), run by gay activist and publisher Friedrich Radszuweit (15 April 1876 – 15 March 1932). The Bund was an organization for homosexuals and had a membership of 48,000 in the 1920s.This magazine, together with other lesbian magazines of that era such as Frauenliebe (Love of Women), represented a part-educational and part-political perspective, and were assimilated within the local culture. Die Freundin published short stories and novellas. Renowned contributors were pioneers of the lesbian movement like writer and activist Selli Engler (28 September 1899 – 1982) and “transvestite” and lesbian activist Lotte Hahm (1890-1967). The magazine also published advertisements of lesbian nightspots, and women could place their personal advertisements for meeting other lesbians. Women’s groups related to the Bund für Menschenrecht and Die Freundin which offered a culture of readings, performances, and discussions as alternative to the bars. This magazine was usually critical of women for what they viewed as “attending only to pleasure”, with a 1929 article urging women “Don’t go to your entertainments while thousands of our sisters mourn their lives in gloomy despair.” Die Freundin, along with other gay and lesbian periodicals, was shut down by the Nazis after they came to power in 1933. But even before the rise of the Nazis, the magazine faced legal troubles during the Weimar Republic. From 1928 to 1929, the magazine was shut down by the government under a law that was supposed to protect youth from “trashy and obscene” literature. During these years, the magazine operated under the title Ledige Frauen (Single Women).

 

1951

Randy Shilts (August 8, 1951 – February 17, 1994) is born. He was an American journalist and author. He worked as a reporter for both The Advocate and the San Francisco Chronicle as well as for San Francisco Bay Area television stations, becoming the first openly gay reporter with a gay ‘beat’ in the American mainstream press. Shilts wrote three best-selling, widely acclaimed books. The Mayor of Castro Street: The Life and Times of Harvey Milk (1982), And the Band Played On: Politics, People, and the AIDS Epidemic (1987), and Conduct Unbecoming: Gays and Lesbians in the US Military from Vietnam to the Persian Gulf (1993) which examined discrimination against lesbians and gays in the military. Shilts bequeathed 170 cartons of papers, notes, and research files to the local history section of the San Francisco Public Library. Shilts died of complications from AIDS on February 17, 1994.

 

1973

The American Bar Association passes a resolution urging the repeal of sodomy laws.

 

1978, UK

Representatives of 17 gay (predominantly male) and European organizations from 14 countries found the International Lesbian and Gay Association (ILGA) at a meeting hosted by the English Campaign for Homosexual Equality in Coventry, England. The ILGA is an international organization bringing together more than 750 LGBTI groups from around the world. It continues to be active in campaigning for LGBT rights and intersex human rights on the international human rights and civil rights scene, and regularly petitions the United Nations and governments. ILGA is represented in 110+ countries across the world. ILGA is accredited by the United Nations and has been granted NGO consultative status. It was originally called the International Gay Association; the name was changed in 1986.

 

1980, Canada

The General Council of the United Church of Canada, the largest Protestant denomination in country, meets in Halifax and gives approval to the “In God’s Image… Male and Female,” study document which advocates acceptance of gays and lesbians into ministry and which says premarital and extramarital sex are acceptable under certain circumstances.

 

1983

Bobbi Campbell became known as the “KS Poster Boy.”  He appears with his partner on the cover of Newsweek on August 8, 1983. Robert Boyle “Bobbi” Campbell Jr., January 28, 1952 – August 15, 1984) was a public health nurse and an early AIDS activist. In September 1981, Campbell became the 16th person in San Francisco to be diagnosed with Kaposi’s sarcoma when that was a proxy for an AIDS diagnosis. He was the first to come out publicly as a person living with what was to become known as AIDS. In 1983, he co-wrote the Denver Principles, the defining manifesto of the People with AIDS Self-Empowerment Movement, which he had co-founded the previous year. Appearing on the cover of Newsweek and being interviewed on nation-al news reports, Campbell raised the national profile of the AIDS crisis among heterosexuals and provided a recognizable, optimistic, human face of the epidemic for affected communities.

 

1984

Greg Louganis (born January 29, 1960) wins his first Olympic gold medal for the Men’s 3-meter springboard in Los Angeles. A few days later he wins gold for the 10-meter platform. He does it again in the 1988 Olympics in Seoul. He has been called both “the greatest American diver” and “probably the greatest diver in history”. He doesn’t speak about being gay until a 1995 interview with Oprah Winfrey.

 

1986

A group of people who tried to collect signatures for the recall of Durham, N.C. mayor Wib Gulley for declaring June 22-June 29 Anti-Discrimination Week admitted that they were short by 6,500 signatures.

 

1991

Tom Duane (born January 30, 1955), an openly gay candidate in a close race for a New York Ccity West Side Council seat, reveals he is HIV+. He served in the New York State Senate from 1999 to 2012. Duane was the first openly gay member of the New York State Senate and the only such member during his tenure there. He was also their only openly HIV+ member. Duane was the lead sponsor of same-sex union legislation in the New York State Senate. Duane’s partner of 25 years is actor Louis Webre.

 

1992

The Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Indianapolis orders an AIDS prevention organization to vacate their office space in a church-run facility because they distributed condoms.

 

1996, UK

A BBC documentary airs which presents the case of a man who died in the 1960’s as a result of malpractice during aversion therapy to “cure” his homosexuality.

 

2000

The U.S. Women’s Basketball League consistently distances itself from the topic of lesbians but Sue Wicks (born November 26, 1966), one of the first players to come out, says in this day’s Village Voice: “I can’t say how many players are gay, but it would be easier to count the straight ones.” Susan Joy “Sue” Wicks is a former basketball player in the Women’s National Basketball Association (WNBA) who played with the New York Liberty from 1997 to 2002. In July 2006, she became the Assistant Coach for the women’s basketball team at Saint Francis College in Brooklyn, New York. After leaving her assistant coaching position at Saint Francis College, Wicks said that she felt that being an out lesbian was an overwhelming liability in getting a job as a women’s basketball coach. She is one of only two Rutgers women’s basketball players to have her jersey retired.

 

2001, Singapore

Fridae.com (a major GLBT website in Singapore) organizes the country’s first large-scale LGBT event at Sentosa’s Fantasy Island. Sentosa is a popular island resort in Singapore, visited by some twenty million people a year. Attractions include a 2 km (1.2 mi) long sheltered beach, Fort Siloso, two golf courses, the Merlion, 14 hotels, and the Resorts World Sentosa, featuring the theme park Universal Studios Singapore.

 

2005

New York City police reveal there had been nearly 100 hundred attacks on gays in the city during the summer of 2005.

  

August 9

  

1858, Ottoman Empire

The Ottoman Empire decriminalizes consensual homosexuality.

 

1858

Raphael Gallenti, a sailor from Malta, is thought to be the first person to be arrested for sodomy in California. He served a five-year prison sentence and was released on this day.

 

1958

Amanda Bearse (born August 9, 1958) is an American actress, director and comedian best known for her role as neighbor Marcy Rhoades (Seasons 1-5) and Marcy D’Arcy (Seasons 5-11) on Married… with Children, a sitcom that aired in the United States from 1987 to 1997, and for her performance in the 1985 horror film Fright Night opposite William Ragsdale. She has been publicly out as a lesbian since 1993 and has an adopted daughter.

 

1963

Whitney Elizabeth Houston (August 9, 1963 – February 11, 2012) was an American singer and actress, one of the best-selling recording artists of all time. Houston released seven studio albums and two soundtrack albums, all of which have been certified diamond, multi-platinum, platinum, or gold by the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA). Her crossover appeal on the popular music charts as well as her prominence on MTV influenced several African American female artists. Houston’s pal and purported girlfriend, Robyn Crawford, said Houston was dogged by media speculation over her sexuality. Former husband Bobby Brown, however, wrote in his 2016 autobiography that he knew his wife was bisexual. Those claims were corroborated by Crawford herself in 2019’s A Song for You: My Life with Whitney Houston in which she revealed that she’d been in a relationship with The Bodyguard star in the early 1980s. Houston. Houston called off the romance after she signed with Arista Records in 1983, but the pair remained confidantes.

 

1967, UK

English playwright Joe Orton is murdered by his lover Kenneth Halliwell. John Kingsley “Joe” Orton (1 January 1933 – 9 August 1967) was an English playwright and author. His public career was short but prolific, lasting from 1964 until his death three years later. During this brief period he shocked, outraged, and amused audiences with his scandalous black comedies. The adjective Ortonesque is sometimes used to refer to work characterized by a similarly dark yet farcical cynicism. On August 9, 1967, Kenneth Halliwell bludgeoned 34-year-old Orton to death at their home at 25 Noel Road, Islington, London, with nine hammer blows to the head, and then died by suicide with an overdose of 22 Nembutal tablets washed down with the juice from canned grapefruit. Investigators determined that Halliwell had died first because Orton’s sheets were still warm.

 

1970, Israel

Sharon Afek (born August 10, 1970) became the Israel Defense Forces’ first openly gay major general, making him the first member of high command and the most senior Israeli military officer to come out.

 

1972

The Ohio Secretary of State refuses to grant articles of incorporation to the Greater Cincinnati Gay Society. Two years later, the Ohio Supreme Court upholds the decision, stating that even though homosexual acts are now legal in Ohio, “the promotion of homosexuality as a valid lifestyle is contrary to the public policy of the State of Ohio.”

 

1973

Donald Cawley, New York City police commissioner, issues a directive prohibiting police officers from using derogatory terms to refer to homosexuals.

 

1986

Gay Games II opened in San Francisco on this day. The games ran until August 17, 1986. The games were billed as “3482 Athletes (40% women), from 251 cities in 17 countries, participating in 17 sporting events.”

 

1990

Sarah McBride is the first transgender state senator elected in the United States. Sarah McBride (born August 9, 1990) is an American activist and politician who is a Democratic member of the Delaware Senate since January 2021. She is currently the National Press Secretary of the Human Rights Campaign. After winning the September 15, 2020 Democratic primary in the safely-Democratic 1st Delaware State Senate district, she won in the November 2020 election. She is the first transgender state senator in the country, making her the highest-ranking transgender official in United States history. McBride is largely credited with the passage of legislation in Delaware banning discrimination on the basis of gender identity in employment, housing, insurance, and public accommodations. In July 2016, she was a speaker at the Democratic National Convention, becoming the first openly transgender person to address a major party convention in American history. In 2018, McBride released the book Tomorrow Will Be Different: Love, Loss, and the Fight for Trans Equality.

 

1995

While attending a June demonstration against racial inequality and police brutality in New Orleans, Justice Smith (born August 9, 1995), the Pokemon: Detective Pikachu star came out as queer. The actor posted a video on Instagram showing him at the protest with his boyfriend, Queen Sugar actor Nicholas Ashe. “As a Black queer man myself, I was disappointed to see certain people eager to say ‘Black Lives Matter,’ but hold their tongue when Trans/Queer was added,” he wrote in the accompanying caption. “I want to reiterate this sentiment. If your revolution does not include Black Queer voices, it is anti-Black.”

 

1996

Oregon judge Stephen Gallagher Jr. rules that the state must offer benefits to the partners of gay state employees. Lon Mabon, director of the anti-gay Oregon Citizens Alliance which challenges the governor’s executive order to grant benefits, said the ruling aids in the systematic destruction of the whole notion of family.

 

1998, UK

Dr. George Carey, Archbishop of Canterbury, issues an apology to GLB Anglicans for the pain they experienced as a result of the Lambeth Conference of Bishops’ resolution against homosexuality.

  

2000

Dr. Saul Levin was appointed president of the Gay and Lesbian Medical Association (GLMA). GLMA: Health Professionals Advancing LGBT Equality is an international organization of lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and ally (LGBT) healthcare professionals and students of all disciplines including physicians, advanced practice nurses, physician assistants, nurses, behavioral health specialists, researchers and academicians, and their supporters in the United States and internationally. Founded in 1981 as the American Association of Physicians for Human Rights, GLMA “came out of the closet” and changed its name in 1994 to the Gay and Lesbian Medical Association. GLMA changed its name again in 2012 to GLMA: Health Professionals Advancing LGBT Equality.

 

2004

A domestic partner registry opens in Miami Beach, Florida.

 

2005, Nepal

Nepal police begin rounding up transsexuals in a sweep of the capital, Katmandu.

 

2007

Democrat presidential candidates appear at a forum sponsored by the Human Rights Campaign. It was televised on LOGO and streamed online. Most candidates said they approved civil unions but not same-sex marriage. Six Democrats participate in the forum including Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama while all Republican candidates decline.

  

August 10

 

1900, France

Rene Crevel (August 10, 1900 – June 18, 1935) is born in Paris. He was a French writer involved with the surrealist movement. The only out bisexual member of the Dada movement of artists, he was the founder of a number of short-lived literary magazines. His poetry was filled with death and castration themes. He told anyone who would listen he had been mutilated as an infant by being circumcised.

 

1914

A Florida Enchantment, written by Archibald Clavering Gunter (October 25, 1847 –February 24, 1907), was a silent film depicting homosexuality and cross-dressing,. It was released on this day. The film is based on the 1891 novel and 1896 play (now lost) of the same name. The film is also known for its use of blackface antics, an aspect carefully dissected in Siobhan Somerville’s Queering the Color Line. Since its inclusion in Vito Russo’s The Celluloid Closet, the film has increasingly been seen as one of the earliest film representations of homosexuality and cross-dressing in American culture.

 

1986, New Zealand

The Homosexual Law Reform Act goes into effect decriminalizing consensual sex between homosexual men.

 

1989

Keith Haring (May 4, 1958 – February 16, 1990) reveals he is HIV positive. Prices for his art soar as collectors anticipate his death. He was an American artist and social activist whose work responded to the New York City street culture of the 1980s by expressing concepts of birth, death, sexuality, and war. In 2006, Haring was named by Equality Forum as one of their 31 Icons of LGBT History Month.

 

2011, Czech Republic

Several thousand people march through Prague in the Czech capital’s first gay pride festival. The event was peaceful though there were some 300 vocal opponents. 

August 11

 

1862, France

Sarah Bernhardt (October 23, 1844 – March 26, 1923) makes her acting debut as a French stage actress who stars in some of the most popular French plays of the late 19th and early 20th century, including La Dame Aux Camelias by Alexandre Dumas, Ruy Blas by Victor Hugo, Fédora and La Tosca by Victorien Sardou, and L’Aiglon by Edmond Rostand. She also plays male roles, including Shakespeare’s Hamlet. Rostand called her “the queen of the pose and the princess of the gesture” while Hugo praised her “golden voice.” She made several theatrical tours around the world and was one of the first prominent actresses to make sound recordings and to act in motion pictures. While she had many male lovers, she had a 25-year relationship with Louise Abbéma (1853–1927), a French impressionist painter some nine years her junior. In 1990, a painting by Abbém depicting the two on a boat ride on the lake in the bois de Boulogne was donated to the Comédie-Française. The accompanying letter stated that the painting was “Peint par Louise Abbéma, le jour anniversaire de leur liaison amoureuse”(loosely translated: “Painted by Louise Abbéma on the anniversary of their love affair”).

 

1921

The play The March Hare opens. It includes several same-sex innuendoes, both male and female. The March Hare is a lost 1921 American silent comedy romance film produced and distributed by Adolph Zukor‘s Realart Pictures Corporation. It stared Bebe Daniels.

 

1977

The Austin (Texas) City Council voted 4-3 to accept a Fair Housing Ordinance that does not include lesbians and gays.

 

1979, Canada

A rally in Vancouver, British Columbia, protests police inaction in dealing with street violence against gays.

  

1981

Larry Kramer (born June 25, 1935–May 27, 2020), whose 1978 novel Faggots takes gay men to task for promiscuity in pre-AIDS New York, calls a meeting of concerned men in his Greenwich Village apartment. It is a precursor to the organization that will become the Gay Men’s Health Crisis. Kramer is an American playwright, author, public health advocate, and LGBT rights activist. He began his career rewriting scripts while working for Columbia Pictures which led him to London where he worked with United Artists. There he wrote the screenplay for the 1969 film Women in Love (1969) and earned an Academy Award nomination for his work. Kramer introduced a controversial and confrontational style in his Faggots which earned mixed reviews and emphatic denunciations from elements within the gay community for Kramer’s one-sided portrayal of shallow, promiscuous gay relationships in the 1970s.

 

1992

The American Bar Association’s House of Delegates votes 318 to 123 to grant affiliate status to the National Lesbian and Gay Law Association.

 

1992

During a television interview, President George H. W. Bush said that if one of his grandchildren were gay he would love the child but tell him homosexuality is not normal and discourage him from working for gay rights.

 

1994, Columbia

The government of Colombia issues a protest against the display of a painting by Chilean artist Juan Davila in London. The painting presents nineteenth-century South American independence hero Simon Bolivar as a transgender.

 

1995, South Korea

South Korea marks its first Pride Celebration with a march and other events in Seoul.

 

1995

Robert H. Eichberg (1945-August 12, 1995) was a psychologist, activist and author who helped establish National Coming Out Day, a day of observance encouraging gay and lesbian people to reveal their homosexuality, Dr. Eichberg died of complications from AIDS. In 1990, a book by Dr. Eichberg entitled Coming Out: An Act of Love was published by E. P. Dutton & Company. He and his partner, Jon Landstrom, and Jean O’Leary (March 4, 1948 – June 4, 2005) co-founded National Coming Out Day in 1988. O’Leary was an openly lesbian political leader and long-time activist from New York,  and was at the time the head of the National Gay Rights Advocates in Los Angeles. LGBT activists, including Eichberg and O’Leary, did not want to respond defensively to anti-LGBT action because they believed it would be predictable. This caused them to found NCOD in order to maintain positivity and celebrate coming out. The date of October 11 was chosen because it was the anniversary of the 1987 National March on Washington for Lesbian and Gay Rights. In 1978, Eichberg founded The Experience, a community-based workshop that inspired people to reveal their homosexuality to family and friends. 

 

1998

The United Methodist Judicial Council rules that the Social Principles rule prohibiting Methodist ministers from officiating at same-sex unions would have the force of church law.

 

1998

The Raleigh News and Observer runs an article on the ex-gay debate. Psychiatrist Dr. William Byne points out that after three decades of therapy, castration, hormone injections, shock treatment, and brain surgery, if it were possible to reverse sexual orientation, it would have happened.

 

2010

Degrassi: The Next Generation introduces its first transgender character. Jordan Todosey stars as Adam Torres.

 

2012, Lebanon

A protest is held in reaction to 36 men being subjected to an examination of the anus to see if penetration has occurred (which is discredited as inaccurate). The men had been arrested at a porn cinema and were forced to pay for the test. At the time, this was the largest LGBT protest in the Arab world.

 

August 11

  

1642, France

Henri Coiffier de Ruzé, Marquis of Cinq Mars is beheaded for treason at Lyon. Cardinal Richelieu introduced King Louis XIII (September 27, 1601 – May 14, 1643) to the Marquis. Louis took him as his lover. The Marquis plotted against the king and was executed when the king discovered his plans. Louis XIII was married to Anne of Austria, daughter of Philip III of Spain. There is no evidence that Louis kept mistresses (a distinction that earned him the title “Louis the Chaste“), but persistent rumors insinuated that he may have been homosexual or at least bisexual. His interests as a teenager increasingly focused on his male courtiers, and he quickly developed an intense emotional attachment to his favorite, Charles d’Albert, although there is no clear evidence of a physical sexual relationship. Gédéon Tallemant des Réaux, drawing from rumors told to him by a critic of the King (the Marquise de Rambouillet), explicitly speculated in his Historiettes about what happened in the king’s bed. A further liaison with an equerry, François de Baradas, ended when the latter lost favor fighting a duel after duelling had been forbidden by royal decree. Louis XIII was a monarch of the House of Bourbon who ruled as King of France from 1610 to 1643 and King of Navarre (as Louis II) from 1610 to 1620, when the crown of Navarre was merged with the French crown. Shortly before his ninth birthday, Louis became king of France and Navarre after his father Henry IV was assassinated. His mother, Marie de’ Medici, acted as regent during his minority.

 

1833, London

Captain Nicholas Nicholls, 50, is sentenced to death on a charge of sodomy. A newspaper said, “Captain Henry Nicholas Nicholls, who was one of the unnatural gang to which the late Captain Beauclerk belonged, (and which the latter gentleman put an end to his existence), was convicted on the clearest evidence at Croydon, on Saturday last, of the capital offence of Sodomy; the prisoner was perfectly calm and unmoved throughout the trial, and even when sentence of death was passed upon him.”

 

1859

Lesbian Katharine Lee Bates, (August 12, 1859 – March 28, 1929), an American poet, is born. She is remembered as the author of the words to the anthem America the Beautiful. She had graduated from Wellesley then became a professor there. Bates was a prolific author of many volumes of poetry, travel books, and children’s books. She popularized Mrs. Claus in her poem Goody Santa Claus on a Sleigh Ride from the collection Sunshine and other Verses for Children (1889). Bates never married. She lived in Wellesley with Katharine Coman who was a history and political economy teacher and founder of the Wellesley College School Economics department. The pair lived together for twenty-five years until Coman’s death in 1915. Bates was inducted into the Songwriters Hall of Fame in 1970. In 2012, she was named by Equality Forum as one of their 31 Icons of the 2015 LGBT History Month.

 

1880, UK

Radclyffe Hall (August 12, 1880 – October 7, 1943) is born in Bournemouth, England. She was an English poet and author and is best known for the novel The Well of Loneliness, a groundbreaking work in lesbian literature. In 1915 Hall fell in love with Una Troubridge (1887–1963), a sculptor who was the wife of Vice-Admiral Ernest Troubridge, and the mother of a young daughter. In 1917 Radclyffe Hall and Una Troubridge began living together. The relationship lasted until Hall’s death though Hall was involved in affairs with other women throughout the years. In 1934 Hall fell in love with Russian émigrée and poet Evguenia Souline and embarked upon a long-term affair with her which Troubridge painfully tolerated.

 

1907

Blues singer Gladys Bentley is born (August 12, 1907 – January 18, 1960) to a Trinidadian mother and an African American father. She was an American blues singer, pianist and entertainer during the Harlem Renaissance. Her career skyrocketed when she appeared at Harry Hansberry’s Clam House in New York in the 1920s, as a black lesbian cross-dressing performer. She headlined in the early 1930s at Harlem’s Ubangi Club where she was backed up by a chorus line of drag queens. She dressed in men’s clothes (including a signature tuxedo and top hat), played piano, and sang her own raunchy lyrics to popular tunes of the day in a deep, growling voice while flirting with women in the audience. She relocated to southern California where she was billed as “America’s Greatest Sepia Piano Player” and the “Brown Bomber of Sophisticated Songs.” She was frequently harassed for wearing men’s clothing. She tried to continue her musical career but did not achieve as much success as she had had in the past. Bentley was openly lesbian early in her career (a “bulldagger” in the parlance of the day) and even once told a gossip columnist she had married a white woman (whose identity remains unknown) in New York. However, during the McCarthy Era she started wearing dresses and married Mr. J. T. Gipson who died in 1952,the same year in which she married Charles Roberts, a cook in Los Angeles; they were married in Santa Barbara, California, and went on a honeymoon in Mexico. (Roberts denied ever marrying her.) Bentley died of pneumonia in Los Angeles in 1960, aged 52.

 

1968, August 12-17

The North American Conference of Homophile Organizations, nicknamed NACHO, made up of delegates from 26 groups, convenes in Chicago to discuss goals and strategy. Although delegates fail to form a unified national organization, they pass a five-point “Homosexual Bill of Rights” and resolve to make “Gay Is Good” the slogan of the movement.

 

1977

The Fraternal Order of Police in Rhode Island pass a resolution discouraging the hiring of lesbian or gay police officers.

 

1992

Sharon McCracken becomes the first openly lesbian person to be licensed as a foster parent in Florida.

 

1993

The Kansas City, Missouri City Council votes 11-1 to approve a hate crimes bill that includes anti-gay crimes.

 

1993

Federal district court judge William Bassler of Newark, New Jersey rejects a challenge to the state gay rights law.

 

1996

Mary Fisher (born April 6, 1948) addresses the Republican convention in San Diego to remind them that AIDS is caused by infection, not immorality. She is an American political activist, artist and author. After contracting HIV from her second husband, she had become an outspoken HIV/AIDS activist for the prevention and education and for the compassionate treatment of people with HIV and AIDS. She is particularly noted for speeches before two Republican Conventions: Houston in 1992 and San Diego in 1996. The 1992 speech has been hailed as “one of the best American speeches of the 20th Century.” She is founder of a non-profit organization to fund HIV/AIDS re-search and education, the Mary Fisher Clinical AIDS Re-search and Education (CARE) Fund. Since May 2006, she has been a global emissary for the Joint United Nations Programme on HIV/AIDS (UNAIDS).

 

2004

“I am a gay American.” New Jersey Gov. James E. McGreevey (born August 6, 1957) told a news conference that he is gay, appointed his lover, Golan Cipel, to a high government office for which he was not qualified, then re-igned from office.

 

2005, Japan

Kanako Otsuji (December 16, 1974), an assemblywoman, is the first politician to come out in Japan. She is a Japanese LGBT rights activist and former member of the House of Councilors of the National Diet of Japan. She was also a member of the Osaka Prefectural Assembly (April 2003–April 2007). One of only seven women in the 110-member Osaka Assembly, Otsuji represented the Sakaiku, Sakai City constituency. In May 2013, after her party member of the House resigned, Otsuji became the nation’s first openly homosexual member of the Diet but her term in office expired in July.

 

2009

Harvey Milk (May 22, 1930 – November 27, 1978) is posthumously awarded the Medal of Freedom, the nation’s highest civilian honor, by President Barack Obama. Harvey Milk was an American politician and the first openly gay elected official in the history of California where he was elected to the San Francisco Board of Supervisors. Despite being the most pro-LGBT politician in the United States at the time, politics and activism were not his early interests; he was neither open about his sexuality nor civically active until he was 40, after his experiences in the counterculture movement of the 1960s. He and San Francisco Mayor Mascone were assassinated on Nov. 27, 1978. In July 2016, U.S. Secretary of the Navy Ray Mabus named the second ship of the Military Sealift Command‘s John Lewis-class oilers, the USNS Harvey Milk.

 

2012, Uganda

The first Pride parade in Uganda is held. The Grand Marshall is Maurice Tomlinson (born 1971), an LGBT activist from Jamaica. Police raid the event and detain participants but they are released without charges. Tomlinson is a Jamaican Attorney-at-Law and law lecturer. He has been a leading Gay Rights and HIV activist in the Caribbean for over 20 years and is one of the only Jamaican LGBTI human rights advocates to challenge the country’s 1864 British colonially imposed anti-gay Sodomy Law (known as the Buggery Law). This law predominantly affects men who have sex with men (MSM) and carries a jail sentence of up to ten years imprisonment with hard labor. Maurice was married to his best female friend in 1999 in an attempt to “cure” his homosexuality. The couple divorced four years later and they had one son who now lives with his mother. He now teaches Canadian Human Rights and other law courses at the University of Ontario Institute of Technology in Oshawa, Canada and is also a Senior Policy Analyst for the Canadian HIV/AIDS Legal Network, where he focuses on challenging homophobia and HIV in the Caribbean. In 2013, Maurice became a founding member of Dwayne’s House, Jamaica’s first charity which focuses exclusively on providing food and basic services to homeless LGBTI youth who have been forced to live in the sewers of the capital, Kingston. In December 2011, Maurice was awarded the inaugural “David Kato Vision and Voice Award” which was created to honor the memory of slain Ugandan LGBTI activist, David Kato (1964 – 26 January 2011) who was a Ugandan teacher and LGBT rights activist, considered a father of Uganda’s gay rights movement and described as “Uganda’s first openly gay man.” He served as advocacy officer for Sexual Minorities Uganda (SMUG). Kato was murdered in 2011 allegedly by a male sex worker, shortly after winning a law-suit against a magazine which had published his name and photograph identifying him as gay and calling for him to be executed. 

 

August 13

  

1937

The New York Times runs a story saying that New York City police were compiling a list of known sex criminals, and that the list already consisted of over 300 names, most of whom were gay men.

 

1952

Herb Ritts (August 13, 1952 – December 26, 2002) is born. He was a gay American fashion photographer who concentrated on black-and-white photography and portraits often in the style of classical sculpture. He received the GLAAD Media Pioneer Award posthumously in 2008.

 

1958, Italy

Domenico Dolce (born August 1958) is born. He is a co-founders of the fashion house Dolce & Gabbana with Stefano Gabbana (born 14 November 1962). Since founding D&G in 1985, Dolce has become one of the world’s most influential fashion designers and an industry icon. Dolce and Gabbana were an open couple for many years. Following their success, they lived in a 19th-century villa in Milan and owned several properties on the French Riviera. They ended their relationship in 2003, but the pair still work together at D&G.

 

1975

The Advocate calls 1975 the Year of the Disco. Across the U.S. and around the world, discos changed the face of the gay and lesbian subculture.

 

1975

Gay writer Randy Shilts (August 8, 1951 – February 17, 1994) made his debut in The Advocate with the story Candy Jar Politics–The Oregon Gay Rights Story.

 

1981

The Australian government agrees to grant refugee status to people from other nations who are persecuted because of their sexual orientation.

1984

Homophobes Jimmy Swaggart, Phyllis Schlafley, and Jerry Falwell spoke to a Republican Party committee, urging a platform opposed to gay rights.

 

1988

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) approves funding for The National Task Force on AIDS Prevention (NTFAP). NTFAP originated as a program of the National Association of Black and White Men Together (NABWMT), a multi-racial gay organization. The first NTFAP meeting was held on August 13-14, 1988. Reggie Williams (1951-1999), longtime community activist and member of BWMT, was the Executive Director of NTFAP from its birth until his retirement in February of 1994. Williams also served on the boards of the NABWMT, the AIDS Action Council in Washington D.C., and numerous other organizations related to African Americans, lesbians and gay men, and AIDS.

 

1992, Nicaragua

Nicaragua president Violeta Chamorro signed into law legislation that criminalized consensual same-sex sodomy. The maximum sentence was set at eight years but could be as high as twenty years for someone who was in a position of authority over minors such as a teacher.

 

1992

Senator Dennis DeConcini (D-AZ) calls on the Pentagon to end the ban on gay and lesbian service personnel unless an independent study could provide a rational basis for it.

 

1993, Russia

The International Gay and Lesbian Human Rights Commission reports that lesbians and gay men are still jailed though Russia had legalized homosexual acts between consenting adults earlier in the year.

 

1998

San Francisco’s Bay Area Reporter, a gay and lesbian newspaper, published its first issue in seventeen years with no AIDS-related obituaries.

 

1998, France

Julien Green (September 6, 1900 – August 13, 1998), a novelist who chronicled his struggle with his homosexuality, dies in Paris at age 97. He was an American writer who authored several novels (The Dark Journey, The Closed Garden, Moira, Each Man in His Darkness, the Dixie Trilogy, etc.), a four-volume autobiography (The Green Paradise, The War at Sixteen, Love in America and Restless Youth) and his famous Diary (in nineteen volumes, 1919–1998). He wrote primarily in French and was the first non-French nationals to be elected to the Académie Française. For many years Green was the companion of Robert de Saint-Jean, a journalist, whom he had met in the 1920s.In his later years Green formally adopted gay fiction writer Éric Jourdan.

 

1999

The Pentagon officially revises “Don’t Ask Don’t Tell,” requiring mandatory anti-harassment training for all troops.

 

2004

The California Supreme Court rules that the San Francisco mayor Gavin Newsom overstepped his authority by issuing marriage licenses to gay and lesbian couples, voiding thousands of marriages sanctioned in San Francisco earlier this year.

 

2005

Politicians who supported gay rights were banned from speaking at Catholic churches in the Roman Catholic Diocese of Phoenix.

 

2010

Radio talk show host Stephanie Miller (born September 29, 1961) comes out on air, saying she was inspired by singer Chely Wright (born October 25, 1970). Stephanie is the daughter of U.S. Rep. William Miller who was Barry Goldwater’s running mate. She is an American political commentator, comedian, and host of The Stephanie Miller Show, a liberal talk radio program produced in Los Angeles by WYD Media Management and syndicated syndicated nationally by Westwood One. In 2012, Talkers magazine ranked her the 11th most important radio talk show host out of 13 syndicated radio programs broadcast in America. Since 2011, Miller’s live Sexy Liberal Comedy Tour has periodically toured the country to sold out houses and high acclaim. After Trump became president, the tour was renamed the Sexy Liberal Resistance Tour.

 

2021

Karine Jean-Pierre became the first openly gay woman to serve as a vice presidential chief of staff. Karine Jean-Pierre (born August 13, 1977 is an American political campaign organizer, activist, political commentator, author serving as White House Deputy Press Secretary to Jen Psaki since January 2021. She is a former lecturer in international and public affairs at Columbia University. She was previously the senior advisor and national spokeswoman for MoveOn.org and a political analyst for NBC News and MSNBC. She served as the chief of staff for Democratic vice-presidential nominee Kamala Harris on the Joe Biden 2020 presidential campaign. President Joe Biden selected Jean-Pierre to serve as Principal Deputy White House Press Secretary.

 

August 14

  

384 BC, Greece

Demosthenes (Aug. 14, 384 – October 12, 322 BC) is born in Athens. He was a Greek statesman and orator. His orations constituted a significant expression of contemporary Athenian intellectual prowess and provided an insight into the politics and culture of ancient Greece during the 4th century B.C. Demosthenes learned rhetoric by studying the speeches of previous great orators. In Aeschines’s speeches, he uses the pederastic relations of Demosthenes as a means to attack him.

 

1886

Dr. Randolph Winslow wrote of an “epidemic of gonorrhea contracted through rectal coition” at a boys’ reform school near Baltimore, Maryland. The outbreak lasted from 1883-1885 and was brought under control by keeping a strict watch on the boys and inflicting severe corporeal punishment on anyone caught in the act.

 

1892, Russia

Composer Piotr “Peter” Ilyich Tchaikovsky (April 7, 1840 –November 6, 1893) wrote to his nephew Vladimir “Bob” Davidov, “It had to be this little incident which made me feel again how strong my love for you is. Oh God! How I want to see you!” Tchaikovsky was a Russian composer of the romantic period, some of whose works are among the most popular music in the classical repertoire. He was the first Russian composer whose music made a lasting impression internationally, bolstered by his appearances as a guest conductor in Europe and the United States. Tchaikovsky was honored in 1884 by Emperor Alexander III and awarded a lifetime pension. Discussion of Tchaikovsky’s personal life, especially his sexuality, has perhaps been the most extensive of any composer in the 19th century and certainly of any Russian composer of his time. While there have been Soviet efforts to expunge all references to same-sex attraction, biographers have generally agreed that Tchaikovsky was homosexual.

 

1920, Germany

In Germany, a publication of the Community of the Special includes an article called Uranians of the World Unite! It urged the formation of a world-wide homosexual organization.

 

1954

Dade County, Florida sheriff’s deputies raided eleven gay bars in Miami and Miami Beach under the pretext of checking for venereal disease. Fifty-three men were brought in, and nineteen were held over the weekend pending a medical examination.

 

1961

Police raid the Tay-Bush Inn, the largest gay bar raid in San Francisco history. One hundred and three patrons are arrested on ‘lewd behavior’ charges. The arrested include actors, actresses, dancers, a state hospital psychologist, a bank manager, an artist and an Air Force officer.

 

1974

After a three-year battle, Gay Community Services Center Los Angeles wins tax-exempt status.

 

1980

Black gay activist Melvin “Mel” Boozer (June 21, 1945 – March 6, 1987) is recommended for Vice President at the Democratic National Convention in New York City. In a speech to the convention he said, “I know what it’s like to be called nigger, and I know what it’s like to be called faggot. I can sum up the difference in one word – none!” Boozer also told the convention that “bigotry is bigotry” and that homophobia “dishonors our way of life just as much” as racism, before withdrawing his nomination in favor of Walter Mondale. He was a university professor and activist for African American, LGBT and HIV/AIDS issues. He was active in both the Democratic Party and Socialist Party USA, and president of the Gay Activists Alliance.

 

1980

Gwen Craig, a delegate at the Democratic National Convention, carried a sign that read “Black Lesbian Feminist.”

 

1985

Los Angeles is the first U.S. city to ban discrimination against people with AIDS in employment, housing, education, and health care.

1997

Members of the American Psychological Association vote to limit attempts to cure homosexuality and agreed to require the reading of a statement to gay patients affirming that being gay is normal and healthy. Homophobe Charles Socarides, president of the National Association for Research and Therapy of Homosexuality (NARTH), said it was an attempt to brainwash people and called homosexuality “a purple menace that threatens proper gender distinction.” His openly gay son, Richard Socarides (born November 8, 1954), was the White House liaison to the gay community. Richard was the founding president of Equality Matters in 2011.

 

2003

David Gilmore fights public radio station KUAZ for syndication of the nationally awarded program Outright Radio. Outright Radio is the leading nationally syndicated radio show featuring the extraordinary true stories of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgendered people, distributed by Public Radio International and broadcast on nearly 100 stations across the US. Outright Radio is a recipient of the 2003 Edward R. Murrow Award. 

 

2006, Canada

Andre Boisclair (born April 14, 1966), the first openly gay Canadian politician, becomes the leader of Parti Quebecois in Quebec. In November 2012, he was named as the new provincial delegate-general in New York City.

 

August 15

  

1880, Germany

Journalist Anna Rüling, (August 15, 1880 – May 8, 1953) is born. In 1904 she gave a speech to the Scientific Humanitarian Committee in Berlin, the first known public statement of the socio-legal problems faced by lesbians. Her actual name was Theodora “Theo” Anna Sprüngli. One of the first modern women to come out as homosexual, she has been described as “the first known lesbian activist“.

 

1937

The New York Times Book Review features Either is Love by Elisabeth Craigin. It was a first-person narrative of a woman who was happily married but also in love with a woman.

 

1963

Strom Thurmond tries to disrupt plans for the March on Washington by announcing in the Senate that Bayard Rustin (March 17, 1912 – August 24, 1987), Dr. Martin Luther King’s right-hand man and planner of the March, is a sex pervert. The tactic didn’t work and the March was a success.

 

1972

Nineteen-year-old Mark Segal was arrested for barging into the studio of WPVI in Philadelphia and attempting to announce his grievance against the station on the air. Earlier in the month he and a male friend had been kicked out of a dance sponsored by the station for dancing together. It would be his first arrest of four.

 

1977, Canada

Stefan Maysztowicz creates the micro-nation of the Gay Parallel Republic (GPR) on 308 square miles near Quebec, centered on the city of Sherbrooke.

 

1978, Canada

The Quebec Human Rights Commission reconsiders an earlier decision and now agrees that the Montreal Catholic School Commission could refuse to rent premises to a gay group.

  

1983

Returning to his district for the first time since his House censure, Representative Gerry E. Studds (D-Mass.) (May 12, 1937 – October 14, 2006) receives three standing ovations from supporters. He was an American Democratic Congressman from Massachusetts who served from 1973 until 1997 and the first openly gay member of Congress. In 1983 he was censured by the U.S. House of Representatives after he admitted to an inappropriate relationship with a 17-year-old page. Studds and partner Dean T. Hara (his companion since 1991) were married in Boston on May 24, 2004, one week after Massachusetts became the first state in the country to legalize same-sex marriage. Studds died on October 14, 2006, in Boston, at age 69, several days after suffering a pulmonary embolism. Due to the federal ban on same-sex marriage, Hara was not eligible, upon Studds’ death, to receive the pension provided to surviving spouses of former members of Congress. Hara later joined a federal lawsuit, Gill v. Office of Personnel Management, that successfully challenged the constitutionality of section 3 of the Defense of Marriage Act.

 

1985

People magazine publishes an “expose” of Rock Hudson’s (November 17, 1925 – October 2, 1985) homosexuality and AIDS.

 

1987

Right Step Recovery Program, a Portland, Oregon, drug and alcohol treatment facility for gays and lesbians, closes due to financial problems.

 

1988

The National Center for Health Statistics announces that in 1987 AIDS was the 15th leading cause of death in America.

 

1989

According to an article in The Advocate, nearly eight out of ten victims of anti-gay hate crimes do not report it to the police. Reasons include fear of job loss if employers learned of the reason for the attack and fear of abuse from the police. The article includes a report of a Philadelphia man who said that after a police officer interrupted an attack, the officer allowed the attacker to leave, and refused to take the victim to the hospital. The officer asked the victim, “Are you a faggot?”

1994

Over 100 people gathered to protest a sentence by district court judge David Young on David Thacker who plead guilty to killing a gay man because of his sexual orientation. He was sentenced to six years rather than the maxi-mum sentence of fifteen years.

 

1996

Rich Tafel of the Log Cabin Republicans announces that the organization would support Bob Dole for president on the homophobic Republican ticket.

 

1996

After a three-year legal battle, Sharon Bottoms withdrew her petition to re-gain custody of her five-year-old son Tyler Doustou. A Virginia judge had ruled that her lesbianism made her an unfit mother. She was granted visitation but ordered to keep her girlfriend away from her son. Bottoms v. Bottoms was a landmark child custody case in Virginia that awarded custody of the child to the grandmother instead of the mother, primarily because the mother was a lesbian. In April 1993, Kay Bottoms sued her daughter, Sharon Bottoms, for custody of Sharon Bottoms’ son Tyler. On April 5, 1993, judge Buford Parsons ruled that Sharon Bottoms was an unfit parent and Kay Bottoms was awarded custody of her grandson. Sharon Bottoms was allowed visitation rights two days a week but Tyler was not allowed in his mother’s home or to have any contact with his mother’s partner.

 

1997, Italy

A new edition of the Catechism of the Catholic Church says that homosexuals have deep-seated tendencies and are “objectively disorder. They must be accepted with respect, compassion, and sensitivity…”

 

2003

Episcopal Bishops who supported Rev. Gene Robinson (May 29, 1947) to be bishop of New Hampshire began receiving hate mail.

 

2005

The National Lesbian and Gay Journalists Association (NLGJA) launches an education program to teach straight reporters how to cover LGBT issues.

 

2013

WWE wrestler Frederick Douglas Rosser III, better known as Darren Young (born November 2, 1983) comes out. While WWE wrestlers Pat Patterson, Chris Kanyon, and Orlando Jordan (bisexual) came out after either leaving the company or retiring, Rosser is the first professional wrestler to publicly come out while still signed to a major promotion. WWE released a statement in support of Rosser for being open about his sexuality, and various fellow wrestlers tweeted their support for him. Rosser has been in a relationship with his boyfriend, Nick, since 2011. On April 26, 2017, Rosser disclosed that his mother is also gay during his interview with the Afterbuzz TV.

 

2013, Sweden

Sweden issues the first family-based visa for a same-sex partner’s spouse. It is a direct result of the June 2013 decision of the U.S. Supreme Court to expand recognition of same-sex marriage to the federal level. This allows the husband of Ambassador Mark Bezezinski (born April 7, 1965) to now travel to the United States as a fully recognized spouse. Brzezinski is an American lawyer who served as the United States Ambassador to Sweden from 2011–2015.

  

August 16

  

1661, France

Jacques Chausson (1618 – December 29, 1661) was a French ex-customs manager and writer. He was arrested on August 16, 1661, and charged with attempted rape of a young nobleman, Octave des Valons. He was convicted of sodomy and sentenced to death. His tongue was cut out and he was burned at the stake (without being suffocated first, the more common and “merciful” practice).

 

1898

Bessie Foust, 19, and Maud Hoffnagle, 20, of Philadelphia, died by suicide because they loved one another “like man and woman.” They jumped from a ferryboat into the Delaware river. Both took the leap to death together, hand in hand, and were drowned before they could be rescued. The double suicide was evidently prearranged. A note was found in a pocketbook they had left behind, signed by both, and consisted of a quotation from a melancholy poem and the words, “We find we are utterly unfit for this world and will try another.”

 

1940

Alix Dobkin is born (August 16, 1940-May 18, 2021) into a Jewish Communist family. She is a singer, songwriter, and feminist activist in New York City. In 1965 she married Sam Hood who ran the Gaslight Cafe in Greenwich Village. They moved to Miami and opened The Gaslight South Cafe but moved back to New York in 1968. Their daughter Adrian was born two years later. The following year the marriage broke up. A few months later, Dobkin came out as a lesbian which was uncommon for a public personality to do at the time. In 1977, she became an associate of the American nonprofit publishing organization Women’s Institute for Freedom of the Press (WIFP). Dobkin is a member of the OLOC (Old Lesbians Organizing for Change) Steering Committee. Dobkin has been a highly vocal proponent of women-only space through her consistent exclusion of males. Her controversial criticisms of postmodernism, sadomasochism, transgenderism and other issues appeared in several of her written columns. Her article The Emperor’s New Gender appeared in the feminist journal off our backs in 2000. The Erasure of Lesbians, co-authored with Sally Tatnall, was published in the legislation and case law website Gender Identity Watch in 2015 (transgender activists consider the site anti-transgender). Dobkin has been called a “women’s music legend” by Spin Magazine, “pithy” by The Village Voice, and “a troublemaker” by the FBI. She gained some unexpected fame in the 1980s when comedians such as David Letterman and Howard Stern tracked down her land-mark Lavender Jane Loves Women album, and began playing phrases from the song “View From Gay Head” on the air.

 

1943, Australia

Dennis Altman (born 16 August 1943) is an Australian academic and pioneering gay rights activist. Altman was born in Sydney, New South Wales to Jewish immigrant parents, and spent most of his childhood in Hobart, Tasmania. In 1964 he won a Fulbright scholarship to Cornell University where he began working with leading American gay activists. Returning to Australia in 1969, he taught politics at the University of Sydney, and in 1971 he published his first book, Homosexual: Oppression and Liberation, considered an important intellectual contribution to the ideas that shaped gay liberation movements in the English-speaking world. Altman is a longtime patron of the Australian Lesbian and Gay Archives. In March 2013 Altman wrote about the death of his partner of 22 years, Anthony Smith, who died from lung cancer in November 2012.

 

1969

New York City’s Gay Liberation Front sponsored the first “Coming Out” dance at Alternate U. to give gays and lesbians the opportunity to support their own organizations rather than what they said were mafia-owned bars. Alternate U was a free counterculture school and leftist political organizing center in Greenwich Village for many of its activities through 1970. It was founded around 1966 by Tom Wodetski. It had several classrooms in a former dance studio on the second floor of 69 West 14th Street, at the corner of Sixth Avenue.

 

1971

Blue Earth County, Minnesota issues a marriage license to two men, Jack Baker (born 1942) and Mike McConnell (born 1942) when Jack changed his name to Pat. Michael McConnell and Jack Baker are pioneering advocates of marriage rights for gay couples. Jack Baker was a stage name used by Richard John Baker in the 1970s to promote full equality for gay men and women. He and Michael McConnell originally applied in Hennepin County for a license to marry which was denied. They appealed the denial to the Minnesota Supreme Court which dismissed the claim. “Under the law at the time (since repealed) governing the [U.S.] Supreme Court’s jurisdiction over appeals from state-court decisions, Baker v. Nelson reached the justices as a mandatory appeal.” The State argued that the marriage license issued previously in Blue Earth County proved that the “questions raised by this appeal are moot.” Baker and McConnell were legally married in 2019.

 

1973

The chairwoman of the Mississippi Gay Alliance attempted to place an ad in The Reflector, the student newspaper of Mississippi State University. The editor refused to accept the ad. The ad announced hours and services offered by MGA, an unrecognized student organization.

 

1985

Dr. Paul Volberding, Chief of Medical Oncology and Director of AIDS Activities at San Francisco General Hospital, writes a “breakthrough letter” to Blaine Elswood, founder of the Guerilla Clinic, about obtaining currently unapproved experimental drugs mostly from Mexico. In 1983, Volberding founded the first inpatient ward for persons with AIDS in the San Francisco General Hospital. He worked on early clinical trials to evaluate antiretroviral therapy in HIV infection, and has served on the two major guidelines panels for antiretroviral therapy, addressing issues such as the optimal timing of treatment in early HIV infection when no symptoms are evident. In 2001 Volberding left the SF General Hospital to become chief medical officer at the San Francisco VA Medical Center at which time he also became vice chairman of the department of medicine at the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF). He became co-director of the Center for AIDS Research (CFAR) at UCSF and the Gladstone Institute of Virology and Immunology. In February 2012, he became the director of UCSF’s AIDS Research Institute, and director of research for UCSF Institute for Global Health Sciences. He is widely considered one of the world’s leading AIDS experts.

 

1988, Canada

The General Council of the United Church of Canada, meeting in Victoria, B.C., became the first mainstream church in the world to accept gay ordination without imposing celibacy.

 

1990, UK

The British action group OutRage demonstrates outside Scotland Yard to call for an end to police entrapment and an increase in efforts to solve anti-gay murders.

 

1991

New Jersey governor James Florio issues an executive order prohibiting sexual orientation discrimination in the public sector.

 

1992

In an address to the Huntington, West Virginia chamber of commerce, chamber president Richard Bolen states that the enactment of an ordinance banning anti-gay discrimination would be good for business.

 

1994

In Largo, Florida, a video store clerk was found not guilty of obscenity charges for renting a gay porn video to an undercover police officer.

 

1996

At a volunteer campaign training conference in Chicago sponsored by the Human Rights Campaign, President Clinton said through a videotaped address, “I’m especially proud to be the first president to endorse a civil rights bill that specifically includes gay and lesbian Americans. I support the Employment Non-Discrimination Act because I believe in the fundamental values of fairness and equality.”

 

1996, Australia

New South Wales announced it would review the “homosexual panic” defense in murder trials to determine the effect it has on the prejudice of a jury.

 

2004

The United Nations Program on HIV/AIDS voices concern about the arrests and reported mistreatment of 39 gay men in Nepal.

 

2008

Portia DeRossi (January 31, 1973) and Ellen DeGeneres (January 26, 1958) marry. Portia de Rossi is an Australian-American actress, model, and philanthropist. She appeared as a regular cast member on the American political thriller television series Scandal in the role of Elizabeth North from 2014 to 2017. Ellen DeGeneres is a talk show host, comedian, and activist. 

 

August 17

  

1786, Germany

German monarch Frederick II (January 24, 1712 – August 17, 1786) dies. He was King of Prussia from 1740 until 1786, the longest reign of any Hohenzollern king, and named himself Frederick the Great. Recent major biographers of Frederick are unequivocal that he was predominantly homosexual, and that his sexuality was central to his life and character.

 

1893

Mae West is born. Mary Jane “Mae” West (August 17, 1893 – November 22, 1980) was an American actress, singer, playwright, screenwriter, comedian, and sex symbol whose entertainment career spanned seven decades. In 1927, she wrote a play about homosexuality called The Drag, and alluded to the work of Karl Heinrich Ulrichs. It was a box-office success. West regarded talking about sex as a basic human rights issue, and was also an early advocate of gay rights. With the return of conservatism in the 1930s, the public grew intolerant of homosexuality, and gay actors were forced to choose between retiring or agreeing to hide their sexuality.

 

1967

The third national planning conference of Homophile Organizations was held in Washington, D.C.

 

1969

An Atlanta art theatre was raided during a showing of Andy Warhol’s (Au-gust 6, 1928 – February 22, 1987) film Lonesome Cowboys saying it was a hotbed of homosexuality. Police photographed everyone in attendance as reference material for the vice squad. Written by Paul Morrissey, the film is a satire of Hollywood westerns. It won the Best Film Award at the San Francisco International Film Festival.

  

1973, Canada

In Toronto, Vancouver, Montreal, and Ottawa, Gay Pride Week becomes a national celebration.

 

1974, Canada

In Toronto, a Gay Pride March converges on Queen’s Park. For the first time, the daily newspapers cover the march.

 

1982

Texas’s sodomy law was repealed by Federal Judge Jerry Buchmeyer who declared it unconstitutional. A new law was passed three years later and approved by the federal bench because it outlawed only homosexual acts.

 

1987

City commissioner John Markl of Traverse City, Michigan, during a debate on the sale of condoms within city limits, states that homosexuals are the cause of AIDS and that a quick cut of the scalpel would prevent them from spreading it. He also said that homosexuals were mentally unbalanced.

 

1993

Loc Minh Truong of Orange County, California, filed a lawsuit against Jeffrey Raines and Christopher Cribbens who assaulted him because they assumed he was gay (he was not). He was beaten so severely that doctors could not determine his race and did not expect him to live. The amount of the suit was $25,000 to cover medical expenses and lost wages. Ten men who watched the attack but did nothing to intervene and were also identified in the suit.

 

1998

Newsweek runs a cover article on the ex-gay debate. The headline reads “Gay for Life? Going Straight: The Uproar over Sexual Conversion.”

 

2004

Indiana Governor Joseph Kernan issues an executive order banning gender identity discrimination in the public sector.

 

2004

Eugene Lange College in New York City is named the most gay-positive school in America by the Princeton Review.

 

2005

The FBI said mafia kingpin James (Whitey) Bulger, sought for 30 years, was thought to be hiding in a gay neighborhood somewhere in the U.S. or Europe.

 

2007

The Hollywood Reporter pulls a Ray Richmond column entitled Merv Griffin (March 16, 1925 – August 12, 2007) died a closeted homosexual. Several hours later, it was back online with a different title: Griffin Never Revealed the Man Behind the Curtain. Griffin was an American television host and media mogul. He began his career as a radio and big band singer who went on to appear in film and on Broadway. From 1965 to 1986, Griffin hosted his own talk show, The Merv Griffin Show. He also created the internationally popular game shows Jeopardy! and Wheel of Fortune through his television production companies, Merv Griffin Enterprises and Merv Griffin Entertainment. During his lifetime, Griffin was considered an entertainment business magnate. In 1991, he was sued by Deney Terrio (born June 15, 1950), the host of Dance Fever, another show Griffin created, alleging sexual harassment. The same year, Brent Plott, a longtime employee who worked as a bodyguard, horse trainer and driver, filed a $200 million palimony lawsuit against Griffin. Griffin characterized both lawsuits as extortion. Ultimately, both suits were dismissed.

 

2012

ParaNorman, a 3D animated comedy film produced by Laika and distributed by Focus Features, is the first mainstream children’s film with an explicit non-adult LGBTQ character. The film has drawn some attention for the revelation in its final scenes that Mitch is gay, making him the first openly gay character in a mainstream animated film. Nancy French of the National Review Online suggested that the film could lead parents “to answer unwanted questions about sex and homosexuality on the way home from the movie theater.” Conversely, Mike Ryan of The Huffington Post cited Mitch’s inclusion as one of the reasons why ParaNorman is “remarkable”. Co-director Chris Butler said that the character was explicitly connected with the film’s message: “If we’re saying to anyone that watches this movie don’t judge other people, then we’ve got to have the strength of our convictions.” In 2013 GLAAD nominated ParaNorman as its first-ever PG-rated movie for its annual GLAAD Media Awards.

 

2016, Space

The U.S. charity organization Planting Peace launched a rainbow flag as a symbolic gesture to “make space LGBTQ-friendly.” The flag was launched using a high-altitude balloon with a GoPro camera attached and went as high as 21.1 miles over the Earth’s surface, remaining airborne for over three hours.

 

August 18

  

1721, Germany

Catherina Margaretha Linck (died 1721) is executed for female sodomy. She was a Prussian woman who for most of her adult life presented as a man named Anastasius Lagrantius Rosenstengel. She married 18-year-old Catharina Margaretha Mühlhahn, and, based on their sexual activity together (court records detail their sexual activities), was convicted of sodomy and executed by order of King Frederick William I. Linck’s execution was the last for lesbian sexual activity in Europe and an anomaly for its time. Linck’s story was the subject of a play, Executed for Sodomy: The Life of Catharina Linck, performed at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe in 2013.

 

1935

The New York Times publishes a review of Gale Wilhelm’s (April 26, 1908 – July 11, 1991) lesbian novel We Too Are Drifting. The reviewer refers to reading about “Sapphic intimacy” as chilling and said that while the author had a poetic style and was clearly talented, the subject matter was the book’s major fault. Wilhelm lived with Helen Hope Rudolph Page in San Francisco from 1938 until Page’s death in the late 1940s. Barbara Grier (November 4, 1933 – November 10, 2011), owner of Naiad Press, spent several years attempting to locate Wilhelm. The 1984 Naiad Press edition of We Too Are Drifting included a foreword by Grier describing Wilhelm’s life and pleading for any assistance from anyone who knew any information on the whereabouts of Wilhelm. By the time Naiad published Torchlight to Valhalla in 1985, it contained a foreword by Wilhelm herself, information given to Grier by an anonymous source. Grier speculated that Wilhelm stopped writing before she turned 40 years old because “the world would not let her write the books she wanted.” Wilhelm lived with Kathleen Huebner from 1953 until Wilhelm’s death in 1991 of cancer.

 

1988

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) announced that syphilis and hepatitis B among gay men decreased dramatically since 1982 but had increased among heterosexuals.

 

1990

President George H. W. Bush signs the Ryan White Care Act, a federally funded program for people living with AIDS. Ryan White (December 6, 1971 – April 8, 1990), an Indiana teenager, contracted AIDS in 1984 through a hemophilia treatment. After being barred from attending high school because of his HIV-positive status, Ryan White becomes a well-known activist for AIDS research.

 

1992

Rocky Mountain Regional United Methodist Church bishop Roy Sano urges Colorado Methodist ministers to oppose Amendment 2 which sought to ban laws against anti-gay discrimination.

 

1993, Sicily

Giuseppe Mandanici, 33, was shot three times but survived the attack. Police believed it to be an act of random violence until they discovered that his father had paid a hit man $1 million lire (approx. $700 US) to kill his son because he could not come to terms with his son’s homosexuality.

 

1999

Hackers re-routed hate monger Fred Phelps’ anti-gay web site, godhatesfags.com to godlovesfags.com.

 

2009

Lateisha Green, a transgender woman, was killed in 2008. Her killer was found guilty of manslaughter in the first degree as a hate crime, the second person in the U.S. to be convicted of a hate crime for killing a transgender person.

 

August 19

 

1867, Germany

In Munich, Karl Heinrich Ulrichs (28 August 1825 – 14 July 1895) is jeered when he attempts to persuade jurists that same-sex love should be tolerated rather than persecuted. He is probably the first to come out publicly in defense of what he calls “Uranism” (homosexuality). Ulrichs coined various terms to describe different sexual orientations, including Urning for a man who desires men (English “Uranian”) and Dioning for one who desires women. These terms are in reference to a section of Plato‘s Symposium in which two kinds of love are discussed, symbolized by an Aphrodite who is born from a male (Uranos) and an Aphrodite who is born from a female (Dione). Ulrichs also coined words for the female counterparts (Urningin and Dioningin) and for bisexuals and intersexual persons. Ulrichs is likely the first true gay activist and is seen today as the pioneer of the modern gay rights movement. Published in 1870, Ulrich’s Araxes: A Call to Free the Nature of the Urning from Penal Law is remarkable for its similarity to the discourse of the modern gay rights movement. In it “the Urning, too, is a person. He, too, therefore, has inalienable rights. His sexual orientation is a right established by nature. Legislators have no right to veto nature; no right to persecute nature in the course of its work; no right to torture living creatures who are subject to those drives nature gave them. The Urning is also a citizen. He, too, has civil rights; and according to these rights, the state has certain duties to fulfill as well. The state does not have the right to act on whimsy or for the sheer love of persecution. The state is not authorized, as in the past, to treat Urnings as outside the pale of the law.”

 

1890

In response to a letter received from John Addington Symonds, American poet Walt Whitman (May 31, 1819 – March 26, 1892) denies that “Calamus” from Leaves of Grass was homoerotic. Whitman’s work was very controversial in its time, particularly his poetry collection Leaves of Grass which was described as obscene for its overt sexuality. Though biographers continue to debate Whitman’s sexuality, he is usually described as either homosexual or bisexual in his feelings and attractions.

 

1984

President Ronald Reagan issues a statement saying his administration would fight governmental endorsement of homosexuality.

 

1992

The Ann Arbor, Michigan, city council votes 8-1 to extend health benefits to same sex partners of city employees.

 

1992, Germany

Over 250 gay and lesbian couples submit marriage applications in over fifty German cities as part of an attempted mass wedding. About 75% of the couples were male, and over 100 of the applications were submitted in Berlin. The demonstration, organized by the Gay League of Germany, receives widespread media attention. Lesben und Schwulenverband in Deutschland (LSVD), German for the Lesbian and Gay Federation in Germany, is the largest non-governmental LGBT rights organization in Germany. It was founded in 1990 and is part of the International Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender and Intersex Association (ILGA). Manfred Bruns, Volker Beck, Eduard Stapel, Günter Dworek and Halina Bendkowski were prominent persons in the Board of Directors. People from the arts, like comic-designer Ralf König, comedian Hella von Sinnen, director Rosa von Praunheim, and from politics and from science like sexologist Rolf Gindorf and others are prominent individual members of the organization.

 

1996

California’s state senate kills a bill banning same-sex marriage after Democrats attach a provision to establish a domestic partner registry.

 

1996

In Spokane, Washington, the family of Curtis Babcock files a lawsuit against county coroner Dexter Amend. Babcock’s memorial service had to be delayed because Amend ordered an autopsy to link his AIDS-related death to sodomy.

 

1997

The school board of Wayne-Westland, a suburb of Detroit, votes 6-1 to repeal sexual orientation protection for students and staff.

 

2005

DC Comics orders the Kathleen Cullen Fine Arts Gallery in New York to remove an exhibit of watercolors showing Batman and Robin in a variety of romantic poses. DC threatened both artist and the Kathleen Cullen Fine Arts gallery with legal action if they did not cease selling the works and demanded all remaining art as well as any profits derived from them. Homosexual interpretations have been part of the academic study of the Batman franchise at least since psychiatrist Fredric Wertham asserted in his 1954 book Seduction of the Innocent that “Batman stories are psychologically homosexual.” Wertham, as well as parodies, fans, and other independent parties, have described Batman and his sidekick Robin as homosexual, possibly in a relationship with each other. DC Comics has never indicated Batman or any of his male allies to be gay but several characters in the Modern Age Batman comic books are expressly gay, lesbian, or bisexual.

 

2011

The Arizona Queer Archives is founded by Jamie A. Lee with support from Susan Stryker. The Arizona Queer Archives is the state of Arizona’s Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, Queer, Intersex (LGBTQI) collecting archives of the Institute for LGBT Studies at the University of Arizona.

 

August 20

  

1308, France

Jacques de Molay (1243 – March 18, 1314), the leader of the Knights Templar, who denied sexual relations with two of his servants, finally admits to it. He was the 23rd and last Grand Master of the Knights Templar, leading the Order from April 20, 1292 until it was dissolved by order of Pope Clement V in 1307. Though little is known of his actual life and deeds except for his last years as Grand Master, de Molay is one of the best known Templars.

 

1881

Dr. E.C. Spitzka of New York presents the case of Edward Hyde, Viscount Cornbury (Nov. 28, 1661 – March 31, 1723), the colonial governor of New York and New Jersey in the early 1700’s, in a Chicago medical journal. Cornbury frequently appeared in public wearing female clothing. Spitzka describes Cornbury as a sexual pervert, “a degraded, hypocritical and utterly immoral being.”

 

1916

The New York Times publishes a review of Edward Carpenter’s (August 29, 1844 – June 28, 1929) autobiography. Carpenter’s book was among the earliest in which an author self-identified as homosexual. He was an English socialist poet, philosopher, anthologist, and early activist for rights for homosexuals.

 

1969

Staircase, a film in which Rex Harrison and Richard Burton play lovers, has its world premiere. The film, like the play, is about an aging gay couple who own a barber shop in the East End of London. One of them is a part-time actor about to go on trial for propositioning a police officer. The action takes place over the course of one night as they discuss their loving but often volatile past together and possible future without each other. It was panned by most critics, including Roger Ebert, who gave it one star in his review and called it “an unpleasant exercise in bad taste. Rarely seen on television, the film was broadcast by Turner Classic Movies during its June 2007 tribute to gay cinema.

 

1977

Syndicated columnist Mike Royko includes anti-gay Anita Bryant on a list of the ten most obnoxious people in America.

 

1978

Ronald Reagan announces his opposition to the Anita Bryant Briggs Initiative in California which sought to ban homosexuals or anyone who was supportive of gay rights from being employed as a public-school teacher. The Briggs Initiative, on the ballot as Prop 6, failed.

 

1979, Canada

Seven men staged Gay Sit-in for Justice in the office of Ontario Attorney General Roy McMurtry to demand a meeting about police and legal harassment of the gay community.

 

1979, Canada

At the Sarnia, Ontario/Port Huron, the Michigan international bridge, lesbians on their way to the Michigan Womyn’s Music Festival were harassed or turned back by U.S. Immigration officials. Formal complaints were made on behalf of Canadian women by the National Gay Task Force (NGLTF).

 

1987

The New York State Consumer Protection Board announces that a one-month supply of AZT costs consumers anywhere from $900 to $3,000, depending on where it was purchased.

 

1992, Iran

More than 90 gay men were arrested at a private party in Iran. Under Iranian law, homosexuals can be sentenced to death with the testimony of four men.

 

2001

A federal judge rules that Florida’s law banning lesbians and gays from adopting children is valid, saying the state has a legitimate interest in allowing only married heterosexual couples to adopt. The law is considered the nation’s toughest ban on gay adoptions, prohibiting adoptions by any gay or lesbian individual or couple. Anita Bryant’s hate-based Save Our Children campaign in Dade County branded all gays as pedophiles.

  

August 21

  

1826

Frances Ann Wood (August 21, 1826 – November 10, 1901) was an American educator. She was the founder of the Mount Carroll Seminary which later became Shimer College in Mount Carroll, Illinois. She was also the sole proprietress of the school from 1870 to her retirement in 1896. Turns out Frances and her woman companion, Cinderella Gregory, left up-state NY in 1800s to go out west looking for land to “start a woman’s seminary.” They found it in Mt. Carroll and established Shimer. They moved into a house in Mt. Carroll and lived there for years. When they were in middle age Frances “married” a local townsman named Shimer who moved into the house with them. From 1853 to 1870, Frances Shimer operated the Mount Carroll Seminary as a partnership with Cinderella Gregory who served as the chief academic officer while Shimer handled finances and other non-academic operations. Shimer and Gregory purchased the school from the discouraged incorporators in 1855 when it still occupied only a single building. The subsequent expansion of the seminary to a 25-acre campus with four connected buildings and numerous outbuildings was attributed largely to Shimer’s industry and careful management of finances.

 

1869

Walt Whitman (May 31, 1819 – March 26, 1892) wrote to Peter Doyle on this date: “My love for you is indestructible, and since that night and morning has returned more than before.”

 

1872, UK

Aubrey Beardsley (August 21, 1872 – March 16, 1898) was born in Brighton, England. More than any other artist of his time, Beardsley epitomized the Art Nouveau style. As a young man he would walk down the boulevards of Paris arm in arm with his mother, his makeup far more dazzling than hers. Although Beardsley was associated with the homosexual clique that included Oscar Wilde (16 October 1854 – 30 November 1900) and other English aesthetes, the details of his sexuality remain in question. He was generally regarded as asexual. His association with Oscar Wilde ruined him and he died of tuberculosis three years after Wilde was sentenced to prison.

 

1928

James “John” Finley Gruber (August 21, 1928 – February 27, 2011) was an American teacher and early LGBT rights activist. Gruber helped to document the early LGBT movement through interviews with historians, participating in a panel discussion in San Francisco in 2000 commemorating the 50th anniversary of the founding of Mattachine and appearing in the 2001 documentary film Hope Along the Wind about the life of Harry Hay (April 7, 1912 – October 24, 2002). Growing up Gruber considered himself bisexual and was involved with both men and women. His father, a former vaudevillian turned music teacher, relocated the family to Los Angeles in 1936. Gruber enlisted in the U. S. Marine Corps in 1946 at the age of 18 and was honorably discharged in 1949. Using his G.I. Bill benefits, Gruber studied English literature at Occidental College in Los Angeles. Gruber suffered increasingly ill health for several years before his death on February 27, 2011, at his home in Santa Clara.

 

1929, Mexico

Bisexual Frida Kahlo (July 6, 1907 – July 13, 1954) marries Diego Rivera. She was a Mexican painter, who mostly painted self-portraits. Inspired by Mexican popular culture, she employed a naïve folk art style to explore questions of identity, post colonialism, gender, class, and race in Mexican society. Her work has been celebrated internationally as emblematic of Mexican national and indigenous traditions, and by feminists for what is seen as its uncompromising depiction of the female experience and form. Kahlo was mainly known as Rivera’s wife until the late 1970s when her work was re-discovered by art historians and political activists. By the early 1990s, she had become not only a recognized figure in art history, but also regarded as an icon for Chicanos, the Feminism movement, and the LGBTQ movement. Kahlo’s work has been celebrated internationally as emblematic of Mexican national and Indigenous traditions, and by feminists for what is seen as its uncompromising depiction of the female experience and form.

 

1936, Spain

Luisa Isabel Alvarez de Toledo y Maura, 21st Duchess of Medina Sidonia, Grandee of Spain (August 21, 1936 – March 7, 2008) was nickname La Duquesa Rojaor The Red Duchess. She was the 21st Duchess of the ducal family of Medina-Sidonia, one of the most prestigious noble families and Grandees of Spain. Eleven hours before her death, on March 7, 2008, Luisa Isabel married her longtime partner and secretary since 1983, Liliana Maria Dahlmann in a civil ceremony on her deathbed. Today, the Dowager Duchess Liliana Maria, her legal widow, serves as life-president of the Fundación Casa Medina Sidonia.

 

1944, Germany

Felice Schragenheim (March 9, 1922 – December 31, 1944), a young Jewish resistance fighter in Germany, was sent to a concentration camp in Poland on this date. Her love story with Lilly Wust, a German wife of a Nazi, is portrayed in the 1999 film Aimee & Jaguar and in a book of the same name by Erica Fischer. It is also the subject of the 1997 documentary Love Story: Berlin 1942.

 

1970

Huey Newton, co-founder of the Black Panthers, publicly announces his support of gay rights, stating his “solidarity” with the “Gay Power” movement.

 

1971, Canada

In Ottawa, We Demand, a brief prepared by the Toronto Gay Action and sponsored by Canadian gay groups, is presented to the federal government. It calls for law reform and changes to public policy relating to homosexuals.

 

1983

The musical version of La Cage Aux Folles opens on Broadway to rave reviews and $4 million in advance ticket sales. With a book written by Harvey Fierstein (born June 6, 1954) and lyrics and music by Jerry Herman (born July 10, 1931 – December 26, 2019), La Cage is a romantic musical comedy based on a popular French film about two male lovers, the manager and the leading star of a nightclub featuring female impersonators.

 

1989

The National Association of State Boards of Education reports that only twenty-four states require AIDS education in schools, and eighteen of those suggest abstinence as the only method of avoiding the disease. Only three programs require teachers to discuss the use of condoms in their programs.

 

1989

Lucie McKinney, the widow of Congressman Stewart McKinney (R-CT) (January 30, 1931 – May 7, 1987), the first congressman to die of complications from AIDS, challenges his will in court because he left a car and a 40% share of his Washington, D.C. house to his lover Arnold Dennison. McKinney’s physician speculated that McKinney became infected with HIV in 1979 as the result of blood transfusions during heart surgery. McKinney was known by friends to be bisexual, though his family said this was not the case, which raised the issue of how he had contracted the disease. Anti-gay prejudice at the time of McKinney’s death in 1987 may have promoted a disingenuous approach to speculations on the cause of McKinney’s HIV infection. Arnold Denson, the man with whom McKinney had been living in Washington, said that he had been McKinney’s lover, and that he believed McKinney was already infected when Denson met him.

 

1994

Rikki Streicher (1922 – Aug. 21,1994) dies of cancer at age 68 in San Francisco. She opened Maud’s, America’s oldest continuously operating lesbian bar, in 1966 and Amanda’s, a lesbian dance club that opened in 1978. Maud’s closed in 1989 because of financial problems. Streicher also helped organize the Gay Games in San Francisco in 1986. Streicher was born in 1922. She served in the military and lived in Los Angeles in the 1940s where she spent time in the gay bars of that city. She also frequented the gay bars of North Beach in San Francisco. Butch-femme roles were very fixed at that time. Streicher, then identified as butch, was photographed in 1945 in a widely published image, sitting in Oakland‘s Claremont Resort with other lesbians, wearing a suit and tie. In 1966, Streicher opened Maud’s, originally called “Maud’s Study”, or “The Study”, a lesbian bar on Cole St. in the Haight-Ashbury district of San Francisco. The following year, the Haight-Ashbury would become the epicenter of the hippie movement during the 1967 Summer of Love. Maud’s, said one historian, served to “bridge the gap between San Francisco’s lesbian community and its hippie generation.” Because women were not allowed to be employed as bartenders in San Francisco until 1971, Streicher had to either tend bar herself or hire male bartenders. The bar quickly became a popular gathering place for San Francisco lesbians and bisexual women. One notable customer of Maud’s was singer Janis Joplin (January 19, 1943 – October 4, 1970). Activists Del Martin (May 5, 1921 – August 27, 2008) and Phyllis Lyon (born November 10, 1924) were also early patrons of Maud’s. In 1978, at the height of the disco era, Streicher opened a more spacious bar and dance club on Valencia Street in San Francisco’s Mission District called Amelia’s, named after Amelia Earhart. Streicher died of cancer in 1994, and was survived by her partner, Mary Sager.

 

1996

Intel announces that the company will begin offering domestic partner benefits.

 

1996

Denver Colorado’s Career Service Authority votes 5-0 to extend health insurance benefits to the partners and children of gay and lesbian city employees. The plan did not cover unmarried heterosexual couples. Mayor Wellington Webb announced that he would approve the plan which had the support of the majority of the city council.

 

1997

Irving Cooperberg, (1932 – Aug. 21, 1997), co-founder of the New York City Lesbian and Gay Community Services Center, dies of complications from AIDS at age 65. Mr. Cooperberg, who was born and raised in Brooklyn, quit college in 1951, joined the Army and served in Korea. Real estate investments in Manhattan and Fire Island Pines, beginning in the early 1960’s, made him wealthy. In 1973, he attended a service at the embryonic gay and lesbian synagogue, Congregation Beth Simchat Torah in Greenwich Village. He soon volunteered to serve on its board. Because of his role at the synagogue, Mr. Cooperberg was drawn into the effort in the early 1980s to establish a citywide lesbian and gay center with a full complement of services. One of the first of its kind in the country, it was to occupy the former Food and Maritime High School at 208 West 13th Street. Mr. Cooperberg was elected the center’s first president in July 1983 and served until May 1987. He is survived by his companion, Lou Rittmaster.

  

1998

According to a survey by the Arizona Department of Public Safety, hate crimes in the first part of 1998 were down 15% but gay males were the second most commonly targeted group with twenty incidents. Ten incidents against lesbians were reported.

 

1998

Elton Jackson was found guilty by a jury in Virginia of the murder of Andrew Smith. He was given a sentence of life in prison. Police suspected him in the murder of twelve gay men.

 

2002

Twenty lesbian and gay survivors whose partners died in the September 11 terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center were told they would receive workers’ compensation under a new state law.

 

2003

Former Georgia representative Bob Barr, the man who wrote the Defense of Marriage Act that prevents same-sex couples from receiving federal benefits, said it would be a mistake to amend the Constitution to ban gay marriage.

 

2004

A Louisiana state judge rules that the proposed constitutional amendment banning same-sex marriages and civil unions was unconstitutional and must be taken off the September 18 ballot.

 

2008

The Coquille Indian Tribe in Oregon legalizes same-sex marriage which is not recognized by the state.

 

2008

Hallmark Greeting Cards based in Kansas City introduces line of same-sex wedding cards.

 

2018

A bill was signed into law designating the LGBTQ Veterans Memorial in Desert Memorial Park in Palm Springs as California’s official LGBTQ veterans memorial. California becomes the first state in the nation to officially recognize LGBTQ military veterans.   

 

August 22

 

 

1662, Spain

A leader of the Mexican Inquisition sent a letter to his supervisors complaining that the severe punishments given to sodomites had been ineffective. He noted that over 100 had been indicted, that a large number of the offenders were clergy, and that torture had been used to extract confessions.

 

1894, Denmark

Willem Arondeus (August 22, 1894 – July 1, 1943) is born. He was a Dutch artist and author who joined the Dutch anti-Nazi resistance movement during World War II. He participated in the bombing of the Amsterdam public records office to hinder the Nazi German effort to identify Dutch Jews. Arondeus was caught and executed soon after his arrest. He defiantly asserted his sexuality before his execution. In his last message before his execution, Arondeus, who had lived openly as a gay man before the war, asked his lawyer to “Let it be known that homosexuals are not cowards!”

 

1895, Hungary

László Ede Almásy de Zsadány et Törökszentmiklós (August 22, – March 22, 1951) is born. He was a Hungarian aristocrat, desert explorer, aviator, scout leader and sportsman who served as the basis for the protagonist in both Michael Ondaatje‘s novel The English Patient (1992)and the movie adaptation of the same name (1996). Letters discovered in 2010 in Germany written by Almásy prove that, unlike the fictionalized character of the film, he was in fact gay. His lover was a young soldier named Hans Entholt who was an officer in the Wehrmacht and who was killed by stepping on a landmine. A staff member of the Heinrich Barth Institute for African Studies where the letters are located also confirmed that “Egyptian princes were among Almásy’s lovers.” The letters confirmed that Almásy died from amoebic dysentery in 1951.

 

1914, France

Violette Morris (April 18, 1893 – April 26, 1944) marries a man on this day. She won two gold and one silver medals at the Women’s World Games in 1921–1922. Starting in 1936 she worked with the Gestapo during World War II. She was killed in 1944 in a Resistance-led ambush as a traitor to the French state. Morris was a gifted athlete, becoming the first French woman to excel at shot put and discus, and playing on two separate women’s football teams. She played for Fémina Sports from 1917 until 1919 and for Olympique de Paris from 1920 to 1926. Both teams were based in Paris. She also played on the French women’s national team. She was refused license renewal by the Fédération Française sportive Féminine (FFSF – French Women’s Athletic Federation) amid complaints of her bisexual lifestyle and was therefore barred from participating in the 1928 Summer Olympics. The agency cited her lack of morals, especially in light of the fact that one of her lovers, Raoul Paoli, made public her bisexuality. Paoli had recently left Morris after she had initially decided to undergo an elective mastectomy in order to fit into racing cars more easily. At the end of December 1935, Morris was recruited by the Sicherheitsdienst (Security Service), a wing of the infamous SS of Nazi Germany. She was invited, with honor, to attend the 1936 Summer Olympics in Berlin at the personal behest of Adolf Hitler. She was killed along a country road by members of a French resistance group on April 26,1944 at the age of 51 while out driving with friends who were also collaborators.

 

1915, UK

British actor Hugh Paddick (August 22, 1915 – November 9, 2000) is born in Hoddesdon, Hertfordshire. He was an English actor whose most notable role was in the 1960s BBC radio show Round the Horne, in sketches such as Charles and Fiona (as Charles) and Julian and Sandy (as Julian). Paddick was gay and lived for over thirty years with his partner Francis. He was distantly related to Brian Paddick (born 24 April 1958), Britain’s first openly gay police commander. Paddick died in November 2000, at age 85.

 

1927

James Kirkwood, Jr.  (August 22, 1924 – April 21, 1989) is born in Los Angeles. He was an American playwright, author and actor. In 1976 he received the Tony Award, the Drama Desk Award for Outstanding Book of a Musical, and the Pulitzer Prize for Drama for the Broadway hit A Chorus Line.

 

1965

David Peter Reimer is born (August 22, 1965 – May 4, 2004). He was a Canadian man born biologically male but who was reassigned as female by Dr. John Money after his penis was destroyed in infancy by a botched circumcision. He died by suicide in 2004. In 1955, Money (1921-2006), a sexologist and psychologist, introduced the concept of ‘gender role’ into the transsexual debate. Money later was heavily criticized over Reimer’s suicide. David Reimer, an identical twin, was mutilated at  eight months old in a botched circumcision and then surgically reassigned as female by Money and raised as a girl. But he never felt female on the inside (even though his parents followed Money’s advice and hid the fact of his birth sex from him), despite Money’s claims to the contrary. His life, especially at school, was sheer hell because others never really perceived him to be a girl either, despite his girl drag. By age 16, Reimer underwent a second reassignment at his own insistence so that he could live as the boy he knew himself to be. In the meantime, however, Money had convinced the medical establishment and the lay public, despite growing evidence to the contrary in his “girl” twin, that babies could be arbitrarily assigned a gender with no psychological consequences. Today, still, five children a day are surgically “corrected” at birth because of this one “case study” and Money’s defense of his handling of David’s life. With the help of Drs. Milton Diamond and H.K. Sigmundson, Reimer would finally tell the medical establishment the truth about his life in 1997 in the Archives of Adolescent and Pediatric Medicine, [“Sex reassignment at birth. Long-term review and clinical implications” Arch Pediatr Adolesc Med, Mar 1997; 151: 298 – 304.], challenging the firmly established medical and popular myth that gender was mostly a function of nurture rather than nature. Later that year, Reimer would work with author John Colapinto to tell his story to the lay public, first under a pseudonym, in Rolling Stone.

 

1972

John Wojtowicz (March 9, 1945 – January 2, 2006) and Sal Naturale attempt to rob the Chase Manhattan Bank in Brooklyn to get money for Wojtowicz’s lover’s sex change operation. Naturale was shot to death. The incident became the subject of the 1975 movie Dog Day Afternoon with Al Pacino. Wojtowicz was sentenced to 20 years.

 

1979

Stephan “Steve” Joseph Kornacki (born August 22, 1979) is an American political journalist, writer, and television host. Kornacki is a national political correspondent for NBC News. He has written articles for Salon, The New York Observer, The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, New York Daily News, the New York Post, The Boston Globe, and The Daily Beast. Kornacki was the multimedia anchor and data analyst for much of MSNBC’s The Place for Politics campaign coverage, airing throughout 2016. On May 1, 2021, Kornacki was part of the NBC broadcast team for the Kentucky Derby, bringing his “big board” to Louisville’s Churchill Downs. Kornacki is gay and publicly came out in 2011 through a column in Salon. He resides in the East Village of Manhattan

  

1983

Organizers of a Washington march marking the 20th anniversary of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s “I Have a Dream” speech announce that no representatives from gay or lesbian rights groups will be allowed to speak. A group of lesbians and gay men stage a sit-in at the organizers’ office in response. Bayard Rustin (March 17, 1912 – August 24, 1987), an openly gay man, was one of the primary organizers of the 1963 March.

 

1996

In an interview publishes by the St. Petersburg Times (Florida, not Russia), openly gay Rep. Barney Frank (born March 31, 1940) said the outing of hypocrites was justified.

 

1996

Gov. Kirk Fordice of Mississippi signs an executive order banning same-sex marriage.

 

1998

Hundreds picket at the Coral Ridge Presbyterian Church to protest the Truth in Love newspaper ad campaign which claimed gays and lesbians can be “cured” by becoming Christians. The church in Fort Lauderdale, Florida is a major player in spreading hatred for the gay community.

 

2001

U.S. Census figures showed that same-sex couples head nearly 600,000 homes in U.S., with a same-sex couple in nearly every county.

 

2017

The Village Voice, a New York newsstand staple since its 1955 inception, discontinued its print edition. The left-leaning weekly, co-founded by the late Norman Mailer is now digital-only.

August 23

  

1954

Charles Busch (August 23, 1954) is born. He is an American actor, screenwriter, playwright and female impersonator known for his appearances on stage in his own camp style plays and in film and television. He wrote and starred in his early plays off-off-Broadway beginning in 1978, generally in drag roles, and also acted in the works of other playwrights. He wrote for television and began to act in films and on television in the late 1990s. His best-known play is The Tale of the Allergist’s Wife (2000), which was a success on Broadway.

 

1971

Newsweek magazine publishes an article entitled “The Militant Homosexual.”

 

1994, Australia

The federal government acts to overturn Tasmania’s anti-sodomy law. Tasmania is the last Australian state to penalize same sex relations.

 

August 24

  

79 AD

Mount Vesuvius erupts, burying Pompeii and preserving the city. In a macabre way, it was fortunate for it saved the homoerotic frescos that Christianity would no doubt have destroyed. It also saved the graffiti found centuries later by archaeologists. When the artwork was first discovered, people found it so scandalous that much of it was locked away in the National Museum of Naples where it remained hidden from view for over 100 years. In 2000, the art was finally made viewable to the public, but minors must be accompanied by an adult.

  

1932, Germany

Five Nazis are convicted of political murder on August 22nd. On this day, Edmund Heines (July 21, 1897, Munich –June 30, 1934), a Nazi leader, organizes a protest against their death sentence. Less than two years later, Heines is discovered naked in bed, by Hitler himself, with another man. Hitler orders Heines to be shot. Hitler’s chauffeur Erich Kempka claimed in a 1946 interview that Edmund Heines was caught in bed with an unidentified 18-year-old male when he was arrested during the Night of the Long Knives, although Kempka did not actually witness it. The boy was later identified as Heines’ young driver Erich Schiewek. According to Kempka, Heines refused to cooperate and get dressed. When the SS detectives reported this to Hitler, he went to Heines’ room and ordered him to get dressed within five minutes or risk being shot. After five minutes had passed by, Heines still had not complied with the order. As a result, Hitler became so furious that he ordered some SS men to take Heines and the boy outside to be executed.

 

1953

The summary of Kinsey’s Sexual Behavior in the Human Female is published in Time magazine. The study includes lesbian behavior.

 

1954, UK

The Wolfenden Committee is appointed to investigate laws in Britain relating to homosexual offenses.

 

1957, UK

Actor Stephen Fry (August 24, 1957), most famous for playing Oscar Wilde in Wilde, was born in Hampstead, London. In addition to his numerous film credits, Fry is also the author of The Liar (1991), The Hippopotamus (1994), and Making History (1996).

 

1969

The fourth annual North American Conference of Homophile Organizations opens in Kansas City. It includes twenty-four independent gay liberation organizations.

 

1970

The New York Times runs a front-page story with the headline “Homosexuals in Revolt”. The article reports “a new mood now taking hold among the nation’s homosexuals. In growing numbers, they are publicly identifying themselves as homosexuals, taking a measure of pride in that identity and seeking militantly to end what they see as society’s persecution of them.”

 

1972

The Greater Cincinnati Gay Society files suit to require the Secretary of State to grant them articles of incorporation. Their request was denied on the grounds that homosexual acts were illegal. The court agreed that the state was not required to grant incorporation to an organization that promotes the acceptance of homosexuality.

 

1987

Bayard Rustin (March 17, 1912 – August 24, 1987), an African American gay man who organized the March on Washington for Civil Rights in 1964, dies of cardiac arrest in New York City. Bayard Rustin was a leader in social movements for civil rights, socialism, nonviolence, and gay rights. Rustin worked with A. Philip Randolph on the 1963 March on Washington Movement, in 1941, to press for an end to racial discrimination in employment. Rustin later organized Freedom Rides and helped to organize the Southern Christian Leadership Conference to strengthen King’s leadership and teaching King about nonviolence. Rustin became the head of the AFL–CIO’s A. Philip Randolph Institute which promoted the integration of formerly all-white unions and promoted the unionization of African Americans. During the 1970s and 1980s, Rustin served on many humanitarian missions, such as aiding refugees from Communist Vietnam and Cambodia. At the time of his death in 1987, he was on a humanitarian mission in Haiti. Rustin had been arrested early in his career for engaging in public sex though he was posthumously pardoned. In the 1980s, he became a public advocate on behalf of gay causes, speaking at events as an activist and supporter of human rights. On November 20, 2013, President Barack Obama posthumously awarded Rustin the Presidential Medal of Freedom.

 

1988

Actor Leonard Frey (September 4, 1938 – August 24, 1988) dies of complications from AIDS at age 49. Frey received critical acclaim in 1968 for his performance as Harold in off-Broadway’s The Boys in the Band. He later appeared alongside the rest of the original cast in the 1970 film version, directed by William Friedkin. He is best remembered for his Academy Award-nominated performance in Fiddler on the Roof.

 

1993

During a Holocaust remembrance, Oregon governor Barbara Roberts criticizes anti-gay ballot initiatives in the state.

 

2000

A U.S. federal court of appeals rules that a Mexican transgender woman had reason to fear persecution in Mexico and was entitled to asylum.

 

2004

Vice President Dick Cheney told a GOP rally in Davenport, Iowa, that gay marriage should be left up to the states, a reversal of his previous statement on the subject and a return to his original position while running in 2000. His daughter Liz Cheney is a lesbian.

 

2017

Julie “JD” DiSalvatore (March 5, 1966 – August 24, 2017) died on this day. She was an American LGBT film and television producer/director and gay rights activist. She was also an animal rights activist. JD died of breast cancer at her home in Sherman Oaks, California, at the age of 51. DiSalvatore won a GLAAD Media Award for Shelter, for best feature film in limited release. In 2009, DiSalvatore was honored at the Los Angeles Gay and Lesbian Center’s An Evening With Women with a LACE (Lesbians and bisexual women Active in Community Empowerment) Award for her work in the community, and was featured in Go Magazine’s “100 Women We Love.”

 

2019

The New York Times reported a complaint against astronaut Lieutenant Colonel Anne McClain, brought by her then wife Summer Worden through the Federal Trade Commission, accusing her of illegally accessing financial information while residing in the International Space Station. This accusation “outed” McClain as a lesbian, making her the first openly LGBT NASA astronaut and the third known lesbian astronaut after Sally Ride and Wendy B. Lawrence. McClain was a Flight Engineer for Expedition 58/59 to the International Space Station. McClain married Summer Worden in 2014 but divorced in 2017. On April 7, 2020, McClain was cleared of all charges while Worden faces a two-count indictment on charges of making false statements. McClain resides in suburban Houston, Texas.

 

August 25

  

1845, Bavaria

Ludwig II (August 25, 1845 – June 13, 1886) is born in Nymphenburg, Bavaria. Louis Otto Frederick William was King of Bavaria from 1864 until his death in 1886. He is sometimes called the Swan King, Mad King Ludwig or Fairy Tale King. He built fairytale castles on the Rhine and filled them with young boys in revealing military uniforms. Crown Prince Ludwig had just turned 18 when his father died after a three-day illness, and he ascended the Bavarian throne. Although he was not prepared for high office, his youth and brooding good looks made him popular in Bavaria and elsewhere. Ludwig never married nor had any known mistresses. It is known from his diary (begun in the 1860s), private letters, and other surviving personal documents, that he had strong homosexual desires.

 

1876

The Sacramento Daily Union reports that Ah Lee and Ah Joe both plead not guilty in California for “crimes against nature.” Ah Joe is sentence to three years in prison. Ah Lee’s fate is unknown.

 

1918

Leonard Bernstein (August 25, 1918 – October 14, 1990) is born. He was an American composer, conductor, author, music lecturer, and pianist. He was among the first conductors born and educated in the U.S. to receive worldwide acclaim. According to music critic Donal Henahan, he was “one of the most prodigiously talented and successful musicians in American history.” His most famous work is probably the music for West Side Story. His lover, author John Gruen, died in July, 2016 at the age of 89.

 

1981

Bob Hoy, an openly gay graduate student at North Carolina State University, runs for the Raleigh, N.C., City Council. He is defeated with only 3% of the vote after being attacked by the local press. Joe Herzenbeng (June 25, 1941 – October 28, 2007) was the first openly gay elected official in North Carolina, in Chapel Hill, in 1987.

 

1982

Iran re-institutes Islamic sharia law, proscribing all same-sex acts. Punishments include 100 lashes of the whip, beheading, and stoning to death.

 

2017

President Trump issues a Presidential Memorandum for the Secretary of Defense and the Secretary of Homeland Security which prohibits transgender individuals from serving in the military.

  

August 26

  

1904, UK

English-American novelist Christopher Isherwood (August 26, 1904 –  January 4, 1986) is born in Wyberslegh Hall, United Kingdom. His best-known works include The Berlin Stories (1935-39) and two semi-autobiographical novellas inspired by Isherwood’s time in Weimar Republic, Germany. These enhanced his postwar reputation when they were adapted first into the play I Am a Camera (1951), then the 1955 film of the same name. In 1966 I Am a Camera became the bravura stage musical Cabaret which was acclaimed on Broadway. His novel A Single Man was published in 1964. He began living with the photographer William “Bill” Caskey. In 1947, the two traveled to South America. Isherwood wrote the prose and Caskey took the photographs for a 1949 book about their journey entitled The Condor and the Cows. On Valentine’s Day 1953, at the age of 48, he met 18 year old Don Bachardy (born May 18, 1934) among a group of friends on the beach at Santa Monica. Despite the age difference, this meeting began a partnership that, though interrupted by affairs and separations, continued until the end of Isherwood’s life. Bachardy became a successful artist with an independent reputation, and his portraits of the dying Isherwood became well known after Isherwood’s death.

 

1923

American photographer Mel Roberts (Aug. 26, 1923) is born in Toledo, Ohio. Roberts specialized in capturing the ideal California male in a series of images taken during the 1960s and 1970s. Like other photographers from his era, Roberts often used friends and former lovers as his models. Much of his work was published in The Wild Ones: California Boys: The Erotic Photography of Mel Roberts.

 

1929

Chuck Renslow (August 26, 1929 – June 29, 2017) was an openly gay American businessperson known for pioneering homoerotic photography in the mid-20th-century and establishing many landmarks of late-20th-century gay male culture, especially in the Chicago area. His accomplishments included the founding of the Gold Coast bar, Man’s Country Baths, the International Mr. Leather competition, Chicago’s August White Party, and the magazines Triumph, Rawhide, and Mars. He was the partner and lover of erotica artist Dom Orejudos (July 1, 1933 – September 24, 1991), better known by his pen names Etienne and Stephen.

 

1952

Actor Michael Jeter (August 26, 1952 – March 30, 2003) is born. He was an American actor of film, stage, and television. His television roles include Herman Stiles on Evening Shade from 1990 until 1994 and Mr. Noodle on Elmo’s World (Sesame Street) from 2000 until 2003. Jeter’s film roles include Zelig, The Fisher King, Waterworld, Air Bud, Patch Adams, The Green Mile, Jurassic Park III, Sister Act 2, and The Polar Express. Jeter was openly gay and met his partner Sean Blue in 1995; they were together from 1995 until Jeter’s death in 2003. Jeter was found dead in his Hollywood home at age 50. Although he was HIV positive, he had been in good health for many years. Blue stated publicly that Jeter died after suffering an epileptic seizure.

 

1954

William Burroughs (February 5, 1914 – August 2, 1997) was an American writer and artist. Burroughs was a primary figure of the Beat Generation and a major postmodernist author whose influence is considered to have affected a range of popular culture as well as literature. On this day he wrote to poet Allen Ginsberg (June 3, 1926 – April 5, 1997) that he had fallen in love with his boyfriend Kiki. Their relationship lasted three years until a jealous former lover murdered Kiki. Burroughs found success with his confessional first novel Junkie (1953), but he is perhaps best known for his third novel Naked Lunch (1959), a highly controversial work that was the subject of a court case after it was challenged as being in violation of the U.S. sodomy laws. Much of Burroughs’s work is semi-autobiographical, primarily drawn from his experiences as a heroin addict. He lived through-out Mexico City, London, Paris and Tangier in Morocco as well as from his travels in the South American Amazon.

 

1969, Canada

In Ottawa, amendments to the Canadian Criminal Code come into effect, legalizing sexual acts between two consenting adults in private who are 21 years of age or older. Neither sexual acts nor homosexuality per se were “legalized,” rather, “gross indecency” and “buggery” were decriminalized in certain circumstances.

 

1973

The Lesbian Feminist Liberation demonstration at the American Museum of Natural History takes place. It is to demand the inclusion of matriarchies and women’s culture. Lesbian Feminist Liberation was a lesbian rights advocacy organization in New York City in 1972. It was originally the Lesbian Liberation Committee as part of the Gay Activists Alliance (GAA). In 1972, when the members felt the GAA was not giving enough focus to lesbian and feminist issues, they left GAA and formed the Lesbian Feminist Liberation. The departure was coordinated by Jean O’Leary (March 4, 1948 – June 4, 2005). The formation of Lesbian Feminist Liberation left the Radical Lesbians group with few members. The Lesbian Liberation Committee, and initially the Lesbian Feminist Liberation as well, met at an old Firehouse at 99 Wooster Street in SoHo in New York City. In 1974, the organization worked with New York Radical Feminists to increase the visibility of women at the New York City LGBT Pride March.

 

1976

Transgender tennis player Dr. Renee Richards (born August 19, 1934), who had undergone sex reassignment surgery in 1975, is barred from the U.S. Open to play as a woman. Her first professional tennis match as a woman was a year later after a decision from the New York Supreme Court. After four years of playing tennis, she decided to return to her medical practice which she moved to Park Avenue in New York. She then became the surgeon director of ophthalmology and head of the eye-muscle clinic at the Manhattan Eye, Ear and Throat Hospital. In addition she served on the editorial board of the Journal of Pediatric Ophthalmology and Strabismus. She now lives in a small town north of New York City with her platonic companion Arleen Larzelere.

 

1981

California Governor Jerry Brown appoints Mary C. Morgan to the San Francisco Municipal Court. She was the first openly lesbian judge in the U.S. She retired in 2011. At the time of her appointment to the San Francisco County Superior Court, Morgan’s partner was Roberta Achtenberg (born July 20, 1950) who served as Assistant Secretary of the Department of Housing and Urban Development during the Clinton Administration. Senator Jesse Helms, who had referred to Achtenberg as “that damn lesbian,” had held up Achtenberg’s nomination and was particularly outraged at discovering that Achtenberg and Morgan had kissed during a gay pride parade.

 

1985

Ryan White (December 6, 1971 – April 8, 1990), an Indiana boy with hemophilia and AIDS, is barred from attending public school. When a court decision allowed him to return, he was forced to use a separate restroom and eat with disposable utensils. His family was forced to move because of threats and violent acts directed toward them.

 

1986

Jerry Smith (July 19, 1943 – October 15, 1986), former Washington Redskins tight end, is the first professional athlete to voluntarily acknowledge that he has AIDS. However, he never acknowledged his homosexuality though his teammates were aware and supported him. The Redskins logo, along with Jerry Smith’s uniform number 87, is part of the AIDS quilt. He was a professional American football tight end for the National Football League’s Washington Redskins from 1965–1977. By the time he retired he held the NFL record for most career touchdowns by a tight end. A 2014 documentary from the NFL Network’s A Football Life series profiles his career, as well as his “double life as a closeted gay man and a star athlete”

 

1993

U.S. Secretary Defense Les Aspin releases a study saying the ban on lesbians and gays in the armed forces should be lifted. The study was conducted by the Rand Corp. and cost $1.3 million. It concluded that the ban could be dropped without damaging order and discipline. Several previous Pentagon studies had reached similar conclusions.

 

1993

Federal district court judge Aldon Anderson of Utah announces that he would strike down a state law that prohibited people with AIDS from marrying.

 

1995

Spokespersons for homophobic Republican presidential candidate Bob Dole announce that his campaign was returning a $1,000 donation from the Log Cabin Federation, saying the gay and lesbian Republican organization has “a specific political agenda that’s fundamentally at odds” with the senator’s.

 

2020

The 4th Circuit Court of Appeals rules in favor of former student Gavin Grimm in a more than four-year fight over restroom policies for transgender students. The ruling states that policies segregating transgender students from their peers is unconstitutional and violate federal law prohibiting sex discrimination in education. The decision relies in part on the Supreme Court’s decision in June 2020, stating that discrimination against people based on their gender identity or sexual orientation violates Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964.

  

August 27

  

1782

John Laurens (October 28, 1754 – August 27, 1782) dies at the age of 28. He was an American soldier and statesman from South Carolina during the American Revolutionary War, best known for his criticism of slavery and efforts to help recruit slaves to fight for their freedom as U.S. soldiers. Though he was married, letters between Laurens and Alexander Hamilton (January 11, 1755 or 1757 – July 12, 1804) indicate that the two men had an affair. From a young age, Laurens apparently exhibited a lack of interest in women. Laurens’ biographer Gregory D. Massey states that he “reserved his primary emotional commitments for other men.” Though he eventually married, a union born out of regret. While in London for his studies, Laurens impregnated Martha Manning and married her to preserve the legitimacy of their child. Laurens wrote to this uncle, “Pity has obliged me to marry.” Hamilton had “at the very least” an “adolescent crush” on Laurens. Chernow also states that “Hamilton did not form friendships easily and never again revealed his interior life to another man as he had to Laurens. […] After the death of John Laurens, Hamilton shut off some compartment of his emotions and never reopened it.”

 

1873

Maud Allan (August 27, 1873 – October 7, 1956) was a pianist-turned-actress, dancer and choreographer who is remembered for her “impressionistic mood settings.” From the 1920s on, Allan taught dance and lived with her secretary and lover, Verna Aldrich. She died in Los Angeles.

 

 

 

1951

California Supreme Court ruled that the mere congregation of homosexuals at the Black Cat Bar was not sufficient grounds for suspending the bar’s liquor license (Stoumen v. Reilly , 37 Cal.2d 713, [S. F. No. 18310. In Bank. Aug. 28, 1951.]). The Black Cat Bar or Black Cat Café was a bar in San Francisco, California that had originally opened in 1906 and closed in 1921. The Black Cat re-opened in 1933 and operated for another 30 years. During its second run of operation, it was a hangout for Beats and bohemians but over time began attracting more and more of a gay clientele. The Black Cat closed down for good in February of 1964. The site is now the location of Bocadillos, a tapas-style restaurant. On December 15, 2007, a plaque commemorating the Black Cat and its place in San Francisco history was placed at the site.

 

1961

U.S.fashion designer and gay icon Tom Ford (August 27, 1961) is born. He is a film director, screenwriter, and film producer. He launched his luxury brand in 2006, having previously served as the creative director at Gucci and Yves Saint Laurent. Ford directed the Oscar-nominated films A Single Man (2009) and Nocturnal Animals (2016). Ford is married to Richard Buckley (born 1948), a journalist and former editor in chief of Vogue Hommes International; they have been in a relationship since meeting in 1986.

  

1967

Brian Epstein (September 9, 1934 – August 27, 1967), the manager of The Beatles, dies of a drug overdose. Although John Lennon often made sarcastic comments about Epstein’s homosexuality to friends and to Epstein personally, no one outside the group’s inner circle was allowed to comment. Male homosexual activity was illegal in England and Wales until September 1967 when it was decriminalized; however, this was one month after Eptein’s death.

 

1969, Switzerland

Erica Mann (November 9, 1905 – August 27, 1969) dies in Zurich. She was a German actress and writer and the eldest daughter of the novelist Thomas Mann and his wife Katia. In 1924, Erika Mann moved to Berlin where she lived a bohemian lifestyle and became a critic of National Socialism. She acted in, and wrote for, an anti-Nazi cabaret in Berlin. After Hitler came to power in 1933, Mann moved to Switzerland. She married gay poet W. H. Auden (February 21, 1907 – September 29,1973). The marriage was arranged in 1935 by Christopher Isherwood to help Mann get a British passport to flee Nazi Germany. Mann remained active in liberal causes and continued to attack Nazism in her writings, most notably with her 1938 book School for Barbarians which was a critique of the Nazi education system. Erika was in a relationship with actress Pamela Wedekind (December 12, 1906-April 9, 1986). She would later have relationships with actress Therese Giehse (6 March 1898 – 3 March 1975), author and photographer Annemarie Schwarzenbach (23 May 1908 – 15 November 1942) and dancer Betty Knox (10 May 1906 – 25 January 1963) with whom she served as a war correspondent during World War II.

 

1973

In New York City the local 6th police precinct defeated the New York Matts in a softball game. Matts was short for Mattachines, a gay organization. It attracted approximately 1,000 spectators and raised $1,000 for mentally disabled children. Geraldo Rivera was the first base umpire.

 

1992

Colorado Republican senate candidate Terry Considine refers to AIDS as a self-inflicted injury during a town meeting and equates AIDS with gun violence and drug abuse.

 

1998

At the 16th Annual Gay and Lesbian Medical Association Symposium in Chicago, attorney Aaron Greenberg argues that if the gay gene is isolated, parents should have the right to abort a gay fetus or have its genetic makeup altered.

 

2000, Japan

After a four-year absence, the Tokyo Lesbian and Gay Pride Parade is held in Japan. Beginning in 1996 as the First Les-Bi-Gay Pride March Sapporo, for the next two years it was the Sexual Minority Pride March, and from 1999 became the Rainbow March. It has become an annual public event of Sapporo and the longest, continuously run LGBT parade in Japan. The 1999 Rainbow Parade was also the first pride parade in Japan to feature floats. Called the Tokyo Lesbian & Gay Parade (TLGP), the event took place in 2000 in the form of a march around the Shibuya district. The Parade went on, taking place in late summer of the two subsequent years, 2001 and 2002, now attracting crowds of over 3,000.

 

2005

Sen. John McCain announces that although he is opposed a federal constitutional amendment to ban gay marriage, he supports a state version in his home state of Arizona.

 

August 28

  

430, Africa

St. Augustine of Hippo (November 13, 354 – August 28, 430) dies. He was an early Christian theologian and philosopher whose writings influenced the development of Western Christianity and Western philosophy. He was the bishop of Hippo Regius in north Africa and is viewed as one of the most important founders in Western Christianity for his writings in the Patristic Era. Among his most important works are The City of God and Confessions. Some of his writings in Confessions reveal his attraction to men.

 

1603, Italy

During a trial Italian painter Caravaggio (September 29, 1571 – July 18, 1610) was charged with libel when Baglione testified that he had a male lover. Baglione’s painting of Divine Love has also been seen as a visual accusation of sodomy against Caravaggio. Caravaggio was an Italian painter active in Rome, Naples, Malta, and Sicily between 1592 (1595?) and 1610. His paintings combine a realistic observation of the human state, both physical and emotional, with a dramatic use of lighting, and they had a formative influence on Baroque painting. Since the 1970s both art scholars and historians have debated the inferences of homoeroticism in Caravaggio’s works as a way to better understand the man.

 

1814, Ireland

Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu (August 28, 1814 – February 7,1873) is born in Dublin. He wrote vampire fiction, predating Bram Stoker‘s Dracula (1897) by 26 years. His best known, written 25 years before Dracula, is Carmilla, a story of a lesbian vampire who preyed on young women.

 

1825, Germany

Karl Heinrich Ulrichs (28 August 1825 – 14 July 1895), German jurist and activist, was born in Aurich, Germany. He would become one of the earliest activists in Germany to attempt to abolish the German sodomy law. In 1862, Ulrichs, a lawyer, theologian, and pioneer of the modern gay rights movement, described his own homosexuality as anima muliebris virili corpore inclusa– a female psyche confined in a male body. “I may have a beard, and manly limbs and body,” he writes in Latin “yet confined by these, I am and remain a woman.” Ulrichs’ fusion of gay and gender identities dominates discussion of transsexualism for almost a century.

 

1920, Germany

The first post-WWI general membership meeting of the Scientific Humanitarian Committee passes a motion to establish connections with homosexual organizations in other countries.

 

1921

Nancy Kulp (August 28, 1921 – February 3, 1991), famous for her role as Miss Jane Hathaway on The Beverly Hillbillies, is born in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. After the show’s cancellation, Kulp ran unsuccessfully for state office in Pennsylvania. Kulp lived her life completely in the closet. After her retirement from acting and teaching, she moved first to a farm in Connecticut and later to Palm Springs, California, where she became involved in several charity organizations including the Humane Society of the Desert, the Desert Theatre League, and United Cerebral Palsy. Later in life, Kulp indicated to author Boze Hadleigh in a 1989 interview that she was a lesbian. “As long as you reproduce my reply word for word, and the question, you may use it…. I’d appreciate it if you’d let me phrase the question. There is more than one way. Here’s how I would ask it: ‘Do you think that opposites attract?’ My own reply would be that I’m the other sort – I find that birds of a feather flock together. That answers your question.” Her lesbianism was not publicly acknowledged until after her death from cancer in Palm Springs on February 3, 1991.

 

1957

Gender-bending lesbian and Jewish folk/punk singer/songwriter Phranc (August 28, 1957) is born. Phranc is the stage name of Susan Gottlieb who began her performing career in the late 1970s and early 1980s punk scene in Los Angeles. She had a bleached blonde crewcut and wore male attire, creating an androgynous persona for her first band, Nervous Gender, which formed in 1978. She lives in Santa Monica, California with her partner and children.

  

1963

The March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom takes place. Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. gives his “I have a Dream” speech. Openly gay Bayard Rustin (March 17, 1912 – August 24, 1987) was the march’s prime organizer.

 

1965

Keith Boykin (born August 28, 1965), African American activist and author, is born in St. Louis, Missouri. As if a forecast of his future activism, his birthday and Dr. Martin Luther King’s “I have a Dream Speech” share the same day. Working in the Clinton Administration, Boykin held the positions of Special Assistant to the President and Director of News Analysis, and Director of Specialty Media. In 2001, Boykin founded the National Black Justice Coalition, the largest African American GLBT rights organization in America. Boykin has authored several books: One More River to Cross: Black and Gay in America (1996), Respecting the Soul: Daily Reflections for Black Lesbians and Gays (1999), Beyond the Down Low: Sex, Lies, and Denial in Black America (2005) and For Colored Boys Who Have Considered Suicide When the Rainbow Is Still Not Enough (2012). He teaches politics at the Institute for Research in African American Studies at Columbia University in New York.  From December 2003 until April 2006, Boykin served as president of the board of the National Black Justice Coalition, a Washington-based civil rights organization dedicated to fighting racism and homophobia which he co-founded.

 

1970

Police in New York force their way into The Haven, a private, unisex non-alcohol gay club. It was the third of four raids on the club that would take place in a two-week period. Six were arrested, detained overnight, and released the next morning. Between these and other raids, over 300 homosexuals were arrested during the month of August. There were also cases of threats and harassment. New York City was sued for false arrest and harassment in three of the cases. All other cases were dismissed.

  

1970

The Gay Liberation Front, Radicalesbians, and other gay activists hold a protest at NYU after the campus administration cancelled a series of dances at NYU’s Weinstein Hall when they learned a gay organization was sponsoring them. After a discussion with the dean they were allowed to use the property. The dean had been called by campus police who arrived to break up the demonstration.

 

1981

The U.S. Centers for Disease Control (CDC) first announces a sudden, unusual increase in cases of Kaposi’s sarcoma, the first sign of the worldwide epidemic of what would eventually be called HIV/AIDS. The CDC formally recognizes AIDS as sn “epidemic”

 

1982

The first “Gay Games” are held at Kezar Stadium in San Francisco. 1,600 people participated and 50,000 people attended. At that time, it was still called the “Gay Olympics” until the U. S. Olympic Committee sued for trademark infringement and won. Author Rita Mae Brown (born 28 November 1944) hosted the opening ceremonies. The Gay Games is the world’s largest sporting and cultural event specifically for lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender athletes, artists and musicians, founded by Tom Waddell, Rikki Streicher and others.

 

1989

A law took effect in Texas that requires that real estate agents tell potential buyers or tenants if the person who previously occupied a property had AIDS.

 

1993

Keith Douglas Pruitt (October 12, 1961- November 12, 2008) and another gay man were attacked in Manhattan. Pruitt once played a part on the soap opera As the World Turns. Pruitt required 14 stitches in his head. Three men from New Jersey were arrested and charged with the attack.

 

1996

In response to threats to out him after the city of Tempe, Arizona granted $1,500 in fee waivers to the annual gay pride festival, Mayor Neil Giuliano  (born October 26, 1956) comes out in an interview with the Tempe Daily News Tribune. He was named to the OUT 100 by OUT Magazine, which notes the top 100 people in gay culture in the U.S. While he was Mayor in 2003, Tempe was named an “All American-City,” an award honoring local governments demonstrating success in problem solving. He was named Tempe Humanitarian of the year in 2014.

 

1998

The Gay and Lesbian Fund for Colorado, a fund of the Gill Foundation, announces $195,950 in grants to 22 Colorado organizations.

 

2002

Nevada teen Derek Henkle (born in 1983) settles a lawsuit (Henkle v. Gregory, 150 F. Supp.2d 1067 (D Nev. 2001) against the Washoe County School District for $451,000. The settlement is believed to be the largest pre-trial award ever in this kind of case. Derek’s suit alleged that administrators in three separate schools failed to protect him from years of being beaten, spat upon, called names and threatened with a lasso because he is gay.

 

2007

The world learns that Republican U.S. Senator Larry Craig had been arrested for lewd conduct in the men’s bathroom at the Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport on June 11, 2007 and entered a guilty plea to a lesser charge of disorderly conduct on August 8, 2007.

 

August 29

 

1844, UK

English writer Edward Carpenter (August 29, 1844 – June 28, 1929) was born in Brighton. He was an English socialist poet, philosopher, anthologist, and early activist for rights for homosexuals. On his return from India in 1891, he met George Merrill, a working-class man 22 years his junior, and the two men struck up a relationship, eventually cohabiting in 1898. Their relationship endured and they remained partners for the rest of their lives, a fact made all the more extraordinary by the hysteria about homosexuality generated by the Oscar Wilde (16 October 1854 – 30 November 1900) trial of 1895. An early advocate of sexual freedoms, Carpenter had an influence on both D. H. Lawrence (11 September 1885 – 2 March 1930) and Sri Aurobindo (15 August 1872 – 5 December 1950), and inspired E. M. Forster’s (1 January 1879 – 7 June 1970) novel Maurice.

 

1956

Dancer and choreographer Mark Morris (August 29, 1956) is born in Seattle, Washington. He founded his own award-winning dance troupe. He is openly gay and lives in the Kips Bay neighborhood of Manhattan. On November 28, 1980, he got together a group of his friends and put on a concert of his own choreography and called them the Mark Morris Dance Group. For the first several years, the company gave just two annual performances – at On the Boards in Seattle, Washington, and at Dance Theater Workshop in New York. In 1986, the company was featured on the nationally televised Great Performances – Dance in America series on PBS. In 1990, Morris and Mikhail Baryshnikov established the White Oak Dance Project. He continued to create works for this company until 1995. In 2013, Morris was the first choreographer and dancer to be the Music Director of the Ojai (CA) Music Festival.

 

1968

Me’Shell NdegéOcello is born Michelle Johnson (August 29, 1968). She became a widely respected, openly bisexual singer, songwriter, and bassist and the first female artist to be signed by Madonna’s Maverick label. Ndegeocello is bisexual and previously had a relationship with feminist author Rebecca Walker. Ndegeocello’s first son, Solomon, was born in 1989. As of 2011 she had been married to Alison Riley for five years, with whom she has a second son.

 

1970

Local activists had had enough, so on Saturday August 29, 1970, the Gay Liberation Front, the Gay Activists’ Alliance, Radical Lesbians and other women’s groups organized a demonstration. About 250 people showed up at 8th Avenue and West 42nd Street near Times Square, and marched down 7th. Avenue to Sheridan Square in Greenwich Village. This action has since been known as “The Forgotten Riot.” The demonstration broke up around midnight, but the frustrations were still there. Some went on to march around the Women’s House of Detention at Greenwich Avenue and 6th Avenue. New York City Police arrived to break it up and the crowd ran toward Christopher Street. The crowd arrived just in time to witness the police raiding a bar called The Haven. As a mass of demonstrators gathered in front of the bar and the police called for reinforcements. A police bus arrived and was met with a shower of bottles. A running battle ensued over the next two hours as crowds set trash cans on fire and overturned at least one car. Eight were injured and approximately fifteen people were arrested. 

 

1987, Mexico

The First National Conference of Lesbians is held in Guadalajara to unite the lesbian movement in Mexico in anticipation of Feminist Lesbians of Latin America and the Caribbean Conference. The result is the creation of the National Coordination of Lesbians.

 

1993

Twenty-nine people stage a silent demonstration at St. James Cathedral in Brooklyn, N.Y. to protest Brooklyn Roman Catholic bishop Thomas Daily’s pastoral letter opposing anti-gay bias laws.

 

1997

Jim McKnight discusses his research on the gay gene on the BBC program Science Now. His research group at the University of Western Sidney studied the families of homosexuals and discovered that evidence exists to suggest that homosexuality is an inherited trait.

 

August 30

  

1928

The New York Times reports that U.S. publisher Alfred Knopf had purchased the American rights to Radclyffe Hall’s (12 August 1880 – 7 October 1943) novel about lesbianism, The Well of Loneliness.

 

1956

American psychologist Evelyn Hooker, UCLA, shares her paper The Adjustment of the Male Overt Homosexual at the American Psychological Association Convention in Chicago. After administering psychological tests such as the Rorschach, to groups of homosexual and heterosexual males, Hooker’s research concludes homosexuality is not a clinical entity and that heterosexuals and homosexuals do not differ. Hooker’s experiment becomes very influential, changing clinical perceptions of homosexuality.

 

1969

A National Institute of Mental Health study chaired by Dr. Evelyn Hooker of UCLA urges decriminalization of private sex acts between consenting adults.

 

1974, Canada

The second national gay rights conference is held in Winnipeg. As part of the opening session, a gay rights march is in held in the city. it was the first major gay demonstration in the prairie provinces.

 

1981, Canada

Toronto’s Cabbagetown Group Softball League hosts the fifth Gay Softball World Series. Players from eleven cities in U.S. and Canada participated. It was the first time the series was held in Canada. Gay Softball World Series, part of the North American Gay Amateur Athletic Alliance (NAGAAA), is the largest annual LGBT single-sport, week-long athletic competition in the world. Teams from the 46 Member Cities across North America compete to qualify and represent their city in one of five Divisions. Formed in 1977, NAGAAA is a 501c(3) international sports organization comprised of men and women dedicated to providing opportunity and access for the LGBT community to participate in organized softball competition in safe environments.

  

1991, UK

OutRage stages a zap against Amnesty International London over their failure to adopt lesbian and gay persons as prisoners of conscience.

 

1993

Texas state health officials announce that they are investigating two cases of HIV transmission through female-female sex. However, in both cases other risk factors were present. In 2012, in another Texas case, the CDC said that HIV transmission through female-to-female sexual contact was reported, a rare female-to-female transmission of the virus which is “rarely reported and difficult to ascertain.” The two women in the 2012 case said they routinely had unprotected sexual contact and shared sex toys between them. At times, the contact was “rough to the point of inducing bleeding in either woman,” according to the CDC. The women said some of the unprotected sexual contact occurred during menstruation.

 

1994, UK

A panel of magistrates in London dismissed a paternity suit against singer Boy George (born June 14, 1961) for lack of evidence. By George is an English singer, songwriter, DJ, fashion designer and photographer. He is the lead singer of the Grammy and Brit Award-winning pop band Culture Club. At the height of the band’s fame, during the 1980s, they recorded global hit songs such as Do You Really Want to Hurt Me, Time (Clock of the Heart) and Karma Chameleon. George is known for his soulful voice and androgynous appearance. He was part of the English New Romantic movement which emerged in the late 1970s to the early 1980s. In his autobiography Take It Like a Man, George stated that he had secret relationships with punk rock singer Kirk Brandon and Club drummer Jon Moss (born 11 September 1957). He stated many of the songs he wrote for Culture Club were about his relationship with Moss.

 

2005

Off-Broadway musical Naked Boys Singing! re-opens in Milwaukee after being closed by police on obscenity charges two weeks earlier. Naked Boys Singing! is a traditional American vaudeville-style musical revue, with book and direction by Robert Schrock, musical direction by Stephen Bates and choreography by Jeffry Denman, that features eight actors who sing and dance naked. This campy Off-Broadway musical comedy opened on July 22, 1999 at the Actors’ Playhouse in New York City. The show transferred to Theatre Four in March 2004, and again in 2005 to New World Stages Stage Four, until it closed on January 28, 2012. The show has no plot; it contains 15 songs, about various issues, such as gay life, male nudity, coming out, circumcision and love. The official Off Broadway Revival opened at Theatre Row’s Kirk Theatre on April 5, 2012 and is still enjoying a healthy run today.

 

2012

Charlie Jane Anders, who identifies as genderqueer and a transwoman, wins the 2012 Hugo Award for her book Six Months, Three Days. She is an American writer and commentator. She has written several novels and is the publisher of other magazine, the “magazine of pop culture and politics for the new outcasts”. In 2005, she received the Lambda Literary Award for work in the transgender category, and in 2009, the Emperor Norton Award. In 2007, Anders brought attention to the policy of a San Francisco bisexual women’s organization called “The Chasing Amy Social Club” that she felt was discriminatory, as it specifically barred preoperative transgender women from membership. Since 2000, Anders has been the partner of author Annalee Newitz (born 1969). The couple co-founded Other magazine.

 

2013

A gay combat medic who challenged the military’s Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell policy while serving in Iraq, dies in a car crash in New York. Darren Manzella (August 8, 1977 – August 29, 2013), a former U. S. Army sergeant, went on national television in 2007 to reveal his sexual orientation, becoming the face of gay servicemen and women before being discharged in 2008 for publicly discussing his sexual identity. The policy was repealed in 2011, and a friend said Manzella had recently signed on as a reservist. He was a United States Army Sergeant, Army medic and gay activist from Portland, New York, who was discharged under the Don’t ask, don’t tell policy. Manzella served in Iraq and Kuwait and was stationed in Fort Hood, Texas. Manzella married Javier Lapeira in Rochester on July 5, 2013. On August 29, 2013, Manzella was killed when an SUV hit him as he was in the act of pushing his disabled vehicle off the road in Pittsford, Monroe County, New York.

  

August 31

  

12 AD, Italy

Gaius Caesar Germanicus, better known as Caligula (August 31, 12 – January 24, 41) , is born in Anzio, Italy. He was violent and cruel. Bisexual, his male lovers included soldiers, actors and a priest. A soldier was said to have kicked him to death after sex, though more likely Caligula was assassinated as a result of a conspiracy by officers of the Praetorian Guard, senators, and courtiers. During his brief reign, Caligula worked to increase the unconstrained personal power of the emperor as opposed to countervailing powers within the principate. He directed much of his attention to ambitious construction projects and luxurious dwellings for himself. He also initiated the construction of two aqueducts in Rome: the Aqua Claudia and the Anio Novus. During his reign, the empire annexed the Kingdom of Mauretania as a province.

 

1935

Jim Morris (August 31, 1935 – January 28, 2016) is born. He was an openly gay African American bodybuilder known for winning competitions over a thirty-year career. Among the titles Morris won are: Mr. USA (1972), AAU Mr. America (1973), Mr. International (1974), and Mr. Olympia Masters Over 60 (1996). At age 50, he became a vegetarian then vegan, a diet to which he credited much of his excellent health. He posed nude for a PETA ad in support of the vegan lifestyle. From 1974 to 1988 he was Elton John’s personal bodyguard. In March 2014 a short documentary-film starring Jim Morris entitled Jim Morris: Lifelong Fitness was released on YouTube. The film focuses on his life-long body building career, vegan lifestyle and Morris’ yearning to break stereotypes attached to the elderly. Morris died on January 28, 2016 at the age of 80.

 

1961

The first English language film to use the word “homosexual” in a feature film is shown in the U.S. It was the British suspense film Victim. It was denied the motion picture code seal of approval. The film was directed by Basil Dearden and starred Dirk Bogarde and Sylvia Syms. It premiered in the UK on August 31,1961, and in the US the following February.

1968

Jennifer Lynn Azzi (born August 31, 1968) is a former basketball coach, most recently the head coach of the women’s team at the University of San Francisco. Azzi is also a former collegiate and professional basketball player as well as an Olympic and FIBA world champion. Azzi was inducted into the Women’s Basketball Hall of Fame in 2009. On March 31, 2016, Azzi publicly came out as gay, announcing her marriage to University of San Francisco assistant Blair Hardiek while introducing Golden State Warriors president Rick Welts at the Anti-Defamation League’s Torch of Liberty Award ceremony at the Fairmont Hotel. About coming out, Azzi said, “I, too, lived a long time not being 100 percent honest. Kind of the don’t-ask-don’t-tell kinda of thing. And it’s so stupid. I don’t know why we do that, but we do that. I’m a college coach. Is it going to hurt me with recruiting? What are people going to think? And you are constantly worrying about those things. What I realized in watching Rick in his path and his journey is that there is nothing more powerful than living the truth. And the best thing I can do for my team is be authentic and true to myself” Azzi and her wife Blair have son and a daughter.

 

1979

At the start of the Labor Day weekend at the Sri Ram Ashram near Benson, Arizona, the Spiritual Conference for Radical Fairies was organized as a ʺcall to gay brothersʺ by early gay rights advocates Harry Hay  (April 7, 1912 – October 24, 2002), John Burnside (1916-2008), Don Kilhefner (born March 3, 1938), and Mitch Walker (born 1951). It becomes the birthplace of The Radical Faeries. The Radical Faeries is a loosely affiliated worldwide network and counter-cultural movement seeking to redefine queer consciousness through spirituality. Sometimes deemed a form of contemporary Paganism, it adopts elements from anarchism and environmentalism. Today Radical Faeries embody a wide range of genders, sexual orientations, and identities. All sanctuaries and most gatherings are open to all, though a decreasing minority of gatherings still focus on the particular spiritual experience of man-loving men co-creating temporary autonomous zones. Faerie sanctuaries adapt rural living and environmentally sustainable concepts to modern technologies as part of creative expression. Radical Faerie communities are generally inspired by indigenous, native or traditional spiritualties, especially those that incorporate genderqueer sensibilities.

 

2001, Canada

The Canadian Human Rights tribunal rules in favor of prisons respecting sex reassignment. 

 

2019

June Eastwood became the first openly male-to-female transgender athlete to compete in NCAA Division I cross country; she competed for the University of Montana women’s team. On this day, she became the first transgender athlete to compete in DI cross country when she ran for the University of Montana in the women’s division at the Clash of the Inland Northwest meet. Assigned male at birth, Eastwood, a 22-year-old senior at the time, says she has identified as female since middle school and made the decision to transition during her third year competing on the men’s track team at Montana.

 

2020

Actor and comedian Niecy Nash (born February 23, 1970) announced that she and Jessica Betts (born born 1972), a singer and songwriter, had gotten married.

July 1

1510

Las Sergas de Esplandián (The Adventures of Esplandián) is a novel written by Garci Rodríguez de Montalvo (1450-1505), published in July, 1510. Unbeknownst to most people, the state of California was named after Calafia, a fictional Black queen who ruled over a mythic all-female (perhaps lesbian) island of Black women just off the coast of Asia. She used an army of flying griffins to fight Christians at Constantinople and has become an interesting yet little known literary figure ever since. In 1530, when Spanish conquistador Hernán Cortés arrived on what is now known as Baja California on Mexico’s west coast, he named the land “California,” after Calafia’s island in Garci Rodríguez de Montalvo’s book.

 

1663, UK

English politician Samuel Pepys writes in his diary of his displeasure at how common sodomy had become in the country’s military.

 

1670, France

Julie d’Aubigny (1670/1673-1707), better known as Mademoiselle Maupin or La Maupin, was a word-slinger, opera singer, and larger-than-life bisexual 17th-century celebrity opera singer. Little is known about her life; her tumultuous career and flamboyant lifestyle were the subject of gossip, rumor, and colorful stories in her own time, and inspired numerous fictional and semi-fictional portrayals afterwards. Gautier loosely based the title character, Madeleine de Maupin, of his novel Mademoiselle de Maupin (1835) on her. The celebration of sensual love, regardless of gender, was radical, and the book was banned by the New York Society for the Suppression of Vice and authorities elsewhere. Mademoiselle Maupin retired from the opera in 1705 and took refuge in a convent, probably in Provence, where she is believed to have died on July 1, 1707, at the age of 33.

 

1828, UK – The Buggery Act is repealed then reenacted, criminalizing sodomy.

 

1925

Farley Granger (July 1, 1925 – March 27, 2011) is born. He was an American actor, best known for his two collaborations with director Alfred Hitchcock. In 2007, Granger published the memoir Include Me Out, co-written with domestic partner Robert Calhoun (November 24, 1930 – May 24, 2008). In the book, named after one of Goldwyn’s famous malapropisms, he freely discusses his career and personal life.

 

1928

The lesbian novel The Well of Loneliness by the British author Radclyffe Hall (August 12, 1880 – October 7, 1943) was published on this date in the United States and sold an initial 20,000 copies. It follows the life of Stephen Gordon, an Englishwoman from an upper-class family whose “sexual inversion” (homosexuality) is apparent from an early age. She finds love with Mary Llewellyn whom she meets while serving as an ambulance driver in World War I, but their happiness together is marred by social isolation and rejection, which Hall depicts as typically suffered by “inverts” with predictably debilitating effects. The novel portrays inversion as a natural, God-given state and makes an explicit plea: “Give us also the right to our existence.” In 1915, Hall fell in love with Una Troubridge (1887–1963), a sculptor with whom she lived at 37 Holland Street, Kensington, London. The relationship would last until Hall’s death, though in 1934 Hall fell in love with Russian émigré Evguenia Souline and embarked upon a long-term affair with her which Troubridge painfully tolerated.

 

1934

Hollywood makes adherence to the Hays Code mandatory. It was named after for Will H. Hays who was the president of the Motion Picture Producers and Distributors of America (MPPDA) from 1922 to 1945. Among its provisions: “Pictures shall not infer that low forms of sex relationships are the accepted or common thing,” and “Sex perversion or any inference to it is forbidden on the screen.” The Motion Picture Production Code was the set of industry moral guidelines that was applied to most United States motion pictures released by major studios from 1930 to 1968. The Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) adopted the Production Code in 1930 and began strictly enforcing it in 1934. The Production Code spelled out what was acceptable and what was unacceptable content for motion pictures produced for a public audience in the United States. Hays, who was Postmaster General under Warren G. Harding and former head of the Republican National Committee, served for 25 years as president of the Motion Picture Producers and Distributors of America (MPPDA).

 

1943, Netherlands

Willem Arondeus (August 22, 1894 – July 1, 1943) dies. He was a Dutch artist and author who joined the Dutch anti-Nazi resistance movement during World War II. He participated in the bombing of the Amsterdam public records office to hinder the Nazi German effort to identify Dutch Jews. Arondeus was caught and executed by the Nazis soon after his arrest along with tailor Sjoerd Bakker and writer Johan Brouwer who also were gay and 10 others. Arondeus was openly gay before the war and defiantly asserted his sexuality before his execution. The last wish of Arondeus is that he be given a pink shirt. He declares: “Let it be known that homosexuals are not cowards.”

 

1947

U.S. Congress discontinues the military “Blue Discharges” with two new classifications: general and undesirable. The Army then changes its regulations so that gay and lesbian service members would not qualify for general discharges. The U.S. military had a long-standing policy that service members found to be homosexual or to have engaged in homosexual conduct were to be court-martialed for sodomy, imprisoned and dishonorably discharged. However, with the mobilization of troops following the United States’ entry into World War II, it became impractical to convene court-martial boards of commissioned officers so some commanders began issuing administrative discharges instead. Several waves of reform addressing the handling of homosexuals in the military resulted in a 1944 policy directive that called for homosexuals to be committed to military hospitals, examined by psychiatrists, and discharged under Regulation 615-360, Section 8 as “unfit for service.” It is unknown exactly how many gay and lesbian service members were given blue discharges under this regulation, but in 1946 the Army estimated that it had issued between 49,000 and 68,000 blue discharges, with approximately 5,000 of them issued to homosexuals. The Navy’s estimates of blue-discharge homosexuals was around 4,000. Blue discharges were discontinued as of July 1, 1947 when the two new headings of general and undesirable took their place. A general discharge was considered to be under honorable conditions—distinct from an “honorable discharge”—and an undesirable discharge was under conditions other than honorable—distinct from a “dishonorable discharge.” At the same time, the Army changed its regulations to ensure that gay and lesbian service members would not qualify for general discharges. Those found guilty of engaging in homosexual conduct still received dishonorable discharges, while those identified as homosexuals but not to have committed any homosexual acts now received undesirable discharges.

 

1962

Dr. Alan Hart (October 4, 1890 – July 1, 1962) dies. Historian Jonathan Ned Katz explains that Stanford University graduate Lucille Hart changed her name and lived as a man in order to practice medicine and marry the women he loved. The first was Inez Stark in 1918 and then, after their 1925 divorce, Edna Ruddick, to whom he stayed married until his death 37 years later.

 

1969

In Norton v. Macy, the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit rules that the termination of a National Aeronautics and Space Administration employee for “immoral conduct” relating to his alleged homosexual conduct was unlawful.

 

1970

The Task Force on Gay Liberation forms within the American Library Association. Now known as the GLBT Round Table, this organization is the oldest LGBT professional organization in the United States. On July 1st at the ALA Annual Conference in Detroit, MI, the Task Force on Gay Liberation meets for the first time. Israel Fishman serves as the first coordinator of the group. A social and “consciousness-raising event” was held with members of the Detroit Gay Liberation Front. Initial goals of the group included the creation of bibliographies, revision of library classification schemes and subject headings, building and improving access to collections, and fighting job discrimination. Barbara Gittings (July 31, 1932 – February 18, 2007) puts together a list of 37 gay-positive books, magazine articles, and pamphlets – the first version of a resource that would become known as A Gay Bibliography.

 

1971, Canada

The founding meetings of the Gay Alliance Toward Equality (GATE) are held in Vancouver. It is the first Canadian group to talk about civil rights strategies.

 

1971

The Furies Collective House at 219 11th St SE in Washington, D.C. was the operational center of the Furies, a lesbian feminist separatist collective from July 1, 1971 to 1973. The work done by the Furies here, including publication of their newspaper, The Furies, was instrumental in creating and shaping the ideas that continue to underpin lesbian feminism and lesbian separatism. The Furies, along with the Gay Liberation House and the Skyline Collective, was among Washington, D.C.’s best known communal living groups in the early 1970s. They were an example of lesbian feminism which emerged during the women’s movement of the late 1960s and 1970s. According to Rita Mae Brown in Rita Will, the members of the collective were Rita Mae Brown, Charlotte Bunch, Tasha Byrd Peterson, Ginny Berson, Sharon Deevey, Susan Hathaway, Lee Schwing, Helaine Harris, Coletta Reid, Jennifer Woodul, Nancy Myron and Joan E. Biren (J.E.B.) In 2016 the house at 219 11th St. SE was named as the first lesbian-related historic landmark in Washington, D.C.

 

1971, Austria

The Parliament rescinds laws against sex between consenting adults but adds legislation penalizing individuals who make public statements or join organizations that favor homosexuality. Although the new legislation is used to harass lesbians and gay men and, later, to prevent the import of gay and lesbian pornography, including safer sex literature, no individuals or organizations are successfully prosecuted under the laws.

 

1972,  UK

The United Kingdom’s first Gay Pride March draws about 2,000 gay men and lesbians to the center of London.

 

1972

Democratic presidential candidate George McGovern endorses gay rights, the first U.S. presidential candidate in history to do so; party stalwarts denounce him.

 

1975, Mexico

Lesbian activists at the first United Nations World Conference on Women come to the attention of the world press when Pedro Gringoire attacks their efforts to make lesbian rights part of the conference agenda in an essay published in Excelsior, the country’s leading newspaper. Gringoire calls lesbianism a “pathological irregularity,” a “sexual aberration,” and a “severe illness.” Lesbian activists score gains in visibility as a result but fail to elicit an official response to their demands at the conference.

 

1975

California and Washington decriminalize private consensual adult homosexual acts. Indiana does so the following year.

 

1975

A gay rights group called Gay American Indians is launched in San Francisco by Randy Burns and Barbara May Cameron. It was initially launched as a safe place to socialize and share. It was the first gay American Indian liberation organization.

 

1975

Blue Boy magazine debuts. It was a gay pornographic/lifestyle magazine with pictures of men in various states of undress from 1974 to 2007. It was published by Donald N. Embinder, a former advertising representative for After Dark, an arts magazine with a substantial gay readership. Embinder first used the nom de plume Don Westbrook but soon assumed his real name on the masthead.

 

1976

Haaz Sleiman (born July 1, 1976) is a Lebanese-American television and film actor. He most notably played the role of Tarek in the 2007 film The Visitor and the role of Jesus in the American TV mini-series Killing Jesus, in addition to a number of American TV series. On August 22, 2017 Sleiman came out as gay via a Facebook video.

 

1979

The Susan B. Anthony dollar makes its debut. While there were many complaints about the coin, it was mostly because it was nearly the same size as a quarter, not that it was the first U.S. coin to feature the likeness of a lesbian. Susan Brownell Anthony (February 15, 1820 – March 13, 1906) was an American social reformer and women’s rights activist who played a pivotal role in the women’s suffrage movement. Born into a Quaker family committed to social equality, she collected anti-slavery petitions at the age of 17. In 1856, she became the New York state agent for the American Anti-Slavery Society. In 1851, she met Elizabeth Cady Stanton, who became her lifelong friend and co-worker in social reform activities, primarily in the field of women’s rights. In 1852, they founded the New York Women’s State Temperance Society after Anthony was prevented from speaking at a temperance conference because she was female. In 1863, they founded the Women’s Loyal National League which conducted the largest petition drive in United States history up to that time, collecting nearly 400,000 signatures in support of the abolition of slavery. In 1866, they initiated the American Equal Rights Association which campaigned for equal rights for both women and African Americans. The Nineteenth Amendment, which guaranteed the right of women to vote, was popularly known as the Susan B. Anthony Amendment. Historian Lillian Faderman (July 18, 1940) suggests that Susan B. Anthony may have had relationships with Anna Dickinson, Rachel Avery and Emily Gross at different times in her life. Her niece Lucy Anthony was a life partner of suffrage leader and Methodist minister Anna Howard Shaw.

 

1986

Renowned science-fiction writer Arthur C. Clarke (December 16, 1917 – March 19, 2008) comes very close to coming out in an interview published in Playboy magazine. When Clarke was asked if he’s had bisexual experiences, he responded, “Of course! Who hasn’t?” He is perhaps most famous for being co-writer of the screenplay for the 1968 film 2001: A Space Odyssey, widely considered to be one of the most influential films of all time.

 

1987

President Reagan nominates openly homophobic Robert Bork to the U.S. Supreme Court. The nomination is rejected by the U.S. Senate for a wide variety of reasons.

 

1989

Professional body builder Bob Paris (December 14, 1959) comes out in an interview in Ironman magazine. He is an American writer, actor, public speaker, civil rights activist and former professional bodybuilder. Paris was the 1983 NPC American National and IFBB World Bodybuilding Champion Mr. Universe. He was the world’s first male professional athlete, in any sport, to come out in the media while still an active competitor in his sport. The same year, Paris appeared on The Oprah Winfrey Show discussing marriage and being gay. Oprah asked Paris, “Bob, why not just stay in the closet?” Paris explained how “you fall in love” and that it doesn’t feel right to hide it. Paris and his former boyfriend at the time, Rod Jackson, became symbols for gay marriage and advocated for gay rights. Paris’s career ended up suffering because he came out; he claims his life was even threatened through mail and by phone. Paris lost about 80% of his bookings and endorsements for bodybuilding. Today, Paris lives with his spouse Brian LeFurgey on an island near Vancouver, British Columbia. Together since 1996, Bob and Brian were legally married in British Columbia after the province equalized the marriage laws in 2003.

 

2000

Vermont begins performing civil unions for same-sex couples. Still not equivalent to marriages (and not recognized by the federal government or by other states or countries), these are nonetheless the first relationships in the U.S. to receive this level of legal recognition.

 

2006

Florida Republican gubernatorial candidate Charlie Crist’s (July 24, 1956) campaign ads were carefully worded to include his support of “traditional marriage.” Media stories throughout the campaign claimed that Crist is gay. He is the U.S. Representative for Florida’s 13th congressional district. He had previously served as the 44th Governor of Florida from 2007 to 2011. In January 2014, Crist apologized for his support for the 2008 same-sex marriage ban and for the same-sex adoption ban, telling an Orlando LGBT publication that “I’m sorry I did that. It was a mistake. I was wrong. Please forgive me. On May 9, 2013, Crist announced that he supports same-sex marriage; “I most certainly support marriage equality in Florida and look forward to the day it happens here.” In both 2006 and 2008, Crist announced his support for the Federal Marriage Amendment. By 2010, he had endorsed adoption rights for gay couples.

 

2009, Hungary

Registered partnerships go into effect.

 

2010, Denmark

Denmark allows same sex couples to apply jointly for adoptions.

 

2020, Poland

LGBT Free Zone stickers distributed by the Gazeta Polska newspaper in Poland. The Warsaw district court ordered that distribution of LGBT-free zone stickers should halt pending the resolution of a court case. However, Gazeta Polska’s editor dismissed the ruling saying it was “fake news” and censorship, and that the paper would continue distributing the stickers. Gazeta continued distribution of the stickers but modified the decal to read “LGBT ideology-Free Zone.”

 

July 2

 

1899, UK

Actor Charles Laughton is born in Scaborough, England. Laughton (July 1, 1899 – December 15, 1962) was an English stage and film character actor, director, producer and screenwriter. Not blessed with matinee idol looks, Laughton built a brilliant career as a character actor and still earned his fair share of male lovers. His wife Elsa Lanchester (October 28, 1902 – December 26, 1986) was a British-born American actress with a long career in theatre, film and television. Elsa knew all about Charles’ boys. In her biography of Laughton she was candid and loving in her descriptions of his affairs.

 

1951

Sylvia Rivera (July 2, 1951 – February 19, 2002) was an American gay liberation and transgender activist and self-identified drag queen. She was a founding member of both the Gay Liberation Front and the Gay Activists Alliance. With her close friend Marsha P. Johnson (August 24, 1945 – July 6, 1992), Rivera co-founded the Street Transvestite Action Revolutionaries (STAR), a group dedicated to helping homeless young drag queens and trans women of color. Rivera’s gender identity was complex and varied throughout her life. In 1971 she spoke of herself as a “half sister.” In her essay Transvestites: Your Half Sisters and Half Brothers of the Revolution, she specifically claims her use of the word “transvestite” as only applying to the gay community: “Transvestites are homosexual men and women who dress in clothes of the opposite sex.” People now want to call me a lesbian because I’m with Julia, and I say, “No. I’m just me. I’m not a lesbian.” I’m tired of being labeled. I don’t even like the label transgender. I’m tired of living with labels. I just want to be who I am. I am Sylvia Rivera. Ray Rivera left home at the age of 10 to become Sylvia. And that’s who I am.”

 

1953

The State Department fires 381 gay and lesbian employees. In the early 1950s, the entire country was in the grips of the Red Scare as Wisconsin Republican Sen. Joseph McCarthy was conducting his witch hunts. One of his main platforms was the Senate’s Subcommittee on the Investigation of Loyalty of State Department Employees. While McCarthy’s main targets were imaginary Communists in the State Department, gay employees were also seen as “subversives” in need of rooting out. Both homosexuals and Communist Party members were seen as subversive elements in American society who shared the same ideals of antitheism, rejection of the middle-class morality, and lack of conformity. In the eyes of the government, they were seen as scheming and manipulative and, most importantly, would put their own agendas above that of the general population. McCarthy also as-sociated homosexuality and communism as “threats to the ‘American way of life’.” Homosexuality was directly linked to security concerns, and more government employees were dismissed because of their homosexual sexual orientation than because they were left-leaning or communist. George Chauncey noted that, “The specter of the invisible homosexual, like that of the invisible communist, haunted Cold War America,” and homosexuality (and by implication homosexuals themselves) were constantly referred to not only as a disease, but also as an invasion, like the perceived danger of communism and subversives. Among the more high-profile targets was Samuel Reber III (July 15, 1903 – December 25, 1971) a twenty-seven year career diplomat who announced his retirement in May of 1953 after McCarthy charged that he was a security risk which was a barely-concealed code for homosexual. By then, President Dwight D. Eisenhower had already responded to McCarthy’s witch hunt by signing an executive order that mandated the firing of all federal employees who were deemed guilty of “sexual perversion,” whether proven or not. Eisenhower also announced a re-organization of the State Department. Rep. Charles B Brownson, an Indiana Republican with his own lesser-known witch hunt underway in the House Government Operations Committee, asked the State Department for a progress report in rooting out homosexuals. On July 2, 1953, the State Department’s chief security officer R.W. Scott McLeod revealed that 351 homosexuals and 150 other “security risks” had been fired between 1950 and 1953.

 

1970

The Fifth Biennial Convention of the Lutheran Church in America expresses its opposition to discrimination and oppression of gay men and lesbians.

 

1981

“Rare Cancer Seen in Homosexuals” is the first story in The New York Times about the mysterious disease that will later be named AIDS.

 

1984

Figure skater Johnny Weir (July 2, 1984) is born. Johnny an American figure skater, fashion designer, and television commentator. He is a two-time Olympian, the 2008 World bronze medalist, a two-time Grand Prix Final bronze medalist, the 2001 World Junior Champion, and a three-time U.S. national champion (2004–2006). Weir is openly gay. In 2011, Weir married Victor Voronov (b. 1984), a Georgetown Law graduate of Russian Jewish descent, in a civil ceremony on New Year’s Eve in New York City. He is also known for his sports commentary with Tara Lipinski, as well as his work in LGBTQ activism.

 

1989

Internal Revenue Service employees who are members of the National Treasury Employee’s Union receive a new contract that includes protection from discrimination based on sexual orientation.

 

2009, India

Same-sex sex acts are decriminalized in India, citing that the existing laws violate fundamental rights to personal liberty. The Delhi High Court rules that the existing laws violate fundamental rights to personal liberty (Article 21 of the Indian Constitution) and equality (Article 14) and prohibition of discrimination (Article 15). Before the overturning of this 148-year-old law, so-called homosexual acts were punished with a ten-year prison sentence.

  

July 3

 

1783

Deborah Sampson Gannett (December 17, 1760 – April 29, 1827) was a woman who disguised herself as a man in order to serve in the Continental Army during the American Revolutionary War. She was one of a small number of women with a documented record of military combat experience in that war. She served 17 months in the army under the name Robert Shirtliff of Uxbridge, Massachusetts.  During her first battle, on July 3, 1782, out-side Tarrytown, New York, she took two musket balls in her thigh and a cut on her forehead. She begged her fellow soldiers to let her die and not take her to a doctor, but a soldier put her on his horse and took her to a hospital. The doctors treated her head wound, but she left the hospital before they could attend to her leg. Fearful that her identity would be discovered, she removed one of the balls herself with a penknife and sewing needle, but the other one was too deep for her to reach. Her leg never fully healed. On April 1, 1783, she was reassigned to new duties, and spent seven months serving as a waiter to General John Paterson. On this day, Sampson was wounded in 1782, and was honorably discharged at West Point, New York in 1783. During the summer of 1783, Sampson became ill in Philadelphia and was cared for by Doctor Barnabas Binney (1751-1787). He removed her clothes to treat her and discovered the cloth she used to bind her breasts. Without revealing his discovery to army authorities, he took her to his house, where his wife, daughters, and a nurse took care of her. She was discharged at West Point, New York, on October 25, 1783, after a year and a half of service. In January 1792, Sampson petitioned the Massachusetts State Legislature for pay which the army had withheld from her because she was a woman. The legislature granted her petition and Governor John Hancock signed it. The legislature awarded her 34 pounds plus interest back to her discharge in 1783. An Official Record of Deborah Gannet’s service as ‘Robert Shirtliff” from May 20, 1782 to Oct 25, 1783 appears in the “Massachusetts Soldiers and Sailors of the Revolutionary War” series. During World War II the Liberty Ship S.S. Deborah Gannett (2620) was named in her honor. It was laid down March 10, 1944, launched April 10, 1944 and scrapped in 1962. As of 2001, the town flag of Plympton incorporates Sampson as the Official Heroine of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. Meryl Streep named Deborah Sampson as one of the women who made history in her speech at the 2016 Democratic National Convention on July 26, 2016.

 

1975

In a change of policy, the U.S. Civil Service Commission decides to consider applications by lesbians and gay men on a case-by-case basis. Previously, homosexuality was grounds for automatic disqualification.

 

1981

The CDC initially refers to AIDS as GRID – Gay Related Immune Deficiency Disorder.

 

1989

Andy Lippincott, a fictional character in the cartoon strip Doonesbury, was hospitalized with AIDS. The character first appears in January 1976, in a law library. Joanie Caucus becomes attracted to him so Lippincott confesses he is gay. Joanie is heart-broken and takes some time to recover. Lippincott contributes position papers to Virginia Slade’s failed run for Congress in 1976. He disappears from the strip for a few years after this storyline. In 1982, the character reappears as an organizer for the Bay Area Gay Alliance and contributes to the congressional re-election of Lacey Davenport. In 1989 he returns to the strip again when he is diagnosed with AIDS. Over the course of the next year, Lippincott’s battles with the disease, and eventual death from it, helped bring the AIDS crisis into popular culture. Ultimately, he is shown dying to the sound of the Beach Boys’ song Wouldn’t It Be Nice. This storyline led to a Pulitzer Prize nomination for Garry Trudeau, but three newspapers of the 900 carrying the strip refused to publish it as being in bad taste. Andy Lippincott may be the only fictional character with a panel on the AIDS quilt and hangs in The NAMES Project Foundation‘s offices in Atlanta though it was not actually sewn into a block of The AIDS Memorial Quilt.

 

1992, Buenos Aires

An estimated 300 lesbians and gay men march in Argentina’s first-ever Pride Celebration. While same-sex sexual activity between consenting adults in private had been legal since 1887, there were no civil rights laws de-signed to protect LGBT people, and public opinion tended to look down upon LGBT people. While not given official recognition until 1992, the Comunidad Homosexual Argentina publicly campaigned for the human rights of LGBT people. Since 1987 the rights of gay and bisexual women have been defended by Cuadernos de Existencia Lesbiana. Significant legal and social progress began to be seen in the 1990s.

 

2000

Arthur “JR” Warren, Jr.  (1974 – July 3, 2000) is murdered. Warren, 26, who was African American and gay, was beaten and then run over by a car. One of the two teens who killed him had been sexually involved with him and claimed he felt humiliated when rumors of their relationship began to spread. Warren lived with learning disabilities and a birth defect that caused him to be born with several fingers missing on one hand. He was widely regarded in his community as a “soft spoken” young man. At 16, he came out to his mother and the minister at his church and found acceptance and support with both. After his death, his mother Brenda Warren addressed a hate-crimes rally in Washington, D.C. and lobbied for the inclusion of sexual orientation in West Virginia’s hate crimes law. Arthur Warren’s funeral was held on July 8, 2000, at his family’s church, and was attended by hundreds of mourners. His parents insisted that the coffin be open for viewing. “We want people to see what they did to my son,” said Brenda Warren. The Warrens later told CNN during an interview that they hoped the suspects would be tried as adults and the murder treated as a hate crime.

 

2003, Spain

The first gay hotel, the Axel, opens in Barcelona. The Axel company created a cosmopolitan and tolerant environment where atmosphere, diversity and respect are valued. The construction of Axel Hotel Barcelona, opened in 2003, was the beginning of a project that is now a chain. In 2007, Axel opened its first hotel in South America, the Axel Hotel Buenos Aires, and two years later, in 2009, Axel Hotel Berlin.

 

2005, Spain

Same-sex marriage is legalized. In 2004, the nation’s newly elected Socialist Party (PSOE) Government, led by Prime Minister José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero, begins a campaign for its legalization, including the right of adoption by same-sex couples. The law took effect on this day, making Spain the third country in the world to allow same-sex couples to marry across the entire country, after the Netherlands and Belgium, and 17 days ahead of the right being extended across all of Canada. The U.S. was 17th.

 

July 4

 

1826

Composer Stephen Foster (July 4, 1826 – January 13, 1864), born in Pittsburgh and known as “the father of American music,” was famous for his parlor and minstrel music. Foster wrote over 200 songs; among his best-known are Oh! Susanna, Camptown Races, Swanee River, My Old Kentucky Home, and more. He likely abandoned his wife for fellow composer George Cooper. There are many biographers who have published works on the life of Stephen Foster but details differ widely. Foster wrote very little biographical information himself. His brother destroyed much of the information about Stephen that he judged to reflect negatively upon the family.

 

1855

First edition of Walt Whitman’s (May 31, 1819 – March 26, 1892) Leaves of Grass is published. It’s considered the clearest expression of the author’s homosexual desires.

 

1895

The song America the Beautiful is published. Its author, Katharine Lee Bates (August 12, 1859 – March 28, 1929) was a professor at Wellesley College who lived with Katharine Coman (November 23, 1857 – January 11, 1915), as ‘one soul together.’ Coman was a history and political economy teacher and founder of the Wellesley College School Economics department. The pair lived together for twenty-five years until Coman’s death in 1915.

 

1965

Organized by ECHO, the East Coast Homophile Organizations, demonstrators picket at Independence Hall in Philadelphia. Picketers returned each year through 1969 for what came to be known as the Annual Reminder. It was the beginning a new era in Philadelphia LGBT culture as a presence in the community. A small group of conservatively dressed lesbians and gay men picket Independence Hall in in one of the first public demonstrations for gay rights. Among those marching is Barbara Gittings (July 31, 1932 – February 18, 2007). The picket is to call public attention to the lack of civil rights for LGBT people. The gatherings continue annually for five years. The Daughters of Bilitis and Mattachine Society members participate in the fifth and final picket in 1969.

 

1970

The General Assembly of the Unitarian Universalist Association becomes the first mainstream religious group in the US to recognize publicly the existence of gay, lesbian, and bisexual clergy and laity among its members and to demand “an end to all discrimination against homosexuals.”

 

1973

The Seattle Lesbian Separatist Group (later the Gorgons) issues The Amazon Analysis, a manifesto and handbook of lesbian separatism. The paper’s nearly 100 mimeographed pages are passed among lesbians across the country.

 

1975, Canada

In Winnipeg, the New Democratic Party Gay Caucus is formed at the NDP national convention.

 

1976

Dykes on Bikes is founded by Soni Wolf as a group of lesbians on motorcycles who come together to lead the San Francisco Pride Parade. In 1976 a small group of 20 – 25 women motorcyclists gathered at the head of the San Francisco Pride Parade and, unbeknownst to them, a tradition began. Soni coined the phrase “Dykes on Bikes.” The San Francisco Chronicle picked it up and ran with it. Chapters of the club have been leading Pride Parades around the world ever since.

2020, Russia

The United States Embassy in Moscow defied U.S. President anti-gay Donald Trump by hanging a rainbow LGBT PRIDE flag on its building after Trump ordered embassies around the world not to do so. Russian President Vladimir Putin mocked the flag, suggesting it reflected on the orientation of the diplomats. Putin also signed amendments to the constitution backed by way of a national vote that includes a clause on marriage being between a man and a woman, aimed at preventing legalization of gay unions. Putin then claimed that Russia does not discriminate against people on the basis of sexual orientation. In 2013 Putin signed into law, amid a storm of international condemnation, the prevention of ‘foisting’ LGBT information to children. The law has since been used as a pretext to ban gay pride events and jail LGBT activists in Russia.

 

July 5

 

1842

Andrew George Scott (July 5, 1842 – January 20, 1880), also known as Captain Moonlite, is born. He was an Irish-born Australian bushranger and folk figure. He gathered a band of thieves together and became especially close to one James Nesbit. Nesbit was to die in a shoot-out after which Scott was imprisoned. While there he wrote letters that declared his undying love for Nesbit in terms that were extravagant and uncompromising.

 

1853, UK

Cecil Rhodes (July 5, 1853 – March 26, 190) is born in Hertfordshire, England. He was a British businessman, mining magnate and politician in South Africa who served as Prime Minister of the Cape Colony from 1890 to 1896. The owner of the Kimberley Diamond Mines, he was a multi-millionaire whose De Beers diamond company, formed in 1888, retains its prominence into the 21st century. Rhodes never married saying that he would not be a dutiful husband. Some writers and academics have suggested that Rhodes may have been homosexual and had relationships with Sir Leander Starr Jameson (9 February 1853 – 26 November 1917) and Henry Latham Curry (1863 – 1945). Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe) was named for him. He also created the Rhodes Scholarship at Oxford. While Rhodes is considered a hero, the true story is that he was a blatant racist who built his empire on “land grabs” and murders of thousands in Zimbabwe.

 

1889, France

Jean Cocteau (July 5, 1889 – October 11, 1963) is born in Maisons-Lafitte, France. A giant in the arts, Cocteau was a poet, a novelist, a playwright, and a filmmaker. He is best known for his novel Les Enfants Terribles (1929), and the films The Blood of a Poet (1930), Les Parents Terribles (1948), Beauty and the Beast (1946) and Orpheus (1949). His affairs with the handsome young men of Paris is as legendary as his art. Cocteau’s longest-lasting relationships were with the French actors Jean Marais (11 December 1913 – 8 November 1998) and Édouard Dermit, whom Cocteau formally adopted. Cocteau cast Marais in The Eternal Return (1943), Beauty and the Beast (1946), Ruy Blas (1947), and Orpheus (1949).

 

1903, Netherlands

Hendrik “Hein” Vos (5 July 1903 – 23 April 1972) was a Dutch politician of the Labour Party (PvdA). Vos was the first known Dutch gay politician. This fact was an open secret in Dutch politics at that time. His life partner was the journalist and writer Aar van de Werfhorst (March 3, 1907-January 20, 1994).

 

1970

Wayne Besen (born July 5, 1970) is an American gay rights advocate. He is a former investigative journalist for WABI-TV, a former spokesman for the Human Rights Campaign, and the founder of Truth Wins Out. Besen came out to his parents before starting his Truth Wins Out organization. After coming out to his parents, they bought him an ex-gay DVD that could supposedly hypnotize people and turn them straight. It was that and the invitation by President George W. Bush of ex-gay leader Alan Chambers to the White House that led him to start Truth Wins Out. Besen has interviewed hundreds of former and current “ex-gays” and is an out-spoken critic of organizations such as Homosexuals Anonymous. Besen announced on his truthwinsout.org website that he married his boyfriend of five years Jamie Brundage on December 8, 2011 in the City Hall of Burlington, VT.

 

1978, Canada

In Kitchener-Waterloo, Ontario, an hour-long Gay News and Views begins on a local station. It is the first regularly scheduled gay radio program in Canada.

 

1978, Canada

The Quebec Human Rights Commission decides that Montreal Catholic School Commission’s refusal to rent facilities to a gay group is discriminatory. It is the first such finding by the Commission since the inclusion of “sexual orientation” in the provincial Charter of Rights and Freedoms.

 

1980, Canada

The national convention of the Liberal Party of Canada adopts a resolution to include sexual orientation in the Canadian Human Rights Act.

 

1985

Megan Rapinoe (July 5, 1985) is the first openly gay woman in the annual Sports Illustrated swimsuit issue. Megan is an American professional soccer player who heads the National Women’s Soccer League (NWSL) as well as the United States national team. Winner of the Ballon d’Or Féminin and named the Best FIFA Women’s Player in 2019, Rapinoe won gold with the national team at the 2012 London Summer Olympics, 2015 FIFA Women’s World Cup, and 2019 FIFA Women’s World Cup. Rapinoe co-captained the national team alongside Carli Lloyd and Alex Morgan from 2018 to 2020. She previously played for the Chicago Red Stars, Philadelphia Independence, and MagicJack in Women’s Professional Soccer (WPS) as well as Olympique Lyon in France’s Division 1 Féminine.

 

1987

James H. Donovan was a New York state senator. On this day, he suggests that giving teens rosary beads would prevent the spread of AIDS more effectively than the distribution of condoms.

 

2011, Serbia

The Serbian parliament approves a law to prohibit discrimination based on sexual orientation.

 

July 6

 

1750, France

Bruno Lenoir and Jean Diot, 18 and 20 years old, are caught having sex. They are strangled and burned in the Place de Greve by “seven wagons of brushwood, two hundred faggots (bundles of wood sticks), and straw.” This is the last execution in France for consensual sodomy. In October, 2014, a memorial plaque was unveiled the Paris mayor Anne Hidalgo to remember them.

 

1907, Mexico

Mexican painter Frida Kahlo (July 6, 1907 – July 13, 1954) is born. Inspired by Mexican popular culture, she employed a naïve folk-art style to explore questions of identity, post-colonialism, gender, class, and race in Mexican society. Kahlo was bisexual and a polio survivor. She married Diego Rivera twice, had an affair with Leon Trotsky, and had affairs with several women as well. La Casa Azul, her home in Coyoacán, was opened as a museum in 1958, and has become one of the most popular museums in Mexico City. In the United States, she became the first Hispanic woman to be honored with a U.S. postage stamp, in 2001, and in 2012 was inducted into the Legacy Walk, an outdoor public display in Chicago that celebrates the LGBT history and people.

 

1943

Leonard P. Matlovich (July 6, 1943 – June 22, 1988) is born. During three tours of duty in Viet Nam, he would earn, among other honors, a Bronze Star, a Purple Heart, and an Air Force Commendation Medal. Sgt. Matlovich was discharged when he came out as gay. He died of AIDS in June 1988, at the age of 45. Matlovich was the first gay service member to purposely out himself to the military to fight their ban on gays, and perhaps the best-known gay man in America in the 1970s next to Harvey Milk (May 22, 1930 – November 27, 1978). His fight to stay in the United States Air Force after coming out of the closet became a cause célèbre around which the gay community rallied. His case resulted in articles in newspapers and magazines throughout the country, numerous television interviews, and a television movie on NBC. Matlovich was the first named openly gay person to appear on the cover of a U.S. newsmagazine – of the September 8, 1975 issue of Time magazine, making him a symbol for thousands of gay and lesbian service members and gay people generally. According to author Randy Shilts (August 8, 1951 – February 17, 1994), “It marked the first time the young gay movement had made the cover of a major newsweekly. To a movement still struggling for legitimacy, the event was a major turning point.” His tombstone, meant to be a memorial to all gay veterans, does not bear his name. It reads, “When I was in the military, they gave me a medal for killing two men and a dis-charge for loving one.”

 

1966

Glenn Christopher Scarpelli (born July 6, 1966) is an American former child actor and singer. He is best known for his role as Alex Handris from 1980 to 1983 on the sitcom One Day at a Time. Scarpelli came out as gay in adulthood. He resides in Arizona where he and his then-partner Jude Belanger established the Sedona Now Network, a community television station, in 2003. Scarpelli and Belanger were married in California in 2008 but filed for divorce in 2012.

 

1979

Billy S. Jones, Darlene Garner, and Delores P. Berry co-found the National Coalition of Black Lesbians and Gays in Washington, D.C. Bisexual and transgender people are included in bylaws, mission and outreach. The National Coalition of Black Lesbians and Gays (formerly The National Coalition of Black Gays) was the United States’ first national organization for African American and Third World gay rights. While many Washington, D.C.-based gay rights organizations opposed the 1979 National March on Washington for Lesbian and Gay Rights, NCBG’s support for the march smoothed the way for the event. The organization was to provide a national advocacy forum for African American gay men and lesbians at a time when no other organization existed to express their views. The organizers, also including Louis Hughes, Gil Gerald, Rev. Renee McCoy, and John Gee, were motivated by a belief that existing gay and lesbian organizations did not represent the views and experiences of African Americans. In 1984, NCBG added Lesbian to its name to become the National Coalition of Black Lesbians and Gays. The organization’s headquarters moved to Detroit, Michigan briefly in the mid-1980s. By 1986, several key leaders left the or-ganization, and eventually the group (without any official announcement) faded out of existence. By 1990, formal operations ended for the organiza-tion. As founding member A. Billy S. Jones described, “We just faded away. Some board members re-fused to acknowledge that it was time to say goodbye but folks just burned out and faded away.”

 

1992

Some 50 activists in New York City attend the first public meeting of the Lesbian Avengers, a direct action group focused on issues vital to lesbian survival and visibility.” Dozens of other chapters quickly emerged world-wide, a few expanding their mission to include questions of gender, race, and class. The Lesbian Avengers was founded by Ana Maria Simo, Sarah Schulman ((born July 28, 1958), Maxine Wolfe, Anne-Christine D’Adesky, Marie Honan, and Anne Maguire, six longtime lesbian activists who were involved in a variety of LGBT groups from the Medusa’s Revenge lesbian theater to ACT-UP and ILGO (the Irish Lesbian and Gay Organization). Lesbian Avenger Ann Northrop underlined the point. “We’re not going to be invisible anymore … We are going to be prominent and have power and be part of all decision making.” Her assumptions were largely proved in interviews with Avengers in the 1993 documentary film Lesbian Avengers Eat Fire, Too edited by Sue Friedrich and Janet Baus. Some members, though, joked they also joined to meet women.

 

2007, Hungary

Gábor Szetey (born January 6, 1968) is a Hungarian former politician and former Secretary of State for Human Resources in the Gyurcsány government, a role he held from July 2006 to April 2009. He was the first openly gay Hungarian government member. On this day, he publicly declares that he’s gay at the opening night of the Budapest LGBT film festival, making him the first out LGBT person in Hungarian government. He currently lives in Spain.

 

July 7

  

1974, Canada

The Quebec Charter of Human Rights is adopted by the National Assembly without legal protection for gays.

 

2010, Sweden

Tobias Billstrom (born 27 December 1973) is the first openly bisexual person elected to the Swedish government. He was the Minister of Migration Affairs and has been leader of the Moderate Party in the Swedish Riksdag since 2017. He served as Minister for Migration and Asylum Policy in the Swedish Government from 2006 to 2014 and has been a Member of the Swedish Riksdag for Malmö Municipality since 2002. Although several controversial statements regarding immigration and immigrants, Billström is the longest serving Minister for Migration and Asylum Policy in Sweden. From 2014 to 2017, he served as First Deputy Speaker of the Riksdag.

 

2014

The first White House LGBT Innovation Summit takes place to discuss ways in which technology can help the LGBT community’s challenges. Speakers included Tim Gill (born October 18, 1953), founder of Quark publishing software; transgender activist and model Geena Rocero (born 1983 or 1984), founder of transgender rights group Gender Proud; and Leanne Pittsford (born 1980), founder of Lesbians Who Tech, an organization dedicated to increasing the number of women and lesbians in technology. This was the first summit of its kind held at the White House. Nearly 180 people attend.

 

July 8

 

1864

Fred Holland Day (July 8, 1864 – November 12, 1933) is born. He was an American photographer and publisher, and the first to advocate that photography should be considered a fine art. Day’s life and works had long been controversial since his photographic subjects were often nude young men. Since the 1990s, Day’s works have been included in major exhibitions by museum curators, notably in the solo Day retrospective at the Boston Museum of Fine Arts in 2000/2001 and similar shows at the Royal Photographic Society in England and the Fuller Museum of Art. Art historians are once again taking an interest in Day, and there are now significant academic texts on Day’s homoerotic portraiture, and its similarities to the work of Walter Pater and Thomas Eakins.

 

1906

Philip Cortelyou Johnson (July 8, 1906 – January 25, 2005) was an American architect best known for his works of modern and postmodern architecture. Among his best known designs are his modernist Glass House in New Canaan, Connecticut, the postmodern 550 Madison Avenue in New York, designed for AT&T, and 190 South La Salle Street in Chicago. In 1978, he was awarded an American Institute of Architects Gold Medal and in 1979 the first Pritzker Architecture Prize. Johnson was gay. He came out publicly in 1993 and was regarded as “the best-known openly gay architect in America”.

 

1950

Harry Hay (April 7, 1912 – October 24, 2002) and Rudi Gernreich (August 8, 1922 – April 21, 1985) meet on this day and later found the Mattachine Society, one of the earliest homophile organizations in the U.S. Hay was a prominent American gay rights activist, communist, labor advocate, and Native American civil rights campaigner. He was a founder of the Mattachine Society, the first sustained gay rights group in the United States, as well as the Radical Faeries, a loosely affiliated gay spiritual movement. Gernreich was an Austrian-born American fashion designer whose avant-garde clothing designs are generally regarded as the most innovative and dynamic fashion of the 1960s. He purposefully used fashion design as a social statement to advance sexual freedom, producing clothes that followed the natural form of the female body, freeing them from the constraints of high fashion.

 

1978

A group of men set out to attack homosexuals in Central Park, injuring several with baseball bats, including former Olympic and world champion ice skater Dick Button (born July 18, 1929).

 

1980

The Democratic Rules Committee states that it will not discriminate against homosexuals. At their National Convention on August 11-14, 1980, the Demo-crats become the first major political party to endorse a homosexual rights platform.

 

1981, Canada

In Montreal the owner of Sauna David is found guilty of keeping a common bawdyhouse. The charges were the result of a police raid on bathhouse April 26, 1980.

 

2010

U.S. District Court Judge Joseph Tauro in Massachusetts becomes the first to rule that a key section of the Defense of Marriage Act is unconstitutional.

 

2018

Tab Hunter (July 11, 1931 – July 8, 2018) died. He was an American actor, pop singer, film producer, and author. He starred in more than 40 films and was a well-known Hollywood star of the 1950s and 1960s. Hunter’s autobiography, Tab Hunter Confidential: The Making of a Movie Star (2005), co-written with Eddie Muller, became a New York Times best-seller as did the paperback edition in 2007. Hunter had long-term relationships with actor Anthony Perkins (April 4, 1932 – September 12, 1992) and champion figure skater Ronnie Robertson (September 25, 1937 – February 4, 2000) before settling down with his partner of over 35 years, film producer Allan Glaser.

July 9

  

1550, Italy

Jacopo Bonfadio (c. 1508 – July 1550) is tried and beheaded for sodomy, most likely because he published gossipy accounts of wealthy Genoese families. He was an Italian humanist and historian. Several humanists were tried for sodomy during this time as well, but Bonfadio is one of few to be executed.

 

1775, UK

Matthew Gregory Lewis (9 July 1775 – 16 May 1818) is born. He was an English novelist and dramatist, often referred to as “Monk” Lewis because of the success of his 1796 Gothic novel The Monk. Silly, stilted, and great fun to read, the genre was the high camp of its day. His most famous work was Ambrosio, The Monk written in 1795. Like most Gothic novels, it takes place in a Latin country. In this case in a monastery where Ambrosio, the head of the order, meets Matilda. She sneaks into his bed disguised as a man and quickly reveals she is a woman. After humping him into a frenzy he turns into a satyr and can’t get enough. In real life, Lewis was in love with a 14-year-old boy who brought him nothing but misery.

 

1893

Dorothy Thompson (July 9, 1893 – January 30, 1961) is born in Lancaster, New York. Thompson, a newspaper writer and radio commentator, was expelled from Germany by Hitler because of her critical reports on Nazism. Thompson fell in love with Baroness Hatvany, better known as Christa Winsloe (23 December 1888 – 10 June 1944), the author of Madchen in Uniform about girls in love in a boarding school. Other lovers include Gertrude Franchot Tone (1876 – 1953), the feminist politician and mother of actor Franchot Tone. In 1939 she was recognized by Time magazine as the second most influential woman in America next to Eleanor Roosevelt (October 11, 1884 – November 7, 1962), and was featured on the cover. She was married three times, most famously to second husband and Nobel Prize in literature winner Sinclair Lewis. She is regarded by some as the “First Lady of American Journalism.”

1926, Italy

Mathilde Krim (July 9, 1926 – January 15, 2018) is born. She was a medical researcher and the founding chair of the American Foundation for AIDS Research. She devoted her life to the fight against HIV/AIDS, in particular raising the public’s awareness of the devastating disease. In 1950, she married David Danon, an Israeli man she met at University of Geneva School of Medicine. Krim died at home in Kings Point, New York on January 15, 2018, aged 91.

 

1965

Anthony D. Romero (July 9, 1965) is the executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union. He assumed the position in 2001 as the first Latino and openly gay man to do so.

 

1969

The Mattachine Society of New York invites activists to gather in Greenwich Village for the first “gay power” meeting. Called the “Homosexual Liberation Meeting,” it was held at the Freedom House in Midtown Manhattan with over 100 attendees.

 

1986, New Zealand

The Parliament passes the Homosexual Law Reform Act, decriminalizing sex between men and establishing the same legal provisions for all sexual relations.

 

2008, Croatia

The Croatian parliament approves new law prohibiting discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity and expression in all areas.

 

2018

Melanie Kaye/Kantrowitz (1945 – July 9, 2018) was a Jewish-American essayist, poet, academic, and political activist against racism and for economic and social justice. She later added Kantrowitz to her name to honor her Jewish roots. Kaye/Kantrowitz was active in the Harlem Civil Rights Movement as a teenager. When she was 17, she worked with the Harlem Education Project. About this she said “It was my first experience with a mobilizing proud community and with the possibilities of collective action.” In 1990, she served as a founding director for Jews for Racial and Economic Justice (JFREJ), a progressive Jewish organization focused mostly on anti-racist work and issues of economic justice. Kaye/Kantrowitz served on the JFREJ board from 1995 to 2004. Melanie Kaye/Kantrowitz taught the first women’s studies course at the University of California, Berkeley and at Hamilton College, Brooklyn College/CUNY, Vermont College, and  Jewish studies, history and comparative literature at Queens College. Kaye/Kantrowitz died on July 9, 2018, of Parkinson’s disease at age 73.

 

July 10

 

1871, France

Marcel Proust (July 10, 1871 – November 18, 1922) is born in Anteuil. The great French writer, perhaps the greatest of the first half of the 20th century, was rejected when he brought the manuscript for Remembrance of Things Past to a publisher. The rejection note reads “one has no idea what it’s all about.” His friend Andre Gide pointed out that Proust suffered a pronoun problem. Too many of his characters were women when they were intended to be men. Proust was homosexual, and his sexuality and relationships with men are often discussed by his biographers. His romantic relationship with composer Reynaldo Hahn (August 9, 1874 – January 28, 1947) and his infatuation with his chauffeur and secretary, Alfred Agostinelli, are well documented.

 

1909

The book Road to Oz, the fifth in the Oz series by L. Frank Baum (May 15, 1856 – May 6, 1919) is published. In gay slang, a “friend of Dorothy” is a term for a gay man. While the precise origin of the term is unknown, some believe it is derived from this book. The book introduces readers to Polychrome who, upon meeting Dorothy’s traveling companions, ex-claims, “You have some queer friends, Dorothy,” and she replies, “The queerness doesn’t matter, so long as they’re friends.” More commonly, “friend of Dorothy” refers to the film The Wizard of Oz because Judy Garland, who starred as the main character Dorothy, is a gay icon. In the early 1980s, the Naval Investigative Service (NIS) was investigating homosexuality in Chicago. Having heard gay men refer to themselves as “friends of Dorothy,” the NIS went on a futile search for the elusive woman clearly at the center of a homosexual ring.

 

1931

Jerry Herman (born July 10, 1931– December 26, 2019) was an American composer and lyricist, known for his work in Broadway musical theater. He composed the scores for the hit Broadway musicals Hello, Dolly!, Mame, and La Cage aux Folles. He has been nominated for the Tony Award five times, and won twice, for Hello, Dolly! and La Cage aux Folles. In 2009, Herman received the Tony Award for Lifetime Achievement in the Theatre. He is a recipient of the 2010 Kennedy Center Honors. Herman was diagnosed with HIV in 1985. As noted in the Words and Music PBS documentary, “He is one of the fortunate ones who survived to see experimental drug therapies take hold and is still, as one of his lyrics proclaims, ‘alive and well and thriving’ over quarter of a century later. Herman resided in Miami Beach, Florida. He died at the age of 88.

 

1932

American actor Nick Adams (July 10, 1931 – February 7, 1968) is born on this day. The blonde actor usually played neurotics or comic sidekick roles such as Andy Griffith’s friend Ben in No Time for Sergeants. Before he got into acting, Adams was a well-known Hollywood hustler. He was the roommate of James Dean (February 8, 1931 – September 30, 1955). Adams tragically took his own life at age 36 in 1968. Adams’ highly publicized life and death at a young age, his friendships with cultural icons such as James Dean and Elvis Presley, and his reported drug consumption made his private life the subject of many reports and assertions by some writers who have claimed Adams may have been gay or bisexual.

 

1954, UK

“Pet Shop Boy” Neil Tennant (born 10 July 1954) is born. He is an English musician, singer, songwriter, music journalist and co-founder of the synthpop duo Pet Shop Boys which he formed with Chris Lowe in 1981. He also was a journalist for Smash Hits and was assistant editor for the magazine for a period in the mid-1980s. Tennant is openly gay, revealing his sexuality in a 1994 interview in Attitude magazine. He is also a patron of the Elton John AIDS Foundation.

 

1965

Actor/comedian Alec Mapa (born July 10, 1965) is born. He is a Fillipino-American actor, comedian and writer. He got his first professional break when he was cast to replace B. D. Wong for the role of Song Liling in the Broadway production of M. Butterfly. He gained recognition for roles such as Adam Benet in Half & Half, Suzuki St. Pierre on Ugly Betty and Vern on Desperate Housewives. Mapa recurred as Renzo on Switched at Birth. Mapa co-hosted the Logo network reality dating game show Transamerican Love Story with Calpernia Addams in 2008. In 2013, he debuted in his own one-man show, Alec Mapa: Baby Daddy, which was made into a concert film and premiered on Showtime in 2015. Mapa is gay and lends his support to various projects supporting the gay, lesbian, and Asian American communities. In 2008, Mapa legally married Jamison “Jamie” Hebert after dating since 2002. On the TV series The Gossip Queens, Mapa stated in the opening episode that he and his husband had adopted a 5-year-old boy.

  

1970, Austria

The Austrian Parliament decriminalizes homosexual acts between consenting adults.

 

1970

The national organization of Daughters of Bilitis (DOB) is disbanded. Local chapters are free to continue as independent entities. The Daughters of Bilitis was the first lesbian civil and political rights organization in the United States. The organization, founded in 1955 by Del Martin (May 5, 1921 – August 27, 2008) and Phyllis Lyon (born November 10, 1924) in San Francisco, was conceived as a social alternative to lesbian bars which were subject to raids and police harassment. As the DOB gained members, their focus shifted to providing support to women who were afraid to come out. The DOB educated them about their rights and about gay history. The historian Lillian Faderman (born July 18, 1940) declared, “It’s very establishment in the midst of witch-hunts and police harassment was an act of courage, since members always had to fear that they were under attack, not be-cause of what they did, but merely because of who they were.” The Daughters of Bilitis endured for 14 years, becoming an educational resource for lesbians, gay men, researchers and mental health professionals. Bilitis is the name given to a fictional lesbian contemporary of Sappho by the French poet Pierre Louÿsin his 1894 work The Songs of Bilitis in which Bilitis lives on the Isle of Lesbos alongside Sappho.

 

1972

Jim Foster and Madeleine Davis are the first openly gay and lesbian people to address a major party presidential nominating convention, the Democratic National Convention, held in Miami Beach, Florida. They called upon the party to add a gay rights plank to the platform. The plank was defeated. Jim Foster (November 19, 1934 – October 31, 1990) was an American LGBT rights and Democratic activist. He became active in the early gay rights movement when he moved to San Francisco following his undesirable discharge from the Army in 1959 for being homosexual. Foster co-founded the Society for Individual Rights (SIR), an early homophile organization, in 1964. U.S. Senator Dianne Feinstein credits SIR and the gay vote with generating her margin of victory in her election to the San Francisco Board of Supervisors in 1969. Madeleine Davis (born 1940) is a noted gay rights activist. In 1970 she was a founding member of the Mattachine Society of the Niagara Frontier, the first gay rights organization in Western New York. In 1972, Davis taught the first college course on lesbianism in the United States. She was also a founding member of HAG Theater, the first all-lesbian theater company in the US.

 

1972

Ann Arbor, Michigan becomes the first U.S. city to pass a broad gay civil rights law. The city council passes the Human Rights Code making discrimination against gays and lesbians in housing, public accommodation, and employment illegal throughout the city.

 

1985

“Given a choice between sharing a park with homosexuals or a bunch of white-sheeted, racist, hate-peddling losers, we think we would prefer homosexuals.” This quote is from an editorial in the Texas Daily News regarding an upcoming anti-gay rally by the Ku Klux Klan.

 

1991

Raykeea Raeen-Roes Wilson (born July 10, 1991), known professionally as Angel Haze, is an American rapper and singer. In 2012, Wilson released Reservation. On December 31, 2013, Wilson released her debut album Dirty Gold which featured the singles Echelon (It’s My Way) and Battle Cry. Wilson is pansexual and agender. She has said: “People talking about me, like, ‘I’m glad there’s an actual woman of color representing queerness and pansexuality, someone who is like me in the spotlight.

  

July 11

 

1931

Tab Hunter (born Arthur Andrew Kelm; July 11, 1931 – July 8, 2018) is born. He was an American actor, television host, pop singer, film producer, and author. He starred in more than 40 films and was a well-known Hollywood star and heart throb of the 1950s and 1960s, known for his Golden Blond Californian surfer-boy looks. At his height he had his own television show The Tab Hunter Show and a hit single with Young Love. His break-through role came when he was cast as the young Marine Danny in 1955’s World War II drama Battle Cry. He starred in the 1958 musical film Damn Yankees in which he played Joe Hardy of Washington, D.C.‘s American League baseball club. Hunter’s autobiography, Tab Hunter Confidential: The Making of a Movie Star (2005), co-written with Eddie Muller, became a New York Times best-seller. In the book, he acknowledges that he is gay, confirming rumors that had circulated since the height of his fame. Hunter had long-term relationships with actor Anthony Perkins (April 4, 1932 – September 12, 1992) and champion figure skater Ronnie Robertson (September 25, 1937 – February 4, 2000) before settling down with his partner of over 30 years, film producer Allan Glaser. Hunter died from complications of deep vein thrombosis that caused cardiac arrest on July 8, 2018, three days before his 87th birthday. According to his partner Glaser, Hunter’s death was “sudden and unexpected”.

 

1934, Italy

Giorgio Armani (July 11, 1934) is born. He is an Italian fashion designer, particularly noted for his menswear and is also known as the man who put women into men’s blazers. He formed his company, Armani, in 1975, and by 2001 was acclaimed as the most successful designer that Italy has produced. Armani is an intensely private man but has publicly identified as bisexual. He had a longstanding relationship with architect Sergio Galeotti (1945-Aug. 14, 1985) who died of AIDS-related complications in 1985. Galeotti was co-founder and chairman of the board of Armani.

 

1946

Vito Russo (July 11, 1946 – November 7, 1990) is born. He was an American LGBT activist, and film historian who is best remembered as the author of the book The Celluloid Closet (1981, revised edition 1987). Russo’s concern over how LGBT people were presented in the popular media led him to co-found the Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation (GLAAD), a watchdog group that monitors LGBT representation in the mainstream media and presents the annual GLAAD Media Awards. The Vito Russo Award is named in his memory and is presented to an openly gay or lesbian member of the media community for their outstanding contribution in combating homophobia. When he published the first edition of The Celluloid Closet in 1981, there was little question that it was a ground-breaking book. Today it is still one of the most informative and provocative books written about gay people and popular culture. Russo appeared in the 1989 Academy Award-winning documentary Common Threads: Stories from the Quilt as a “storyteller,” relating the life and death of his lover Jeffrey Sevcik (1955-1986). Russo was diagnosed with HIV in 1985 and died of AIDS-related complications in 1990. His work was posthumously brought to television in the 1996 HBO documentary film The Celluloid Closet, co-executive produced and narrated by Lily Tomlin. Also in 1990, Merrill College at UC Santa Cruz established the Vito Russo House to promote Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual and Transgender awareness and provide a safe and comfortable living environment for queer, straight-supportive and all students who value and appreciate diversity. The house tailors its programming to meet the needs of LGBT students and offers all an opportunity to build understanding and tolerance. Russo’s papers are held by the New York Public Library.

 

1946

Jack Wrangler, born John Robert Stillman (July 11, 1946 – April 7, 2009), is born. He was an American gay and straight pornographic film actor, theatrical producer, director and writer. Open about his homosexuality and adult film work throughout his career, Wrangler was considered an icon of the gay liberation movement.

 

1966

Oklahoma County Attorney Curtis Harris revealed that 26 teachers and school administrators in Oklahoma City had been forced to resign following a six-month investigation into “alleged homosexual activity.”

1968

Esera Tavai Tuaolo (born July 11, 1968) is born. He was a former American professional football player, a defensive tackle in the National Football League (NFL) for nine years. Tuaolo, who is of Samoan ancestry, was born in Honolulu, Hawaii, and raised in poverty in a banana-farming family in Waimanalo. He played college football at Oregon State University. Nick-named “Mr. Aloha”, Tuaolo played tackle for several teams in his career, reaching the Super Bowl in 1999 while playing with the Atlanta Falcons. He also played for the Carolina Panthers, Jacksonville Jaguars, Minnesota Vikings and Green Bay Packers during his career. He recorded the last tackle of football legend John Elway. In 2002, having retired from sports, he announced to the public that he is gay, coming out on HBO‘s Real Sports. This made him the third former NFL player to come out after David Kopay (born June 28, 1942) and Roy Simmons (November 8, 1956 – February 20, 2014). He has since worked with the NFL to attempt to combat homophobia in the league and is a board member of the Gay and Lesbian Athletics Foundation. He made an appearance on The Oprah Winfrey Show in 2004 to share his coming out story. Tuaolo’s autobiography, Alone in the Trenches: My Life As a Gay Man in the NFL, was released in the spring of 2006. Tuaolo currently resides in Minneapolis. Along with his advocacy and singing, he does philanthropic work, cooks professionally, and runs Hate in Any Form is Wrong, an anti-bullying pro-gram.

 

1984

Mayor Ray Flynn of Boston signs a gay rights ordinance into law.

 

1986, New Zealand

The NZ Homosexual Law Reform Act of 1986 decriminalizes consensual sex between men. Homosexual male sex had been illegal in NZ since 1840.

 

1987

Dr. Tom Waddell (November 1, 1937 – July 11, 1987) dies on this day. He was a gay American sportsman and competitor at the 1968 Summer Olympics who founded the Gay Olympics in 1982 in San Francisco. The international sporting event was later renamed the Gay Games after the United States Olympic Committee (USOC) sued Waddell for using the word “Olympic” in the original name. The Gay Games are held every four years. The October 11, 1976 issue of People magazine featured Waddell and his lover Charles Deaton in a cover article. They were the first gay couple to appear on the cover of a major national magazine. In 1981, while founding the Gay Games, Waddell met two people with whom he formed major relationships. One was public relations man and fundraiser Zohn Artman with whom he fell in love and began a relationship. The other was lesbian athlete Sara Lewinstein. Both Tom and Sara had longed to have a child so they decided to have a child together. Their daughter, Jessica, was born in 1983. To protect Jessica’s and her mother’s legal rights, Tom and Sara married in 1985. In the 1980s Waddell was employed at the City Clinic in San Francisco’s Civic Center area; after his death, it was renamed for him. He died of complications from AIDS.

 

1990

Muscatine, Iowa’s public library board held a meeting to discuss the possible removal of books about gays and lesbians from the shelves. The proposal was defeated. Of the 75 residents who attended the meeting only one was in favor of the proposal.

 

1998, Italy

The Vatican condemns a decision by municipal authorities in Pisa, Italy to recognize a lesbian marriage. The women had been together for eleven years.

 

2003, UK

Britain’s House of Lords repeals the notorious anti-gay Section 28, the Thatcher-era law that banned any mention of homosexuality in schools.

 

2006

The 7th Circuit Court of Appeals in Chicago orders Southern Illinois University to officially recognize the Christian Legal Society, a student group that excludes membership to gays and people who support LGBT issues, while a lawsuit against the university proceeds. The injunction allows the group to use university facilities and receive funding from the public institution even though the school’s own policies and state law bars discrimination against gays.

 

2007

Florida State Rep. Bob Allen (Republican), a co-chair of John McCain’s Florida presidential campaign, was arrested for trying to charge a cop $20 for oral sex in a park restroom in Titusville, FL. During his time in the Florida legislature, Allen was a staunch supporter of anti-gay legislation. In 2009, Newsweek listed Allen among other conservative and liberal politicians who were caught in sex scandals.

2012

Jane Lynch (July 14, 1960), Billie Jean King (November 22, 1943), Chicago Cubs co-owner Laura Ricketts (December 15, 1967), LGBT leader Urvashi Vaid (October 8, 1958) and other influential lesbians form their own political action group to fundraise and lobby on issues that impact lesbians in the U.S. LPAC provides financial backing to pro-lesbian candidates, whether Democrat or Republican, male or female, gay or straight. Laura Ricketts is the daughter of Joe Ricketts, a Republican businessman who had donated large sums to an anti-Obama super PAC. His daughter, however, was a major donor to President Obama. While there are already women’s and LGBT groups—such as EMILY’s List and the Gay and Lesbian Victory Fund—LPAC bills itself as the first super PAC to specifically target lesbians who are generally a small subset of these two communities.

 

2012

Stacy Offner became the rabbi of Temple Beth Tikvah in Madison, Connecticut. Offner is an openly lesbian American rabbi and was the first to be hired by a mainstream Jewish congregation. She also became the first rabbi-elected chaplain of the Minnesota Senate, the first female vice president of the Union for Reform Judaism, and the first woman to serve on the national rabbinical pension board. She graduated Magna Cum Laude from Kenyon College and earned an M.A. in Hebrew Literature from Hebrew Union College in New York. She also has an honorary degree from Hebrew Union College where she was ordained in 1984. She was fired from her job as associate rabbi when she came out as a lesbian in 1987. She left with some of her congregants and in 1988 they founded Shir Tikvah, a Reform congregation in Minneapolis.

 

July 12

 

1817

Henry David Thoreau (July 12, 1817 – May 6, 1862) is born in Concord, Massachusetts. He was an American essayist, poet, philosopher, abolitionist, naturalist, tax resister, development critic, surveyor, and historian. A leading transcendentalist, Thoreau is best known for his book Walden, a reflection upon simple living in natural surroundings, and his essay Civil Disobedience (originally published as Resistance to Civil Government), an argument for disobedience to an unjust state. His life was spent falling in and out of love with his male companions. He strove to portray himself as an ascetic puritan. However, his sexuality has long been the subject of speculation, including by his contemporaries. Thoreau never married and was childless. Critics have called him heterosexual, homosexual, or asexual. There is no evidence to suggest he had physical relations with anyone, man or woman. Some scholars have suggested that homoerotic sentiments run through his writings and concluded that he was homosexual.

 

1868, Germany

Poet Stefan George (July 12, 1868 – December 4, 1933) is born. Believing that the purpose of poetry was distance from the world—he was a strong advocate of art for art’s sake—George’s writing had many ties with the French Symbolist movement and he was in contact with many of its representatives including Stéphane Mallarmé and Paul Verlaine. George was an important bridge between the 19th century and German modernism even though he was a harsh critic of the then modern era. George’s homosexuality is reflected in works such as Algabal and the love poetry to a gifted adolescent of his acquaintance named Maximilian Kronberger whom he called Maximin and whom he identified as a manifestation of the divine.

 

1876, France

French writer Max Jacob (July 12, 1876 – March 5, 1944) is born. He was a poet, painter, writer, and critic. He was among the leaders of the avant-garde art movement in Paris during the early 20th century. He is regarded as an important link between the symbolists and the surrealists as seen in his prose poems Le cornet à dés (The Dice Box, 1917) and in his paintings, exhibitions of which were held in New York City in 1930 and 1938. Max Jacob was Jewish but converted to Catholicism hoping to stem his homosexual urges. He was arrested on February 24, 1944 by the Gestapo and died in the infirmary of Le Cité de la Muette, a former housing block which served as the internment camp known as Drancy.

 

1908

Milton Berle (born Mendel Berlinger; July 12, 1908 – March 27, 2002) was an American comedian and actor. As the host of NBC‘s Texaco Star Theater (1948–55), he was the first major American television star and known to millions of viewers as “Uncle Miltie” and “Mr. Television” during TV’s golden age. While Berle was heterosexual, he often cross-dressed on his television shows.

 

1918

American novelist, biographer, literary critic, and essayist Doris Grumbach (born July 12, 1918) is born on this date in New York City. She taught at the College of Saint Rose in Albany, New York, the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, and American University in Washington, D.C., and was literary editor of The New Republic for several years. Following her 1972 divorce, she began a relationship with Sybil Pike (July 27, 1929-March 9, 2021) who became and remains her life partner. For two decades, she and Sybil operated a bookstore, Wayward Books, in Sargentville, Maine, until 2009 when they moved to a retirement home in Kennett Square, Pennsylvania.

 

1934

Pianist Van Cliburn (Harvey Lavan Cliburn Jr.) (July 12, 1934 – February 27, 2013) is born. He was an American pianist who achieved worldwide recognition in 1958 at the age of 23 when he won the inaugural quadrennial International Tchaikovsky Piano Competition in Moscow during the Cold War. Cliburn received the Kennedy Center Honors in 2001. He was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2003 by President George W. Bush, and, in October 2004, the Russian Order of Friendship, the highest civilian awards of the two countries. He was also awarded the Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award the same year. In 1998, Cliburn was named in a lawsuit by his domestic partner of seventeen years, mortician Thomas Zaremba. In the suit, Zaremba claimed entitlement to a portion of Cliburn’s income and assets and went on to charge that he might have been exposed to HIV and claimed emotional distress. Each claim was subsequently dismissed by an Appellate Court, citing palimony suits are not permitted in the state of Texas unless the relationship is based on a written agreement.

  

1940, Germany

A directive from Heinrich Himmler of the Nazi Reich Main Security Office mandated that any homosexual who had seduced more than one person would be put into a concentration camp. Evidence of a sexual act was often absent in meeting the criteria.

 

1948

Milton Teagle “Richard” Simmons (born July 12, 1948) is an American fitness guru, actor, and comedian. He promotes weight-loss programs, prominently through his Sweatin’ to the Oldies line of aerobics videos and is known for his eccentric, flamboyant, and energetic personality. Aside from his three Dalmatians and two maids, Simmons lives alone in Beverly Hills, California. While his sexual orientation has been the subject of much speculation, he has never publicly discussed his sexuality. In May 2017, Simmons sued the National Enquirer, Radar Online and American Media, Inc. for libel and false claims that he was undergoing gender reassignment. In September 2017, Simmons lost the lawsuit and was ordered to pay the defendants’ attorney’s fees.

 

1975

Cheyenne David Jackson (July 12, 1975) is born. He is an American actor and singer-songwriter. His credits include leading roles in Broadway musicals and other stage roles as well as film and television roles, concert singing, and music recordings. Jackson appeared on the March 26, 2008, cover of The Advocate. The magazine used the caption “Hello, gorgeous! For leading man Cheyenne Jackson, coming out is a beautiful thing.” In 2008, he was named “Entertainer of the Year” by Out and appeared beside Gus Van Sant, Katy Perry, and Sam Sparro on the magazine’s commemorative 100th issue in December. Jackson is an LGBT rights supporter and an international ambassador for The Foundation for AIDS Research (AmFAR). Jackson is also a national ambassador and spokesperson for the Hetrick-Martin Institute, a non-profit organization devoted to serving the needs of LGBT youth. In October 2013, Jackson announced he was dating actor Jason Landau (April 12, 1977). They were married in Encino, California in September 2014. Jackson and Landau welcomed twins on October 7, 2016.

 

1976

Kyrsten Sinema (born July 12, 1976) is born. She was elected to the U.S. House of Representatives in 2012, making her the first openly bisexual member of Congress. A member of the Democratic Party, she served in both chambers of the Arizona legislature, being elected to the Arizona House of Representatives in 2005, and the Arizona Senate in 2011. Sinema has worked for the adoption of the DREAM Act and has campaigned against Propositions 107 and 102, two voter referendums to ban the recognition of same-sex marriage and civil unions in Arizona. In 2005 and 2006, she was named the Sierra Club‘s Most Valuable Player. She also won the 2006 Planned Parenthood CHOICE Award, 2006 Legislator of the Year Award from both the Arizona Public Health Association and the National Association of Social Workers, 2006 Legislative Hero Award from the Arizona League of Conservation Voters, and the 2005 Stonewall Democrats‘ Legislator of the Year Award. In 2010, she was named one of Time magazine‘s “40 Under 40.” Sinema is the only openly non-theist or atheist member of Congress although she herself has disassociated from such labels.

 

1982, France

France removes homosexuality from its official list of mental illnesses.

 

1986

The International Lesbian and Gay Association votes almost unanimously not to revoke the membership of the South African Gay Association after testimony from a representative who stated that the organization was opposed to apartheid.

 

1998, Poland

Poland’s first gay pride demonstration was canceled because city authorities refused to issue the necessary permits.

 

1999

William Douglas Ireland (March 31, 1946 – October 26, 2013) was an American journalist and blogger who wrote about politics, power, media, and LGBT issues. He was the U.S. correspondent for the French political-investigative weekly Bakchich for which he also wrote a weekly column, and he was the contributing editor for International Affairs of Gay City News. Scott Tucker has called him “not only a left-wing critic of sexual and political conformism among sectors of the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender movements, but … also one of the notable public intellectuals of the civil libertarian left. On this day Ireland suggested rebuilding the Gay Movement in The Nation, and that “the direction the gay movement takes will depend not on checkbook activism but on the kind of energy and commitment that people bring to work in their own communities. This may involve some nasty battles with more conservative gay elements and force the debate into the open, but the ultimate goal is victories that last, and that’s worth the fight.”

2018

Angela Bowen (February 6, 1936 – July 12, 2018) dies. She was an American dance teacher, English professor, and a lesbian rights activist. Bowen co-founded the Bowen/Peters School of Dance in New Haven, Connecticut in the 1960s. It closed in 1982. She became a gay rights activist and served on the board of the National Coalition of Black Lesbians and Gays. Bowen was a professor of English and Women’s Studies at California State University, Long Beach. She was the subject of the 2016 documentary, The Passionate Pursuits of Angela Bowen, by her wife Jennifer Abod and Mary Dupree which won Best Documentary in the Women’s History U.S. category at the 2017 To the Contrary About Women and Girls film festival. Bowen suffered from Alzheimer’s disease and died on July 12, 2018 in Long Beach, California, at age 82.

July 13

 

100 BC, Italy

Caius Julius Caesar (July 13, 100 BC – March, 15, 44 BC) is born in Rome.  He had an affair with Nicomedes IV of Bithynia early in his career according to some historians. Caesar was referred to as the Queen of Bithynia by some Roman politicians as a way to humiliate him. Catullus wrote two poems suggesting that Caesar and his engineer Mamurra were lovers, but later apologized. Mark Antony charged that Octavian had earned his adoption by Caesar through sexual favors. Suetonius described Antony’s accusation of an affair with Octavian as political slander. Octavian eventually became the first Roman Emperor as Augustus.

 

1863

Mary Emma Woolley (July 13, 1863 – September 5, 1947) is born today. She was an American educator, peace activist and women’s suffrage supporter. She was the first female student to attend Brown University and served as the 11th President of Mount Holyoke College from 1900 to 1937. In 1900, Woolley was one of 60 signers of the Call for the Lincoln Emancipation Conference to Discuss Means for Securing Political and Civil Equality for the Negro, a document which created the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People. She lived in a lesbian relationship with Professor Jeanette Marks (1875-1964) for fifty-five years.

 

1888

According to an article in Ohio’s Springfield Daily Republic, James Chesser marries George Ann Holly who is actually one George Burton, discovered to be a male person after a medical exam. They were a young interracial couple living in Fort Smith, Arkansas from May to July of 1888. Both men were charged with sodomy. This is thought to be the first case where two men were duly married to one another.

 

1934, Germany

Hitler gave a speech in response to a retaliation that occurred after the murder of Ernst Rohm. The speech equated being homosexual with being a traitor.

1935, France

Monique Wittig (July 13, 1935 – January 3, 2003) is born in Haut-Rhin, France. She was a French author and feminist theorist and one of the founders of the Mouvement de Libration des Femmes (MLF) (Women’s Liberation Movement). On August 26, 1970, accompanied by numerous other women, she put flowers under the Arc de Triomphe to honor the wife of The Unknown Soldier. This symbolic action was considered to be the founding event of French feminism. Defining herself as a radical lesbian, she and other lesbians during the early 1980s in France and Quebec reached a consensus that “radical lesbianism” posits heterosexuality as a political regime that must be overthrown.

 

1943

Daniel Joseph “Danny” Lockin (July 13, 1943 – August 21, 1977) was an American actor and dancer who appeared on stage, television, and film. He was best known for his portrayal of the character Barnaby Tucker in the 1969 film Hello, Dolly! On the night of August 21, 1977, Lockin went to a gay bar in Garden Grove, California and left with Charles Leslie Hopkins who already had a police record and was on probation at the time. Several hours later, Hopkins called police to say that a man had entered his apartment and tried to rob him. Upon arrival, police found Lockin’s body on the floor of Hopkin’s apartment. He had been stabbed 100 times and bled to death. His body had also been mutilated after death. Hopkins claimed he had no idea how the dead body got in his apartment. He was arrested, convicted of voluntary manslaughter, and sentenced to a four-year prison term.

 

1944

Joan E. Biren or JEB (born July 13, 1944) is an American feminist photographer and filmmaker who dramatizes the lives of LGBT’s in contexts that range from healthcare and hurricane relief to Womyn’s Music and anti-racism. For portraits, she encourages sitters to act as her “muse” rather than her “subject.” In her early 20s, Biren and others, including Rita Mae Brown (born November 28, 1944) and Charlotte Bunch (October 13, 1944), formed The Furies Collective, a radical experiment in lesbian feminist separatist organizing. Though the collective lasted only about 18 months, it had a pro-found influence on lesbian thought through its newspaper, The Furies, and other publications. JEB’s papers and visual materials are permanently archived at The Sophia Smith Collection, the premiere women’s history collection, at Smith College. Many of her photographs are located at the Library of Congress in Washington, D.C. In addition, The George Washington University houses a collection of photographs used in Queerly Visible: 1971–1991.

 

1953

Danitra Vance (July 13, 1954 – August 21, 1994) is born. She was an African American comedian and actress best known as a cast member on the NBC sketch show Saturday Night Live during its eleventh season and for work in feature films like Sticky Fingers (1988), Limit Up (1990) and Jumpin’ at the Boneyard (1992). Vance was the first African American woman to become an SNL repertory player in 1985. She was awarded an NAACP Image Award in 1986 and later won an Obie Award for her performance in the theatrical adaptation of Spunk, a collection of short stories written by Zora Neale Hurston. She died of breast cancer in 1994.

 

1970

In response to a letter asking if she considered homosexuality a disease, advice columnist Dear Abby responded “No! It is the inability to love at all which I consider an emotional illness.”

 

1981, Canada

Toronto City Council appoints former journalist-turned-lawyer Arnold Bruner to conduct a study into relations between the police and the gay community. The appointment is made five months after the infamous Toronto bath-house raids.

 

1982, France

The Ministry of Health removes homosexuality from its official list of mental illnesses.

 

1982

The U.S. House of Representatives votes to begin an investigation into reports that a major homosexual prostitution ring was operating in Congress. After a year of hearings no evidence was presented to support the allegations. The reports were the result of accusations from a former page who flunked a lie detector test.

 

1984

Hate-monger Jerry Falwell appeared on television and denied that he had ever referred to the Metropolitan Community Church (MCC) as vile and satanic and its members “brute beasts” on his Old Time Gospel Hour. He offered $5,000 to anyone who could prove that he had. Rev. Jerry Sloan of MCC called Falwell’s toll-free number and purchased a copy of the tape as proof then demanded payment of the $5,000. When Falwell refused, Sloan sued and won.

 

1984

The Brothers debuts on Showtime as the first television show in the United States with a gay lead character. Two conservative men support their younger brother when he comes out as gay and help him navigate being openly homosexual in 1980s Philadelphia.

 

1998

A full-page ad claiming gay men and lesbians can overcome their sexuality by becoming Christian ran in the New York Times. The ads were opposed by many in the scientific and medical communities including Dr. Dean Hamer (born 1951) of the National Institutes of Health who said the ads “fly in the face of scientific fact and are at odds with what we know from biological and psychological sciences.” Hamer is an American geneticist, author, and filmmaker. He is known for his research on the role of genetics in sexual orientation and human behavior, contributions to biotechnology and HIV/AIDS prevention, and popular books and documentaries on a wide range of topics.

 

1999

Dr. Dean Edell wrote that “An investigation into the size of male sex organs reveals that homosexuals are generally better endowed than heterosexuals. This is a study done by the Kinsey Institute and researchers say there may be some relationship between innate sexual orientation tendencies and the size of genitalia. Researchers say they surveyed data gathered on 5,172 men and found penis sizes to be larger in homosexuals than heterosexuals based on five measurement standards. One reason for the differences in penile dimensions could be variations in prenatal hormone levels, according to the study published in the journal, Archives of Sexual Behavior.”

 

1999

The Vatican orders Rev. Robert Nugent and Sister Jeannine Gramick to end their Maryland-based 22-year ministry to gays and lesbians. Jeannine Gramick, S. L., (born 1942) is a Catholic religious and advocate for lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender rights as a co-founder of New Ways Ministry. Robert Nugent, a Catholic priest, became nationally known for his pastoral work with gay men and lesbians, a ministry that was officially ended in 1999 when the Vatican declared it “erroneous and dangerous.”

 

2000

Love in Action’s ex-gay poster boy Wade Richards revealed that his sexual orientation had not in fact changed. “I am and always have been a homosexual, and I do not believe that ex-gay ministries can ever change an individual’s sexual orientation.”

 

2003

Gay activists took over the general assembly of the Church of England demanding equality for gays in the church.

 

2016

Army Reserve officer Tammy Smith becomes the first openly gay U.S. general in American history. Tammy Smith (born c. 1963) is a Major General of the U.S. Army Reserve. She received her confirmation to Major General on July 13th, 2016 and was formally promoted to the position in a ceremony at the U.S. Army Garrison Yongsan in Seoul, Korea. Major General Smith is the Deputy Commanding General-Sustainment for Eighth Army. She also became the first female general officer to serve in an Eighth Army headquarters-level position. Prior to this position, she served as the Commanding General of the 98th Training Division (Initial Entry Training) and served for a year in the Afghanistan War. Smith married Tracey Hepner on March 31, 2012, in a ceremony at the Jefferson Memorial in Washington, D.C. The ceremony was officiated by a military chaplain. The District of Columbia began recognizing same-sex marriages in 2010 but because Smith was in the Army she could not enter into a marriage until after Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell was re-pealed. She is the first openly gay U.S. flag officer to come out while serving since the repeal of the policy. Smith and her spouse Tracey Hepner are active in volunteer military family support event. General Smith retired in 2021.

 

July 14

1454, Italy

Angelo Poliziano (July 14, 1454 – September 24, 1494) is born in Montepulciano, Tuscany. He wrote under the name Politian and was considered the successor to Ovid. He was a tutor to the children of Lorenzo de Medici. Young men flocked from throughout Europe to study under him. He died at 42 of a heart attack while in bed with one of his students.

 

1897

Annie Hindle (1840s – July 14, 1897) died. She was the first popular male impersonator performer in the United States. Born in the 1840s in England, she and her adoptive mother migrated to New York City in 1868 where she performed as a male impersonator in solo acts and in minstrel shows from 1868 to 1886. She received high reviews and steady bookings. Her skills in male impersonation astounded her audience. A review of one of her performances at the Adelphi Theater in Galveston, Texas, noted, “Annie Hindle has proved a great success. As a male impersonator her sex is so concealed that one is apt to imagine that it is a man who is singing.” Hindle’s male impersonation career ended in 1886 when she married her dresser, Annie Ryan, while on a tour through the mid-west. Hindle dressed in male clothing and gave her name as Charles and a local Baptist minister performed the ceremony.

 

1895

Karl Heinrich Ulrichs (August 28, 1825 – July 14, 1895) dies. Ulrichs was an openly gay lawyer who was among the earliest to call for the repeal of Germany’s sodomy law Paragraph 175. He was truly a pioneer of the modern gay rights movement.

 

1926

Charles Pierce (July 14, 1926 – May 31, 1999) was one of the 20th century’s foremost female impersonators, particularly noted for his impersonation of Bette Davis. He was born on this day in Watertown, New York. Throughout his career, Pierce appeared in numerous television shows (Fame, Laverne and Shirley, Designing Women, Starsky & Hutch, and Love, American Style) as well as feature films. He died of cancer on May 31, 1999.

 

1960

Jane Lynch (born July 14, 1960) is an American actress, singer, and comedian. She is best known for her role as Sue Sylvester in the musical television series Glee. Lynch is openly lesbian; in 2005, she was named one of Power Up’s “10 Amazing Gay Women in Showbiz.” Lynch married clinical psychologist Lara Embry on May 31, 2010, in Sunderland, Massachusetts. In June 2013, Lynch announced that she and Embry were divorcing after three years of marriage. The divorce was finalized in January 2014.

 

1983

Rep. Gerry Studds (D-MA) (May 12, 1937 – October 14, 2006) comes out. He was the first openly gay member of Congress. Studds and partner Dean T. Hara (his companion since 1991) were married in Boston on May 24, 2004, one week after Massachusetts became the first state in the country to legalize same-sex marriage. Studds died on October 14, 2006, in Boston, at age 69, several days after suffering a pulmonary embolism.

 

1983

Graham Samuel Ackerman (born July 14, 1983) is an American gymnast. In April 2005 he won the national championship in the floor exercise event at the NCAA Men’s Gymnastics championship at the United States Military Academy at West Point, New York, making him a three-time national champ. In 2004 he won the national titles in two events—floor and vault. Ackerman is openly gay.

 

1986

In an interview with People magazine, Roy Cohn (February 20, 1927 – August 2, 1986) denies that he was gay (he was) or that he had AIDS (he did). When Cohn brought on G. David Schine (September 11, 1927-June 19, 1996) as chief consultant to the McCarthy staff, speculation arose that Schine and Cohn had a sexual relationship. Cohn died of AIDS in 1986. During Senator Joseph McCarthy‘s investigations into Communist activity in the United States during the Second Red Scare, Cohn served as McCarthy’s chief counsel and gained special prominence during the Army-McCarthy hearings. He was also known for being a Justice prosecutor at the espionage trial of Julius and Ethel Rosenberg and later for representing Donald Trump during his early business career. In 1984, Cohn was diagnosed with AIDS and attempted to keep his condition secret while receiving experimental drug treatment. He participated in clinical trials of AZT, a drug initially synthesized to treat cancer but later developed as the first anti-HIV agent for AIDS patients. He insisted to his dying day that his disease was liver cancer. He died on August 2, 1986, in Bethesda, Maryland, of complications from AIDS, at the age of 59. Cohn’s “absolute goal was to die completely broke and owing millions to the IRS. He succeeded.” He was buried in Union Field Cemetery in Queens, New York.

 

1987

In Williamson, West Virginia, a public swimming pool was closed temporarily by Mayor Sam Kapourales who ordered a scrub-down of the diving board, lounge chairs, and locker room, the pool drained and refilled, and 16 times the normal amount of chlorine added because he learned that a man with AIDS had gone swimming in the pool.

 

1998

The city council of West Hartford, Connecticut voted not to allow same sex couples access to family rate discounts at the city pool.

 

2004, Canada

Yukon Territory becomes the most northern area of the world to legalize same-sex marriage.

 

2011

The Fair, Accurate, Inclusive, and Respectful Education Act, also known as the FAIR Education Act is signed into law in California. The act requires that political, economic, and social contributions of LGBTQ people are included in educational curricula in California public schools. It also prohibits discrimination regarding school activities and groups. The bill was originally introduced by then-Senator Sheila James Kuehl (February 9, 1941).

 

2014

The Los Angeles OUTFEST premiere of the documentary Letter to Anita, the heart-wrenching documentary by award-winning filmmaker Andrea Meyerson that explores the painful legacy of singer Anita Bryant’s infamous anti-gay campaign of the late 1970s.

 

2016

The Secretary of the Navy Ray Mabus announces that he will name the Military Sealift Command fleet oiler for USNS Harvey Milk (T-AO-206). The ship is the second of the John Lewis-class oilers built by General Dynamics NASSCO in San Diego, Calif.

 

July 15

  

1834, Spain

The Spanish Inquisition is abolished by Ferdinand VII’s widow Maria Christina. Between 1000 and 1600 people had been convicted of sodomy during that time and 170 were executed.

 

1914, Scotland

Ring of Bright Water author and naturalist Gavin Maxwell (July 15, 1914 – September 7, 1969) is born on this date. Ring of Bright Water (1960) is about how he brought an otter back from Iraq and raised it in Scotland. The otter was of a previously unknown sub-species which was subsequently named after Maxwell. Though he had been involved with several women and was married for a year, his loves were the men in his life.

 

1947

Lambda Literary Award winning poet and author Michael Lassell (July 15, 1947) is born. He has written extensively in the fields of design, travel, the arts, and LGBT studies. He lives in New York City. He served as features director of Metropolitan Home from 1992 until 2009. Prior to that, he served as managing editor of Interview and L.A. Style magazines, as well as a theater critic for the Los Angeles Herald Examiner and L.A. Weekly. Lassell currently resides in Greenwich Village, New York City, with his rescued dachshund Schuyler.

 

1962

In New York City, Randy Wicker (Feb. 3, 1938) talks listener-supported radio station WBAI into broadcasting a taped program in which seven gay people discuss homosexuality. Widely publicized in the local press, the program is probably the first favorable broadcast on the subject in the U.S. While it resulted in positive comments in several newspapers and magazines, a group of homophobic listeners contacted the FCC to challenge the station’s license. The complaint was rejected. The 90-minute program aired in July, 1962. Several mainstream media outlets, alerted by Wicker, covered the broadcast which received favorable treatment in The New York Times, The Realist, Newsweek, the New York Herald Tribune, and Variety. As a result of the publicity, from 1962 through 1964 Wicker was one of the most visible homosexuals in New York. He spoke to countless church groups and college classes and, in 1964, became the first openly gay person to appear on East Coast television with a January 31st appearance on The Les Crane Show. Wicker is also credited with organizing the first known gay rights demonstration in the United States. Wicker, along with Craig Rodwell, sexual freedom activist Jefferson Poland and a handful of others, picketed the Whitehall Street Induction Center in New York City in 1964 after the confidentiality of gay men’s draft records was violated. He supported himself by operating, with his lover Peter Ogren, Underground Uplift Unlimited, a slogan-button and head shop. The couple ran the shop from 1967 to 197 and used the proceeds to open an antique and lighting store. Wicker ran his store for 29 years. Since 2009, he has been documenting and participating in the Radical Faerie communities in Tennessee and New York.

 

1961

David Cicilline (born July 15, 1961) is an American politician who has been the U.S. Representative for Rhode Island’s 1st congressional district since 2011. Upon being sworn in, Cicilline became the fourth openly gay member of Congress. A Democratic, he previously served as mayor of Providence, Rhode Island, from 2003 to 2011, and was the first openly gay mayor of a U.S. state capital. Rep. Cicilline introduced the Equality Act in 2015 to amend the 1964 Civil Rights Act and expand protections to LGBTQ people. In September 2017, he re-introduced the Equality Act. In July 2018, Cicilline was a co-sponsor of the Gay and Trans Panic Defense Prohibition Act. This act would prohibit defense lawyers from using a victim’s LGBTQ identity as justification for a crime or to argue for lesser sentences on the premise that there were extenuating circumstances that motivated their clients to lash out violently.

 

1975

Santa Cruz County, California is the first U.S. county to make job discrimination against gay men and lesbians illegal.

 

1985

An obviously ill actor Rock Hudson (Nov. 17, 1925 – Oct. 2, 1985) appears on television to promote his new cable series with Doris Day. His publicist explains his appearance by saying he was just getting over the flu. He died from AIDS related complications.

 

1990

The book Behind the Mask by Dave Pallone (Oct. 5, 1951) debuts at #15 on the New York Times bestseller list. Pallone was a major league baseball umpire who was fired for being gay. He was “outed” in an article. Pallone now does diversity training for corporations, colleges, universities and athletes with the NCAA. Pallone was in the first class of inductees to The National Gay and Lesbian Sports Hall of Fame in 2013.

 

1991

Col. Margarethe Cammermeyer (March 24, 1942) is informed by a military board that while she is a “great American, a great asset, and a superb leader,” and that her 27 years of service have been of “great value,” she is to be discharged for being a lesbian. She was the highest ranking person to be discharged for homosexuality, serving as a colonel in the Washington National Guard. She became a gay rights activist. She had a 15-year marriage to a man with whom they had four sons. In 1988, when she was 46, she met Diane Divelbess who later became her wife. In 2012, after same-sex marriage was legalized in Washington state, Cammermeyer and Divelbess became the first same-sex couple to get a license in Island County. They live on Whidbey Island in Washington State.

 

1999

An 1897 letter written by gay author Oscar Wilde (Oct. 16, 1854 – Nov. 30, 1900) to novelist Henrietta Stannard fetched $18,745.00 at a Sotheby’s Auction. Stannard was not a lesbian but wrote under the name of John Strange Winter.

 

2003

Queer Eye for the Straight Guy, a reality show of gay men who conduct makeovers for straight men, premieres on Bravo. The show features the “Fab Five,” a quintet of gay men – Ted Allen (born May 20, 1965), Kyan Douglas (born May 5, 1970), Thom Filicia (born May 17, 1969), Carson Kressley (born November 11, 1969), and Jai Rodriguez (born June 22, 1979). The show plays on stereotypes that gay men know more about fashion, food, personal grooming, interior design and culture. The show becomes immensely popular and is praised by much of the mainstream gay press but receives some criticism for its generalizations and stereotyping. Queer Eye won an Emmy Award for Outstanding Reality Program in 2004. The series’ name was abbreviated to Queer Eye at the beginning of its third season to include making over individuals regardless of gender or sexual orientation. Queer Eye ended production during June 2006 and the final episode aired on October 30, 2007. Netflix announced in January 2017 that it was reviving the series with a new Fab Five in a season of eight episodes. On February 7, 2018, the revival aired its first season to positive reviews.

 

2005

Robert Traynham, the chief of staff and communications director for homophobe Sen. Rick Santorum, (R-Pa.) confirms rumors circulating in Washington for several months that he is gay. He continued to defend Santorum even into the 2016 election cycle. Traynham is currently the Bipartisan Policy Center’s vice president of communications.

 

2010, Argentina

The Senate approves same-sex marriage by a vote of 33-27.

 

2015

The club Jewel’s Catch One in Los Angeles opened in 1973 and closed on this day in 2015.  Jewel’s Catch One was one of the first black discos in the United States and was for a long time the major black gay bar in Los Angeles. It was a dance bar owned by Jewel Thais Williams, located on West Pico Boulevard in Los Angeles. Open for forty years, it was the longest running black gay dance bar in Los Angeles. After nearly closing in 2015, it was purchased by Mitch Edelson who reopened under new management. Briefly called Union after the change in management, it has since reverted to the Catch One moniker. Jewel Thais-Williams graduated from UCLA with a B.A. in History. During her college years she wanted to be self-employed. Her first business was a boutique but it went out of business, so she bought a bar. She opened the club after she experienced discrimination in different clubs around West Hollywood because she was black and female. Women at the time were not allowed to tend bar but Jewel saved enough money and bought the bar despite the limitations. When the club opened, it became a hub for a diverse population of performers including Sylvester, Whitney Houston, Luther Vandross, Janet Jackson, Donna Summer, Whoopi Goldberg, Rick James, and Madonna.

  

July 16

  

1746, UK – Mary Hamilton (1721-??) was the subject of a notorious 18th century case of fraud and female cross-dressing in which Hamilton, under the name of Charles, duped a woman into marriage. She was arrested, charged with fraud, publicly whipped, and imprisoned for six months. While the surviving records of the case indicate that Hamilton was only prosecuted for deceiving one woman into marriage, newspaper reports at the time claimed that there had been 14 marriages in all.

 

1943, Cuba

Novelist Reinaldo Arenas (July 16, 1943 – December 7, 1990) is born. He was a Cuban poet, novelist, and playwright who despite his early sympathy for Fidel Castro and the 1959 revolution, grew critical of and then rebelled against the Cuban government. He changed when the government began open persecution of homosexuals. His first novel, entitled Celestino Antes del Alba (Singing from the Well), was published in 1967. He came to the United States in 1980, fleeing the persecution of his homeland. On December 7, 1990, suffering from complications of AIDS and too sick to continue writing, Arenas died by suicide.

 

1956

Tony Kushner (born July 16, 1956) is born. Kushner, openly gay, received a Tony and the Pulitzer Prize for writing Angels in America. Angels in America is about AIDS, religion/spirituality, family, sexuality, and politics in our culture. He also authored several children’s plays and an essay book, Thinking about the Longstanding Problems of Virtue and Happiness (1995). Kushner and his spouse Mark Harris (born November 25, 1963) held a commitment ceremony in April 2003, the first same-sex commitment ceremony to be featured in the Vows column of The New York Times. Harris is an editor of Entertainment Weekly and author of Pictures at a Revolution – Five Movies and the Birth of the New Hollywood. In summer 2008, Kushner and Harris were legally married at the city hall in Provincetown, Massachusetts.

 

1969

The Mattachine Society of New York hosts an organizing meeting which over 200 people attend. During the course of the meeting, approximately 40 participants walk out in dissatisfaction over chapter president Leitsch’s handling of the post-Stonewall political energy. Richard Dick Valentine Dick Leitsch (born May 11, 1935) is an American LGBT rights activist. He was president of the Mattachine Society, a gay rights group, in the 1960s. He conceptualized and lead the “Sip-In” at Julius’ Bar which was one of the earliest acts of gay civil disobedience in the United States in which LGBT activists attempted to legally gain the right to drink in bars in New York. He is also known for being the first gay reporter to publish an account of the Stonewall Riots and the first person to ever interview Bette Midler in print media.

 

1973

Chad Griffin (born July 16, 1973) is an American political strategist best known for his work advocating for LGBT rights in the United States. Griffin got his start in politics volunteering for the Bill Clinton presidential campaign, which led to a position in the White House Press Office at the age of 19. Following his stint in the White House and his graduation from Georgetown University, he led a number of political campaigns advocating for or against various California ballot initiatives as well as a number of fundraising efforts for political candidates, such as Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama. Following the 2008 passage of California’s highly publicized Proposition 8 which barred the recognition of same-sex marriage, Griffin founded the American Foundation for Equal Rights (AFER) to overturn the law. AFER’s challenge, Perry v. Brown, was ultimately successful following a decision by the United States Supreme Court in June 2013. In 2012, Griffin was appointed president of the Human Rights Campaign, the largest LGBT rights organization in the United States

 

1976

The discharge of Sgt. Leonard Matlovich (July 6, 1943 – June 22, 1988) is upheld in a civilian court by Federal District Judge Gerhard Gesell. He was a Vietnam War veteran, race relations instructor, and recipient of the Purple Heart and the Bronze Star. Matlovich was the first gay service member to purposely out himself to the military to fight their ban on gays, and perhaps the best-known gay man in America in the 1970s next to Harvey Milk (May 22, 1930 – November 27, 1978). His fight to stay in the United States Air Force after coming out of the closet became a cause célèbre around which the gay community rallied. Matlovich was the first named openly gay person to appear on the cover of a U.S. newsmagazine. His tombstone, meant to be a memorial to all gay veterans, does not bear his name. It reads, “When I was in the military, they gave me a medal for killing two men and a discharge for loving one.

 

1982

The U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service policy of barring homosexuals from entering the country is ruled unconstitutional by a federal judge.

 

1984

U.S. News and World Report announces that gays and lesbians make up the seventh-largest voting bloc in the US.

 

1986

Jeff Levi, executive director of NGLTF (National Gay and Lesbian Task Force), announces plans for a Privacy Project to fight sodomy laws.

 

1992

Bill Clinton becomes the first candidate for president to mention gays and lesbians in a speech accepting the Democratic nomination for president.

 

2001

Leaders of the Presbyterian Church (USA) vote overwhelmingly to overturn a ban on ordaining homosexuals as ministers of the church. The 317-208 vote, taken at the church’s annual general assembly in Louisville, Kentucky, comes after more than two hours of debate.

 

2003

Drew Barrymore (born February 22, 1975) comes out as bisexual. She is an American actress, author, director, model and producer. She is a member of the Barrymore family of American stage and film actors, and is a grand-daughter of actor John Barrymore. Barrymore began acting on television, and soon transitioned to film with roles in E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial (1982) and Irreconcilable Differences (1984).

 

2003

Rev. Troy Perry (born July 27, 1940), founder and moderator of the Universal Fellowship of Metropolitan Community Churches, marries his long-time partner in Toronto. Perry lives in Los Angeles with his husband, Phillip Ray DeBlieck whom he married under Canadian law at the Metropolitan Community Church of Toronto. They sued the State of California upon their return home after their Toronto wedding for recognition of their marriage and won. The state appealed and the ruling was overturned by the State Supreme Court after five years in their favor.

 

2005

Thailand announces it will provide free HIV/AIDS meds to any citizen who needs them.

 

July 17

 

1730, Netherlands

In Rotterdam, Leendert de Haas, age 60, candlemaker, Casper Schroder, distiller, and Huibert V. Borselen, gentleman’s servant, were strangled, burnt, and their ashes carried in an ash cart out of the city and then by ship to the sea and thrown overboard during the anti-gay purge. In April 1730 some men were arrested in Utrecht. They incriminated others, and on June 21st, the State of Holland issued a Placat, posted in every town, that set off wide-scale persecution. The document began with the customary warnings about the fate of Sodom and Gomorrah, then lamented that no laws had heretofore been provided to punish “this execrable crime of sodomy”, and concluded with its measures for obliterating this evil: that sodomy be punished by death, that those who offer their homes for its commission also die, that their corpses be burned to ashes and thrown into the sea “or exposed as unworthy of burial”, that the names of the convicted — including the fugitives — be publicly posted, and that the magistrates be specially authorized to investigate thoroughly any suspicions, particularly against those who mysteriously flee the province. Some 250 men were summoned before the authorities; 91 faced decrees of exile for not appearing. At least 60 men were sentenced to death. The astonishing purges of 1730 were widely re-ported in the English newspapers (mainly in June and July), and probably sent men running for cover even in England. The English news reports also state that many Dutch sodomites fled to England—where they unfortunately were not accorded the same reception as refugees from religious persecution.

 

1859, UK

Ernest Rhys (July 17, 1859 – May 25, 1946) is born in London. Rhys was the editor of the Everyman Library, a collection that totaled 967 volumes containing the classics. After he retired, he wrote his autobiography filled with anecdotes about his gay clique including Oscar Wilde (16 October 1854 – 30 November 1900).

 

1883, Finland

Swedish director Mauritz Stiller (July 17, 1883 – November 18, 1928) is born. In addition to discovering Greta Garbo (18 September 1905 – 15 April 1990), Stiller is given credit for creating a Swiss national cinema that took a progressive attitude toward sexuality and desire.

1898

Photographer Bernice Abbott (July 17, 1898 – December 9, 1991) is born in Springfield, Ohio. Famous for her photographs of the changing New York City cityscape, Abbott also photographed many gay, lesbian, and bisexual images during the 1920s and 30s. The film Bernice Abbott: A View of the 20th Century, which showed 200 of her black and white photographs, suggests that she was a “proud proto-feminist,” someone who was ahead of her time in feminist theory. Before the film was completed she said, “The world doesn’t like independent women, why, I don’t know, but I don’t care.” She lived with critic, writer, and historian Elizabeth McCausland (1899–1965) for 30 years.

 

1942

Fred Halsted (July 17, 1941 – May 9, 1989) is born. He was an American gay pornographic film director, actor, escort, publisher, and sex club owner. His films Sex Garage and L.A. Plays Itself are the only gay pornographic movies in the permanent collection of the Museum of Modern Art, where they were screened before a capacity audience on April 23, 1974. A screening of L.A. Plays Itself was sponsored by the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art on February 28, 2013 and another took place on December 16, 2011 at the Los Angeles art gallery Human Resources. His films have also been shown the Netherlands Film Museum and in competition at The Deauville Film Festival. His lover, Joseph Yanoska, died of AIDS in 1986.

 

1945

Drag performer Ethyl Eichelberger (July 17, 1945 – August 12, 1990) is born in Pekin, Illinois, under the name John Roy Eichelberger. He was an American drag performer, playwright, and actor. He became an influential figure in experimental theater and writing, and performed nearly forty plays. He became more widely known as a commercial actor in the 1980s. With the lack of AIDS medications, Ethyl died by suicide on August 12, 1990.

1968

The Wall Street Journal publishes an article entitled “U.S. Homosexuals Gain in Trying to Persuade Society to Accept Them.” The article, an overview of what was happening during the late 1960’s, was written by Charles Alverson.

 

1982, UK

Commander Michael Trestrail (born 1931), Queen Elizabeth’s personal bodyguard, is forced to resign after he was outed in the British newspapers. Soon after, reports surfaced that Margaret Thatcher wanted to raise the issue of gays in the palace until the Queen reportedly summoned her to Buckingham Palace and told her to mind her own business.

 

July 18

 

64, Italy

Roman Emperor Nero (15 December 37 AD – 9 June 68 AD) took the role of a bride in a public wedding ceremony to Pythagoras. Nero also married other men and some women during his lifetime.

 

1865, UK

Playwright Laurence Housman (July 18, 1865 – February 20, 1959) is born in Fockbury, England. He and his sibling, the classicist A. E. Housman (26 March 1859 – 30 April 1936), and sister Clemence (23 November 1861 – 6 December 1955) who was a woodcut artist and an activist in the women’s suffrage movement, were all gay. There is no doubt he was helped in his career by Oscar Wilde  (16 October 1854 – 30 November 1900). His greatest script was Victoria Regina.

 

1882

A new edition of Walt Whitman’s (May 31, 1819 – March 26, 1892) Leaves of Grass is released by Rees Welsh & Company publisher. It was rejected by his former publishers on obscenity charges. The first printing of 1000 of the new edition sold out in one day even though it was boycotted by major retailers.

 

1892

Alice Mitchell’s trial begins in Tennessee. Alice Mitchell (November 26, 1872-March 31, 1898) was an American woman who gained notoriety for the murder of her lover Freda Ward. On February 23, 1892, the 19-year-old Mitchell cut the throat of her lover, 17-year-old Freda Ward. Mitchell was subsequently found insane by means of a jury inquisition and placed in a psychiatric hospital until her death in 1898. The case, exploited by sensationalist press, and focused attention of the sexual attachments of women and drew out into the public discourse discussions of lesbianism. The case was headlined as “A Very Unnatural Crime” across the country. The case influenced the popular literature of the era which began to depict lesbians as “murderous” and “masculine.” One identity that came to be through lesbians was the “mannish lesbian” creating dialogue of gender expression.

 

1929

Richard Totten “Dick” Button (July 18, 1929) is born. He is an American former figure skater and a well-known long-time skating analyst. He is a twice Olympic Champion (1948, 1952) and five-time World Champion (1948–1952). Button is credited as having been the first skater to successfully land the double axel jump in competition in 1948, as well as the first triple jump of any kind – a triple loop – in 1952. He also invented the flying camel spin which was originally known as the “Button camel.” Button graduated from Harvard University in 1952 where he was a member of The Delphic Club. He received a JD degree from Harvard Law School in 1956. On July 5, 1978, Button and five other victims were attacked with baseball bats by a gang of teenagers in New York City’s Central Park. The gay-bashing left all six victims with skull fractures; Button also suffered serious nerve damage and permanent hearing loss in one ear. In 1996, Button was named to the 100 Golden Olympians, a USOC program to celebrate the 100th anniversary of the modern Olympic Games and honor America’s best Olympic athletes.

 

1940

Lillian Faderman (born July 18, 1940) is an American historian whose books on lesbian history and LGBT history have earned critical praise and awards. The New York Times named three of her books on its “Notable Books of the Year” list. In addition, The Guardian named her book Odd Girls and Twilight Lovers one of the Top 10 Books of Radical History. Faderman studied first at the University of California, Berkeley and later at UCLA. She was a professor of English at California State University, Fresno and a visiting professor at UCLA. She retired in 2007. She lives with her wife Phyllis Irwin in San Diego.

 

1966

Before Stonewall there was Compton’s Cafeteria. People picketed Comp-ton’s Cafeteria in San Francisco when management starts using Pinkerton agents and police to harass LGBT customers. This precedes the August 1966 riot at Compton’s that is considered one of the first transgender rights pro-tests in the U.S.

 

1969

Elizabeth M. Gilbert (born July 18, 1969) is an American author, essayist, short story writer, biographer, novelist, and memoirist. She is best known for her 2006 memoir Eat, Pray, Love which had spent 199 weeks on The New York Times Best Seller list and which was also made into a film by the same name in 2010. On September 7, 2016, Gilbert published a Facebook post saying that she was in a relationship with her best friend, writer Rayya Elias (1960-January 4, 2018). On June 6, 2017, the two celebrated a commitment ceremony with close family and friends. Elias died of pancreatic cancer on January 4, 2018.

 

2006

Alabama’s first openly gay public official, Patricia Todd (born July 25, 1955), wins the Democratic primary by 59 votes. She represented downtown Birmingham in the Alabama House of Representatives. Currently she is the Human Rights Campaign Alabama State Director. Formerly she was the associate director of AIDS Alabama. Her spouse was Jennifer Clarke. They were married in 2013 and divorced in 2014.

 

2014

The White House announces that President Barack Obama will sign an executive order that prohibits federal contractors from discriminating against lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender employees and job seekers. LGBT discrimination would continue under the guise of so called “religious beliefs.”

 

July 18, 2020

The Pentagon bans confederate flags on military property but that also includes rainbow PRIDE flags. Rudy Coots, president of Department of Defense Pride, objects to the new policy because it would change Pride displays and events at the Pentagon. “It’s absolutely outrageous that Defense Secretary Mark Esper would ban the Pride flag — the very symbol of inclusion and diversity,” said Jennifer Dane, interim executive director for the Modern Military Association of America . “In what universe is it OK to turn an opportunity to ban a racist symbol like the Confederate flag into an opportunity to ban the symbol of diversity? This decision sends an alarming message to LGBT service members, their families and future recruits.”

 

July 19

 

508, Lebanon

Marina the Monk (dates of birth and death uncertain) was the daughter of a wealthy nobleman who wanted to live in the Monastery of Qannoubine in the Kadisha Valley of Lebanon. After her father found a husband for her, rather than marry, Marina cut her hair, donned men’s clothes, and changed her name to Marinus. When she died, the monks changed his clothes for burial and discovered he was female. She defied gender roles so well that, her fellow monks never once suspected that Brother Marinos was a woman, as they attributed her lack of beard and high voice as a result of pious asceticism. Her discipline and self-control also goes against the assumption of what is typical female behavior, for when she was accused of fathering a child (after years of staying in the monastery, long after her father died) she did not break down and tell the truth, as many would assume, but instead took responsibility for the child that was not hers. On this day, we celebrate the feast day of Saint Marina the Monk.

 

1822, UK

The Irish Bishop of Clogher Percy Jocelyn (November 29, 1764 – September 3, 1843) is discovered having sex with a soldier in the 1st Regiment of Guards in an alehouse in London. This is one of the largest public homosexual scandals involving the Church in the 19thcentury. The bishop is arrested, but it is possible he is allowed to escape to avoid the spectacle of the government prosecuting a clergy member. Jocelyn flees to Scotland and lives out his life under the name of Thomas Wilson, working as a butler.

 

1875

Alice Ruth Moore Dunbar Nelson (July 19, 1875 – September 18, 1935) is born. She was an American poet, journalist and political activist. Among the first generation born free in the South after the Civil War, she was one of the prominent African Americans involved in the artistic flourishing of the Harlem Renaissance. Her first husband was the poet Paul Laurence Dunbar; she then married physician Henry A. Callis; and last married Robert J. Nelson, a poet and civil rights activist. Dunbar had a long-term relationship with educator Edwina Kruse (1848-?), the school’s principal, and affairs with artist Helene London and journalist Fay Jackson Robinson (1902-1988).

 

1884

An editorial in a New York medical journal said that urnings, a term coined by Karl Heinrich Ulrichs (August 28, 1825 – July 14, 1895) to describe men who are attracted to other men, have an irrepressible desire to act like females, and that their “perverted feelings” lead to insanity and suicide. The article was an attempt to remove homosexuality from the realm of the criminal and into the realm of the medical.

 

1892, France

Suzanne Alberte Malherbe (19 July 1892 – 19 February 1972) is born. She and Lucy Renee Mathilde Schwob (25 October 1894 – 8 December 1954), under their pseudonyms Claude Cahun and Marcel Moore, earned belated recognition for the startling photographs, collages and writings they created in the cutting-edge art world of 1920s Paris. As lovers and collaborators they left a body of surrealist work prescient in its gender ambiguity and shape-shifting, and earned fans ranging from rock star David Bowie to artist Cindy Sherman. Their lives and art are marked by fluidity – in their sexuality, in their names, in their identities. In 1909, at age seventeen, Malherbe met fifteen-year-old Lucie Schwob and began a lifelong artistic collaboration. … They took gender-neutral pseudonyms: Malherbe became Marcel Moore, and Schwob became Claude Cahun. They remained together until Cahun’s death in 1954. In 1937 Moore and Cahun moved from Paris to Jersey, possibly to escape the increasing anti-Semitism and political upheavals leading up to World War II. They remained on the island of Jersey when German troops invaded in 1940. For several years, the two risked their lives by distributing anti-Nazi propaganda to the German soldiers. Despite having reverted to their original names and introducing themselves as sisters in Jersey, their resistance activities were discovered in 1944, and they were sentenced to death. They were saved by the Liberation of Jersey in 1945, but their home and property had been confiscated and much of their art destroyed by the Germans. In 2018, a street of Paris close to the rue Notre-Dame-des-Champs where Marcel and Claude lived, took the name of “Allée Claude Cahun-Marcel Moore” in the 6th district of the French capital.

 

1921

The U.S. Senate Naval Affairs Committee issues its “Report on Alleged Immoral Conditions and Practices at the Naval Training Station, Newport, RI,” accusing officers under the command of Franklin D. Roosevelt, former assistant secretary of the U.S. Navy, of ordering enlisted men to engage in 11 immoral practices in order to entrap “perverts” and obtain evidence against them. The report is also one of the first to document gay male cruising areas including Riverside Drive in New York City.

 

1925

A book reviewer for The New York Times, Percy A. Hutchison, writes about a new translation of the poetry of Sappho (c. 630 – c. 570 BC). He criticizes previous translators who purposely mistranslated the love poems directed toward women by masculinizing the subject. He also criticizes the fanatical Christians who destroyed much of her work by burning the library at Alexandria in 391, and Pope Gregory VII who ordered much of what remained to be destroyed.

 

1970

Hans Knight of the Philadelphia Sunday Bulletin writes an article that begins “Homosexuals are sick. Very sick. They’re sick of wearing masks. They’re sick of being snickered and sneered at. They’re sick of being feared. They’re sick of being called queers, faggots, and fairies. They’re sick of being punished for being honest, of being labeled criminals by the letter of the law. They’re sick of being barred from federal jobs and the armed forces. They’re sick of being insulted on one hand, pitied on the other. Most of all, they’re sick of being told they’re sick.”

 

1974

Beth Chayim Chadashim (BCC) synagogue in Los Angeles receives its charter from the Union of American Hebrew Congregations, making it the first officially recognized gay and lesbian synagogue. Affiliated with Reform Judaism, it has been acknowledged by the Los Angeles Conservancy as being “culturally significant” as both the first LGBT synagogue in the world, the first LGBT synagogue recognized by the Union for Re-form Judaism and, in 1977, as the first LGBT synagogue to own its own building. In 1973, BCC received a Torah scroll from the town of Chotebor, Czechoslovakia, on permanent loan from Westminster Synagogue in London. It continues to be a cherished guest at BCC. Janet Marder was the congregation’s first rabbi. Lisa Ann Edwards later served as a student rabbi under their first full-time rabbi, Denise Eger (born March 14, 1960). Edwards became the Synagogue’s longest running Rabbi.

 

1977

Actor Danny Roberts (July 19, 1977) is born. He is best known for appearing on The Real World: New Orleans in 2000. Prior to beginning the show, he had begun a relationship with Paul Dill, a U.S. Army captain stationed in Vicenza, Italy. Because of the U.S. Military “Don’t ask, Don’t tell” policy toward homosexuals, Paul’s face was obscured on TV and much national attention was brought to the issue. In early 2004 MTV aired a special where Paul (then out of the military) revealed his face for the first time and the policy and its effects were discussed. In November 2006, Roberts announced in The Advocate magazine that he and Dill had split up.

 

1984

Gay author Roger Austen (1935-1984) dies by suicide. He was a literary historian whose work focused on gay writers. He was the author of Playing the Game: the Homosexual Novel in America (1977), and Genteel Pagan: The Double Life of Charles Warren Stoddard, which was unpublished at the time of his suicide. The Stoddard manuscript was later edited by Austen’s friend and mentor, Syracuse University professor John W. Crowley, and published by the University of Massachusetts Press in 1991. Additional biographical information and an account of Austen’s friendship with Crowley can be found in Crowley’s lengthy preface to Genteel Pagan.

 

1988

Massachusetts governor Michael Dukakis signs into law an amendment that bars homosexuals from becoming foster parents unless no heterosexual couples are available. The law was in effective for only one year.

 

1989

Urvashi Vaid (born 8 October 1958) is appointed to replace Jeff Levi as executive director of the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force. Urvashi is an Indian-American LGBT rights activist. In April 2009 Out magazine named her one of the 50 most influential LGBT people in the United States. Vaid shares homes in Manhattan and Provincetown, Massachusetts with her partner, comedian Kate Clinton.

 

1990

The House of Representatives Ethics Committee votes to reprimand Rep. Barney Frank (born March 31, 1940) for his involvement with a male prostitute. Attempts to have Frank expelled from Congress by Reps William Dannemeyer and Newt Gingrich failed.

 

1998

A group of ex-gays hold a press conference to counter ads stating that gays and lesbians could become straight by converting to Christianity. They said the ads were an attempt to falsely present gays and lesbians as anti-Christian and deny that many are spiritual people.

 

2001

Rhode Island becomes the second state in the country to ban discrimination against transsexuals, cross-dressers and others who cross sex boundaries. The law, which became effective without the governor’s signature, prohibits discrimination based on “gender identity or expression” in housing, employment and credit. The law ensured that a worker cannot be fired for having “sex reassignment” surgery.

 

2004

Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger of California refuses to apologize to gays for using the word “girlie-man” to describe his political foes.

 

2005, Iran

Iranian gay youths Mahmoud Asgari, 16, and Ayaz Marhoni, 18, are publicly hanged in the town square in Mashhad in northeast Iran.

 

July 20

 

356 BCE, Macedonia

Alexander the Great (July 20, 356 BC – June 10, 323 BC) is born. Alexander died in the palace of Nebuchadnezzar II, in Babylon, at age 32. One of the greatest conquering generals of all time, Alexander’s love of Hephaistion, before and during a marriage, is well accepted as factual history. Upon Hephaistion’s death in battle, Alexander wept for days and pro-vided him a funeral normally afforded kings.

 

1845, France

In Paris, a mob attacks a group of about 50 men arrested by police in a sweep of the Tuileries Gardens, a popular cruising area.

 

1950

Roberta Achtenberg (July 20, 1950) is born. She is an American politician who recently served as a Commissioner on the United States Commission on Civil Rights. She also served as Assistant Secretary of the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, becoming the first openly lesbian or gay public official in the United States, appointed by President Bill Clinton in 1993, whose appointment to a federal position was confirmed by the United States Senate.

 

1981

Martina Navratilova (born October 18, 1956) is granted U.S. citizenship, six years after she defected from Czechoslovakia. She is a retired tennis player and coach. In 2005, Tennis magazine selected her as the greatest female tennis player for the years 1965 through 2005 and is considered one of the best female players of all time. Navratilova was World No. 1 for a total of 332 weeks in singles, and a record 237 weeks in doubles, making her the only player in history to have held the top spot in both singles and doubles for over 200 weeks. In 1981, shortly after becoming a United States citizen, Navratilova gave an interview to New York Daily News sports reporter Steve Goldstein, coming out as bisexual and revealing that she had a sexual relationship with author Rita Mae Brown (born November 28, 1944), but asked him not to publish the article until she was ready to come out publicly. However, the New York Daily News published the article on July 30, 1981.Navratilova and professional basketball player and coach Nancy Lieberman (born July 1, 1958), her girlfriend at the time, gave an interview to Dallas Morning News columnist Skip Bayless, where Navratilova reiterated that she was bisexual and Lieberman identified herself as straight. Navratilova has since identified herself as a lesbian. On September 6, 2014, Navratilova proposed to her longtime girlfriend Russian former model Julia Lemigova (born 20 June 1972) at the US Open. They married in New York on December 15, 2014.

 

2021

Paul Fasana (July 20, 1933-April 5, 2021) was born on this day. He helped the LGBT community thrive by keeping its history alive. The Stonewall National Museum & Archives in Ft. Lauderdale, Florida was where he volunteered his time and knowledge for more than 20 years. Fasana served in the U.S. Army during the Korean War then graduated from UC Berkeley; first in 1959 with a B.A. and then 1960 with a Masters of Library Science. Armed with those degrees, he began a long career in library administration; first at the New York Public Library as a cataloguer and later at the Columbia University Libraries as director of library automation. Eventually he returned to the New York Public Library as senior vice president and director of the Research Libraries until he retired in 1995.

 

July 21

 

1414, Italy

Fransesco della Rovere (July 21, 1414 – August 12, 1484), who later became Pope Sixtus IV, is born on this date. According to the later published chronicle of the Italian historian Stefano Infessura, Diary of the City of Rome, Sixtus was a “lover of boys and sodomites,” awarding benefices and bishoprics in return for sexual favors, and nominating a number of young men as cardinals; some of whom were celebrated for their good looks. He founded the Sistine Chapel where the team of artists he brought together introduced the Early Renaissance to Rome with the first masterpiece of the city’s new artistic age. In addition to restoring the aqueduct that provided Rome an alternative to the river water that had made the city famously unhealthy, Sixtus IV restored or rebuilt over 30 of Rome’s dilapidated churches and added seven new ones.

 

1730, The Netherlands

Holland issues an edict justifying arrests and capital punishment of homosexuals.

 

1899

Poet Hart Crane (July 21, 1899 – April 27, 1932) is born in Garrettsville, Ohio. He has been called “a Dionyesian ecstatic from Cleveland, drunk on metaphysics and cheap red wine.” Crane associated his sexuality with his vocation as a poet and had a number of lovers until his suicide at the age of 32. His most famous poem, “The Bridge,” appears in The Complete Poems of Hart Crane.

 

1977, Canada

The Ontario Human Rights Code Review Committee releases its report Life Together, calling for major changes in code and commission, including strong support for inclusion of sexual orientation.

 

1980, Russia

Enso Francone, a 32 year-old Italian in Moscow for the summer Olympics, chains himself to a fence in Red Square to protest Soviet persecution of homosexuals. He was dragged away by KGB officers.

 

1986

U.S. Rep. Barney Frank (born March 31, 1940) addresses the House of Rep-resentatives for one hour regarding a Justice Department memo that misrepresents medical evidence to give the impression that AIDS is casually transmitted. He criticized the memo as an invitation to discriminate.

 

1988

Michael Dukakis officially becomes the Democratic candidate for President. During his acceptance speech he promises to do more in the fight AIDS.

 

1997

Chrysler employee and gay activist Ron Woods spoke about his coming out in The New Yorker. He had been physically assaulted and received death threats.

 

1998

The Lesbian Health Initiative in Houston receives a $50,000 grant from the Susan G. Komen Breast Cancer Foundation.

 

1998, UK

Waheed Alli, Baron Alli (born 16 November 1964) takes his place in the House of Lords as the youngest and the first openly gay Muslim life peer to be appointed in Britain. He is a British multimillionaire media entrepreneur and politician. He was co-founder and managing director of Planet 24, a TV production company, and managing director at Carlton Television Productions. He was, until November 2012, chairman of ASOS.com. He is the Chief Executive of Silvergate Media which purchased two of the media rights previously held by Chorion Ltd where Alli was former chairman. Alli is a patron of Oxford Pride, the annual Pride event in Oxfordshire, and of Pride London. He is also a patron of the Elton John AIDS Foundation.

 

1999, Mexico

Meeting to discuss the formation of Gay/Lesbian Pride Committee of Gua-dalajara and to join the Pride Organization National and International Plan. The event took place at the Flama Latina night club.

 

2014

President Obama issues an executive order to prohibit job discrimination against LGBT people in federal employment.

 

July 22

 

1777, UK

In England, Ann Marrow is found guilty of impersonating a man so she could marry three different women and defraud them. Marrow was sentenced to three months in prison and had stand at the pillory at Charing Cross, where she was pelted so severely, primarily by female spectators, that she was blinded in both eyes. The spectacle of the sentence was crucial in the very public unmasking of the female body hidden by the passing cross-dresser.

 

1860, UK

Frederick William Rolfe (July 22, 1860 – October 25, 1913) is born. He is better known as Baron Corvo but also calling himself Frederick William Serafino Austin Lewis Mary Rolfe. He was a flamboyant and decadent English writer, novelist, artist, fantasist and eccentric. His writings were an una-shamed celebration of male love and friendships. His fantasy autobiography Hadrian the Seventh (1904) was successfully adapted by Peter Luke as a stage production in London in 1968, in which the part of Hadrian/Rolfe was played by Alec McCowen. Further productions with Barry Morse played in Australia, on Broadway, and in a short USA national tour.

 

1896, UK

Film Director James Whale (July 22, 1889 – May 29, 1957) is born in Dudley, England. He directed such classics as Frankenstein, Bride of Frankenstein, and The Invisible Man. His death was featured in the film Gods and Monsters where he was portrayed by out actor Sir Ian McKellan (born 25 May 1939). James Whale lived as an openly gay man throughout his career in the British theatre and in Hollywood, something that was virtually unheard of in the 1920s and 1930s. He and David Lewis lived together as a couple from around 1930 to 1952. Whale died by suicide, drowning himself in his Pacific Palisades swimming pool on May 29, 1957 at the age of 67.

 

1935

Grover Dale (born July 22, 1935) is an American actor, dancer, choreographer and theatre director. He was involved in a six-year relationship with actor Anthony Perkins (April 4, 1932 – September 12, 1992) that ended in 1973 when he married actress/singer Anita Morris; they remained married until Morris’s death in 1994. Dale’s Broadway stage debut was in the 1956 musical Li’l Abner as a dancer. He appeared in the original cast of West Side Story as Snowboy, a member of the Jets gang. Other stage credits include the role of Andrew in Greenwillow, in which he also understudied Anthony Perkins as Gideon Briggs; Noël Coward’s Sail Away where he had the juvenile lead role of architect Barnaby Slade; and in Half a Sixpence, where he played Pearce, one of a quartet of 19th century London shop apprentices around whom the show is structured.

 

1963

Lesbian singer Emily Saliers (July 22, 1963), a member of the rock/folk duo Indigo Girls, is born on this date in New Haven, Connecticut. She has a passion for wine collecting, and is the co-owner of Watershed restaurant in Decatur, Georgia. Saliers married her longtime girlfriend, former Indigo Girls tour manager Tristin Chipman at New York City Hall in 2013.

 

1966

Born on this day, Roland Tec is an American writer and movie director. His 1997 film All the Rage is widely considered a hallmark of the Queer Indie Film movement of the ’90s for what was then its unprecedented critical view of A-list gay male culture of perfection

 

1973, Canada

The Metropolitan Community Church (MCC) is given its first mission status in Canada. It begins holding services at Holy Trinity Church in Toronto under Rev Bob Wolfe.

 

1973

Rufus Wainwright (July 22, 1973) is born. He is an openly gay Grammy-nominated Canadian-American singer-songwriter. He released his first album in 1998 to great critical acclaim. He has contributed to several film soundtracks, including Moulin Rouge, I Am Sam, Heights, and Brokeback Mountain. Wainwright is the son of musicians Loudon Wainwright III and Kate McGarrigle. In April 2010, Wainwright came out publicly in favor of legalizing same-sex marriage in the United States because he wanted to marry his partner, Jörn Weisbrodt (born 26 January 1973).

 

1977, Canada

In Toronto a second march is organized by the Coalition Against Anita Bryant to protest the homophobe’s visit to the city takes place.

 

1980

The U.K. House of Commons extends the Sexual Offenses Act to cover Scotland, decriminalizing most private consensual sex acts between men.

 

1997

Three same-sex couples sue the state of Vermont on the grounds that banning same-sex unions is a violation of their state constitution. Baker v. Vermont, 744 A.2d 864 (Vt. 1999) was decided by Vermont Supreme Court on December 20, 1999. It was one of the first judicial affirmations of the right of same-sex couples to treatment equivalent to that afforded different-sex couples. The decision held that the state’s prohibition on same-sex marriage denied rights granted by the Vermont Constitution. The court ordered the Vermont legislature to either allow same-sex marriages or implement an alternative legal mechanism according similar rights to same-sex couples. The plaintiffs were Stan Baker and Peter Harrigan, Holly Puterbaugh and Lois Farnham, and Nina Beck and Stacy Jolles. Two of the couples had raised children together. The couples sued their respective localities and the state of Vermont, requesting a declaratory judgment that the denial of licenses violated Vermont’s marriage statutes and the state Constitution. The plaintiffs were represented by Mary Bonauto (born June 8, 1961), an attorney with Boston-based Gay & Lesbian Advocates and Defenders, and two Vermont attorneys, Susan Murray and Beth Robinson.

 

2004

A Federal appeals court declines to hear a challenge to Florida’s ban on gay adoption.

 

2008, Greece

An Athens court rules that the term lesbian “does not define status and personality and therefore the Lesbos islanders have no reason to complain that they felt personally slighted by its use.” The word lesbian is derived from the name of the island of lesbos where the Greek poet Sappho lived.

 

2010

Argentina legalizes same-sex marriage.

 

2011

A bill to repeal Don’t Ask Don’t Tell is introduced in Congress, overturning the 1993 law prohibiting lesbian, gay, and bisexual people from serving openly in the U.S. military.

 

2011, Norway

A lesbian couple, Hege Dalen and Toril Hansen, who had been camping on a neighboring island, use their boat to ferry forty people to safety as 69 other people are being shot and killed.

 

2013, Jamaica

Sixteen year old Dwayne Jones attends a party in Montego Bay dressed as a woman and dances with men. A mob identified Dwayne as male and killed him. His story gained international attention and outcry as an example of the anti-LGBT violence issues in Jamaica.

 

July 23

 

1726, UK

Margaret Clap (died c. 1726) is convicted for of “keeping a disorderly house of the entertainment of sodomites.” Better known as Mother Clap, she was notable for running a molly house, an inn or tavern primarily frequented by homosexual men. She was also heavily involved in the ensuing legal battles after her premises were raided and shut down. Primarily targeted by the Society for the Reformation of Manners, the house had been under surveillance for two years. While not much is known about her life, she was an important part of the gay subculture of early 18th-century England. At the time sodomy in England was a crime under the Buggery Act 1533, punishable by a fine, imprisonment, or the death penalty. Despite this, particularly in larger cities, private homosexual activity took place. To service these actions there existed locations where men from all classes could find partners or just socialize, called molly houses, “molly” being slang for a gay man at the time. One of the most famous of these was Clap’s molly house.

 

1816

Charlotte Cushman (July 23, 1816 – February 18, 1876) was born in Boston. She was an opera singer but when her voice began to fail she turned to acting, becoming America’s first great performer. Cushman did not limit her roles to females, earning accolades for Hamlet and Romeo. It may have been a hint about her own life. Cushman was involved romantically with just about every major female of her time including Rosalie Sully  (June 3, 1818 – July 8, 1847), one of America’s first female foreign correspondents writer Anne Hampton Brewster (October 29, 1818 – April 1, 1892), writer and actress Matilda Hays (8 September 1820 – 3 July 1897), African American/Native American sculptor Edmonia Lewis (c. July 4, 1844 – September 17, 1907),  the first female professional sculptor Harriet Hosmer (October 9, 1830 – February 21, 1908), sculptor Emma Stebbins (1 September 1815 – 25 October 1882), and actress, Emma Crow (April 3, 1839 – September 15, 1920). In 1869, Cushman underwent treatment for breast cancer. Stebbins ignored her own sculpting career and devoted all of her time to caring for Cushman. In 1915 she was elected to the Hall of Fame for Great Americans. Her Charlestown home is a site on the Boston Women’s Heritage Trail.

1899

Ruth Charlotte Ellis (July 23, 1899 – October 5, 2000) is born. She was an open lesbian and an LGBT rights activist. Her life was the subject of the documentary directed by Yvonne Welbon, Living with Pride: Ruth C. Ellis at 100. Until her death in 2000 at age 101, she was thought to be the oldest living “out” African American lesbian. Her parents were born in the last years of slavery in Tennessee. She came out as a lesbian around 1915, and graduated from Springfield High School in 1919, at a time when fewer than seven percent of African Americans graduated from secondary school. In the 1920s, she met the only woman she ever lived with, Ceciline “Babe” Franklin. They moved together to Detroit, Michigan, in 1937 where Ellis became the first American woman to own a printing business in that city. She made a living printing stationery, fliers, and posters out of her house. Ellis and Franklin’s house was also known in the African American community as the “gay spot”. It was a central location for gay and lesbian parties, and also served as a refuge for African American gays and lesbians. Although Ellis and Franklin eventually separated, they were together for more than 30 years. Franklin died in 1973.Throughout her life, Ellis was an advocate of the rights of gays and lesbians, and of African Americans. She died in her sleep at her home on October 5, 2000.

 

1909

Samuel M. Steward (July 23, 1909 – December 31, 1993) is born in Woodsfield, Ohio. He hated teaching and students so much he gave it up to become a tattoo artist. When he wasn’t tattooing he was feeding information about the tattoo subculture to Alfred Kinsey. He wrote under the name Phil Andros and became one of the 20th century’s greatest porn writers. Unlike modern gay porn, Steward’s characters spouted Shakespeare while they had sex with handsome young men. Starting in 2001, Steward’s biographer Justin Spring tracked down Steward’s archive and began writing Secret Historian: The Life and Times of Samuel Steward, Professor, Tattoo Artist, and Sexual Renegade, which was ultimately published by Farrar, Straus and Giroux in 2010. The book was the recipient of many literary honors and was a finalist for the National Book Award.

 

1924, UK

Gavin Lambert (23 July 1924 – 17 July 2005) is born. He was a British screenwriter, novelist and biographer who lived part of his life in Hollywood. His final biography was Natalie Wood: A Life (2004) where he claimed that Wood frequently dated gay and bisexual men including director Nicholas Ray (August 7, 1911 – June 16, 1979) and actors Nick Adams (Ju-ly 10, 1931 – February 7, 1968), Raymond Burr (May 21, 1917 – September 12, 1993), James Dean (February 8, 1931 – September 30, 1955), Tab Hunter (July 11, 1931 – July 8, 2018), and Scott Marlowe (November 28, 1932 – January 6, 2001). Lambert said he was also involved with Ray and that Wood supported playwright Mart Crowley (born August 21, 1935– March 7, 2020) (a later lover of Lambert’s) in a manner that made it possible for him to write his play The Boys in the Band (1968). Lambert was also a biographer and novelist, who focused his efforts on biographies of gay and lesbian figures in Hollywood.

 

1944

Novelist Lisa Alther (born July 23, 1944) is born. Alther’s most recent book, published in spring 2007, is a nonfiction work entitled Kinfolks: Falling Off the Family Tree, the Search for My Melungeon Ancestors. As in others of Alther’s novels, lesbianism is portrayed as one of several possible versions of how one might live one’s life. Alther’s heroines tend not to have a single sexual identity but move from lesbian relationships to heterosexual ones, or vice versa.

 

1985

A publicist for actor Rock Hudson (November 17, 1925 – October 2, 1985) announces that he is being treated for inoperable liver cancer in Paris. The AIDS epidemic got much needed publicity and support after it was revealed that Hudson actually had AIDS.

 

1985

After a two-year legal battle, a Minnesota judge grants custody of Sharon Kowalski to her father rather than her lover, Karen Thompson. After Kowalski was severely disabled, her father put her in a nursing home and forbade visits by Thompson. Thompson continued the legal fight, but it was more than three years before she saw Kowalski again. Re Guardianship of Kowalski, 478 N.W.2d 790 (Minn. Ct. App. 1991) is a Minnesota Court of Appeals case that established a lesbian‘s partner as her legal guardian after she became incapacitated following an automobile accident. Because the case was contested by Kowalski’s parents and family and initially resulted in the partner being excluded for several years from visiting Kowalski, the gay community celebrated the final resolution in favor of the partner as a victory for gay rights. Karen Thompson received several awards for her work to achieve LGBT equality, including the 2012 “100 Women We Love” from Go Magazine, the Liberty Award from Lambda Legal Defense and Education Fund, and the 1989 Annual Humanitarian Award from the American Psychological Association. Together Thompson and Sharon Kowalski received the 1990 Woman of Courage Award from the National Organization for Women, the 1991 Feminist of the Year Award from the Feminist Majority Foundation, and a 1990 Creating Change Award from the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force.

 

1987

At its national convention in Miami, Florida, the Catholic gay organization Dignity voted to peacefully challenge the Vatican’s Ratzinger letter that referred to homosexuality as “a strong tendency to behavior which is intrinsically evil.” It opposed civil rights for gays and lesbians, barred churches from allowing organizations that do not agree with church teachings on homosexuality from using church facilities, and suggested that anti-gay violence should not come as a surprise to society. On the same day in San Francisco, several groups protest the Pope’s visit, including the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence and Jewish holocaust survivors.

 

1987

President Ronald Reagan announces the formation of a presidential commission on AIDS. None of the 13 members was an expert on AIDS. It included Richard DeVos, political ally of Pat Robertson; homophobic New York Archbishop John Cardinal O’Connor; and Penny Pullen, an associate of homophobe Phyllis Schlafley. Conservatives had a hissy-fit over the selection of Dr. Frank Lilly, a medical researcher who said that “As far as I know, I’m the only gay on the panel. “It was viewed as an embarrassment by medical authorities, a joke by the gay community, and a fiasco by several members of the Reagan administration.

2001, Canada

Eight British Columbia couples took the fight for legalized gay and lesbian marriage to the B.C. Supreme Court. They argued that the federal definition of marriage (between a man and a woman) bans gays and lesbians from marrying and is therefore unconstitutional.

 

2015

The Equality Act is introduced by Senators Jeff Merkley, Tammy Baldwin, and Cory Booker, as well as Representative David Cicilline who formerly introduced The Equality Act, which would make LGBTQ individuals a protected class and grant them basic legal protections in areas of life including education, housing, employment, credit, and more. The Equality Act was re-introduced in 2021 but again failed. The Act would add sexual orientation and gender identity to the 1964 Non-Discrimination law.

 

2019

Meghan Stabler became the first openly transgender member of Planned Parenthood’s National Board of Directors on July 23, 2019. The Advocate editors named Meghan as one of The Advocate magazine’s 2019 Champions of Pride.

  

July 24

  

1 BCE, China

Emperor Ai of Han dies. He ascended the throne when he was 20, having been made heir by his uncle Emperor Cheng who was childless. He reigned from 7 to 1 BC. He’s one of ten emperors of the Western Han dynasty who are considered to be homosexual or bisexual by today’s terms, and was famous for being the most effusive of the Han Dynasty. Traditional historians characterized the relationship between Emperor Ai and Dong Xian as one between homosexual lovers and referred to their relationship as “the passion of the cut sleeve.” Dong was noted for his relative simplicity contrasted with the highly ornamented court, and was given progressively higher and higher posts as part of the relationship, eventually becoming the supreme commander of the armed forces by the time of Emperor Ai’s death. Dong was afterward forced to die by suicide.

 

1897

Aviator Amelia Earhart (July 24, 1897 – disappeared July 2, 1937) is born in Atchison, Kansas. A tomboy, preferring riding pants to dresses, and having a marriage that allowed for infidelity, we will never know if she was bisexual. Many lesbian historians claim her as one of their own. She certainly outrageously transgressed the gender expression boundaries of her time when women were not only not pilots, they also weren’t explorers, except, like the Shoshone heroine Sacajewea, in the service of or in partnership with men who got the credit.

 

1951, UK

British Labour Party politician Christopher Robert “Chris” Smith, Baron Smith of Finsbury (July 24, 1951) is born. He is a British politician and a peer; a former Member of Parliament (MP) and Cabinet Minister; and former chairman of the Environment Agency. For the majority of his career he was a Labour Party member. He was the first openly gay British MP, coming out in 1984, and in 2005, the first MP to acknowledge that he is HIV positive

 

1952

Gus Van Sant, Jr. (born July 24, 1952) is an American film director, screenwriter, painter, photographer, musician and author who has earned acclaim as both an independent and more mainstream filmmaker. His films typically deal with themes of marginalized subcultures, in particular homosexuality; as such, Van Sant is considered one of the most prominent auteurs of the New Queer Cinema movement. He is openly gay and currently lives in Portland, Oregon.

 

1969

The Gay Liberation Front, a radical leftist group addressing not only gay rights but other left-wing causes, is formed in New York City. Over the next few years dozens of local GLF chapters would form across the country.

 

2001

Ronald E. Gay, a drifter, who told Roanoke, Va. police that jokes about his last name had angered him, was sentenced to four life terms for a shooting rampage in a gay bar that killed one man and wounded five other men and a woman. Gay, 55, pleaded guilty to first-degree murder and six charges of malicious wounding in the shooting at the Backstreet Cafe in Roanoke. In court and in interviews with police, he said he was on a mission to kill homosexuals.

 

2004

German Free Democratic Party leader Guido Westerwellen (December 27, 1961 – March 18, 2016) comes out in an interview with the country’s leading news magazine. He served as Foreign Minister in the second cabinet of Chancellor Angela Merkel and as Vice Chancellor of Germany from 2009 to 2011, being the first openly gay person to hold any of these positions. He was also the chairman of the Free Democratic Party of Germany (FDP) from May 2001 until he stepped down in 2011. He died of leukemia at the age of 54.

 

2011

The first legal same-sex marriages are performed in New York. New York City records 659 marriages, a one-day record.

 

2013, Montenegro

The First LGBT Pride march in Montenegro is held with violent protestors shouting “kill the gays.”

 

2013

The Quist LGBT history app is created by Sarah Prager. Sarah is dedicated to raising awareness of LGBTQ history through writing, speaking, and her app, Quist. She lives with her wife Liz, and their daughter Eleanor in Connecticut. (I, for one, thank you, Sarah!…Ronni)

 

July 25

 

1844

One of the greatest American painters of the 19th century, Thomas Eakins (July 25, 1844 – June 25, 1916) is born on this date. He was an American realist painter, photographer, sculptor, and fine arts educator. He is widely acknowledged to be one of the most important artists in American art history. No less important in Eakins’ life was his work as a teacher. As an instructor he was a highly influential presence in American art. The difficulties which beset him as an artist seeking to paint the portrait and figure realistically were paralleled and even amplified in his career as an educator, where behavioral and sexual scandals truncated his success and damaged his reputation. The nature of Eakins sexuality and its impact on his art is a matter of intense scholarly debate. Strong circumstantial evidence points to Eakins having been accused of homosexuality during his lifetime, and there is little doubt that he was attracted to men, as evidenced in his photography, and three major paintings where male buttocks are a focal point: The Gross Clinic, William Rush, and The Swimming Hole. The latter, in which Eakins appears, is increasingly seen as sensuous and autobiographical. Two years earlier Eakins’ sister Margaret, who had acted as his secretary and personal servant, had died of typhoid. It has been suggested that Eakins married Susan Hannah Macdowell to replace her. In the latter years of his life, Eakins’ constant companion was the handsome sculptor Samuel Murray, who shared his interest in boxing and bicycling.

 

1865, UK

James Miranda Steuart Barry (1789-July 25, 1865) dies in Kensal Green, England. It was only on his death that it was discovered Barry was a woman. For 40 years he was an officer and surgeon in the British Army in Canada and South Africa. Although Barry’s entire adult life was lived as a man, Barry was born Margaret Ann Bulkley and was known as female in childhood. Barry lived as a man in both public and private life, at least in part in order to be accepted as a university student and pursue a career as a surgeon, with Barry’s birth sex only becoming known to the public and to military colleagues after death. Barry held strict and unusually modern views about nutrition, being completely vegetarian and teetotal, and, while keeping most personal relationships distant, was very fond of pets, particularly a be-loved poodle named Psyche. Playwright Jean Binnie’s radio play Doctor Barry (BBC, 1982) identified John Joseph Danson as the black servant Barry first employed in South Africa and who remained with Barry until the doctor’s death. The play was re-broadcast as recently as 2018.Barry was buried in Kensal Green Cemetery under the name James Barry and full military rank.

 

1936

Preacher-playwright-composer Alvin Allison “Al” Carmines, Jr. (July 25, 1936 – August 9, 2005) is born on this date. He was a key figure in the expansion of Off-Off-Broadway theatre in the 1960s. Carmines was hired by Howard Moody as an assistant minister at Judson Memorial Church on Washington Square Park, New York, to found a theater in the sanctuary of the Greenwich Village church in conjunction with playwright Robert Nichols. He began composing in 1962 and acted as well. His Bible study group grew into the Rauschenbusch Memorial United Church of Christ, with Carmines as pastor. Carmines taught at Union Theological Seminary and received the Vernon Rice Award for his performance and the Drama Desk Award for Lyrics and Music and was awarded the Obie award for Life Time Achievements. His 1973 musical The Faggot was a succès d’estime which transferred from the Judson Memorial Church to the Truck and Warehouse Theatre and ran for 203 performances. Carmines appeared in the show as Oscar Wilde.

 

1943

Cheryl Christina Crane (born July 25, 1943), lesbian daughter of Lana Turner is born. Cheryl is Turner’s child from her marriage to actor-restaurateur Stephen Crane, Turner’s second husband who murdered her mother’s boyfriend, Johnny Stompanato in 1958. In 1988, Crane published a memoir entitled Detour: A Hollywood Story (1988) in which she discussed the Stompanato killing publicly for the first time and admitted to the stabbing. She further alleged that she was subject to a series of sexual as-saults at the hands of her stepfather and her mother’s fourth husband, actor Lex Barker. The book became a New York Times Best Seller. In it, Crane also publicly revealed how at age thirteen she had come out as a lesbian to her parents. In November 2014, Crane married model Joyce LeRoy, her longtime partner, after having been together for over four decades.

 

1970

The Vatican issues a statement reminding the faithful that the Roman Catholic Church considers homosexuality a moral aberration. The Vatican confirms its condemnation of homosexuality stating that it is a “moral aberration that cannot be approved by human conscience.”

 

1975

A Chorus Line premiers on Broadway. It is directed and choreographed by Michael Bennet (1943–1987) and won nine of twelve Tony nominations in addition to the 1975 Pulitzer for drama.

 

1979

Hundreds of demonstrators show up on Manhattan’s Lower East Side to protest location shooting for William Friedkin’s new film Cruising which deals with a series of grisly mutilation murders within the city’s gay leather community.

 

1985, Paris

A spokesperson for Rock Hudson (November 17, 1925 – October 2, 1985) acknowledges that the actor is suffering from AIDS. Later, media reports openly discuss his homosexuality for the first time. The publicity given his illness marks a turning point in building public awareness of the threat of AIDS and in galvanizing support for efforts to fight the disease.

 

1985, France

The French Parliament amends the penal code to prohibit discrimination based on “moral habits,” one of which is homosexuality. France is the first country to legislate gay and lesbian rights.

 

1989

Studio 54 creator Steve Rubell (December 2, 1943 – July 25, 1989) dies of complications from AIDS.

 

July 26

1944, UK

Mick Jagger (born 26 July 1943) is born in Dartford, England. Androgynous, gender defiant, and ambisexual, Jagger has come to symbolize rock from the 60s and 70s. Look-alike ex-wife Bianca once claimed he married her because “he wanted to achieve the ultimate by making love to himself.”

 

1959

Kevin Spacey (born July 26, 1959) is an American actor, director, producer, screenwriter, and singer. He began his career as a stage actor during the 1980s before obtaining supporting roles in film and television. He gained critical acclaim in the early 1990s that culminated in his first Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor for the neo-noir crime thriller The Usual Suspects (1995), and an Academy Award for Best Actor for the midlife crisis-themed drama American Beauty (1999). In October 2017, actor Anthony Rapp accused Spacey of making a sexual advance toward him when Rapp was 14. In the wake of Rapp’s accusation, numerous other men alleged that Spacey had sexually harassed or assaulted them. As a result, Netflix cut all ties with him, shelved his film Gore and removed him from the cast of the last season of House of Cards.

 

1979

Andrew Gillum (born July 26, 1979) is born. In a September appearance on The Tamron Hall Show, the former Florida gubernatorial candidate came out as bisexual. Gillum, who ran for Florida governor in 2018, appeared on the show alongside his wife, R. Jai, who said her husband of 11 years has been upfront with her about his sexuality.

 

1979

The Advocate magazine first mentions “bears” in print. Bears are “usually hunky chunky types reminiscent of railroad engineers and former football greats.” Bears are one of many LGBT communities with events, codes, and a culture-specific identity. However, in San Francisco in the 1970s, any hairy man of whatever shape was referred to as a ‘bear’ until the term was appropriated by larger men as well. The term bear was popularized by Richard Bulger, who, along with his then partner Chris Nelson (1960–2006) founded Bear Magazine in 1987. There is some contention surrounding whether Bulger originated the term and the subculture’s conventions. George Mazzei wrote an article for The Advocate in 1979 called “Who’s Who in the Zoo?” that characterized gay men as seven types of animals, including bears. The International Bear Brotherhood Flag is the pride flag of the bear community, created by Craig Byrnes in 1995.

 

1981

Dr. Jeanette Howard Foster (November 3, 1895 – July 26, 1981), author of Variant Women in Literature, dies on this date in Arkansas. Dr. Foster was an American librarian, professor, poet, and researcher in the field of lesbian literature. She pioneered the study of popular fiction and ephemera in order to excavate both overt and covert lesbian themes. Her years of pioneering data collection culminated in her 1956 study Sex Variant Women in Literature which has become a seminal resource in LGBT studies. Initially self-published by Foster via Vantage Press, it was photoduplicated and reissued in 1975 by Diana Press and reissued in 1985 by Naiad Press with updating additions and commentary by Barbara Grier.

 

1985

U.S. Senators Pete Wilson (R-CA) and Alfonse D’Amato (R-NY) attempt to hold a briefing on AIDS for Republican senators. Not a single Senator shows up for it.

 

1993, Nigeria

Richard Akuson (born July 26, 1993) is a Nigerian lawyer, LGBT rights activist, writer, editor, and the founder of A Nasty Boy magazine, Nigeria’s first LGBTQ+ publication. In 2019, Richard was named one of Forbes Africa’s 30 Under 30 change-makers for challenging rigid notions of masculinity, gender, and sexuality in Nigeria where homosexual acts can be punished with 14 years in prison. In 2017, he was nominated for The Future Awards Africa’s New Media Innovation Award. Richard is also a two-time Abryanz Style & Fashion Award Best Fashion Writer nominee. Following the launch of A Nasty Boy magazine in 2017, Richard was named one of the 40 Most Powerful Nigerians under the age of 40. 

 

2011

Ruth Berman (born July 19, 1936) was a health and physical education teacher at a Brooklyn high school. She and her partner Connie Kurtz (March 30, 1934– May 27, 2018) sued the New York City Board of Education for domestic partner benefits in 1988, eventually winning for all New York City employees in 1994. The couple came out of the closet on The Phil Donahue Show. Berman and Kurtz started branches of Parents, Friends and Family of Lesbians and Gays (PFLAG) in Florida and New York, and in 2000, they began serving as co-chairs of the New York State NOW Lesbian Rights Task Force. They also founded The Answer is Loving Counseling Center (both certified counselors) and worked there for over twenty years. They were married on July 26, 2011, in New York. Rabbi Sharon Kleinbaum officiated. They retired to Palm Beach County, Florida, where they were active in Democratic, LGBT, feminist, and BlackLivesMatter politics. The Ruthie and Connie LGBT Elder Americans Act had been slowly making its way through Congress. It did not pass. The bill would have amended the Older Americans Act of 1965 to provide equal treatment of LGBT older individuals. In 2002, a documentary titled Ruthie and Connie: Every Room in the House was made about their lives; it was directed by Deborah Dickson. The film premiered at the Berlin Film Festival in February 2002, and won six best documentary awards within a year. The Ruth Berman and Connie Kurtz Papers are held in the Sophia Smith Collection at Smith College.

 

1989

In a response to political outcries over a Robert Mapplethorpe (November 4, 1946 – March 9, 1989) exhibit, Jesse Helms leads a fight in the U.S. Senate to curtail National Endowment for the Arts funding for “obscene or indecent art,” including artworks that depict “sadomasochism, homoeroticism, the exploitation of children, or individuals engaged in sex acts.” The measure was overwhelmingly adopted.

 

1990

President George H. W. Bush signs the Americans with Disabilities Act which prohibits discrimination against various groups of people including those living with AIDS.

 

2007

Fox News host/homophobe Bill O’Reilly apologizes on the air for errors in a widely criticized June 21st segment that reported a “nationwide epidemic” of violent lesbian gangs terrorizing neighborhoods and schools. O’Reilly was fired in 2017 for sexual harassment.

 

2018

Land O’Lakes named Beth Ford its first female CEO, making her the first openly gay woman CEO to run a Fortune 500 company.

 

July 27

 

1899

Author Henry James (15 April 1843 – 28 February 1916) wrote to Hendrik C. Andersen, “I’ve struck up a tremendous intimacy with Conte Alberto, and we literally can’t live without each other. He is the first object my eyes greet in the morning, and the last at night.” James was an American-born British writer. He is regarded as one of the key figures of 19th-century literary realism. He was the son of Henry James, Sr. and the brother of philosopher and psychologist William James and diarist Alice James. As more material be-came available to scholars, including the diaries of contemporaries and hundreds of affectionate and sometimes erotic letters written by James to younger men, the picture gave way to a portrait of a closeted homosexual. Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick’s Epistemology of the Closet made a landmark difference to Jamesian scholarship by arguing that he be read as a homosexual writer whose desire to keep his sexuality a secret shaped his layered style and dramatic artistry.

 

1928

Radclyffe Hall’s (12 August 1880 – 7 October 1943) The Well of Loneliness is published in the UK by Jonathan Cape. It’s one of the first to portray lesbianism as natural. It follows the life of Stephen Gordon, an English-woman from an upper-class family whose “sexual inversion” (homosexuality) is apparent from an early age. She finds love with Mary Llewellyn, whom she meets while serving as an ambulance driver in World War I, but their happiness together is marred by social isolation and rejection, which Hall depicts as typically suffered by “inverts,” with predictably debilitating effects. The novel portrays “inversion” as a natural, God-given state and makes an explicit plea: “Give us also the right to our existence.” Although The Well of Loneliness is not sexually explicit, it was nevertheless the subject of an obscenity trial in the UK, which resulted in all copies of the novel being ordered destroyed. The United States allowed its publication only after a long court battle. It is currently published in the UK by Virago, and by Anchor Press in the United States. The Well of Loneliness was number seven on a list of the top 100 lesbian and gay novels compiled by The Publishing Triangle in 1999.

 

1940

The Rev. Troy Perry  (July 27, 1940), founder of the Metropolitan Community Church, is born. The Metropolitan Community Church, a Christian denomination with a special affirming ministry with the lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender communities, is formed in Los Angeles on October 6, 1968. In March 2017, Perry became the first Ameri-can citizen honored with Cuba’s CENESEX award. The 10th Cuban Gala Against Homophobia and Transphobia, held at the Karl Marx Theater in Havana, Cuba, was the setting where nearly 5,000 people gathered to honor Rev. Perry, including the US, French, Swiss ambassadors, as well as the Minister of Culture of Cuba. Mariela Castro Espín, daughter of Cuban President Raul Castro, and a member of the country’s National Assembly, and Director of CENESEX, presented the award. He was given the award for his long history of working for human rights and the rights of the LGBTQ community worldwide. He re-mains active in public speaking and writing. Perry lives in Los Angeles with his husband, Phillip Ray DeBlieck, whom he married under Canadian law at the Metropolitan Community Church of Toronto. They sued the State of California upon their return home after their Toronto wedding for recognition of their marriage and won. The state appealed. and the ruling was overturned by the State Supreme Court after five years in their favor.

 

1946

Stephen Donaldson (July 27, 1946 – July 18, 1996) is born Robert Anthony Martin, Jr. and also known by the pseudonym Donny the Punk. He was an American bisexual political activist. He is best known for his pioneering activism in LGBT rights and prison reform, and for his writing about punk rock and subculture. In 1966, Donaldson fell in love with a woman, Judith “JD Rabbit” Jones (whom he later considered his “lifetime companion”) and began identifying as bisexual. His “growing feeling of discomfort with biphobia in the homophile/gay liberation movement was a major factor” in his deciding to quit the movement and enlist in the Navy after graduating from Columbia in 1970. After a series of meetings, the Committee of Friends on Bisexuality was formed, with Donaldson (using the name Bob Martin) as its chair until he left the Quakers in 1977. Donaldson was involved in the New York bisexual movement in the mid-1970s, appearing in 1974 on a New York Gay Activists Alliance panel with Kate Millet. Donaldson propounded the belief that ultimately bisexuality would be perceived as much more threatening to the prevailing sexual order than homosexuality, because it potentially subverted everyone’s identity (the idea that everyone is potentially bisexual was widespread) and could not, unlike exclusive homosexuality, be confined to a segregated, stigmatized and therefore manageable ghetto. Donaldson died of AIDS in 1996 at the age of 49. After Donaldson’s death, the Columbia Queer Alliance renamed its student lounge in his honor.

 

1967, UK

Britain decriminalizes homosexuality between consenting adults in private, except for those in the military and police forces. The new law makes the age of consent 21 years old.

 

1969

The Gay Liberation Front organizes a protest of police harassment, with an estimated 300-400 people participating. It was the one-month anniversary of the Stonewall riots.

 

1982

The term AIDS (acquired immune deficiency syndrome) is proposed at a meeting in Washington of gay community leaders, federal bureaucrats and the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) to replace GRID (gay-related immune deficiency) as evidence showed it was not gay specific.

 

1987

Sports Illustrated published a five-page tribute to Dr. Tom Waddell (November 1, 1937 – July 11, 1987), Olympic decathlete and organizer of the Gay Games, who had recently died from complications of AIDS. Waddell was the first gay man to be featured with his lover in the “couples” section of People magazine. He was a U.S. Army paratrooper, a physician specializing in the treatment of infectious disease, a gymnastics champion at Springfield College in Massachusetts, and the personal physician to the brother of the King of Saudi Arabia.

 

2001

The Houston, Texas City Council approves an ordinance outlawing discrimination against gay men and lesbians in hiring by city agencies.

 

2011, Argentina

Osvaldo Ramon Lopez (Sept. 4, 1971), the first openly gay congressperson, takes office in Argentina.

2015

World champion power lifter Janae Marie Kroc (formerly Matt Kroczaleski) (born December 8, 1972) comes out as transgender and genderfluid. Janae began entering powerlifting contests after joining the Marines in 1991. In 2017, after 18 months on estrogen, her performance was reduced to 210 pounds for 10 reps and deadlifted 605 pounds. Kroc is a world champion and a National Physique Committee bodybuilder.

 

2015

Boy Scouts of America President Robert Gates announces “the national executive board ratified a resolution removing the national restriction on openly gay leaders and employees.”

July 28

600 B.C., Greece

The Greek poet Theognis is born near Athens. He was an aristocrat who lost his wealth and property during one of the many civil wars of the period and turned to writing, penning most of his works for his lover Cyrnus. 

 

1533, UK

Walter Hungerford (born 1503 – July 28, 1540), First Baron Hungerford of Heytesbury, is the first person executed under the Buggery Act of 1533.

 

1533, Italy

Artist Michelangelo (March 6, 1475 – February 18, 1564) wrote to Tommaso Cavaleri, “I could as easily forget your name as the food by which I live; nay, it would be easier to forget the food, which only nourishes my body, than your name, which nourishes both body and soul.”

 

1928, The Netherlands

Opening of the 1928 Olympics where French athlete Violette Morris (April 18, 1893 – April 26, 1944) had been barred from competing because she was a lesbian and because she and her female lover made their affair public. Morris won two gold and one silver medals at the Women’s World Games in 1921–1922. She underwent a double mastectomy to fit into race cars more easily. Starting in 1936 she worked with the Gestapo during World War II. She was killed in 1944 in a Resistance-led ambush as a traitor to the French state.

 

1958

Sarah Schulman (born July 28, 1958) is an American novelist, playwright, nonfiction writer, screenwriter and AIDS historian. She is a Distinguished Professor of the Humanities at the College of Staten Island (CSI) and a Fellow at the New York Institute for the Humanities. In 1992, Schulman and five others co-founded the Lesbian Avengers, a direct action organization. On her 1992 book tour for Empathy, Schulman visited gay bookstores in the South to start chapters of Lesbian Avengers. The organization’s high points included founding the Dyke March and sending groups of young organizers to Maine and Idaho to assist local fights against anti-gay ballot initiatives. In 2017, she joined the advisory board of Claudia Rankine’s Racial Imaginary Institute.

 

1961

Illinois becomes the first U.S. state to repeal its sodomy law.

 

1976

The San Francisco Department of Health reports an outbreak of GI disorders, especially shigellosis and amoebic dysentery, among gay men.

 

1983

Bobbi Campbell (January 28, 1952 – August 15, 1984) is the 16th person to be diagnosed with Kaposi’s sarcoma and possibly the first to be open about his diagnosis even before GRID (gay related immune disease ) or HIV/AIDS had been named. Robert Boyle “Bobbi” Campbell Jr. was a public health nurse and an early AIDS activist. In 1983, he co-wrote the Denver Principles, the defining manifesto of the People with AIDS Self-Empowerment Movement which he had co-founded the previous year. Appearing on the cover of Newsweek and being interviewed on national news reports, Campbell raised the national profile of the AIDS crisis among heterosexuals and provided a recognizable, optimistic, human face of the epidemic for affected communities.

 

1985

The first AIDS Walk is held in Los Angeles. Craig Miller and AIDS Project LA produce the fundraiser that attracts 4500 walkers.

 

1986

Gov. George Deukmejian of California vetoes a bill that would have protected people with AIDS from discrimination in housing and employment.

 

1987

Gay filmmaker Arthur Bressan, Jr. (1943 – July 28,1987) dies of complications from AIDS. All of his films were low budget productions and dealt with gay characters and storylines. Buddies was one of the first feature films to deal with AIDS.

 

1989

William Cruse is sentenced to death for a shooting spree in Palm Bay, Florida, that left six people dead and ten injured. He said he did it because his neighbors were spreading rumors that he was a homosexual.

 

1993, UK

Jonathan Harvey’s (born 13 June 1968) influential play about two working-class teenage boys who fall in love, Beautiful Thing, premiers at London’s Bush Theater.

 

1993

New Zealand becomes the seventh country in the world to outlaw discrimination based on sexual orientation.

 

1997

The city council of Evanston, Illinois votes unanimously to extend anti-discrimination protection to transgendered people.

 

1997

Judge John Frusciante, a Broward County Circuit Court judge, upholds Florida’s ban on adoption by same-sex couples.

 

1998, Fiji

A constitution approved by the Fiji government went into effect that granted constitutional protection to gay and lesbian citizens. Opponents claimed it would result in an increase in homosexuality.

 

2004

The Miami Beach City Council unanimously votes to create a domestic partner registry.

 

2011, Serbia

Serbian Parliament approves change in health insurance law to subsidize sex reassignment surgery.

2016

Sarah McBride (born on August 9, 1990) is the first openly transgender person to speak at a major party convention in the U.S., the Democratic National Convention in Philadelphia. She is currently the National Press Secretary of the Human Rights Campaign. McBride made national headlines when she came out as transgender to her college while serving as student body president at American University. McBride is largely credited with the passage of legislation in Delaware banning discrimination on the basis of gender identity in employment, housing, insurance, and public accommodations. In August 2014, McBride married her then-boyfriend Andrew Cray after he received a terminal cancer diagnosis. Episcopal Bishop Gene Robinson (born May 29, 1947) presided at their ceremony. Four days after their nuptials, Cray died from cancer. In 2018, Sarah released the book Tomorrow Will Be Different: Love, Loss, and the Fight for Trans Equality.

 

2020, Europe

The European Union announced its decision to stop the funding of six Polish towns that boast of being “LGBT-Free Zones.” According to CNN, the six Polish towns that were denied funds had applied to join the EU’s twinning program. The program aims at fostering “peaceful relations” and “mutual understanding” between European citizens. It provides funds of up to €25,000 ($29,000) to the members on the condition that it is made accessible to all without any discrimination. Since 2019, one-third of Polish towns have declared themselves to be “free from LGBT ideology”.

 

July 29

 

1519, Spain

Four men are burned at the stake for sodomy because a Franciscan friar, Luis Castelloli, preached that God’s wrath for sodomy was the plague.

 

1905, Sweden

Dag Hammarskjold (July 29, 1905 – September, 18 1961) is born in Jonkoping, Sweden. Secretary of the United Nations during its most turbulent years, he died in a plane crash in Africa. A Swedish diplomat, he was the second Secretary General (leader) of the United Nations. After his death, he would be awarded a Nobel Prize. Hammarskjöld was not out about his sexual orientation during his lifetime; that would have been unheard of at that time in history. According to OutSmart magazine, “[Hammarskjold’s] diary, Markings, published posthumously in 1966, alluded to homosexual longings, perhaps never fulfilled.”

 

1953

Tim Gunn (July 29, 1953), fashion guru, is born. He served on the faculty of Parsons The New School for Design from 1982 to 2007 and was chair of fashion design at the school from August 2000 to March 2007, after which he joined Liz Claiborne as its chief creative officer. For over 15 seasons, Gunn has become well known as the on-air mentor to designers on the television program Project Runway. In 2014, he participated in Do I Sound Gay?, a documentary film by David Thorpe about stereotypes of gay men’s speech patterns.

 

1962

Out actor Kevin Spirtas (July 29, 1962) is born. Spirtas is best known for his roles as Dr. Craig Wesley on the soap opera Days of Our Lives, Jonas Chamberlain on the ABC soap opera One Life to Live, and as Nick in the slasher film Friday the 13th Part VII: The New Blood (1988). Spirtas has worked on Broadway with roles including Hugh Jackman’s understudy in The Boy from Oz, and has also worked as a stunt performer. He began using the name “Kevin Spirtas” professionally in 1995, having been previously credited as “Kevin Blair”.

 

1967, Scotland

Ian Campbell Dunn (May 1, 1943 – March 10, 1998) was a gay rights campaigner who lived and worked in Scotland. Dunn began his work in gay rights activism after finding that the Sexual Offences Act 1967, which partially decriminalized homosexual relations between adult men, applied only to England and Wales and not to Scotland. On this day, he wrote to Antony Grey (6 October 1927 – 30 April 2010), secretary of the Homosexual Law Reform Society in London, about establishing a chapter in Scotland. Grey refused.

 

1975

The Annual Conference of the Metropolitan Community Church was held in Dallas, Texas. Among the speakers was Elaine Noble (born January 22, 1944), who was the first person to be elected to a state legislature (MA) while running as an open lesbian.

 

1978

The Village People’s first major hit Macho Man disco single debuts and eventually goes gold.

 

1986

The Chicago City Council defeats a gay rights bill by a vote of 30-18.

 

1987

President Reagan nominated homophobic judge Robert Bork to the Supreme Court. He was rejected by the Senate 58-42.

 

1998

World renowned and arguably the best ever American choreographer Jerome Robbins (October 11, 1918 – July 29, 1998) dies. Robbins was bisexual, though he was always ashamed of it, according to biographers. He had relationships with a number of people, from Montgomery Clift (Octo-ber 17, 1920 – July 23, 1966) and Nora Kaye to Buzz Miller (December 23, 1923-February 23, 1999) and Jess Gerstein. He never married. Among his numerous stage productions he worked on were On the Town, Peter Pan, High Button Shoes, The King And I, The Pajama Game, Bells Are Ringing, West Side Story, Gypsy, and Fiddler on the Roof. Robbins was a five-time Tony Award winner and a recipient of the Kennedy Center Honors. He received two Academy Awards, including the 1961 Academy Award for Best Director with Robert Wise for West Side Story. In 1950, Robbins was called to testify before the House Committee on Un-American Activities (HUAC), suspected of Communist sympathies. Robbins, though willing to confess to past party membership, resisted naming names of others with similar political connections; he held out for three years until, according to two family members in whom he confided, he was threatened with public exposure of his homosexuality. On the evening of his death, the lights of Broadway were dimmed for a moment in tribute.

 

2004

The Wyoming Supreme Court rejects a final appeal by Matthew Shepard’s killer Russell Henderson to have his sentence reduced. Matthew Wayne “Matt” Shepard (December 1, 1976 – October 12, 1998) was an American student at the University of Wyoming who was beaten, tortured, and left to die near Laramie on the night of October 6, 1998. Six days later, he died from severe head injuries at Poudre Valley Hospital in Fort Collins, Colorado.

 

2005

Aerospace manufacturer Raytheon adds transgender to its anti-discrimination policy.

 

2008, Panama

Same-sex sexual activity is decriminalized

 

2012, India

The Alan Turing Rainbow Festival in Madurai hosts Asia’s first gender-queer Pride Parade.

  

July 30

  

1960, France

The National Assembly adds homosexuality to a list of “fleaux sociaux” (social plagues) that the government is charged to combat.

 

1971

The New York lesbian bar Kooky’s made it known that lesbians working for gay liberation were not welcome. Lesbians gathered to picket. Kooky’s was one of only two lesbian-oriented bars in New York City. Kooky, the bar owner, was said to be hostile to the gay liberation movement, fearing it would cut into her business. Kooky’s closed in the 1970s. Today it’s La Nueva Rampa.

 

1981

Martina Navratilova (born October 18, 1956) is outed by a New York Daily News article. The article is called “Martina Fears Avon’s Call If She Talks.” Navratilova had spoken months earlier with the writer of the article about her sexual relationship with Rita Mae Brown (November 28, 1944), and Navratilova had asked him not to go public. He quotes her in the article: “If I come out and start talking, women’s tennis is going to be hurt. I have heard that if I come out—if one more top player talks about this—then Avon will pull out as a sponsor.” Avon pulled out as a sponsor the next year.

 

2003

U.S. President George W. Bush says he supports “codifying marriage in the United States as being between one man and one woman.

 

1992

Canadian swimmer Mark Tewksbury (born February 7, 1968) won an Olympic gold medal in the 100-meter backstroke. He would come out six years later.

 

1997

The Gay and Lesbian OutGiving Fund, a project of the Gill Foundation, pledged $100,000 to help the victims of flooding in Ft. Collins, Colorado.

 

1998

Massachusetts Governor Paul Celluci announces that he would veto a domestic partnership bill which would have given equal health insurance benefits to all Boston city employees.

 

1998, Netherlands

Dr. Joep M. A. Lange of the University of Amsterdam reported the successful results of a study using a five-drug combination regimen to combat AIDS.

 

1999

After battling a San Francisco ordinance, United Airlines announced it would offer domestic partner benefits.

 

2004

Democratic Presidential candidate John Kerry, in a speech to the party convention in Boston, blasted President Bush for pushing a constitutional amendment banning gay marriage.

 

2015, Israel

An ultra-Orthodox Jewish man returned to the LGBT Pride parade to commit the same 2005 crime of attacking several marchers. After being released just three weeks prior from a 10-year prison sentence for his first crime, Yishai Schlissel returned to the 2015 parade and stabbed six people, killing one. Schlissel reportedly told police he went to the parade “to kill in the name of God.” Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu condemned the attack as “a most serious incident.” Israel’s LGBT community was the target of a 2009 attack in Tel Aviv where a gunman opened fire at a center for young gays, killing two people and wounding 15 others. Israel has relatively liberal gay rights policies, despite the ultra-Orthodox community’s hostility. The Jewish state repealed a ban on consensual same-sex sexual acts in 1988.

 

July 31

 

1607, Italy

Pope Paul V orders the confiscation of 105 paintings from the artist Cavaleiere d’Arpino who had been unable to pay his taxes. Among the paintings was Caravaggio’s Boy with a Basket of Fruit, an overtly homoerotic image of a youth extending both a basket of fruit and his tongue seductively toward the viewer. Art historian Andrew Graham-Dixon has said: A lot has been made of Caravaggio’s presumed homosexuality, which has in more than one previous account of his life been presented as the single key that explains everything, both the power of his art and the misfortunes of his life.

 

1889

Nels Anderson (July 31, 1889 – October 8, 1986) is born. He was an early American sociologist who studied hobos, urban culture, and work culture. The word fag is first used in print in reference to gays in Nels Anderson’s 1923 monograph The Hobo: Fairies or Fags,” defining the words as men or boys who exploit sex for profit. Anderson studied at the University of Chicago under Robert E. Park and Ernest Burgess, whose Concentric zone model was one of the earliest models developed to explain the organization of urban areas. Anderson’s The Hobo was a work that helped pioneer participant observation as a research method to reveal the features of a society and was the first field research monograph of the famed Chicago School of Sociology, marking a significant milepost in the discipline of Sociology.

 

1932

Barbara Gittings (July 31, 1932 – February 18, 2007), one of the pioneers of gay and lesbian activism, is born. She organized the New York chapter of the Daughters of Bilitis (DOB) from 1958 to 1963, edited the national DOB magazine from 1963–66, and worked closely with Frank Kameny (May 21, 1925 – October 11, 2011) in the 1960s on the first picket lines that brought attention to the ban on employment of gay people by the largest employer in the U.S. at that time: the United States government. Her early experiences with trying to learn more about lesbianism fueled her life-time work with libraries. In the 1970s, Gittings was most involved in the American Library Association, especially its gay caucus, the first such in a professional organization, in order to promote positive literature about homosexuality in libraries. She was a part of the movement to get the American Psychiatric Association to drop homosexuality as a mental illness in 1973. Her self-described life mission was to tear away the “shroud of invisibility” related to homosexuality which had theretofore been associated with crime and mental illness.

 

1939

Susan Flannery (born July 31, 1939) is an American actress known for her roles in the daytime dramas The Bold and the Beautiful and Days of Our Lives. She and actress Fannie Flagg (September 21, 1944) had been together for eight years. The cracks in their relationship widened under the pressure. Many of Susan and Fannie’s friends knew they were lovers.

 

1940, Germany

The German Reich Commissar of the occupied Netherlands territories makes all sexual activities between men illegal.

 

1965

The first lesbian and gay protest of the Pentagon happens on this day. Twelve male and four female veterans of the armed services picket the Pentagon to protest discrimination in the military. Coverage airs on CBS in Washington that evening.

 

1965, Australia

Openly gay Australian Ian Roberts (born 31 July 1965) is born. He is an actor, model and former professional rugby league footballer of the 1980s and 1990s. A New South Wales State of Origin and Australian international representative forward, he played club football with the South Sydney Rabbitohs, Wigan Warriors, Manly-Warringah Sea Eagles and North Queensland Cowboys. In 1995 Roberts became the first high-profile Australian sports person and first rugby footballer in the world to come out to the public as gay.

 

1969

The first meeting of the Gay Liberation Front was held in New York City at Alternative University. Gay militants separate from the more moderate homophile movement come together to form a counterculture-inspired group. The meeting was advertised with a leaflet which read, DO YOU THINK HOMOSEXUALS ARE REVOLTING? YOU BET YOUR SWEET ASS WE ARE. About 50 people attended.

 

1974

The Centers for Disease Control reports that gay and bisexual men account for one third of all cases of syphilis in the US.

 

1976

Dykes on Bikes is founded. A group of lesbians on motorcycles comes together to lead the 1976 San Francisco Pride Parade. Founder Soni S.H.S. Wolf (September 1948-April 25, 2018) was to be the Community Grand Marshal during the San Francisco Pride parade in 2018. Unfortunately, Wolf passed away in April 2018. Her close friends represented her in the 2018 parade by carrying the custom-painted motorcycle tank from the bike she rode during the inaugural ride in 1976.Chapters of the club have been leading Pride Parades around the world ever since.

 

1986

Jeff Levi, executive director of National Gay and Lesbian Task Force (NGLTF), addressed the U.S. Senate during hearings on the nomination of William Rehnquist to the Supreme Court. Strom Thurmond questioned him on why NGLTF doesn’t work for something constructive such as changing homosexuals into heterosexuals.

 

1989

Urvashi Vaid (born 8 October 1958) replaces Jeff Levi as the executive director of the NGLTF. Urvashi is an Indian-American LGBT rights activist. In April 2009 Out magazine named her one of the 50 most influential LGBT people in the United States. Vaid shares homes in Manhattan and Province-town, Massachusetts with her partner, comedian Kate Clinton.

 

1996

Jamie Nabozny (born October 1975) wins nearly a million dollars in the first ever case of a gay teen suing school officials for failing to protect him from years of horrendous abuse. (Nabozny v. Podlesny) The United States Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit rules that a public school and individual school employees may be held liable under federal equal protection law for failing to respond to the anti-gay abuse of a student by other students.

 

1998, UK

Kristina Sheffield and Rachel Horsham, both male-to-female transgender people, lost a legal battle to be recognized as women under English law when the European Court of Human Rights ruled that the British government had not violated their rights by refusing to issue them new birth certificates or by refusing to allow them to marry men.

 

1999

Simone Wallace (born 1945) and Adele Wallace close their Sisterhood Bookstore in Los Angeles. Founded in 1972, it operated at the intersection of Westwood and Rochester near UCLA. Sisterhood was so much more than a bookstore; it was a community center whixh supported women for decades. Its books are now in the June Mazer Archives.

 

2003

The Roman Catholic Archbishop of Ottawa warns Canada’s Prime Minister Jean Chretien that if he continues to support same-sex marriage he could be denied the sacraments.

 

2005, The Netherlands

The Netherlands halted the extradition of gays back to Iran following re-ports of gay executions.

 

2012

Gore Vidal (October 3, 1925 – July 31, 2012) dies. He was an American writer and public intellectual known for his patrician manner, epigrammatic wit, and polished style of writing. As a public intellectual, Gore Vidal was identified with the liberal politicians and the progressive social causes of the Democratic Party. In 1960, he was the Democratic candidate for Congress, for the 29th Congressional District of New York State, a usually Republican district on the Hudson River, but lost the election to the Republican candidate J. Ernest Wharton, by a margin of 57 percent to 43 percent. In 1950, Gore Vidal met Howard Austen (January 28, 1929 – September 22, 2003) who became his life-partner in a 53-year relationship. In 2010, Vidal began to suffer from Wernicke–Korsakoff syndrome, a brain disorder often caused by chronic alcoholism. On July 31, 2012 Vidal died of pneumonia at his home in the Hollywood Hills at the age of 86. 

May 1

 

1915, UK

Laurence Michael Dillon (May 1, 1915 – May 15, 1962) was a British physician and the first trans man to undergo phalloplasty. In 1946 Dillon published Self: A Study in Endocrinology and Ethics, a book about what would now be called transgender though that term had not been coined yet. He described “masculine inverts” as being born with “the mental outlook and temperament of the other sex,” using Stephen Gordon in the novel The Well of Loneliness as an example. Self brought him to the attention of Roberta Cowell who would become the first British trans woman to receive male-to-female sex reassignment surgery. Though Dillon was not yet a licensed physician, he himself performed an orchidectomy on Cowell, since British law made the operation illegal. Cowell’s vaginoplasty was later performed by pioneering plastic surgeon Harold Gillies.

 

1960

Andy Thayer (born May 1, 1960) is an American socialist, LGBTQ rights and anti-war activist. He is co-founder of the Gay Liberation Network, one of the largest LGBTQ direction-action groups in Chicago. He is also the co-founder of Chicago Coalition Against War & Racism. Thayer founded the Gay Liberation Network in September 1998 under the original name Chicago Anti-Bashing Network which was changed to the Gay Liberation Network in 2004. The group is one of the largest and most-active LGBTQ direct-action groups in the area of Chicago. Thayer is openly gay and lives in Chicago in the Uptown neighborhood. Thayer got engaged in November 2013 and married in the summer of 2014.

 

1970

At the Second Congress to Unite Women in New York City, lesbian feminists stage the Lavender Menace action in protest of lesbophobia in the women’s movement and particularly in the National Organization for Women. Lavender Menace members included Karla Jay (born February 22, 1947), Martha Shelley, Rita Mae Brown (born November 28, 1944), Lois Hart, Barbara Love (born 1937), Ellen Shumsky, Artemis March, Cynthia Funk, and Michela Griffon, and were mostly members of the Gay Liberation Front (GLF) and the National Organization for Women (NOW).

 

1972

On this day John Waters’ outrageous movie Pink Flamingos opens in theaters. Written, produced, filmed, and edited by John Waters. It is part of what Waters has labelled the “Trash Trilogy”, which also includes Female Trouble (1974) and Desperate Living (1977). The film stars the countercultural drag queen Glen Milstead as Divine  (October 19, 1945 – March 7, 1988) as a criminal living under the name of Babs Johnson, “the filthiest person alive” Waters had plans for a sequel, titled Flamingos Forever. Troma Entertainment offered to finance the picture, but it was never made because Divine refused to be involved. When the film was initially released, it caused a huge degree of controversy due to the wide range of “perverse” acts performed in explicit detail. It has since become one of the most notorious films ever made and is rated as #29 on the list of 50 Films to See Before You Die.

 

1974, Portugal

Gay activists march in Porto for the first time, demanding an end to the country’s sodomy laws and a repeal of all statutes that discriminate against gays and lesbians, following the overthrow of the long installed Salazar regime.

 

1974

One Disco opens in West Hollywood, CA. Started in an old World War II-era bomb-sight manufacturing building, Studio One has a long history that played a big part in the lives, politics and gay rights movement. Don Kilhefner wrote: For most gay men living outside West Hollywood, it represented bigotry, racism and sexism. Scott Forbes, its owner, wanted to limit the number of gay men of color and women. His doormen used every racist excuse possible to keep black gay men out, requiring two or three pieces of photo ID from African Americans and none or one piece from white men. To limit the number of women, excuses were made up on the spot based on what they were wearing, like no open-toe shoes. Rather than being a beacon of pride, countless gay community protests were held there. For most conscious gay and lesbian people of that period, Studio One stood for racist discrimination and white male privilege.

 

1975

Maine Legislators decriminalize homosexuality between consenting adults by repealing its sodomy laws. It also lowers the age of consent to 14.

 

1975

Reports confirm that Paul Newman is having financing trouble with his attempt to bring The Front Runner, a 1974 novel by Patricia Nell Warren (June 15, 1936 – February 9, 2019) to the big screen. Newman eventually allows his option to lapse. The book is considered now to be a classic in LGBT literature.

 

1976

Christopher Street magazine, a gay-oriented magazine published in New York City, debuts. Known both for its serious discussion of issues within the gay community and its satire of anti-gay criticism, it was one of the two most-widely read gay-issues publications in the U.S.  Christopher Street covered politics and culture and its aim was to become a gay New Yorker.  Christopher Street printed 231 issues before closing its doors in December, 1995.

 

1977

Wyoming decriminalizes private consensual adult homosexual acts.

 

1982

The journal Scientific American publishes an ad from the Lesbian and Gay Associated Engineers and Scientists. Science News journal refuses to run the ad.

 

1984

Advocate Men magazine debuts.

 

1986

Lesbian Ann Bancroft (born September 29, 1955) is an author, teacher, and adventurer. On this day, she becomes the first woman to reach the North Pole by dogsled. The trip, which started from Ellesmere Island, took her two months. She was also the first woman to cross both polar ice caps to reach the North and South Poles, as well as the first woman to ski across Greenland. In 1993 Bancroft led a four-woman expedition to the South Pole on skis, the first all-female expedition to cross the ice to the South Pole. In 2001, Ann and Norwegian adventurer Liv Arnesen (born June 1, 1953) became the first women to ski across Antarctica. Ann currently co-owns an exploration company, Bancroft Arnesen Explore, with Liv Arnesen. Bancroft is openly gay and in 2006, she publicly campaigned against a proposed amendment to the Minnesota Constitution to prohibit any legal recognition of marriages or civil unions between members of the same sex.

 

2002, Colombia

A grenade is thrown at home of gay politician Manuel Antonio Velandia.

 

2013, Samoa

Samoa’s Sodomy Crimes Act goes into effect with a sentence of up to five years in prison. “Keeping a place of homosexual resort” is also a crime.

 

2020

David Carter (1953-May 1, 2020), author and historian, dies on this day. His best-known book Stonewall: The Riots That Sparked the Gay Revolution was published in 2004, about the Stonewall Inn uprising of 1969. He was 67.

 

May 2

 

1895

Lorenz Hart (May 2, 1895 – November 22, 1943) was born in New York. He was the lyricist half of the Broadway songwriting team Rodgers and Hart. Some of his more famous lyrics include Blue Moon, The Lady Is a Tramp, Manhattan, Where or When, Bewitched, Bothered, and Bewildered, My Funny Valentine. They became some of the best songs of the ’20s and ’30s. It was a closely guarded secret that Hart was gay. No one knew until a biography came out 30 years after his death.

 

1902

Mabel Hampton (May 2, 1902 – October 26, 1989) was an American lesbian activist, a dancer during the Harlem Renaissance, and a philanthropist for both black and lesbian/gay organizations. In addition to her financial contributions to gay and lesbian organizations, Hampton marched in the first National Gay and Lesbian March on Washington, and she appeared in the films Silent Pioneers and Before Stonewall. In 1984 she said, “I, Mabel Hampton, have been a lesbian all my life, for 82 years, and I am proud of myself and my people. I would like all my people to be free in this country and all over the world, my gay people and my black people.”

 

1948

Cal Anderson (May 2, 1948 – August 4, 1995) is born. Cal grew up in Tukwila, Washington, graduated from Foster High School, served in Vietnam and became the first openly gay member of the Washington State legislature. There, Anderson worked for civil rights for gay, lesbian and bisexual people as well as on such issues as campaign finance reform and easier voter registration. He died of complications from AIDS on August 4, 1995. On April 10, 2003, Seattle’s Broadway Park was renamed Cal Anderson Park in his honor.

1972

Edgar Hoover (January 1, 1895 – May 2, 1972), the homophobic first director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, dies and leaves the bulk of his estate to Clyde Tolson (May 22, 1900 – April 14, 1975), his “companion” of over 40 years.

 

1993

Angels in America: Millennium Approaches, a two-part play by American playwright Tony Kushner (born July 16, 1956), opens on Broadway. Angels in America received numerous awards, including the 1993 and 1994 Tony Awards for Best Play. The play’s first part, Millennium Approaches, received the 1993 Pulitzer Prize for Drama.

 

1994

One of the oldest LGBT magazines, The Metro Weekly in Washington DC, was first published.

 

1998, UK

Justin Fashanu (19 February 1961 – 2 May 1998), the first Black soccer player to earn a million dollars and the first pro soccer player to come out while playing, dies by suicide. After moving to the United States in 1998, he was questioned by police when a seventeen-year-old boy accused him of sexual assault. He was charged and an arrest warrant for him was issued in Howard County, Maryland on 3 April 1998, but he had already left his flat. According to his suicide note, fearing he would not get a fair trial because of his homosexuality, he fled to England where he killed himself in London in May 1998. His suicide note stated that the sex was consensual.

 

2020

Jacksonville, Florida’s anti-discrimination ordinance which banned discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation or gender identity was deemed unenforceable in a unanimous appellate court decision on this day and struck down. The reason for the court’s decision had to do with Jacksonville’s City Council and the way it handled the ordinance saying that it would amend the anti-discrimination laws to include sexual orientation and gender identity, but the council never actually did that.

1912, Belgium

Writer May Sarton  (May 3, 1912 – July 16, 1995) is born in Wendelgem. She wrote some of the most lyrical poetry of the 20th century. When publishing her novel Singing in 1965, Sarton feared that writing openly about lesbianism would lead to a diminution of the previously established value of her work. “The fear of homosexuality is so great that it took courage to write a novel about a woman homosexual who is not a sex maniac, a drunkard, a drug-taker, or in any way repulsive” wrote Sarton in Journal of a Solitude.  After the book’s release, many of Sarton’s works began to be studied in Women’s Studies classes. She died of breast cancer on July 16, 1995.

 

1948

Miriam Ben-Shalom (born May 3, 1948) is an American educator, activist and former staff sergeant in the United States Army. After being discharged from the military for homosexuality in 1976, she successfully challenged her discharge in court and returned to military service in 1987, the first openly gay person to be reinstated after being discharged under the military’s policy excluding homosexuals from military service. She served until 1990 when the Army succeeded in terminating her service after prolonged judicial proceedings. She is a member of the New England Gay, Lesbian and Bisexual Veterans and of the California Alexander Hamilton American Legion Post 448. A resident of Milwaukee with her partner Karen Weiss, she also serves as a full-time tenured instructor of English with the Milwaukee Area Technical College.

 

1976

A Chorus Line wins Pulitzer Prize for Drama. A Chorus Line is a musical with music by Marvin Hamlisch, lyrics by Edward Kleban and a book by James Kirkwood Jr. and Nicholas Dante. Centered on seventeen Broadway dancers auditioning for spots on a chorus line, the musical is set on the bare stage of a Broadway theatre during an audition for a musical. A Chorus Line provides a glimpse into the personalities of the performers and the choreographer as they describe the events that have shaped their lives and their decisions to become dancers. Following several workshops and an Off-Broadway production, A Chorus Line opened at the Shubert Theatre on Broadway July 25, 1975, directed and choreographed by Michael Bennett (April 8, 1943 – July 2, 1987). An unprecedented box office and critical hit, the musical received twelve Tony Award nominations and won nine, in addition to the 1976 Pulitzer Prize for Drama. Bennett was bisexual. He had numerous affairs with both men and women. He died from AIDS-related lymphoma at the age of 44.

 

1978, Canada

In Toronto, the Coalition for Gay Rights in Ontario distributes Discrimination and the Gay Minority to the members of the Ontario Legislature. Liberal leader Stuart Smith supports inclusion of sexual orientation in human rights code.

 

1989

Mary Lambert (born May 3, 1989) is an American singer, songwriter and spoken word artist. She worked with Macklemore and Ryan Lewis on a track on their album The Heist. Lambert is the featured artist of their rights single Same Love. Lambert’s contributions to Same Love draw upon her experiences as “a lesbian growing up in a tumultuous, Christian upbringing.” Lambert took the content she created for Same Love and used it to develop the song She Keeps Me Warm which she released on July 30, 2013. Lambert performed at the 2016 Gay Christian Network Conference in Houston, Texas, an annual conference that draws over 1,300 LGBT people from all over the world. Lambert was raised as a Pentecostal, but her family was expelled from the church when she was six after her mother came out as lesbian. Her girlfriend Michelle Jacqueline Chamuel (born 1986) is an American singer, songwriter and producer. She has released several albums and EPs as a solo artist and in partnership with others. She was the lead singer of the band Ella Riot and the runner-up on season four of The Voice. Chamuel released an EP titled I Am in November 2015 under The Reverb Junkie moniker. She co-wrote and produced Hang out with You with Mary.

 

1989

Christine Jorgenson (May 30, 1926 – May 3, 1989), pioneering transsexual, dies of cancer at age sixty-two.  Jorgensen was the first person to become widely known in the United States for having sex reassignment surgery-in this case, male to female. Jorgensen grew up in the Bronx area of New York. Upon returning to New York aft er military service and increasingly concerned over (as one obituary called it at the time) her “lack of male physical development” Jorgensen heard about sex reassignment surgery and began taking the female hormone ethinyl estradiol on her own. She researched the subject with the help of Dr. Joseph Angelo, a husband of one of Jorgensen’s friends. Jorgensen had intended to go to Sweden, where at the time the only doctors in the world performing this surgery were located. During a stopover in Copenhagen to visit relatives, however, she met Dr. Christian Hamburger, a Danish endocrinologist and specialist in rehabilitative hormonal therapy. Jorgensen stayed in Denmark, and under Dr. Hamburger’s direction, was allowed to begin hormone replacement therapy. She then got special permission from the Danish Minister of Justice to undergo the series of operations for sex re-assignment. Jorgensen chose the name Christine in honor of Dr. Hamburger. She became the most famous and outspoken figure for transsexual and transgender community.

 

1992

Hope Williams (1898-May 3, 1992) dies. She was a debutante with a carefree manner, boyishly clipped blond hair and a humorous walk who was a leading Broadway actress in the late 1920’s and 30’s. She was part of the lesbian “sewing circle” of actresses in New York.

 

2003, Japan

Aya Kamikawa (born January 25, 1968) becomes Japan’s first openly transgender official.

 

2013

After same-sex marriage legislation passes in both houses of Rhode Island’s legislature, Governor Lincoln Chafee signs it into law. The new law, legalizing same-sex marriage, goes into effect on August 1, 2013

 

May 4

 

1497, Italy

Girolamo Savonarola, a Dominican friar, gives the Ascension Day sermon in which he preaches the suppression of sodomy and the burning of men who are “sodomites.”

 

1895, UK

The Regina v. Wild trial is depicted on front page of The Illustrated Police News. It shows the drama of Oscar Wilde’s second trial of the year for sodomy.

 

1958

Keith Haring (May 4, 1958 – February 16, 1990) is born. He was an American artist whose pop art and graffiti-like work grew out of the New York City street culture of the 1980s. Haring’s work grew to iconic popularity from his exuberant spontaneous drawings in New York City subways – chalk outlines on blank black advertising-space backgrounds – depicting radiant babies, flying saucers, and deified dogs. After public recognition he created larger scale works such as colorful murals, many of them commissioned. His imagery has become a widely recognized visual language. His later work often addressed political and societal themes – especially homosexuality and AIDS – through his own unique iconography. Haring’s work very clearly demonstrates many important political and personal influences. Ideas about his sexual orientation are apparent throughout his work and his journals clearly confirm its impact on his work. Heavy symbolism speaking about the AIDS epidemic is vivid in his later pieces. Haring was a gay man who died of complications from AIDS at age 31.

 

1993

Angels in America: Millennium Approaches opens on Broadway. Angels in America: A Gay Fantasia on National Themes is a two-part play by American playwright Tony Kushner (born July 16, 1956). The work won numerous awards, including the Pulitzer Prize for Drama, the Tony Award for Best Play, and the Drama Desk Award for Outstanding Play. Part one of the play premiered in 1991 and its Broadway opening was in 1993. The two parts of the play are separately presentable and entitled Millennium Approaches and Perestroika, respectively. The play has been adapted into a 2003 miniseries of the same title as well as a 2004 opera by Peter Eötvös.

 

2004, Canada

David Peter Reimer (August 22, 1965 – May 4, 2004) is born. He was a Canadian man born male but reassigned as a girl and raised female following medical advice and intervention after his penis was accidentally destroyed during a botched circumcision in infancy. Psychologist John Money oversaw the case and reported the reassignment as successful and as evidence that gender identity is primarily learned. Academic sexologist Milton Diamond later reported that Reimer’s realization he was not a girl crystallized between the ages of 9 and 11, and he transitioned to living as a male at age 15. Well known in medical circles for years anonymously as the “John/Joan” case, Reimer later went public with his story to help discourage similar medical practices. He later died by suicide after suffering years of severe depression, financial instability, and a troubled marriage.

 

2010, El Salvador

The President of El Salvador issues a decree banning discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity.

May 5

 

2400 BCE, Egypt

In 1964 in the ancient necropolis of Saqqara, Egyptian archaeologist Ahmed Moussa discovered the burial chambers of Khnumhotep and Niankhkhnum, servants and royal confidants at the Palace of King Niuserre during the Fifth Dynasty of Egyptian pharaohs, and are believed to be the first same-sex couple in recorded history. They were ancient Egyptian royal servants who shared the title of Overseer of the Manicurists in the Palace of King Nyuserre Ini, sixth pharaoh of the Fifth Dynasty, reigning during the second half of the 25th century BC. They were buried together at Saqqara and are listed as “royal confidants” in their joint tomb.

 

1725, UK

Leendert Hasenbosch (c.1695- c. 1725) was an employee of the Dutch East India Company who was set ashore as a castaway on uninhabited Ascension Island in the South Atlantic Ocean as a punishment for sodomy. He wrote a diary until his presumed death six months later. The diary is published in 1726 under the title Sodomy Punish’d. In 2006 the full story was published by Alex Ritsema with the book A Dutch Castaway on Ascension Island in 1725; a second, revised edition was printed in 2010.

 

1911

Albert Cashier’s (December 25, 1843 – October 10, 1915) doctor discovers that Albert is female during a broken leg repair. The doctor keeps the Civil War veteran’s secret. Albert is moved on this day to the Soldier and Sailors Home in Quincy, Illinois, and lives there as a man. In 1913, he’s moved to the Watertown State Hospital for the Insane. Nurses there discover he is female-bodied while giving him a bath after which he was forced to wear a dress. Born Jennie Irene Hodgers, Cashier was an Irish-born immigrant who served in the Union Army during the American Civil War. Cashier adopted the identity of a man before enlisting and maintained it for most of the remainder of his life. She became famous as one of a number of female soldiers who served as men during the Civil War, although the consistent and long-term commitment to the male identity has prompted some contemporary scholars to suggest that Cashier was a transgender man.

 

1913

Tyrone Power (May 5, 1914 – November 15, 1958) was an American film, stage and radio actor. From the 1930s to the 1950s Power appeared in dozens of films, often in swashbuckler roles or romantic leads. His better-known films include The Mark of Zorro, Blood and Sand, The Black Swan, Prince of Foxes, Witness For The Prosecution, The Black Rose, and Captain from Castile. Power’s own favorite film among those that he starred in was Nightmare Alley. Though largely a matinee idol in the 1930s and early 1940s and known for his striking looks, Power starred in films in a number of genres from drama to light comedy. In the 1950s he began placing limits on the number of films he would make in order to devote more time for theater productions. He received his biggest accolades as a stage actor in John Brown’s Body and Mister Roberts. Power died from a heart attack at the age of 44. Power led an active bisexual life in Hollywood and kept the studio busy keeping his name out of the papers. He had a huge gay following and was involved with several men over the years, among them composer Lorenz Hart (May 2, 1895 – November 22, 1943) and actor Cesar Romero  (February 15, 1907 – January 1, 1994). Tyrone Power is one of the top 100 box-office moneymakers of all time.

 

1974

The Community Homophile Association of Newfoundland (CHAN) is formed becoming the first gay organization in the province.

 

1979, Canada

In Saskatoon, the Saskatchewan Division of Canadian Union of Public Employees (CUPE) at their annual convention supports legislation banning discrimination on basis of sexual orientation.

 

1993

The Hawaii Supreme Court rules that denying marriage to same-sex couples violates the Equal Protection Clause of the State Constitution.

 

2011, Brazil

Supreme Federal Court votes 10-0 for civil unions with the same 112 legal rights as married couples.

 

2016

Transgender male boxer Patricio “El Cacahuate” Manuel, a Southern California fighter, became the first pro boxer to fight as a man after having fought as a woman. He was the highly decorated amateur female boxer Patricia Manuel who fought at the U.S. women’s Olympic Trials boxing in 2012, but was sidelined by an injury. He started his transition in 2013 and had surgery in 2014.

 

May 6

 

1868, Germany

The term “homosexual” is written for the first time by Karl-Maria Kertbeny (February 28, 1824 – January 23, 1882) in a letter to Karl Heinrich Ulrichs (28 August 1825 – 14 July 1895). He derived it from the Greek homos (“the same”) and the Latin root sexualis. Kertbeny, a Hungarian-German doctor who is an early sympathizer of Ulrichs’, uses both “homosexual” and “heterosexual,” terms he has recently coined as part of his system for the classification of sexual types as replacements for the pejorative terms “sodomite” and “pederast” that were used in the German- and French-speaking world of his time. In addition, he called the attraction between men and women heterosexualism

 

1895, Italy

Rodolfo Alfonso Raffaello Pierre Filibert Guglielmi di Valentina d’Antonguella (May 6, 1895 – August 23, 1926), professionally known as Rudolph Valentino, was an Italian naturalized American actor who starred in several well-known silent films including The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse, The Sheik, Blood and Sand, The Eagle, and The Son of the Sheik. He was an early pop icon and a sex symbol of the 1920s who was known as the “Latin lover” or simply as “Valentino”. His death at 31 caused mass hysteria among his female fans and further propelled him to iconic status. From the time he died, in 1926 until the 1960s, Valentino’s sexuality was not generally questioned in print. At least four books including the notoriously libelous Hollywood Babylon suggested that he may have been gay despite his marriage to Rambova. For some, his marriages to Acker and Rambova, as well as the relationship with Pola Negri, add to the suspicion that Valentino was gay and that these were “lavender marriages.”

 

1933, Germany

In Berlin young Nazis attack and destroy the Institute of Sexual Research. A few days later, the Institute’s priceless collection of more than 20,000 publications and 5,000 photographs is burned in a public ceremony. The Institute was founded by Magnus Hirschfeld (14 May 1868 – 14 May 1935), a German Jewish physician and sexologist in Berlin-Charlottenburg. An outspoken advocate for sexual minorities, Hirschfeld founded the Scientific-Humanitarian Committee. Historian Dustin Goltz characterized this group as having carried out “the first advocacy for homosexual and transgender rights”. Under the more liberal atmosphere of the newly founded Weimar Republic, Hirschfeld purchased a villa not far from the Reichstag building in Berlin for his new Institut f√ºr Sexualwissenschaft (Institute of Sexual Research), which opened on 6 July 1919. In Germany, the Reich government made laws, but the L√§nder governments enforced the laws, meaning it was up to the L√§nder governments to enforce Paragraph 175, which they simply didn’t do. After the Nazis gained control of Germany in the 1930s, the Institute and its libraries were destroyed as part of a Nazi government censorship program by youth brigades, who burned its books and documents in the street. On 28 June 1934 Hitler conducted a purge of gay men in the ranks of the SA wing of the Nazis, which involved murdering them in the Night of the Long Knives. This was then followed by stricter laws on homosexuality and the round-up of gay men. The address lists seized from the Institute are believed to have aided Hitler in these actions. Many tens of thousands of arrestees found themselves, ultimately, in slave-labor or death camps.

 

1947

Jon Reed Sims (May 6, 1947 – July 16, 1984) is born. He was the founder of the San Francisco Gay Freedom Day Marching Band and Twirling Corp, world’s first openly gay musical group. Sims was an American choir conductor born in Smith Center, Kansas. Sims studied music composition at Wichita State University, and received his master’s degree in music from Indiana University. Moving to San Francisco, he became a music teacher by profession, serving for a time as a high school band teacher in Daly City but soon became involved in the developing gay community. He formed the San Francisco band in response to Anita Bryant’s anti-gay campaign in the late 1970s. Upon its founding in 1978, it became the first openly gay musical group in the world. In successive years, Sims created the San Francisco Gay Men’s Chorus, the Lesbian/Gay Chorus of San Francisco, Lambda Pro Musica orchestra (now defunct), and encouraged the formation of the Big Apple Corps GLBT band in New York by Nancy Corporon and The Great American Yankee Freedom Band of Los Angeles by Wayne Love. He died from complications of AIDS at the age of 37.   As one friend said in Sims’ newspaper obituary, he gave gays “an alternative to the baths and the bars.”

 

1959

The Cooper’s Donuts riot is the first documented LGBT uprising in the U.S. A group of drag queens and hustlers fought the police in the donut shop in downtown Los Angeles, furious that LAPD officers were arresting their friends for legally congregating in Cooper’s, a popular gay meeting place. Cooper’s was located on Main Street, the Los Angeles “gay ghetto” of the 1950s and ’60s. The event is chronicled in detail in Gay L.A.: A History of Sexual Outlaws, Power Politics, and Lipstick Lesbians, by Lillian Faderman (born July 18, 1940) and Stuart Timmons (January 14, 1957 – January 28, 2017) , a meticulously researched book that positions Los Angeles-and not New York-as the most influential gay city of modern times. By Harry Hay’s (April 7, 1912 – October 24, 2002) recollection, there were even earlier riots and uprisings in which gay and transgender Angelenos were instrumental in resisting police, but Cooper’s was the first such uprising specifically against police treatment of LGBT people.

 

1976, Canada

Two Members of the Ontario Provincial Parliament, Margaret Campbell (Liberal – St George – downtown Toronto) and Ted Bounsell (NDP – Windsor), introduce private members’ bills to amend Ontario Human Rights Code to include sexual orientation. The bills are defeated.

 

1994

Noah Egidi Galvin (born May 6, 1994) is an American actor and singer. He is best known for playing Kenny O’Neal in the ABC sitcom The Real O’Neals and the titular role in the Broadway musical Dear Evan Hansen. He came out as gay at the age of 14.

 

2012

The Family Equality Council hosted its first International Family Equality Day. All over the world, more and more children are growing up in families where one or both of their parents identify as LGBTQ. Yet, each of these “rainbow families” have very different lived equality experiences, often depending not only on what country they live in but what street they live on. In some countries, our families enjoy equal rights and social recognition but in far too many others both parents and their children face overt discrimination and have to live under a constant threat of violence. By celebrating IFED, Family Equality Council and our partners across the globe raise awareness among politicians and the general public about the need for equal treatment and recognition for all families, regardless of the sexual orientation or gender identity of their family’s members.

 

May 7

 

1365, Italy

Fifteen year-old Giovanni de Giovanni is castrated and killed for having sex with other men. He is one of the youngest victims of the campaign against sodomy waged in 14th-century Florence.

 

1840, Russia

Peter Ilyich Tchaikovsky (7 May 1840 – 6 November 1893) is born in Votinsk. He was a Russian composer of the romantic period, whose works are among the most popular music in the classical repertoire. He was the first Russian composer whose music made a lasting impression internationally, bolstered by his appearances as a guest conductor in Europe and the United States. He was honored in 1884 by Emperor Alexander III and awarded a lifetime pension. Discussion of Tchaikovsky’s personal life, especially his sexuality, has perhaps been the most extensive of any composer in the 19th century and certainly of any Russian composer of his time. It has also at times caused considerable confusion due to Soviet efforts to expunge all references to same-sex attraction and portray him as a heterosexual. Russian violinist Iosif Iosifovich Kopek (6 October 1855 – 4 January 1885) was probably Tchaikovsky’s lover at some point.

 

1977, Canada

Ten groups attend the first Manitoba Gay Conference in Winnipeg and form the Manitoba Gay Coalition.

 

1986, Russia

A former Soviet deputy health minister tells readers of Literaturnaya Gazeta, a popular weekly newspaper, that AIDS is not a concern in the USSR because homosexuality and drug use are both illegal.

 

1988

In Sacramento, California, 8,000 activists mark the National Day of Protest with the largest gay and lesbian rights rally in the state’s history.

1988

In New York City, some 500 ACT UP activists protest the nation’s lethargic response to the AIDS crisis by blocking traffic in the financial district.

 

1993

The Hawaii Supreme Court rules that the state must prove a “compelling interest” for denying same-sex partners a marriage license.

 

1990

Premier of the first Washington D.C. area gay and lesbian television program called Gay Fairfax. The content is political. It airs for four years with a sign-off: “Remember to keep the pride alive.”

 

2001, China

Leslie Cheung (September 12, 1956 – April 1, 2003), a Hong Kong-born Canadian singer and actor, is credited as the parent of modern Cantonese and Mandarin pop music. He comes out as bisexual in Time Magazine. Cheung dies by suicide on April 1, 2003 by jumping off the 24th floor of the Mandarin Oriental hotel in Hong Kong. A suicide note left by Cheung stated that he had been suffering from depression.

 

2009, Argentina

Civil Union law is approved by the city council of Rio Cuarto, Cordoba.

May 8

 

1828, Switzerland

Jean-Henri Dunant (8 May 1828 – 30 October 1910) is born. He was a Swiss businessman and social activist, the founder of the Red Cross, and the first recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize. The 1864 Geneva Convention was based on Dunant’s ideas. In 1901 he received the first Nobel Peace Prize together with Fr√©d√©ric Passy, making Dunant the first Swiss Nobel laureate. His birthday, 8 May, is celebrated as the World Red Cross and Red Crescent Day. Following his death his family burned his personal papers in an effort to suppress the fact he was bisexual.

 

1920, Finland

Tom of Finland, Touko Laaksonen, (May 8, 1920 – November 7, 1991) is born. He is a sex-positive artist who went from the “pornography” underground in the 1950s to the mainstream present. His handsome, outrageously virile and endowed men challenged the perception that all homosexuals were effeminate, at the same time allowing that all types coexisted in the same sexual and social landscape. The nation of Finland issued stamps celebrating his art in 2014.

 

1953

Susan Feniger (born May 8, 1953) is an American chef, restaurateur, cookbook author, and radio and TV personality. She is known for her cooking show Too Hot Tamales on the Food Network and for several influential restaurants in Los Angeles including City Cafe (1981), Border Grill (1985), and Ciudad (1998)  In December 2013, Feniger, with Executive Chef Kajsa Alger, opened Mud Hen Tavern at the former location of Street Cafe. Feniger was awarded the Elizabeth Burns Lifetime Achievement Award by the California Restaurant Association. Feniger is a lesbian and her partner is writer, director, composer Liz Lachman.

 

1978, Canada

The trial begins of those in the Montreal Truxx Bar raid, charged with being keepers of a common bawdyhouse (house of prostitution). In 1976 the City of Montr√©al launched a pre-Olympic cleanup of gays and prostitutes, a new wave of persecution that shocked the gay community out of its complacency, both francophone and anglophone, and wholescale organizing started up again, energized by the simple exigency of self-defense. The police responded in October 1977 by swooping with machine-guns into the Stanley Street bar Truxx and made the largest mass arrest since the October Crisis. 146 men were forcibly given VD tests, crammed incommunicado all night into tiny cells with standing room only, and charged the next day under the familiar vague and discriminatory bawdy-house and gross indecency laws. That night, 3000 protesters blocked the streets of what was then the West End Peel-Stanley gay ghetto for several hours, and as the Journal de Montr√©al headline screamed, “Les Homos et la police: c’est la guerre!” No more than 300 demonstrators had ever shown up for a gay lib demo before, and two months later an embarrassed and still idealistic PQ government (only one year in office) passed Loi 88, the first human rights legislation protecting lesbians and gays anywhere in the world (Norway joined Quebec in 1981). The charges hung over the heads of the accused for several years thereafter before finally being dropped.

 

1981

Tennis great Billie Jean King (November 22, 1943) becomes the first prominent professional athlete to come out as a lesbian when her relationship with her secretary, Marilyn Barnett, becomes public in a May of 1981 “palimony” lawsuit filed by Barnett. As a result, King loses all of her endorsements. King is an advocate for gender equality and has long been a pioneer for equality and social justice. In 1973, at age 29, she won the “Battle of the Sexes” tennis match against the 55-year-old Bobby Riggs. King was also the founder of the Women’s Tennis Association and the Women’s Sports Foundation.

 

1996, South Africa

South Africa becomes the first country in the world to adopt language in its constitution protecting the civil rights of lesbians and gay men (Section 2 of the State Duty to Protect Human Rights) That same day, anti-apartheid campaigner Edwin Cameron  (born 15 February 1953) becomes the world’s first openly gay Supreme Court judge. Cameron is well known for his HIV/AIDS and gay-rights activism and was hailed by Nelson Mandela as “one of South Africa’s new heroes.”

2010, Lithuania

The Gay Pride parade takes place amid violence by anti-gay protestors. With the number of police officers in the street almost outnumbering the participants the Latvian capital of Rig a hosted its most successful and peaceful Gay Pride Parade to date. Police presence was heavy as religious groups and some Neo-Nazis had announced their resistance to the Baltic Pride in Riga ahead of the event. But the counter demonstrators were not to be seen and between 300 and 400 people marched through the cobblestone streets of the Latvian capital.

 

2010

Chaz Bono’s (born March 4, 1969) new name is legally recognized by the court. He is an American advocate, writer, musician and actor. His parents are entertainers Sonny Bono and Cher. Bono is a transgender man. In 1995, several years after being outed as lesbian by the tabloid press, he publicly self-identified as such in a cover story in a leading American gay monthly magazine, The Advocate, eventually going on to discuss the process of coming out to oneself and to others in two books. Family Outing: A Guide to the Coming Out Process for Gays, Lesbians, and Their Families (1998) includes his coming-out account. The memoir The End of Innocence (2003) discusses his outing, music career, and partner Joan’s death from non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma. Between 2008 and 2010, Bono underwent female-to-male gender transition. A two-part Entertainment Tonight feature in June 2009 explained that his transition had started a year before. In May 2010, he legally changed his gender and name. A documentary on Bono’s experience, Becoming Chaz, was screened at the 2011 Sundance Film Festival and later made its television debut on the Oprah Winfrey Network. A year after his name change, he appears on the 13th season of the U.S. version of Dancing with the Stars. This was the first time an openly transgender man starred on a major network television show for something unrelated to being transgender.

2020

Roy Horn (October 3, 1944 – May 8, 2020) of Siegfried (Fischbacher, June 13, 1929-January 10, 2021) & Roy died on this day of Covid-19. Siegfried & Roy were a duo of German-American magicians and entertainers, best known for their appearances with white lions and white tigers.

May 9

 

1726, UK

Gabriel Lawrence, William Griffin, and Thomas Wright are hanged at Tyburn following a raid on Margret Clap’s molly house. A molly house in 18thcentury England was a tavern or private room where men could meet other men with shared interests such as cross-dressing or potential sex partners.

 

1860, Scotland

James M. Barrie (9 May 1860 – 19 June 1937), the creator of Peter Pan, was born in Kirriemuir, Scotland. Married, he never consummated the union and preferred to spend his time with a group of young boys. Before his death, he gave the rights to the Peter Pan works to Great Ormond Street Hospital for Children in London, which continues to benefit from them.

 

1972 , Canada

The first issue of The Other Woman is produced in Toronto. It is a combination of several feminist newspapers with input is from lesbian feminists.

 

1977, Canada

In Ottawa, Private Barbara Thornborrow  (born 1951) is confronted by officials in the Canadian Armed Forces about her lesbianism. She decides to go public and fight before she is fired. She later challenged the decision, becoming the first person who was discharged based on their sexual orientation to do so publicly. In honor of her role as a significant builder of LGBT culture and history in Canada, a portrait of Thornborrow by artist Barbara Augustine is held by the Canadian Lesbian and Gay Archives in its National Portrait Collection.[

 

1970

Mark Bingham (May 22, 1970 – September 11, 2001), a gay San Francisco businessman and rugby enthusiast, is born. Bingham helps lead and participates in the attempt to retake control of United Airlines Flight 93 on September 11, 2001 which crashes in a field in Pennsylvania before reaching terrorists’ target on a day that changed America forever. Both for his presence on United 93 as well as his athletic physique, Bingham has been widely honored posthumously for having “smashed the gay stereotype mold and opened the door to many others who came after him.” He is buried at Madronia Cemetery, Saratoga, California. At the 9/11 Memorial Bingham and other passengers from Flight 93 are memorialized at the South Pool, on Panel S-67.

2012

In an ABC interview, Barack Obama becomes the first sitting U.S. president to publicly support the freedom for LGBT couples to marry. It marks a reversal from his 2008 campaign when he said he opposed same-sex marriage but favored civil unions as an alternative. His announcement came one day after voters in North Carolina passed a constitutional amendment banning same-sex marriage as well as civil unions for gay and lesbian couples.

 

2012, Argentina

Gender Identity Law 26,743 is approved. Transgender people may register by their chosen name and gender identity.

May 10

 

320 BC, Greece

Theocritus is born in Syracuse. He developed the verse form known as the pastoral, a stylized and artful form usually about shepherds or cowherds who sing of love and friendship. They were highly homoerotic.

 

1933 – Germany’s

Institute of Sex Research’s library archives are publicly hauled out and burned in the streets. There were many other books burnings throughout Germany on this day as well. Student groups at universities across Germany carried out a series of book burnings of works that the students and leading Nazi party members associated with an “un-German spirit.” The largest of these book bonfires occurred in Berlin, where an estimated 40,000 people gathered to hear a speech by the propaganda minister, Joseph Goebbels, in which he pronounced that “Jewish intellectualism is dead” and endorsed the students’ “right to clean up the debris of the past.”

 

1990, UK

OutRage!, the British LGBTQ  rights group, is formed by a broad-based group of queers committed to radical, non-violent direct action and civil disobedience. OutRage! was an all-volunteer, non-hierarchical grassroots, democratic movement, with no officers, leaders or paid staff. Weekly meetings were open to any LGBT person to attend, speak and vote. It was funded entirely by donations from activists and supporters. It lasted for 21 years, disbanding in 2011.

 

May 11

 

1739 & 1755, UK

Eleanor Butler (11 May 1739 – 2 June 1829) and Sarah Ponsonby (May 11, 1755 -December 9, 1831) celebrated joint birthdays and shared their lives for a half century. The “Ladies of Llangollen” were two upper-class Irish women whose relationship during the late 18th and early 19th century scandalized and fascinated their contemporaries. The subject of several excellent books, they seem to have impressed their neighbors as well as London high society. Eleanor was a member of the Butlers, the Earls (and later Dukes) of Ormond. Considered an over-educated bookworm by her family, she resided at the Butler family seat Kilkenny Castle. She was educated in a convent in France. Her mother tried to make her join a convent because she was remaining a spinster. Sarah lived with relatives in Woodstock, County Kilkenny, Ireland. She was a second cousin of Frederick Ponsonby, 3rd Earl of Bessborough, and thus a second cousin once removed of his daughter Lady Caroline Lamb. Eleanor’s and Sarah’s families lived two miles apart. They met in 1768 and quickly became close. Over the years they formulated a plan for a private rural retreat. Butler and Ponsonby lived together for over 50 years. Eleanor Butler died in 1829 at the age of 90. Sarah Ponsonby died two years later. They are buried together at St Collen’s Church in Llangollen.

 

1933

Mychal Judge (May 11, 1933 – September 11, 2001) is born. Father Judge was a self-identified gay man though celibate due to Catholic restrictions for priests. A long-term supporter of Dignity (a Catholic LGBT activist organization advocating for change in the Catholic Church’s policies/teachings on homosexuality), he was well known and beloved in New York City. He considered himself an “agent of change in both church and society”. He died while administering last rites to a fallen firefighter at the World Trade Center on September 11, 2001. In 2002, the United States Congress passed The Mychal Judge Police and Fire Chaplains Public Safety Officers Benefit Act into law. The law extended federal death benefits to chaplains of police and fire departments, and also marked the first time the federal government extended equal benefits for same-sex couples by allowing the domestic partners of public safety officers killed in the line of duty to collect a federal death benefit. This act was signed into law on June 24, 2002, but was retroactive only to September 11, 2001.

 

2001, Egypt

Fifty-two men are arrested on a floating gay nightclub called the Queen Boat moored on the Nile in Cairo. Of fifty-two men arrested, fifty were charged with “habitual debauchery” and “obscene behavior” under Article 9c of Law No. 10 of 1961 on the Combat of Prostitution. Another two were charged with “contempt of religion” under Article 98f of the Penal Code. All fifty-two men pleaded innocent. The trials of the “Cairo 52” lasted five months and the defendants were vilified in the Egyptian media which printed their real names and addresses and branded them as agents against the State.

 

2003

African American New Jersey high school sophomore Sakia Gunn (May 26, 1987 – May 11, 2003) was murdered after trying to get a man to leave her and her friends alone by explaining that they were lesbian. Gunn was returning from a night out in Greenwich Village, Manhattan, with her friends. While waiting for the #1 New Jersey Transit bus at the corner of Broad and Market Streets in downtown Newark, Gunn and her friends were propositioned by two African American men. The women rejected their advances and declared themselves to be lesbians. The men attacked; Gunn fought back, and one of the men, Richard McCullough, stabbed her in the chest. Both men immediately fled the scene in their vehicle. After one of Gunn’s friends flagged down a passing driver, she was taken to nearby University Hospital, where she died. Gunn’s death sparked outrage from the city’s gay and lesbian community. The community, in conjunction with GLAAD, rallied the mayor’s office, requesting, among other things, the establishment of a gay and lesbian community center, that police officers to patrol the Newark Penn Station/Broad Street corridor 24-hours a day, the creation of a LGBT advisory council to the mayor, and that the school board be held accountable for the lack of concern and compassion when dealing with students at Westside High School (which Gunn attended) immediately following the murder. The Newark Pride Alliance, an LGBT advocacy group, was founded in the wake of Gunn’s murder. In 2008, a documentary was released about Gunn’s murder, titled Dreams Deferred: The Sakia Gunn Film Project.

 

2010

Hundreds of veterans from around the country descend on Washington D.C. to lobby Congress on “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell. Over a hundred U.S. military veterans gather  on Capitol Hill to press Congress for quick repeal of the law banning gays from serving in the military. Gay, lesbian and straight veterans and supporters converged on steps of the U.S. Capitol for a group photograph with Sen. Joseph Lieberman, I-Connecticut, who is the main sponsor of a bill that would officially repeal the law known as “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” (DADT). Event participant Andre Sauvageot, 77, served in the Army during World War II. He described himself as straight and “happily married to a Vietnamese woman for 40 years,” but said he came from nearby Virginia to show solidarity with gay and lesbian veterans. Eric Alva (born April 1, 1971), a retired Marine, is one of the event’s organizers. “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” was the official United States policy on military service by gays, bisexuals, and lesbians, instituted by the Clinton Administration on February 28, 1994. The Department of Defense Directive 1304.26 was issued on December 21, 1993, and lasted until September 20, 2011, when it was repealed by President Obama.

 

May 12

 

1812, UK

Edward Lear (12 May 1812-29 January 1888) was an English artist, illustrator, musician, author and poet, and is known now mostly for his literary nonsense in poetry and prose and especially his limericks, a form he popularized. His principal areas of work as an artist were threefold: as a draughtsman employed to illustrate birds and animals; making colored drawings during his journeys, which he reworked later, sometimes as plates for his travel books; as a (minor) illustrator of Alfred, Lord Tennyson’s poems. As an author, he is known principally for his popular nonsense collections of poems, songs, short stories, botanical drawings, recipes, and alphabets. He also composed and published twelve musical settings of Tennyson’s poetry. Lear’s most fervent and painful friendship was with Franklin Lushington. He met the young barrister in Malta in 1849 and then toured southern Greece with him. Lear developed an infatuation for him that Lushington did not wholly reciprocate. Although they remained friends for almost forty years, until Lear’s death, the disparity of their feelings constantly tormented Lear. Indeed, Lear’s attempts at male companionship were not always successful; the very intensity of Lear’s affections may have doomed these relationships.

 

1820, Italy

Florence Nightingale (12 May 1820 – 13 August 1910) is born in Florence. She is the founder of modern nursing. Nightingale came to prominence while serving as a manager of nurses trained by her during the Crimean War where she organized the tending to wounded soldiers. She gave nursing a highly favorable reputation and became an icon of Victorian culture, especially in the persona of “The Lady with the Lamp,” making rounds of wounded soldiers at night. She often referred to herself in the masculine, as for example “a man of action” and “a man of business” and wrote about having romantic/erotic relationships with women.

 

1937, Luxembourg

Heinz Neddermeyer (April 20,1914-1984), the first great lover of Christopher Isherwood (26 August 1904 – 4 January 1986), is expelled from Luxembourg. The couple lived together in Berlin until they were forced to flee due to the rise of the Nazis. The day after he was expelled from Luxembourg, Heinz was arrested by the Gestapo. He was sentenced to three and a half years of forced labor and military service. He survived the forced labor and was conditionally free if he married. He married a woman named Gerda in 1938 and had a son named Christian, his only child, in 1940. He died in 1984.

 

1940

Joan Nestle (born May 12, 1940) is a Lambda Award winning writer and editor and a founder of the Lesbian Herstory Archives, which holds, among other things, everything she has ever written. She sees her work of archiving history as critical to her identity as “a woman, as a lesbian, and as a Jew”. After the Stonewall riots in 1969, gay liberation became a focus of her activism. She joined the Lesbian Liberation Committee in 1971 and helped found the Gay Academic Union (GAU) in 1972. The following year, she and other members of the GAU began to gather and preserve documents and artifacts related to lesbian history. This project became the Lesbian Herstory Archives, which opened in 1974 in the pantry of the apartment she shared with her then-partner Deborah Edel, and later with her family friend Mabel Hampton (May 2, 1902 – October 26, 1989), then moved it to a brownstone in Park Slope, Brooklyn in 1992. Today its holdings include more than 20,000 books, 12,000 photographs, and 1,600 periodical titles.

 

1960, UK

The first public meeting of the Homosexual Law Reform Society is attended by more than 1,000 people.

 

1975

Robert Reed (October 19, 1932 – May 12, 1992), best known as Mike Brady on the sitcom The Brady Bunch, dies of AIDS-related causes. Reed was gay but kept this fact private, choosing to marry a woman instead. He feared news of his sexual orientation would damage his career. In July 1954, Reed married fellow Northwestern student Marilyn Rosenberger. The couple had one daughter, Karen, before divorcing in 1959. Shortly before his death, Reed appeared in the touring production of Love Letters opposite Betsy Palmer, and taught classes on Shakespeare at UCLA. He died on May 12, 1992 at Huntington Memorial Hospital in Pasadena, California, at age 59.

 

1982, Canada

Police once again raid The Body Politic, the country’s leading gay and lesbian newspaper, on charges of publishing allegedly obscene material.

 

1999

Billy Bean (born March 29, 1962), former outfielder and left-handed hitter for the Detroit Tigers, Los Angeles Dodgers, and San Diego Padres, becomes the second baseball player to publicly come out, three years after his retirement. As a closeted pro athlete, he struggled to juggle his secret and his career. He divorced his wife in 1993 and secretly moved in with his first lover. When his lover died of AIDS, Bean didn’t attend the funeral because he was too frightened that his secret would be revealed. Since 2014, he has served as Major League Baseball’s first Ambassador for Inclusion. He is currently a real estate agent in Miami.  Glenn Burke (November 16, 1952 – May 30, 1995) was the first baseball player to come out to his teammates and employers during his playing days, though Burke did not come out to the public at large until his career was over. Burke died from AIDS-related causes in 1995.

 

2013, Israel

Israel’s Supreme Court allows same-sex parental rights with a court order only, without the lengthy adoption process.

 

2017

Jon Penton-Robicheaux (1978 -May 12, 2017), the lead plaintiff in a case that challenged Louisiana’s ban on same-sex marriages, dies at a New Orleans hospice of liver failure after a battle with bacterial meningitis. He was 39. “Though Jon was a very beloved figure in the gay community, he was low-key. He wasn’t a big publicity person at all. But he is definitely part of history now,” said Frank Perez, a tour guide and chronicler of the city’s gay history. His husband, Derek Penton-Robicheaux, was by his side. Together they founded the nonprofit called Louisiana Equality Foundation to further their gay-advocacy work.

 

2018

Raquel Pennington (born September 5, 1988) faced Amanda Nunes (born May 30, 1988) on May 12, 2018 at UFC 224 in a UFC Women’s Bantamweight Championship bout. Pennington lost the fight via TKO in the fifth round. This was the first event in UFC history to be headlined by two openly gay fighters. Nunes is a Brazilian mixed martial artist who currently fights for the Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC) where she is the reigning champion in both the women’s Bantam weight and Featherweight divisions. Pennington (born September 5, 1988) is an American mixed martial artist who competes in Ultimate Fighting Championship women’s bantamweight division

 

May 13

 

1944

Novelist Armistead Maupin (born May 13, 1944) is born. Maupin is best known for his Tales of the City novels. Published by Harper Collins, Tales places Maupin’s gay characters within a large framework of humanity, creating a social history of San Francisco during the tumultuous decades of the 1970s and 1980s. Maupin is called the Charles Dickens of San Francisco. He is married to Christopher Turner, a website producer and photographer. Maupin’s life and work, and the settings and the themes therein, are the subject of the documentary The Untold Tales of Armistead Maupin.

 

1974

Time Magazine reports of “The New Bisexuals.” The magazine says “bisexuals, like homosexuals before them, are boldly coming out of their closets, forming clubs, having parties and stalking out discotheques.” The article cites Kinsey and feminism as causes for the rise in visibility.

 

1976, Canada

Montreal police raid gay clubs including the Taureau d’Or, Studio One, the Stork Club, the Crystal Baths, and Jilly’s, a lesbian bar.

 

1979, Canada

In London, Ontario, the Ontario division of Canadian Union of Public Employees, at its annual conference, opposes discrimination on basis of sexual orientation and urges local affiliates to include it in non-discrimination clauses of collective agreements.

 

2013

Sex-sex marriage is legalized in Minnesota becoming the twelfth state to do so.

 

May 14

 

1868, Germany

Magnus Hirschfeld (14 May 1868 – 14 May 1935) is born. He was a German Jewish physician and sexologist educated primarily in Germany though he based his practice in Berlin-Charlottenburg. An outspoken advocate for sexual minorities, Hirschfeld founded the Scientific-Humanitarian Committee, the first group to advocate for homosexual and transgender rights. On his 67th birthday, May 14, 1935, Hirschfeld died of a heart attack in his apartment at the Gloria Mansions I building at 63 Promenade des Anglais in Nice. The German Society for Social-Scientific Sexuality Research established the Magnus Hirschfeld Medal in 1990. The Society awards the Medal in two categories, contributions to sexual research and contributions to sexual reform.

 

1881

Julian Eltinge (May 14, 1881 – March 7, 1941) is born.  He was an American stage and screen actor and female impersonator. After appearing in the Boston Cadets Revue at the age of ten in feminine garb, Eltinge made his first appearance on Broadway in 1904. As his star began to rise, he appeared in vaudeville and toured Europe and the United States, even giving a command performance before King Edward VII. Eltinge appeared in a series of musical comedies written specifically for his talents starting in 1910 with The Fascinating Widow, returning to vaudeville in 1918. In 1917 he appeared in his first feature film, The Countess Charming. By the time Eltinge arrived in Hollywood, he was considered one of the highest paid actors on the American stage. Aside from the graceful femininity he exhibited onstage, Eltinge used a super-masculine facade in public to combat the rumors of his homosexuality. But with the arrival of the Great Depression and the death of vaudeville, Eltinge’s star began to fade. He continued his show in nightclubs but found little success. On February 25, 1941, Eltinge fell ill while performing at Billy Rose’s Diamond Horseshoe nightclub. He was taken home and died in his apartment ten days later on March 7th. He leaves a legacy as one of the greatest female impersonators of the 20th century.

 

1897, Germany

Scientific-Humanitarian Committee, the first-ever gay rights organization, was formed in Berlin by Magnus Hirschfeld (14 May 1868 – 14 May 1935) to campaign for social recognition of gay, bisexual and transgender men and women, and to fight for the repeal of the anti-gay law called Paragraph 175 which allowed their legal persecution.

 

1910, Germany

In Berlin, Magnus Hirschfeld (14 May 1868 – 14 May 1935) publishes his ground-breaking study of gender variant people Die Transvestiten, a title which literally translates as ‘The Transvestites.’ The term is used by Hirschfeld to denote a much wider understanding of sexual and gender variation than the cross-dressing which the term often implies today.

 

1919, Germany

In Berlin, Dr. Magnus Hirschfeld (May, 14 1868 – May, 14 1935) co-founds the Institut f√ºr Sexualwissenschaft (Institute for Sex Research), a pioneering private research institute and counseling office. On July 20, 1932, the Chancellor Franz von Papen carried out a coup that deposed the Braun government in Prussia and appointed himself the Reich commissioner for the state. A conservative Catholic who had long been a vocal critic of homosexuality, Papen ordered the Prussian police to start enforcing the anti-gay Paragraph 175 and to crack down in general on “sexual immorality” in Prussia. The Institut f√ºr Sexualwissenschaft remained open, but under Papen’s rule, the police began to harass people associated with it. On January 30, 1933, President Paul von Hindenburg appointed Adolf Hitler as chancellor. Less than four months after the Nazis took power, Hirschfeld’s Institute was ransacked. On the morning of May 6th, a group of university students belonging to the National Socialist Student League stormed into the institution, shouting “Brenne Hirschfeld!” (“Burn Hirschfeld!”) and began to beat up the staff and smash up the premises. That afternoon, the SA came to the institute, carrying out a more systematic attack, removing all volumes from the library for a book-burning event four days later. In the evening, the Berlin police arrived to announce that the institution was now closed forever. Its library of thousands of books was destroyed by the Nazis.

 

1930

Mar√≠a Irene Forn√©s (born May 14, 1930) is born. She is a Cuban-American avant garde playwright and director who was a leading figure of the Off-Off-Broadway movement in the 1960s. Always an iconoclast, each of Forn√©s’ plays was its own world, all vastly different from each other. Whereas contemporary playwrights developed a signature style, the critical factor identifying a Forn√©s play is not tone or structure, but an intense, relentless and compassionate examination of the human condition-especially the way intimate personal relationships are impacted and infected by economic conditions. In 1959, Forn√©s met the writer Susan Sontag (January 16, 1933 – December 28, 2004) at a party and began a relationship that lasted several years. It was while Forn√©s was with Sontag that she began to write plays.

 

1969, Canada

Canada decriminalizes homosexual acts between consenting adults with the passage of the Criminal Law Amendment Act, 1968-69.

 

1970

American Psychiatric Association meeting in New York City includes a presentation advocating the use of electro-convulsive therapy as a “cure” for homosexuality. Three years later it rules that homosexuality is not an illness. The Gay Liberation Front activists ZAP a special session of the American Psychiatric Association dealing with “sex problems.” The activists protest an Australian doctor’s paper on the use of electroshock aversion therapy to “treat” homosexuality.

 

1974

U.S. Congress members Bella Abzug and Ed Koch introduce the first national gay civil rights bill, the predecessor to the Employment Non-Discrimination Act. The Equality Act of 1974 would have amended the 1964 Civil Rights Act by adding “sexual orientation” to the list of protected from discrimination. As of the date of this publication in 2021, it has yet to pass though was re-introduced to Congress on February 17, 2021.

 

1976, Canada

Montreal police raid Montreal’s Neptune Sauna and arrest nineteen men, charging them with being “found-ins” in common bawdyhouse.

 

1981

The Reagan administration cancels the White House subscription to The Advocate.

 

1983

Serial killer Randy Kraft is arrested. He is known as “the Scorecard Killer” and “the Freeway Killer.” Kraft is described as one of the “deadliest and most depraved serial killers” in the California’s history, He murdered 61 young men before being caught on this day. He is currently on death row in California.

 

1996

Blake Brockington (May 14, 1996- March 23, 2015) was an American transman whose suicide attracted international attention. He had previously received attention as the first openly transgender high school homecoming king in North Carolina, and had since been advocating for LGBT youth, the transgender community, and against police brutality. Brockington was enrolled at University of North Carolina at Charlotte, majoring in music education. At the time of his death, he was on medical leave and not attending classes. He stated that his plans were to become a band director and composer. Brockington died on March 23, 2015 after being struck by several vehicles on the outer loop of Interstate 485 near Pavilion Boulevard in Charlotte. The incident was considered a suicide and similar in nature to the suicides of Ash Haffner (1999-Feb. 26, 2015) and Leelah Alcorn (November 15, 1997 – December 28, 2014).

 

2013, Brazil

The National Council of Justice rules 4-1 to allow same-sex marriage nationally.

 

May 15

 

1855

Walt Whitman (May 31, 1819 – March 26, 1892) registers Leaves of Grass with the U.S. Copyright agency. The collection is considered an expression of homosexuality and leads to years of controversy.

 

1871, Germany

Paragraph 175 is added to the German Criminal Code. It made homosexual acts between males a crime. The Nazis broadened the law in 1935 and gay men were forced to wear a pink triangle to indicate their homosexuality. In the prosecutions that followed, thousands died in Nazi concentration camps. It was repealed on March 10, 1994.

 

1969, Canada

The House of Commons votes to decriminalize private same-sex acts between consenting adults. The new law goes into effect in August.

 

1977

CBS’ 60 Minutes broadcasts a segment on child pornography, concentrating on “adult homosexuals who prey on small boys.” As a result, teenagers from a conservative New York Catholic high school go on a bashing spree, beating one victim to death. They are later sentenced to 35 and 40 years in prison.

 

1979, Canada

Teacher Don Jones is dismissed by the Smeaton, Saskatchewan school board because of a complaint that he is gay.

 

1981

In the midst of Lesbian/Gay Awareness Week at the University of Florida, a fraternity-circulated petition asserting, “Homosexuals need bullets-not acceptance” draws the signatures of almost fifty people. “We don’t have anything else to do,” says one of the petition’s organizers. “We’re just out here having a good time. I don’t believe in queers.”

 

1988

Having tied up, tortured, and robbed one gay man the night before, two Hartford, Connecticut, teenagers – Sean Burke and Marcos Perez – bludgeon Richard Reihl to death. Despite attempts by the defense to portray the two teenaged assailants as star athletes and “All-American boys” who deserve leniency and compassion, a judge sentences them to forty and thirty-five years in prison, respectively, for the killing.

 

1990

Stella Maynes Maxwell (born 15 May 1990) is a British fashion model. She is a New Zealander model known for being a Victoria’s Secret Angel and the face of Max Factor. Since late 2016, she has been dating actress Kristen Stewart (born April 9, 1990).

 

1996

The Episcopal Church court rules that there is no “core doctrine” against ordaining a gay man as a deacon, the clergy rank below that of priest.

 

2008

The California Supreme Court rules that same-sex couples have a constitutional right to marry. By November 3rd, 2008, more than 18,000 same-sex couples have married. On November 4, California voters approve a ban on same-sex marriage called Proposition 8.

  

2010, Greenland

The country’s first LGBT Pride parade takes place. It’s the second largest public gathering in Greenland with over 2% of the country’s population attending.

 

2013

Dr. Saul Levin was named the new chief executive officer and medical director of the American Psychiatric Association, making him the first known openly gay person to head the APA. Levin was born in South Africa and received his medical degree from the University of the Witwatersrand in 1982. He then moved to the United States to complete a residency in psychiatry at UC Davis Medical Center. He completed a master’s degree in public administration at the John F. Kennedy School of Government of Harvard University in 1994.

 

May 16

 

218, Italy

Elagabalus (203 – 11 March 222) is declared the 25th emperor of the Roman Empire. He was married to five women and a male athlete named Zoticus whom he wed in a public ceremony. However, his most stable relationship seems to have been with his chariot driver, a blond enslaved man from Caria named Hierocles to whom he referred as his husband. Herodian commented that Elagabalus enhanced his natural good looks by the regular application of cosmetics. He was described as having been “delighted to be called the mistress, the wife, the queen of Hierocles” and was reported to have offered vast sums of money to any physician who could equip him with female genitalia. Elagabalus has been characterized by some modern writers as transgender or transsexual. He was assassinated at the age of 18.

 

1919

Liberace (May 16, 1919 – February 4, 1987) is born Walter Valentino Liberace. For decades, he was known for his flamboyant gender bending style, his music, candelabra, charisma, rhinestones and dazzle. Pianist and entertainer, Liberace enjoyed a career spanning four decades of concerts, recordings, television, motion pictures, and endorsements. At the height of his fame, from the 1950s to the 1970s, Liberace was the highest-paid entertainer in the world, with established concert residencies in Las Vegas and an international touring schedule. Liberace embraced a lifestyle of flamboyant excess both on and off stage, acquiring the nickname “Mr. Showmanship”. Liberace always denied he was gay. In 1982, Scott Thorson, Liberace’s 22-year-old former chauffeur and live-in lover of five years, sued the pianist for $113 million in palimony after he was let go by Liberace. In a 2011 interview, actress and close friend Betty White stated that Liberace was indeed gay and that she was often used as a beard by his managers to counter public rumors of the musician’s homosexuality. Liberace died as a result of AIDS on February 4, 1987, at his retreat home in Palm Springs, California. He was 67 years old.

 

1929

Adrienne Rich (May 16, 1929 – March 27, 2012) was an American poet, essayist and radical feminist. She was called “one of the most widely read and influential poets of the second half of the 20th century,” and was credited with bringing “the oppression of women and lesbians to the forefront of poetic discourse.” In 1976, Rich began her partnership with Jamaican-born novelist and editor Michelle Cliff (2 November 1946 – 12 June 2016) which lasted until her death. In her controversial work Of Woman Born: Motherhood as Experience and Institution, published the same year, Rich acknowledged that, for her, lesbianism was a political as well as a personal issue, writing, “The suppressed lesbian I had been carrying in me since adolescence began to stretch her limbs.”

 

1981

The Fifth BiNational Lesbian Conference in Vancouver draws women from across Canada and organizes the first known lesbian pride march in the world.

 

1987

HIV-Positive people are banned from entering the United States by the U.S. Public Health Service. President Barack Obama lifts the ban in 2009.

 

1991, Bahamas

Same-sex sexual activity is legalized in the Bahamas.

 

2005, Hong Kong

The First Gay Pride Parade in Hong Kong takes place.

 

2007, Baltic Region

Pride events in the Baltic region faced threats of violence and attempts to be banned by local authorities. In 2006, an LGBT Pride march in Riga was banned because of security threats against the participants. On this day in 2007, the Pride march was allowed to go ahead but inside an enclosed park. Outside of the park, crowds of counter-demonstrators shouted abuses at the Pride marchers and threw two devices which exploded in the park. Amnesty International has been supporting Pride events in the Baltic region through campaigning, participation and monitoring since 2008.

 

2013, Puerto Rico

Senate approves a non-discrimination bill 15-11.

 

2019

The film Rocketman premiered on this day. It was the first major film to show gay male sex onscreen. Rocketman is an epic musical fantasy about the incredible human story of Elton John’s breakthrough years. The film follows the fantastical journey of transformation from shy piano prodigy Reginald Dwight into international superstar Elton John. This inspirational story, set to Elton John’s most beloved songs and performed by Taron Egerton, tells the universally relatable story of how a small-town boy became one of the most iconic figures in pop culture.

 

2020

The Pulse Nightclub Massacre memorial mural on the walls of the local LGBT Center in Orlando, FL community is vandalized and is likely the work of the white supremacists group The Patriot Front. The Patriot Front is identified by the Southern Poverty Law Center as a “white nationalist hate group.” Orlando Weekly also reported that The Center’s phone lines had been cut. On June 12, 2016, Omar Mateen opened fire at Pulse Nightclub leaving 49 dead and 53 injured. He later pledged allegiance to ISIS, saying that the shooting was motivated by Islamic extremism.

May 17

International Day Against Homophobia, Transphobia, and Biphobia

 

1606, Russia

Tsar Pseudo-Demetrius I is the Czar of Russia from June 10, 1605 until his death on May 17, 1606 when he is killed by a mob that stormed the Kremlin. His mutilated body was displayed next to his lover Petr Basmanov.

 

1866, France

Composer Erik Satie (17 May 1866 – 1 July 1925) is born in Honfleur, Calvados. Throughout his life he lived in a small Paris room. Dissatisfied with his compositions, he returned to school when he was forty to study music formally. Still his untutored works are among his most popular. An eccentric, Satie was introduced as a “gymnopedist” in 1887, shortly before writing his most famous compositions, the Gymnop√©dies. Satie’s behavior seemed to indicate that he was asexual; he tended to be dismissive when the topic of sexuality arose.

 

1929

Jill Johnston (May 17, 1929 – September 18, 2010) is born. She authored the book Lesbian Nation (1973). Johnston’s self-described “east west flower child beat hip psychedelic paradise now love peace do your own thing approach to the revolution” (as she called it in Lesbian Nation) often confounded her feminist allies as much as it did the conservative foes of gay and lesbian liberation. In 1973, she predicted “an end to the catastrophic brotherhood and a return to the former glory and wise equanimity of the matriarchies.” In 1977, Johnson became an associate of the Women’s Institute for Freedom of the Press (WIFP), an American nonprofit publishing organization. In 1993, in Denmark, she married Ingrid Nyeboe. The couple married again, in Connecticut, in 2009. On September 10, 2010, Johnston suffered a stroke in Hartford, Connecticut, and died. She was 81.

1972

John Waters’ Pink Flamingos opens starring DIVINE!

 

1978

The Toronto Board of Education committee rehires John Argue as swimming instructor, overruling the principal of his school. Argue had been fired because he was gay.

 

1990, Switzerland

Homosexuality is removed from the list of mental illnesses by the World Health Organization, declaring this day the International Day Against Homophobia and Transphobia and Biphobia (IDAHO).  WHO established the IDAHO Committee to coordinate grass-roots actions in different countries, to promote the day and to lobby for official recognition on May 17th. The date was chosen to commemorate the decision to remove homosexuality from the International Classification of Diseases of the World Health Organization(WHO) in 1990. For a long time in Germany, May 17th had been unofficially labelled as a sort of “Gay Day.” Written in the date format 17.5, it had a natural affinity with the anti-gay Paragraph 175. The main purpose of the May 17 mobilizations is to raise awareness of violence, discrimination, and repression of LGBT communities worldwide, which in turn provides an opportunity to take action and engage in dialogue with the media, policymakers, public opinion, and wider civil society.

 

1990

Queer Nation’s name is officially adopted, reclaiming the word queer. Queer Nation is an LGBTQ activist organization founded in March 1990 in New York City  by HIV/AIDS activists from ACT UP. The four founders were outraged at the escalation of anti-gay and lesbian violence on the streets and prejudice in the arts and media. The group is known for its confrontational tactics, its slogans, and the practice of outing. The direct-action group’s inaugural action took place at Flutie’s Bar, a straight hangout at the South Street Sea Port on April 13, 1990. Queer Nation Chicago was inducted into the Chicago Gay and Lesbian Hall of Fame in 1995.

 

1992, Switzerland

Voters approve a wide-ranging reform of the country’s laws, including the deletion of all discriminatory language related to homosexuality, with 73 percent voting in favor.

 

1995

The first Lavender Graduation took place at the University of Michigan, with three graduates. Lavender Graduation is an annual ceremony conducted on numerous campuses to honor lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and ally students and to acknowledge their achievements and contributions to the University. The Lavender Graduation ceremony was created by Dr. Ronni Sanlo, a Jewish Lesbian, who was denied the opportunity to attend the graduations of her biological children because of her sexual orientation.  It was through this experience that she came to understand the pain felt by her students.  Encouraged by Dr. Royster Harper, the Dean of Students at the University of Michigan, Dr. Sanlo designed the first Lavender Graduation in 1995. The first Lavender Graduate was Ryan Bradley. Lavender Graduation is a cultural celebration that recognizes LGBT students of all races and ethnicities and acknowledges their achievements and contributions to the university. Through such recognition LGBT students may leave the university with a positive last experience of the institution thereby encouraging them to become involved as mentors for current students as well as financially contributing alumni.

 

2004

Massachusetts legalizes same-sex marriage, becoming the first U.S. state to do so after the state Supreme Court ruled that the ban on same-sex marriage was unconstitutional. Marcia Hams and Sue Shepard are the first same-sex couple to marry. Robyn Ochs (born 1958) and her long-time partner Peg Preble were also among the first same-sex couples to get legally married that day.

 

2005, Mauritius

The Rainbow Collective is founded, working against homophobia.

 

2009, Russia

A rainbow flash mob happens in St. Petersburg. It is the largest LGBT demonstration in Russia with about 250 people. Nobody was arrested.

 

2009

Annise Parker (born May 17, 1956) was elected mayor of Houston, making her the first LGBT mayor of a U.S. city with a population over 1 million. She is an American politician who served as the 61st Mayor of Houston, Texas, from 2010 until 2016. She also served as an at-large member of the Houston City Council from 1998 to 2003 and city controller from 2004 to 2010. Parker was Houston’s second female mayor (after Kathy Whitmire), and one of the first openly gay mayors of a major U.S. city. Houston is the most populous U.S. city to elect an openly gay mayor. Parker and her partner, Kathy Hubbard, have been together since 1990. On January 16, 2014, Parker and Hubbard were married in Palm Springs, California. They have three foster children together as well as a then-teenage boy who they offered a home and who they consider their son.

 

2016

The Senate confirms Eric Fanning  (born July 2, 1968) to be secretary of the Army, making him the first openly gay secretary of a U.S. military branch. Fanning previously served as Defense Secretary Ash Carter’s chief of staff and also served as undersecretary of the Air Force and deputy undersecretary of the Navy. He was nominated by President Barack Obama and removed by President Donald Trump on Jan. 20, 2017.

May 18

 

1921

Patrick Dennis (May 18, 1921 – November 6, 1976), pseudonym of Edward Everett Tanner, the writer who created Auntie Mame, was born in Chicago. An out bisexual man, he is the only author to have had three novels on the New York Times best-seller list at the same time. Auntie Mame’s first edition spent 112 weeks on the bestseller list (for 8 weeks in 1956), selling more than 2,000,000 copies in five different languages. The manuscript was turned down by fifteen publishers before being accepted by Vanguard Press. Dennis also wrote several novels under the pseudonym Virginia Rowans. On December 30, 1948, Dennis married Louise Stickney, with whom he had two children. He led a double life as a conventional husband and father, and as a bisexual in later life becoming a well-known participant in Greenwich Village’s gay scene.

 

1969

Fight Repression of Erotic Expression (FREE), later to be called the Queer Student Cultural Center, is formed at the University of Minnesota. In 1971, an original officer of FREE, Jack Baker, was the first openly gay man elected student body president at a major university. By winning this election he became the first openly gay man to win any public office in the U.S. In 1970, Jack Baker and Mike McConnell also became the first gay couple to seek legal marriage and were featured in Life magazine. Jack was also re-elected in 1972. FREE pressed for equality and crafted a new University policy. The Administrative Committee approved a final draft 22 May 1972. Complaints could now be filed with the Campus Committee on Placement Services for discrimination by employers recruiting on campus. When challenged, Honeywell admitted that its objection to known homosexuals “still holds.” Facing expulsion from University facilities, Honeywell “quietly reversed its hiring policy”. No longer would it refuse to employ people because they are gay. FREE is the second such organization in the United States, following the Student Homophile League recognized by Columbia University in 1967.

 

1970

Jack Baker and Mike McConnell file for a marriage license in Minnesota. The clerk of the Hennepin County District Court, Gerald Nelson, said he had “no intention of issuing a marriage license,” because it would “result in an undermining and destruction of the entire legal concept of our family structure in all areas of law.” In mid-August 1971, Baker and McConnell took up residence in Blue Earth County and applied to the District Court in Mankato for a license to marry which was granted once the waiting period expired. Rev. Roger Lynn, a Methodist minister, solemnized their marriage on September 3rd. They were the first legally married couple and remain together to this day.

 

1974, Canada

The first prairie conference of gay organizations is hosted by Saskatoon Gay Action.

 

1978, Canada

In Toronto, the second annual conference of MCC (Metropolitan Community Church) in Canada sees the election of a new Canadian coordinator and installation of Rev. Brent Hawkes  (born June 2, 1950) as pastor of MCC Toronto.

 

1981

Lawrence D. Mass, MD (born June 11, 1946) is the first person to report about AIDS. Many believe that June 5, 1981 is the date of the first published report on the new disease which would later become known as AIDS, when the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention published a notice concerning five previously healthy gay men in Los Angeles who died from rare infections which were normally easily curable. But the first published report actually appeared in the New York Native, a gay newspaper, three weeks earlier, on page seven. Dr. Mass went on the help found the Gay Men’s Health Crisis, and was the principal author of the organization’s Medical Answers about AIDS through four revisions spanning ten years. Dr. Mass still works as a physician in New York City, where he resides with his life partner, writer and activist Arnie Kantrowitz (born November 26, 1940). Arnold (Arnie) Kantrowitz was an early secretary and vice-president of the pioneering New York City Gay Activists Allianceand is a co-founder of Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation(GLAAD). He is the author of Under the Rainbow: Growing Up Gay, one of the first autobiographies by a gay activist. From 1999 until his 2004 retirement, Kantrowitz was chair of the English department at the College of Staten Island, where he taught for 41 years. The personal papers of Kantrowitz and Mass are designated for deposit with the New York Public Library.

 

1987

Mondaire Jones (born May 18, 1987) is an American attorney and politician serving as the U.S. representative for New York’s 17th congressional district since 2021. The district includes most of central and northwestern Westchester County and all of Rockland County. A member of the Democratic Party, he and Ritchie Torres are the first openly gay Black members of Congress

 

2006, Belgium

The Belgium Parliament votes to allow same-sex couples to adopt children.

 

2021

Jonathan Ned Katz’ (born 1938) new book The Daring Life and Dangerous Times of Eve Adams, is released. Eve Adams was a rebel. Born Chawa Zloczewer into a Jewish family in Poland, Adams emigrated to the United States in 1912. The young woman befriended anarchists, sold radical publications, ran lesbian- and gay-friendly speakeasies in Chicago and New York, and took on her new name. Then, in 1925, Adams risked all to write and publish a book titled Lesbian Love, presenting brief portraits of two-dozen women. In a repressive era, Adams’s bold activism caught the attention of the young J. Edgar Hoover and the U.S. Bureau of Investigation, leading to her surveillance and arrest. In a case that pitted immigration officials, the New York City police, and a biased informer against her, Adams was convicted of publishing an obscene book and of attempted sex with a policewoman sent to entrap her. Adams was jailed and deported back to Europe, ultimately murdered by Nazis in Auschwitz. In The Daring Life and Dangerous Times of Eve Adams, historian Jonathan Ned Katz has recovered the extraordinary story of an early, daring activist. Drawing on startling evidence, carefully distinguishing fact from fiction, Katz presents the first biography of Adams, and his publisher reprints the long-lost text of Adams’s rare, unique book Lesbian Love.

 

May 19

 

1897, UK

Oscar Wilde (16 October 1854 – 30 November 1900) is released from prison. A short time later, he leaves England to spend the remaining three years of his life in self-imposed exile in France and Italy.

 

1891

John Vernou Bouvier III (May 19, 1891 – August 3, 1957), father of Jackie Bouvier Kennedy Onassis, was born in New York City. Though a well-known womanizer, he was also known for his man-izer within some circles. A noted narcissist, his Manhattan apartment was covered wall to wall with pictures of himself. Among his lovers was composer Cole Porter (June 9, 1891 – October 15, 1964).

 

1923, UK

Peter Wildeblood (19 May 1923 – 14 November 1999) is born. He was an Anglo-Canadian journalist, novelist, playwright and gay rights campaigner. He was one of the first men in the UK to publicly declare his homosexuality. His lover was Edward McNally (born 1928).

 

1927

Wings, the first feature film with a male/male kiss, premieres‚Ķin Texas! The actors were Richard Arlen and Jack Powell. It is also the first film to win the Academy Award for Best Picture. It’s an American silent film set during the First World War, produced by Lucien Hubbard, directed by William A. Wellman.

 

1930

Lorraine Hansberry (May 19, 1930 – January 12, 1965) was an African American playwright and writer. Hansberry was the first Black female author to have a play performed on Broadway. Her best known work, the play A Raisin in the Sun, highlights the lives of Black Americans living under racial segregation in Chicago. Hansberry’s family had struggled against segregation, challenging a restrictive covenant and eventually provoking the Supreme Court case Hansberry v. Lee. The title of the play was taken from the poem “Harlem” by Langston Hughes: “What happens to a dream deferred? Does it dry up like a raisin in the sun?” At the young age of 29, she won the New York’s Drama Critic’s Circle Award making her the first African American dramatist, the fifth woman, and the youngest playwright to do so. She was an activist for gay rights and wrote about feminism and homophobia, joining the Daughters of Bilitis and contributing two letters to their magazine, The Ladder, in 1957 under her initials “LHN.” She died in 1965.

1979

A Bi-national Lesbian Conference is held at University of Toronto.

 

2005

The U.S. Dept. of Health and Human Services officially recognizes May 19th as the National Asian and Pacific-Islander HIV/AIDS Awareness Day.

 

2006

U.S. District Judge Robin J. Cauthron rules that the state of Oklahoma must, under the full faith and credit clause of the U.S. Constitution, recognize the validity of adoptions approved by courts in other states, regardless of whether the adoptive parents are same-sex couples.

 

2009

Glee premiers on television featuring LGBT characters and themes.

 

2011

Rachel Isaacs is the first LGBT person to be ordained in the Jewish Conservative movement. She is now the rabbi of Congregation Beth Israel in Waterville, Maine, which is a Conservative synagogue as well as the Dorothy “Bibby” Levine Alfond Assistant Professor of Jewish Studies at Colby College. In 2014 Isaacs was named one of “America’s Most Inspiring Rabbis” by the Jewish Daily Forward. In 2016, she delivered the evening Hanukkah benediction at the White House

May 20

 

1782

On this day Deborah Sampson (December 27, 1760- April 29, 1827) enlisted as a Continental soldier using the name of her late brother, Robert Shurtliff Sampson, who also served. She was in the Light Infantry Company of the 4thMassachusetts Regiment. She is one of a small number of women with a documented record of military combat experience in that war, serving for months. She was wounded in 1782, and was honorably discharged at West Point, New York in 1783. In January 1792, Sampson petitioned the Massachusetts State Legislature for pay which the army had withheld from her because she was a woman. The legislature granted her petition and Governor John Hancock signed it. The legislature awarded her 34 pounds plus interest back to her discharge in 1783.In 1802, Sampson began giving lectures about her wartime service. She began by extolling the virtues of traditional gender roles for women, but toward the end of her presentation she left the stage, returned dressed in her army uniform. Sampson died of yellow fever at the aged 66 on April 29, 1827.

 

1936, Germany

The German actress Therese Giehse (March 6,1898 – March 3,1975) had been lovers with Erika Mann  (November 9, 1905 – August 27, 1969) in 1933. Born in Munich to German-Jewish parents, she first appeared on the stage in 1920. She became a major star on stage, in films, and in political cabaret. In the late 1920s through 1933, she was a leading actress at the famous Munich Kammerspiele. On 20 May 1936 she married the homosexual English writer John Hampson in order to obtain a British passport and thereby avoid capture by the Nazis. She returned to Germany after World War II and performed in theaters on both sides of the Iron Curtain, but mostly in her native Bavaria, until her death in 1975.

 

1974

Singer v. Hara was a lawsuit filed by John F. Singer (October 21, 1944 – June 5, 2000) and Paul Barwick (born 1946) after being refused a request for a marriage license at the King County Administration Building in Seattle, Washington on September 20, 1971. The suit ended with a unanimous rejection by the Washington State Court of Appeals

 

1979

The first Mr. International Leather contest is held. The winner is David Klos. International Mister Leather (IML) is an international, though largely American, conference and contest of leathermen held annually in May in Chicago, Illinois.

 

1996

In the case of Romer v. Evans, the United States Supreme Court decides that Colorado’s Amendment Two, denying gays and lesbians protections against discrimination, is unconstitutional, calling them “special rights.”

 

2008

Sam Adams (born September 3, 1963) is the first openly gay mayor of a major U.S. city, Portland, OR. He wins with 58% of the vote. Richard Heyman (c. 1935 – September 16, 1994) was the first openly gay person to be elected mayor of any city, in Key West in 1983, stepped down after serving a two-year term, then ran again and won in 1987.

 

2012, Ukraine

In Ukraine’s capital city, Kiev, rights activists planned that country’s first Pride march. Over 500 Neo-Nazi nationalists attacked and insured some of the marchers, in plain view of police officers merely watching. The march was cancelled.

 

2017, Bucharest

Some 1,000 people joined a gay pride march in the Romanian capital of Bucharest demanding greater rights amid government moves they say will curtail their rights. Some 30 ambassadors expressed support for the march and for protecting the rights of the LGBT community and U.S. Ambassador Hans G. Klemm was among those taking part, despite the pouring rain. The gay pride march, now in its 13th year in Romania, comes after lawmakers approved an initiative that could amend Romania’s constitution to explicitly state that marriage is a union between a man and woman. The wording now is a union between “spouses.” Romania decriminalized homosexuality in 2001.

 

May 21

 

1916

Harold Robbins (May 21, 1916 – October 14, 1997) is born in New York. His original name was Francis Kane. Robbins is the author of some of the best-selling blockbusters in publishing history. Dreams Die First, a novel featuring a bisexual hero, was considered a landmark at the time. 

 

1966

A coalition of homophile organizations across the country organize simultaneous demonstrations for Armed Forces Day. The Los Angeles group holds a 15-car motorcade which has been identified as the nation’s first gay pride parade, and activists picket in the other cities. The protest grew out of the first meeting of the organization that would become the North American Conference of Homophile Organizations. (The term homophile  emphasized love rather than sex and was in common use in the 1950s and 1960s by LGBT organizations and publications; the groups of this period are now known collectively as the homophile movement.)

 

1968

Ron Buckmire (born 1968) is born. Buckmire is a mathematician, a professor and a queer activist. He is the founder of the Queer Resources Directory, the largest and oldest website on gay/lesbian/bisexual/transgender/AIDS issues on the Internet. He was born on the Caribbean island nation of Grenada.

 

1969

The Committee for Homosexual Freedom pickets a Tower Records store in San Francisco for several weeks following the firing of Frank Denaro, believing him to be gay. Denaro was reinstated. The CHF ran similar pickets of Safeway stores, Macy’s and the Federal Building.

 

1969, South Africa

The Immorality Amendment Act of 1969 introduces Section 20A, the infamous “men at a party” clause, which criminalizes all sexual acts committed between men “at a party”, where “party” is defined as any occasion where more than two people are present. The amendment also raises the age of consent for male homosexual activity from 16 to 19, although “sodomy” and “unnatural acts” were already criminal.

 

1970

Bella Abzug becomes one of the first major U.S. politicians to openly court the gay vote as she addresses a meeting of the Gay Activists Alliance while running for Congress in New York City. She was one of the first members of Congress to support gay rights, introducing the first federal gay rights bill, known as the Equality Act of 1974, with fellow Democratic New York City Representative, Ed Koch, a future mayor of New York City.

 

1976

Candidate Jimmy Carter announces that if elected he will support and sign a federal civil rights bill outlawing discrimination against gays and lesbians. “I never knew of any word or action of Jesus Christ that discriminated against anyone,” Carter said. The Carter administration was in the midst of extensive meetings with the new National Gay Task Force (NGLTF), founded in 1973. The talks, initiated by Carter aide Midge Costanza (November 28, 1932 – March 23, 2010) and her Office of Public Liaison (OPL), sought to end antigay discrimination. An NGLTF negotiating team had been meeting with agencies like the FCC to persuade them that they could intervene against forms of discrimination that restricted gay and lesbian economic citizenship. They took the position that the Carter administration could open the door to equality by enforcing existing nondiscrimination policies that spoke to human rights principles already endorsed by the president. The group publicly suggested that an executive order establishing gay civil rights would be desirable, they accepted that the president had distanced himself from them as a constituency.

 

1977, Canada

The largest Canadian Gay Rights of Ontario demonstration to date converges on Queen’s Park (The Ontario Legislature) with civil rights demands. The Coalition for Gay Rights in Ontario presents the brief “The Homosexual Minority in Ontario” to the Ontario Human Rights Commission. The Canadian Human Rights Act, which created the Canadian Human Rights Commission, was finally passed on June 2, 1977, by the Federal Parliament; but homosexuals were not included.

 

1979

Dan White is found guilty of lesser charges (voluntary manslaughter) but acquitted on murder charges, stemming from his assassination of San Francisco Mayor George Moscone and Supervisor Harvey Milk (May 22, 1930 – November 27, 1978). Protests following the verdict turn into a riot with over 3,000 people. It became known as the White Night Riots. Dozens were hospitalized.

 

2013, Nepal

Cason Crane (born 1992) becomes the first openly gay man to summit Mt. Everest. He does it as part of his Rainbow Summit Project to raise awareness for the Trevor Project. In 2013, he became the first gay mountaineer to scale the Seven Summits.

2020

San Francisco’s oldest surviving gay bar, The Stud, which opened in 1966, is forced to close, becoming another victim of the COVID-19 pandemic. In November, 2020, Oil Can Harry’s in Los Angeles permanently closed as well.

May 22

 

1879, Russia

Alla Nazimova (May 22 , 1879 – July 13, 1945) was a Russian actress who immigrated to the United States in 1905. Nazimova openly conducted relationships with women, and her mansion on Hollywood’s Sunset Boulevard was believed to be the scene of outlandish parties. She is credited with having originated the phrase “sewing circle” as a discreet code for lesbian or bisexual actresses. From 1917 to 1922, Nazimova wielded considerable influence and power in Hollywood. Nazimova helped start the careers of both of Rudolph Valentino’s wives, actress Jean Acker (October 23, 1893 – August 16, 1978) and film costume and set designer Natacha Rambova (January 19, 1897 – June 5, 1966). Although she was involved in an affair with Acker, it is debated as to whether her connection with Rambova ever developed into a sexual affair. Nevertheless, there were rumors that Nazimova and Rambova were involved in a lesbian affair (they are discussed at length in Dark Lover, Emily Leider’s biography of Rudolph Valentino) but those rumors have never been definitely confirmed. She was very impressed by Rambova’s skills as an art director, and Rambova designed the innovative sets for Nazimova’s film productions of Camille and Salom√©. Of those Nazimova is confirmed to have been involved with romantically, the list includes actress Eva Le Gallienne (January 11, 1899 – June 3, 1991), director Dorothy Arzner (January 3, 1897 – October 1, 1979), writer Mercedes de Acosta (March 1, 1893 – May 9, 1968), and Oscar Wilde’s niece Dolly Wilde (July 11, 1895 – April 10, 1941). Magic realist artist and surrealist painter Bridget Bate Tichenor (November 22, 1917 – died on October 20, 1990) was also rumored to be one of Nazimova’s favored lovers in Hollywood during the World War II years of 1940 to 1942. The two had been introduced by the poet and art collector Edward James, and according to Tichenor, their intimate relationship angered Nazimova’s longtime companion actress Glesca Marshall (September 19, 1906 – August 21, 1987). However, the fact that Tichenor was pregnant most of 1940, giving birth to her son on Dec. 21, 1940, along with the 40-year age gap between the two women, casts some doubt on this rumor. Nazimova lived with Glesca Marshall from 1929 until her death in 1945. Glesca was also the longtime companion of Emily Woodruff, theatrical benefactor and main patron of the Springer Opera House in Columbus, Georgia. Marshall and Woodruff are buried together at Parkhill Cemetery, Columbus, Georgia.

 

1967

The U.S. Supreme Court’s decision in Clive Michael Boutilier v. the Immigration and Naturalization Service (1967) is handed. It is a long-forgotten ruling that upheld the deportation of a legal resident from Canada who was classified by the U.S. government as having a “mental or physical defect.” According to the INS’s Annual Report for 1967, the United States excluded or deported more than 100,000 people on this basis from 1892 to 1967, but this represented a small fraction of the total number of foreign “defectives” rejected by the United States for immigration, residency, and citizenship. U.S. immigration law barred the entry of “lunatics, idiots, epileptics, imbeciles, feeble-minded people, constitutional psychopathic inferiors, and anyone likely to become a public charge.” Physical “defects” that were grounds for exclusion and deportation included “arthritis, asthma, blindness, bunions, deafness, deformities, flat feet, heart disease, hernia, spinal curvature, and varicose veins.” Influenced by eugenics, nativism, and racism, policymakers were determined to promote their (limited) vision of national strength. “Sexual perversion” was the “critical consideration” for Boutilier. Guy Carleton Boutilier was a Canadian politician. Born in 1933, he had moved from Nova Scotia to New York in 1955. By the time he applied for U.S. citizenship in 1963, his mother and most of his siblings also lived in the United States and he was working as a building maintenance man; ironically, he had earlier worked as an attendant for a man who was mentally ill. Boutilier’s immigration troubles began when he noted on his citizenship application that in 1959 he had been arrested, but not convicted, on a sodomy charge in New York. This prompted an interrogation by the INS in which Boutilier revealed that he had engaged in sex with men and women before entering the United States and that he had continued to engage in same-sex sex with his partner Eugene O’Rourke and with other men, after moving to New York. Based on this information, the INS rejected his citizenship application and ordered him deported as a “psychopathic personality.” Boutilier’s lawyers, affiliated with the American Committee for the Protection of the Foreign Born, the American Civil Liberties Union, and the Homosexual Law Reform Society, challenged his deportation with multiple arguments. They submitted medical affidavits indicating that Boutilier was not a psychopathic personality. They raised procedural objections because the Public Health Service had not examined Boutilier. They offered expert testimony that challenged the government’s claim that homosexuality was psychopathic. They questioned whether the intent of Congress was to exclude and deport all homosexual aliens. They argued that even if it was, the law was unconstitutionally vague because the average person would not know that the government regarded homosexuality as evidence of psychopathic personality. The American Psychiatric Association declassified homosexuality as a mental illness in 1973, but Congress did not eliminate the “psychopathic personality” provision in U.S. immigration law until 1990. Boutilier died in a home for people with disabilities in 2003, two months before the U.S. Supreme Court overturned state sodomy laws in Lawrence v. Texas. 

 

1940

Mary Dispenza (born May 22, 1940) is born in Chicago. Sister (nun), teacher, principal and archdiocesan administrator, Mary became one of the highest ranking Roman Catholics ever to lose her job with the Church over her sexual orientation. A survivor of abuse at the hands of a priest,  Mary Dispenza is on a mission to protect children from harm and end abuse within the Catholic Church. Mary volunteers at Lambert House and for countless other Washington State LGBT community organizations. She is the author of SPLIT, her courageous memoir, which reveals the shocking story of her rape by the parish priest at seven years of age.

 

1954

Barbara May Cameron (May 22, 1954 – Feb. 12, 2002) was a photographer, poet, writer and a nationally recognized human rights activist in the fields of gay women, women’s rights and Native American rights. She was  a member of the Hunkpapa Lakota part of the Fort Yates band of the Standing Rock Nation in Fort Yates, North Dakota. Cameron was in a 21-year relationship with Linda Boyd, with whom she raised a son, Rhys Boyd-Farrell. Cameron co-founded the Gay American Indians (GAI) in 1975 with Randy Burns (born 1955), a Native Alaskan. GAI was the first gay Indian organization. The reason for founding GAI, according to Cameron, was that Native American gay people had different needs and struggles than the gay white community. Moreover, there was in general a lack of support for people of color within the Gay and Lesbian community. In 1978, she contributed to the anthology Our Right to Love: A Lesbian Resource Book.

 

2008

Democrat Maryland governor Martin O’Malley signs two bills into law legalizing same-sex domestic partnerships. Full same-sex marriage becomes legal on Jan. 1, 2013.

 

2009

Harvey Milk Day, organized by the Harvey Milk Foundation, is celebrated each year on May 22 in memory of Harvey Milk, a gay rights activist assassinated in 1978. The day was established by the California legislature and signed into law by Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger in 2009 after a series of petitions led by gay rights activist Daren I. Ball and in the wake of the award-winning feature film Milk retracing Milk’s life. It is recognized by California’s government as a day of special significance for public schools.

 

May 23

 

1791, France

France creates a new law system where rape is the only punishable sex crime. Sodomy, a former capital offense, is not included, leading France to be the first country to decriminalize sex between men.

 

1908, Switzerland

Annemarie Minna Ren√©e Schwarzenbach (23 May 1908 – 15 November 1942) is born. She was a Swiss writer, journalist, photographer and traveler. From an early age she began to dress and act like a boy, a behavior not discouraged by her parents, and which she retained all her life. In fact, in later life she was often mistaken for a young man. In 1930 she made contact with German actress Erika Mann (November 9, 1905 – August 27, 1969). She was fascinated by Erika’s charm and self-confidence. A relationship developed which, much to Annemarie’s disappointment, did not last long because Erika had her eye on another woman: the actress Therese Giehse (6 March 1898 – 3 March 1975). Erika and Annemarie always remained friends. In 1935 she returned to Persia where she married the French diplomat Achille-Claude Clarac (31 August 1903 – 11 January 1999), a gay man. They had known each other for only a few weeks, and it was a marriage of convenience for both of them, since she obtained a French diplomatic passport which enabled her to travel without restrictions. They lived together for a while in Teheran but when they fled to an isolated area in the countryside to escape the summer heat, their lonely existence had an adverse effect on Annemarie. She turned to morphine, which she had been using for years for various ailments, but to which she now became addicted. She is reported to have had affairs with the daughter of the Turkish Ambassador in Teheran and a female archaeologist in Turkmenistan.

 

1920

Harvard establishes a committee to investigate homosexual activity on campus. The tribunal becomes known as the Secret Court of 1920. Records of the tribunal are discovered in 2002. Many of those interrogated were never charged and have not been identified. In 2002, a researcher from The Crimson, the school’s undergraduate daily newspaper, came across a box of files labeled “Secret Court” in the University Archives. After a protracted campaign on the part of the paper’s staff, the university released five hundred documents relating to the Court’s work. An article by Amit R. Paley in The Crimson’s weekly magazine Fifteen Minutes reported the 1920 events on November 21, 2002.

 

1953

When the Mattachine Society reconvenes to approve a constitution, it refuses to seat delegates associated with the Communist Party, including Chuck Rowland (Aug. 24, 1917-Dec. 27, 1990), one of the original 1950 Mattachine founders. For the remainder of the decade, the society pursues a low profile, non-confrontational approach to winning societal acceptance of lesbians and gay men. Rowland founded Celebration Theatre in Los Angeles. The Mattachine Society, founded in 1950, was one of the earliest LGBT (gay rights) organizations in the United States, probably second only to the short-lived  Society for Human Rights in Chicago (1923). Communist and labor activist Harry Hay(April 7, 1912 – October 24, 2002)formed the group with a collection of male friends including Chuck Rowland in Los Angeles to protect and improve the rights of gay men. Branches formed in other cities and by 1961 the Society had splintered into regional groups. In 2002, Mattachine Midwest was inducted into the Chicago Gay and Lesbian Hall of Fame. A new Mattachine Society of Washington, D.C. was formed in 2011 and is dedicated to original archival research of LGBT political history.

 

1969

In this day’s issue of the American porno magazine Screw, a column appears by Jack Nichols and Lige Clarke using the term homophobia to refer to straight men’s fear that they might be gay. Screw is usually a straight man’s magazine. John Richard “Jack” Nichols Jr. (March 16, 1938 – May 2, 2005) was a gay rights activist who co-founded the Washington, D.C. branch of the Mattachine Society in 1961 with Franklin Kameny (May 21, 1925 – October 11, 2011). Nichols and his partner Lige Clarke (February 22, 1942 ‚àí February 10, 1975) began writing the column “The Homosexual Citizen” for Screw magazine in 1968. It was the first LGBT-interest column in a non-LGBT publication. As a result of this column, Nichols and Clarke became known as “The most famous gay couple in America.”

1973

Prescott Townsend (June 24, 1894 – May 23, 1973) was an American cultural leader and gay rights activist, from the 1930s through the early 1970s. In the 1950s, he held meetings at his home/bookstore which he described as “the first social discussion of homosexuality in Boston”. He founded a Boston chapter of the Mattachine Society though after the group grew, he was forced out. Townsend had been suffering from failing health brought on by Parkinson’s Disease.

 

2013

The Boy Scouts of America’s national council votes to remove the ban against gay scouts, causing conflict with some faith-based supporters. The policy for adult leaders remained in place until July 27, 2015.

 

May 24

Pansexual and Panromantic Awareness and Visibility Day

 

1610 – The Virginia Colony

The Virginia Colony passes the first anti-sodomy law of the American colonial period.

 

1919, Germany

The first gay feature film “Ander Als die Andern/Different from the Others” is screened for members of the press at the Apollo Theater in Berlin. The film is about a romantic relationship between two men and intended to educate viewers of the hardships faced by homosexuals under Germany’s recently enacted anti-sodomy laws. It starred Conrad Veidtand Reinhold Sch√ºnzel. It was co-written by Richard Oswald and Dr. Magnus Hirschfeld (14 May 1868 – 14 May 1935) who also had a small part in the film and partially funded the production through his Institute for Sexual Science, with the aim of presenting the story as a polemic against the then-current laws under Germany’s Paragraph 175, which made homosexuality a criminal offense. The film was banned across Germany in 1920.

 

1953

A Mattachine Society circular estimates total membership in the society at over 2,000. There are almost 100 different discussion groups meeting in California from San Diego to the Bay Area.

1974, Russia

From the USSR comes a rare public acknowledgment of the country’s repressive policies against gay men and lesbians. American news services report that noted film director Sergei Paradzhanov (January 9, 1924 – July 20, 1990) has been given six years’ hard labor for crimes including “partial homosexuality” and “incitement to suicide.” In 1948 he was convicted of homosexual acts which were illegal in the Soviet Union with an MGB officer named Nikolai Mikava in Tbilisi. He was sentenced to five years in prison but was released under an amnesty after three months. He is one of all estimated 1,000 persons arrested each year on charges related to homosexuality.

 

1976

Tales of the City column by Armistead Maupin (born May 13, 1944) first appears in the San Francisco Chronicle. The stories become a play and a book. It is among the first fiction works to address a disease that initially affected gay men (it would later be identified as AIDS), and feature many minority characters and homosexual relationships.

 

1988, UK

Section 28 is enacted. It states that local authorities “shall not intentionally promote homosexuality or publish material with the intention of promoting homosexuality,” or teach of the acceptance “of homosexuality as a pretended family relationship.” It was repealed on June 21, 2000 in Scotland by the Ethical Standards in Public Life etc. (Scotland) Act 2000, one of the first pieces of legislation enacted by the new Scottish Parliament, and on November 18, 2003 in the rest of the United Kingdom by section 122 of the Local Government Act 2003.

 

1993

Lesbian Roberta Achtenberg (born July 20, 1950) becomes Assistant Secretary of the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development(HUD). She is the first openly lesbian or gay public official in the United States whose appointment to a federal position was confirmed by the United States Senate.

May 25

 

1895, UK

Author Oscar Wilde (October 16, 1854 – November 30, 1900) is convicted of “gross indecency” and sentenced to two years’ hard labor in prison. Gross indecency is a crime under the Criminal Law Amendment Act of 1885, meaning homosexual acts not amounting to buggery. He was an Irish playwright, novelist, essayist, and poet. After writing in different forms throughout the 1880s, he became one of London’s most popular playwrights in the early 1890s. He is remembered for his epigrams, his novel The Picture of Dorian Gray, and his plays, as well as the circumstances of his imprisonment and early death. The international publicity given his trial brings awareness of the existence of homosexuality to a new high.

 

1939, UK

Sir Ian McKellen (born 25 May 1939) is an English actor. He is the recipient of six Laurence Olivier Awards, a Tony Award, a Golden Globe Award, a Screen Actors Guild Award, a BIF Award, two Saturn Awards, four Drama Desk Awards, and two Critics’ Choice Awards. He has also received two Oscar nominations, four BAFTA nominations and five Emmy Award nominations. He has been openly gay since 1988, and continues to be a champion for LGBT social movements worldwide. McKellen is a co-founder of Stonewall, an LGBT rights lobby group in the United Kingdom, named after the New York Stonewall riots. He was knighted in the 1991 New Year Honors for services to the performing arts, and made a Companion of Honor for services to drama and to equality in the 2008 New Year Honors.

 

1977

In a unanimous vote, the San Francisco school board decides to make information on lesbian and gay sexuality a part of the city schools’ sex education programs.

 

1977

The Everard Baths was a Turkish bath founded by financier James Everard in 1888 in a former church building at 28 West 28th Street. It operated from 1888 to 1986. Everard’s originally intended it to be for general health and fitness. But 30 years later that would change. On January 5, 1919, the New York Society for the Suppression of Vice encouraged a police raid in which the manager and nine customers were arrested for lewd behavior. It was raided again in 1920 with 15 arrests. On May 25, 1977, nine patrons (ages 17 to 40) were killed in a fire: seven from smoke inhalation, one from respiratory burns, and one who had jumped from an upper floor. Contributing factors were the deteriorating conditions and the lack of sprinklers. Firefighters said they were thwarted in rescue efforts by paneling covering the windows. Between 80 and 100 patrons left the building; the indefinite number was because the club did not have registration at the time. Most of the victims were identified by friends rather than family. Despite total destruction of the top two floors, the two floors were rebuilt, and the baths reopened. However, it was closed in April 1986 by New York City mayor Ed Koch during the city’s campaign to close such venues during the AIDS epidemic.

 

1978

The first “Gay Day” is held at Disneyland in Southern California. A group entity calling itself The Tavern Guild rented Disneyland for a private party. More than 15,000 people attended, making it the largest private party ever held at Disneyland. It represented one of the first times gay people congregated in these numbers outside a gay pride parade. The current “Gay Day” at Disney World in Orlando began in 1991 and is held on the first Sunday in June. The first documented event, in 1991, had 3,000 gays and lesbians from central Florida going to area theme parks on one day wearing red shirts to make their presence more visible.

 

May 26

 

1968

Transgender Kim Coco Iwamoto (born May 26, 1968) runs in Hawaii’s August 11, 2018, primary election as a Democratic candidate for Lieutenant Governor. Iwamoto has been recognized as an activist, editorialist, policymaker, advocate, and philanthropist, with recent positions including her role as a commissioner on the Hawaii Civil Rights Commission and as a member of the Hawaii Board of Education. Iwamoto was also recognized as a Champion of Change by President Barack Obama. She was elected as a member of the Hawaii Board of Education, making her at that time the highest ranking openly transgender elected official in the United States, as well as the first openly transgender official to win statewide office

 

1977

Officers of the National Gay (later: and Lesbian) Task Force Bruce Voeller (1934-Feb. 13, 1994) and Jean O’Leary  (March 4, 1948 – June 4, 2005) and other leaders including Pokey Anderson, Charles Brydon, Charlotte Bunch (born October 13, 1944), Frank Kameny (May 21, 1925 – October 11, 2011),  Cookie Lutkefedder, Mary Mendola, Elaine Noble (born January 22, 1944), Rev. Troy Perry (July 27, 1940), Betty Powell, George Raya (born April 23, 1949), Myra Riddell (1927 -Jan. 11, 2008), and Charlotte Spitzer meet with President Carter aide Midge Costanza  (November 28, 1932 – March 23, 2010). The meeting marks the first official discussion of gay and lesbian rights in the White House.

 

1988

Start of the first national HIV education campaign in the U.S. Surgeon General C. Everett Koop oversees the mailing of a booklet titled Understanding AIDS to all American households.

 

2009

The California Supreme Court upholds Prop 8 but legally recognizes 18,000 same-sex marriages that took place before its enactment.

 

2019, Kenya

The government of Kenya reaffirms imprisonment of 5 to 14 years of LGBT people. Nearly every country in Africa is vehemently anti-gay, some with calls for penalty of death. The exception is South Africa which has full inclusion of LGBT people.

 

2019

Daniel Atwood becomes the first openly gay Orthodox person to be ordained as a Rabbi. He was ordained by the respected Israeli Rabbi Daniel Landes, in Jerusalem.

 

May 27

 

1917, UK

Major Michael Augustus Lane-Fox Pitt-Rivers (27 May 1917 – December 1999) was a West Country landowner who gained notoriety in Britain in the 1950s when he was put on trial for buggery. This trial was instrumental in bringing public attention-and opposition-to the laws against homosexual acts as they then stood.

 

1919, Germany

Berlin doctor Magnus Hirschfeld (14 May 1868 Р14 May 1935) co-founds the Institut für Sexualwissenschaft (Institute for Sex Research), a pioneering private research institute and counseling office. Its library of thousands of books was destroyed by the Nazis in May of 1933.

 

1927

Lesbian author Marijane Meaker (born May 27, 1927 – 1995) is born. In 1952 she wrote Spring Fire, the first lesbian paperback novel which was the beginning of the lesbian pulp fiction genre. Her publisher made her change its ending from happy to tragic. The book sold 1.5 million copies. Marijane used the pseudonym Vin Packer among others. Using her own observations of lesbians, she wrote a series of nonfiction books about lesbians under the pen name Ann Aldrich from 1955 to 1972. She died in 1995. In 1972 she switched genres and pen names once more to begin writing for young adults, and became quite successful as M.E. Kerr, producing over 20 novels and winning multiple awards including the American Library Association’s lifetime award for young-adult literature, the ALA Margaret Edwards Award. She was described by The New York Times Book Review as “one of the grand masters of young adult fiction.” As Mary James, she wrote four books for younger children. Meaker was involved romantically with author Patricia Highsmith for two years. She wrote about this relationship in the 2003 nonfiction memoir Highsmith: A Romance of the 1950s, and discussed it and her own pulp fiction novels in interviews around the time of the book’s release. Meaker explained her reasons behind writing about their relationship: “I knew Pat when she was young and not yet so jaded and bigoted. The internet is filled with stories of her meanness, and prejudice, and also of her introversion, of her being a loner. I met that Pat many years after we broke up.” Meaker died in 1995.

 

1937

Approximately 200,000 bridge walkers attend the opening day of the Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco. The bridge was considered a symbol of the gay community.

 

1987

Lambda Book Report, the first periodical devoted exclusively to lesbian and gay literature, makes its debut.

 

1993, Russia

President Boris Yeltsin publishes a decree decriminalizing consensual adult male sodomy.

 

1994

Canadian Olympic pole vaulter and world champion Shawnacy “Shawn” Campbell Barber (born 27 May 1994) is born. He came out publicly on Face Book on April 24, 2017, when he wrote: “Gay and proud! Thank you to my parents for being such a great support. I continue to grow as a person and have a great support group. My parents are my greatest support and have helped me through a lot recently. To my friends, you are always my friends and I love you too!”

 

2006, Russia

First attempt at Moscow pride. The march accompanying a gay rights forum was banned. Some activists try to march despite the ban. Neo-Nazi groups and Orthodox protesters threaten the gay activists and beat the marchers. About 50 marchers and 20 protesters are arrested. In 2016, arrests took place during Moscow’s 10th Gay Pride Parade, an event that officials have banned every year of its existence. In previous years, police quickly dispersed the demonstrations, and again protesters were quickly arrested and hauled into waiting vans.

 

2018

Connie Kurtz (1936-May 27, 2018) died in West Palm Beach, Florida. Ruthie Berman (born 1934) and Connie Kurtz are American LGBT rights activists. As a couple, they successfully sued the New York City Board of Education for domestic partner benefits, winning such benefits for all New York City employees. Both women were born in Brooklyn, Berman in 1934 and Kurtz in 1936. They met in the late 1950s and became friends, both married to men and had children at the time. Kurtz moved to Israel with her family in 1970. When she returned to visit America in 1974, she and Ruthie fell in love. They divorced their husbands and became a couple. “Forty-two years we have been ‘significant others,’ we have been ‘life partners,’ we have been any name at the time fitting couples of the same sex,” Connie said. “We now are ‘spouses.’ ” They married on July 26, 2011 in New York City – two days after the state legalized same-sex marriage. Known in the gay world as “Ruthie and Connie,” they received the SAGE Pioneer Award in 2016, presented by Services & Advocacy For GLBT Elders, the country’s largest and oldest organization for LGBT seniors. The 2017 Ruthie and Connie LGBT Elder Americans Act was endorsed by SAGE USA, National Center for Transgender Equality, and National LGBTQ Task Force. In 2002 a documentary titled “Ruthie and Connie: Every Room in the House,”  directed by Deborah Dickson, was made about their lives.. The film premiered at the Berlin Film Festival in February 2002, and won six best documentary awards within a year.

May 28

 

1912

Joseph Israel Lobdell (December 2, 1890 – May 28, 1912) was a 19th-century transgender person who was assigned female at birth but lived as a man for sixty years. Author William Klaber wrote an historical novel The Rebellion of Miss Lucy Ann Lobdell which was based on Lobdell’s life. An 1883 account by P. M. Wise, which cast Lobdell as a “lesbian,” was the first use of that word in an American publication. Lobdell was born into to a working-class family Albany County, New York. Lobdell married George Washington Slater who was reportedly mentally abusive and abandoned Lobdell shortly after the birth of their daughter Helen. Lobdell was known for marksmanship and nicknamed “The Female Hunter of Delaware County, writing a memoir about hunting adventures, the disastrous marriage and feelings about God, ending with a plea for equal employment for women. Lobdell  became engaged to a young woman but a rival for her affection learned Lobdell was assigned female at birth and threatened to tar and feather him. Lobdell’s fianc√© warned him and he escaped. Lobdell married Marie Louise Perry in 1861 in Wayne County, Pennsylvania. They spent years roaming the woods together with their pet bear, living in nomadic poverty. They were arrested for vagrancy and sent to Stroudsburg jail where “discovery that the supposed man was a woman was made.” Lobdell was later arrested again for wearing male clothes. In 1879, Lobdell was taken to the Willard Insane Asylum in Ovid, New York where he became a patient of Dr. P.M. Wise, who published a brief article, “A Case of Sexual Perversion.” The doctor noted Lobdell said “she considered herself a man in all that the name implies.” Lobdell was presumed to have died on May 28, 1912, and is buried in the Binghamton State Hospital Cemetery.

 

1960

First U.S. public gathering of lesbians, at San Francisco’s Daughters of Bilitis national convention. Daughters of Bilitis formed in San Francisco in 1955 by Del Martin (May 5, 1921 – August 27, 2008) and Phyllis Lyon (November 10, 1924 – April 9, 2020) as a social alternative to lesbian bars which were subject to raids and police harassment. The DOB endured for 14 years as an educational resource for lesbians, gay men, researchers and mental health professionals. Bilitis is the name given to a fictional lesbian contemporary of Sappho by the French poet Pierre Lou√øs in his 1894 work The Songs of Bilitis in which Bilitis lives on the Isle of Lesbos alongside Sappho.

1987

Barney Frank (D. Mass) (born March 31, 1940) is the first U.S. Congressperson to come out. In July 2012, he married his long-time partner James Ready, becoming the first sitting member of Congress to marry someone of the same sex.

 

1989

The Leather Pride flag, designed by Tony DeBlase (1942-July 21, 2000), debuts at the International Mister Leather event in Chicago.

 

1990, Tallinn, Estonia

The Estonian Academy of Sciences History Institute sponsors the first international conference on homosexuality and other sexual minorities to be held in the USSR. Gay British historian Jeffrey Weeks (born 1945) and Dutch sociologist Gert Hekma are among the attendees.

 

1997, France

Ma Vie En Rose (My Life in Pink) is released, telling the story of a transgender child. The film was directed by Alain Berliner and depicts Ludovic’s family struggling to accept this transgressive gender expression. The film was selected as the Belgian entry for the Best Foreign Language Film at the 70th Academy Awards, but was not accepted as a nominee. In the United States the film received an R rating by the Motion Picture Association of America, an unusual decision because the film has minimal sexual content, minimal violence, and mild language. Those opposed to the rating believe that the rating was the result of transphobia. The film won the Golden Globe Award for Best Foreign Language Film as well as the Crystal Globe award at the Karlovy Vary International Film Festival.

 

1999

Yahoo! takes over GeoCities for $357 billion from GeoCities developer and openly gay man David Bohnett (born April 2, 1956). Bohnett launched NetZero, PlanetOut and other internet companies. In addition, he has donated computers and accompanying funds for college and university LGBT centers. The first campus David Bohnett Cyber Center was launched at UCLA in 2004.

 May 29

 

1947

Rev. Gene Robinson (born May 29, 1947) is a former bishop of the Episcopal Diocese of New Hampshire.  Robinson was elected bishop coadjutor in 2003 and succeeded as bishop diocesan in March 2004. Before becoming bishop, he served as Canon to the Ordinary for the Diocese of New Hampshire. Robinson is widely known for being the first priest in an openly gay relationship to be consecrated a bishop in a major Christian denomination believing in the historic episcopate, a matter of significant controversy. After his election, many theologically conservative Episcopalians in the United States abandoned the Episcopal Church, formed the Anglican Church in North America(ACNA) and aligned themselves with bishops outside the Episcopal Church in the United States, a process called the Anglican realignment. Rev. Robinson’s story has appeared in print and film. After resigning as bishop of New Hampshire in 2013, Robinson moved to Washington, D.C. to join the Center for American Progress as a senior fellow and serve as bishop-in-residence at St. Thomas’ Parish. In 2014, Robinson and his husband Mark Andrew divorced. In 2017, Robinson was named Vice-President and Senior Pastor of the Chautauqua Institution, a center for arts, education, recreation and religion in upstate New York. He was married to Isabella “Boo” Martin and has children and grandchildren. They divorced in 1986.

 

1961

Melissa Etheridge (born May 29, 1961) is born on this day. In 1993 she came out as a lesbian when she released what would become her mainstream breakthrough recording Yes I Am. Etheridge came out publicly at the Triangle Ball, a gay celebration of President Bill Clinton’s first inauguration. In October 2004, Etheridge was diagnosed with breast cancer. At the 2005 Grammy Awards (the same ceremony for which “Breathe” was nominated), she made a return to the stage and, although bald from chemotherapy, performed a tribute to Janis Joplin with the song “Piece of My Heart”. Etheridge has had relationships with filmmaker Julie Cypher with whom she has two children, actress Tammy Lynn Michaels with whom she has two children, and  actress Linda Wallem who she married on May 31, 2014 in San Ysidro Ranch in Montecito, California, two days after they both turned 53.

 

1965

Organized by the East Coast Homophile Organizations, seven men and three women picket the White House. It was the first of a series of pickets held throughout the summer, which also targeted the Civil Service Commission, the State Department and The Pentagon. Although the June 28, 1969, Stonewall riots are generally considered the starting point of the modern gay liberation movement, a number of demonstrations and actions took place before that date. A favorite technique of early activists was the picket line, especially for those actions organized by such Eastern groups as the Mattachine Society of New York, the Mattachine Society of Washington, Philadelphia’s Janus Society and the New York chapter of Daughters of Bilitis. These groups acted under the collective name East Coast Homophile Organizations or ECHO.

 

1987

U.S. Congressman Barney Frank (born March 31, 1940)(D., Massachusetts), publicly came out as gay after coming out to family, friends and close associates a few years prior, becoming the first sitting member of Congress to do so voluntarily.

 

2013

Robert Hampton “Robbie” Rogers III (born May 12, 1987) is an American professional soccer player.  On this day, he signed with the LA Galaxy, making him the first openly gay man to compete in a top North American professional sports league when he played his first match for the Galaxy. Rogers is the second male soccer player to come out worldwide. Britain’s soccer star Justin Fashanu (9 February 1961 – 2 May 1998) came out in 1990.

May 30

 

1431

Joan of Arc (Jan. 6, 1412-May 30, 1431) is burned at the stake for heresy, dying at nineteen years of age. She is considered a heroine of France for her role during the Lancastrian phase of the Hundred Years’ War and was canonized as a Roman Catholic saint. Over the years it has been suggested that her “crimes” included cross-dressing and inappropriate relationships with women. Around the age of 12 or 13, she began hearing voices and experiencing visions which she interpreted as signs from God. During her trial, she testified that angels and saints first told her merely to attend church and live piously; later, they began instructing her to deliver France from the invading English and establish Charles VII, the uncrowned heir to the French throne, as the country’s rightful king. Joan’s trial was described as so “unfair” that the trial transcripts were later used as evidence for canonizing her in the 20th century.

 

1593, UK

English poet and playwright Christopher Marlowe, (February 26, 1564 – May 30, 1593) is killed in a fight. Like William Shakespeare, Marlowe is occasionally claimed to have been gay. Others argue that the question of whether an Elizabethan was gay or homosexual in a modern sense is anachronistic. For the Elizabethans, what is often today termed homosexual or bisexual was more likely to be recognized as a sexual act rather than an exclusive sexual orientation and identity.

 

1926

Christine Jorgensen (May 30, 1926 – May 3, 1989) is born George William Jorgensen, Jr., the first American to undergo sexual reassignment surgery, in 1952, and becomes a champion for the rights and the dignity of transgender people. Shortly after graduating from high school in 1945, she was drafted into the U.S. Army for World War II. After her service she attended several schools, worked, and around this time heard about sex reassignment surgery. She traveled to Europe and in Copenhagen, Denmark, obtained special permission to undergo a series of operations starting in 1951.  She returned to the United States in the early 1950s. Her transition was the subject of a New York Daily News front-page story. She became an instant celebrity, using the platform to advocate for transgender people and became known for her directness and polished wit. She also worked as an actress and nightclub entertainer and recorded several songs. Jorgensen said in 1989, the year of her death, that she had given the sexual revolution a “good swift kick in the pants.” She died of bladder and lung cancer four weeks short of her 63rd birthday. Her ashes were scattered off Dana Point, California.

 

1950, France

Betrand Delanoë (born 30 May 1950) is a retired French politician who was mayor of Paris from March 25, 2001 to April 5, 2014. He is a member of the Socialist Party. Delanoë was one of the first major French politicians to announce that he was gay, during a 1998 television interview before being elected mayor.

 

1968

On Memorial Day of 1968, men and women gathered at the Griffith Park Merry-Go-Round for a “gay-in” to hear Mike Hannon, a policeman turned lawyer and Civil Rights activist, speak to the challenges of being gay in a homophobic society. Hannon, who was straight, expressed support for civil rights despite the given the leadership of the police department at the time. He showed that there was broad support to protect the rights of those who demonstrate in the streets. Hannon died at the age of 77 in 2014.

 

1977

In an essay in Newsweek, applauding the efforts of Anita Bryant in Florida, columnist George Will condemns gay rights ordinances as “part of the moral disarmament of society,” and predicts that if the current trend continues, homosexual marriages will soon flourish across the United States and gay people will be allowed to adopt children.

 

1980

After winning a landmark lawsuit suit against his high school, Aaron Fricke (born January 25, 1962) takes Paul Guilbert to his senior prom. The suit brought by Aaron Fricke against his school is considered a major milestone in the history of gay rights. Each year cases of young same-sex couples being discriminated against by their schools happen around the world, and when these cases are brought to court, the suit first brought by Aaron Fricke and Paul Guilbert is invariably cited by the plaintiff’s counsel. Aaron later wrote of his experience in a book, Reflections of a Rock Lobster: A Story about Growing Up Gay.  He later collaborated with his father, Walter Fricke, on a book about their relationship and of the elder Fricke’s coming to terms with his son’s homosexuality. That book, Sudden Strangers: The Story of a Gay Son and His Father, was published shortly after Walter Fricke’s death from cancer in 1989.

 

1980

Alaska state-wide human rights conference on sexual orientation is held, sponsored by the Alaska Women’s Resource Center. It lasts for three days and features a keynote by Miriam Ben-Shalom, (born May 3, 1948). Ben Shalom is an American educator, activist and former staff sergeant in the United States Army. After being discharged from the military for homosexuality in 1976, she successfully challenged her discharge in court and returned to military service in 1987, the first openly gay or lesbian person to be reinstated after being discharged under the military’s policy excluding homosexuals from military service. She served until 1990 when the Army succeeded in terminating her service after prolonged judicial proceedings.

 

1984

The U.S. Supreme Court strikes down a New York state law that prohibits loitering in a public place for the purposes of soliciting for or engaging in “gay sex.

 

1986

American fashion designer Perry Ellis (March 3, 1940 – May 30, 1986) dies of AIDS related diseases at the age of forty-six. In 1981, Ellis began a relationship with attorney Laughlin Barker (1948-Jan. 2, 1986). Later that year, Ellis appointed Barker as president of the licensing division of Perry Ellis International. They remained together until Barker’s death in January of 1986. Barker died of AIDS related diseases as the age of 37.  Ellis’ influence on the fashion industry has been called “a huge turning point” because he introduced new patterns and proportions to a market which was dominated by more traditional men’s clothing.

 

May 31

 

1819

Poet Walt Whitman (May 31, 1819 – March 26, 1892), author of Leaves of Grass, is born. He wrote of love between men, nearly thirty years before the word “homosexual” was coined. A humanist, he was a part of the transition between transcendentalism and realism, incorporating both views in his works. Whitman is among the most influential poets in the American canon, often called the father of free verse. His work was very controversial in its time, particularly his poetry collection Leaves of Grass, which was described as obscene for its overt sexuality.

 

1989, Spain

Pablo Albor√°n (born 31 May 1989) is a Spanish singer-songwriter who opened up about his sexuality for the first time in June 2020, telling fans that he is gay. One of Spain’s most successful pop acts, Albor√°n is known to audiences for his soaring ballads.

 

2011, Nepal

Nepal adds a third-gender option to the national census. It is an identity-based category for people who do not identify as either male or female, including those who present as a gender that is different than the one assigned to them at birth based on genitalia or other criteria. It also includes people who do not feel that their male or female gender roles match their true social, sexual, or gender role identity. In the case of Sunil Babu Pant and Others v. Nepal Government and Others, Supreme Court of Nepal (21 December 2007),the Blue Diamond Society, MITINI Nepal, Cruse AIDS Nepal, and Parichaya Nepal, all organizations representing lesbians, gays, and “people of the third gender,” filed a writ petition under Article 107(2) of the Interim Constitution of Nepal seeking recognition of transgender individuals as a third gender, prohibiting discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation and gender identity, and reparations by the State to victims of State violence and discrimination. India has used a third gender category in several administrative capacities, and in 2005, India’s third gender citizens could start registering for passports as eunuch, denoted by an “E.”

2012

Same-sex marriage is unanimously approved by the Conservative Jewish movement allowing U.S. rabbis to perform same-sex weddings. Two model wedding ceremonies are approved along with guidelines for same-sex divorce. Called the “Covenant of Loving Partners,” the Conservative same-sex marriage document bases the ceremonies on Jewish partnership law. In the covenant, the couple pledges to be faithful and a ring ceremony binds the pair.

 

2014, Cyprus

More than 3500 people march through the nation’s capital of Nicosia in the first Cypress pride parade as police blocked a small contingent of Eastern Orthodox Christian protesters from entering the celebration grounds. Homosexuality was decriminalized in most of Cyprus in 1998, though the jurisdiction of Northern Cyprus – formally known as the Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus – did not repeal its colonial-era law against consensual gay sex until January 27 of 2014, making it the last European jurisdiction to abandon such laws.