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Ronni Sanlo

Gay History

Published February 9, 2024

THIS DAY IN LGBTQ HISTORY – SEPTEMBER

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

  1. 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

  1. 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.

Published February 9, 2024

THIS DAY IN LGBTQ HISTORY – AUGUST

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.

Published February 9, 2024

THIS DAY IN LGBTQ HISTORY – JULY

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. 

Published February 8, 2024

THIS DAY IN LGBTQ HISTORY – MAY

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 – 14 May 1935) co-founds the Institut f√ºr 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.

Published February 8, 2024

THIS DAY IN LGBTQ HISTORY – APRIL

April 1

 

1896, Germany

The first issue of Der Eigene (Self-Ownership), an openly homosexual publication, appears from 1896 to 1932. Adolf Brand  (14 November 1874 – 2 February 1945) writes in this first issue: “This journal is dedicated to Eigen people, such people as are proud of their Eigenheit and wish to maintain it at any price.” Brand was a German writer, individualist anarchist, and pioneering campaigner for the acceptance of male bisexuality and homosexuality.

 

1930

The Motion Picture Producers and Distributors of America (MPPDA) introduces a self-regulatory code of movie ethics, discouraging filmmakers from including frank depictions of sex and sexuality. Nicknamed the Hays Code after the head of the MPPDA, former Republican National Committee chairman Will H. Hays, the regulations become mandatory on July 1, 1934.

 

1943, The Netherlands

Fifteen men including three gay men had attacked a Nazi-held building on March 27th. An unknown betrayer causes their arrest on this day. The leader of the group, Willem Arondeus (22 August 1894 – 1 July 1943), declares, “Let it be known that homosexuals are not cowards.” Arondeus 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 and other wanted by the Gestapo. Arondeus was caught and executed soon after his arrest.

 

1950

Bowing to McCarthy-era pressure from anti-Communist conservatives, the Civil Service Commission intensifies its efforts to locate and dismiss lesbians and gay men working in government. Over the next six months, 382 are fired, compared with 192 for the preceding two and a half years.

 

1970

The Advocate estimates that there are approximately 6,817,000 gays in the U.S.

 

1971, France

Police confiscate copies of Jean Paul Sartre’s newspaper Tout when it publishes an editorial advocating social acceptance of homosexuality, which was not criminalized in France.

 

1972

Delaware decriminalizes private consensual adult homosexual acts.

 

1973

Rachel Anne Maddow (born April 1, 1973) is an American television host and political commentator. Maddow hosts The Rachel Maddow Show, a nightly television show on MSNBC, and serves as the cable network’s special event co-anchor alongside Brian Williams. Her syndicated talk radio program of the same name aired on Air America Radio. Maddow holds a doctorate in politics from the University of Oxford, and is the first openly gay anchor to host a major prime-time news program in the United States. Maddow splits her time between Manhattan, New York and West Cummington, Massachusetts with her partner, artist Susan Mikula (born 1958).

 

1974

In Michigan, Kathy Kozachenko wins a seat on the Ann Arbor City Council. Though overlooked, she is the first openly lesbian or gay person elected to public office in the U.S. On the day after the election in 1974, The New York Times ran an article that ignored the election of Kozachenko and instead focused on the marijuana tax referendum. When listing the winning candidates, the Times depicted her as “a student at University of Michigan who described herself as a lesbian.” Kozachenko ran on the ticket of the local, progressive Human Rights Party (HRP) which had already succeeded in winning two Ann Arbor council seats in 1972.

 

1975

Mandate, an openly gay nudie magazine, makes its debut.

 

1976

South Dakota decriminalizes private consensual adult homosexual acts.

 

1979

The Village People ‘s song In The Navy begins a thirteen-week run on the nation’s Top 40. The U.S. Navy briefly considers using the song as a recruitment theme until the full implications of the lyrics are explained.

 

1981

Ebony magazine poses the question, “Is Homosexuality a Threat to the Black Family?” The article concludes that it is not.

 

1985

The Hetrick-Martin Institute opens the Harvey Milk School for 20 openly lesbian and gay teenagers in the basement of a Greenwich Village, NY, church. The city-funded high school provides a place of refuge for the students, many of whom have dropped out of other schools to escape repeated abuse and harassment. In 1979, life partners and educators on gay and lesbian issues, Dr. Emery Hetrick (1946-1987, a psychiatrist, and Dr. Damien Martin (1934-1991), a professor at New York University, heard the heartbreaking story of a homeless 15-year-old boy who had been beaten and thrown out of his emergency shelter because he was gay. They were so moved that they gathered a group of concerned adults and created what was then called the Institute for the Protection of Lesbian and Gay Youth (IPLGY) to assist this group of young people who desperately needed support. In 1988, the organization was renamed Hetrick-Martin Institute in honor of its founders and their lifelong commitment to service.

 

1986, Netherlands

Ireen Wüst (born 1 April 1986) is a Dutch long-track all round speed skater and the youngest Dutch Olympic champion in the history of the Winter Games. At the age of nineteen, on 12 February 2006, she won the gold medal at the 2006 Winter Olympic Games 3000 metre event; four years later at the 2010 Winter Olympic Games she won the 1500 metre event; at the 2014 Winter Olympic Games she won two gold and three silver medals, making her the most decorated athlete at the Sochi Games. Following her victory in the 1500 metres at the 2018 Winter Olympics, she has won a record ten Olympic medals, more than any other speed skater, making her the most successful athlete from the Netherlands at the Olympics. She is also a six-time world all round champion, a twelve-time world single distance champion, and a five-time European all round champion. In 2014, she was elected by Reuters as the Sportswoman of the World. Wust came out as bisexual in 2009. In March 2017, Wüst confirmed she is in a relationship with fellow skater Letitia de Jong.

 

1987

The first National Gay and Lesbian Youth Conference is held in Los Angeles.

 

1990

Madonna announces in Vanity Fair that she is not a lesbian and that Sandra Bernhard (born June 6, 1955) is not her lover. Bernhard is openly bisexual and a strong supporter of gay rights. On July 4, 1998, Bernhard gave birth to a daughter, Cicely Yasin Bernhard, whom she raises with her longtime partner, Sara Switzer.

 

1997

Mecklenburg County, North Carolina Commissioners strips the Arts and Science Council of $2.5 million in funding stemming from a community-wide debate over Angels in America.

 

1998

Coretta Scott King, widow of civil rights leader Martin Luther King, Jr., calls on the civil rights community to join the struggle against homophobia. She receives criticism from members of the black civil rights movement for comparing civil rights to gay rights.

 

2001, The Netherlands

First legal same-sex weddings in the world take place in Amsterdam City Hall after The Netherlands becomes the first country to legalize same-sex marriage. The wedding took place at midnight on 1 April 2001, when Amsterdam Mayor Job Cohen married four same-sex couples. Denmark was already recognizing civil unions, but no country had extended to gay and lesbian couples all the protections, rights and responsibilities of marriage until now.

April 2

 

1956

David C. Bohnett (born April 2, 1956) is born. He is an American philanthropist and technology entrepreneur and founder and chairman of the David Bohnett Foundation, a non-profit, grant-making organization devoted to improving society through social activism. Bohnett founded the pioneering social networking site GeoCities in 1994 with John Rezner as co-founder and chief technical officer. The highly successful site went public via an IPO in 1998, and was acquired by Yahoo! in 1999. GeoCities was the first social networking site on the internet, an early forerunner of MySpace and Facebook. Bohnett has funded numerous LGBT CyberCenters including the first university LGBT cybercenter, at UCLA. In 1983, Bohnett entered into a long-term relationship with fellow activist and openly gay judge Rand Schrader (May 11, 1945 – June 13, 1993).

 

2005

NAACP Chair Julian Bond states in a national speech that “gay rights are civil rights.”

 

2013, Uruguay

Uruguay senate approves same-sex marriage by a vote of 23-8, becoming the fourteenth country in the world to legalize marriage equality.

April 3

 

1895, UK

The opening of the Oscar Wilde v. the Marquis of Queensbury trial. The Marquis accused Wilde (16 October 1854 – 30 November 1900) of being “a sodomite,” a criminal activity. Wilde sued the Marquis for criminal libel. The Marquis had to prove that the allegation was true in order to escape conviction. The court decided the accusation was true and the Marquis was acquitted. Wilde had to pay the Marquis’ legal fees which left him bankrupt.

 

1931

William Bast (April 3, 1931 – May 4, 2015) was an American screenwriter and author. In addition to writing scripts for motion pictures and television, he was the author of two biographies of the screen actor James Dean (February 8, 1931 – September 30, 1955). He often worked with his lover author Paul Huson (born 19 September 1942).

 

1959

The Florida legislative Investigation Committee (the John’s Committee) conducts witch-hunts from 1958 to 1964 at the state’s universities and public school systems. On this day in 1959, the University of Florida fires 14 employees and removes 50 students for being gay.

 

1972

Nancy Wechsler and Jerry DeGrieck become the first openly LGBT elected officials in America. They were graduate students at the University of Michigan, and both were elected to the Ann Arbor City Council. DeGrieck and Wechsler were elected to the Ann Arbor City Council as members of the Human Rights Party on April 3, 1972.

 

2009

Iowa is the first state to allow legal same-sex marriages via an Iowa Supreme Court decision.

APRIL 4

 

1932

Anthony Perkins (April 4, 1932 – September 12, 1992) is born. He was an American actor and singer. He was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor for his second film Friendly Persuasion but is best known for playing Norman Bates in Alfred Hitchcock’s Psycho and its three sequels. According to the posthumous biography Split Image by Charles Winecoff, Perkins had exclusively same-sex relationships until his late 30s, including with actors Rock Hudson (November 17, 1925- October 2, 1985), Tab Hunter (born July 11, 1931), artist Christopher Makos (born 1948), dancer Rudolf Nureyev (17 March 1938 – 6 January 1993), composer/lyricist Stephen Sondheim (born 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 songwriter Patrick Loiseau. Perkins died at his Los Angeles home on September 12, 1992, from AIDS-related pneumonia.

 

1938, Germany

The Gestapo decrees that men convicted of homosexuality will be sent to the concentration camps. Between 1933 and 1945 when WWII ended, an estimated 100,00 men were arrested as homosexuals; 50,000 were sentenced and sent to prison. Between 5,000 and 15,000 were in concentration camps. After WWII many remained in jail until 1968 because homosexuality was still a crime in Germany under Paragraph 175 which as not repealed until 1994.

 

1972

The world’s first LGBT synagogue, Beth Chayim Chadashim (BCC), is founded, in Los Angeles. On April 4, 1972, four Jews – Selma Kay, Jerry Gordon, Jerry Small, and Bob Zalkin – went to a weekly Wednesday night meeting at Los Angeles’s Metropolitan Community Church (MCC). In less than four years MCC, the first church with an outreach to gays and lesbians, had grown to 15,000 members in 40 U.S. cities. In Los Angeles, the “mother church,” led by Rev. Troy Perry and located near USC, had 725 members. The presence of Jews at the church was understandable. In 1972 the existence of lesbian and gay Jews was virtually unheard of. It was a time when same-sex activity was illegal, homosexuality was still classified as a mental illness, and to be openly gay or lesbian usually meant loss of employment and rejection by family and Jewish community. The Stonewall Riots in New York’s Greenwich Village, often considered the watershed event in the modern gay liberation movement, had occurred less than three years earlier. Fifteen people came to the first service, held June 9, 1972 in Jerry Gordon’s home. Beth Chayim Chadashim (“House of New Life”) was founded in Mid-City Los Angeles in 1972 as a synagogue primarily for lesbians and gays. 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 Reform 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.

 

1974

In New York City, more than 1,000 people gather in Greenwich Village to demonstrate support for a gay and lesbian municipal rights ordinance currently under debate in the City Council. The bill had been strongly opposed by, among others, the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of New York and the Uniformed Fire Officers Association.

 

1976, Italy

Pope Paul VI publicly denies press reports that he has had affairs with men.

 

2017

The 7th District Court of Appeals rules that the Civil Rights Act prohibits workplace discrimination against LGBT employees, after Kimberly Hively sues Ivy Tech Community College for violating Title VII of the act by denying her employment. In the groundbreaking 8-3 decision, the full Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that workplace discrimination based on sexual orientation violates federal civil rights law. This came after Lambda Legal urged the Court to reverse a lower court ruling and allow Kimberly Hively to present her case alleging that Ivy Tech Community College, where she worked as an instructor for 14 years, denied her fulltime employment and promotions and eventually terminated her employment because she is a lesbian.

 

APRIL 5

 

1972

My Fair Lady, from gay director George Cukor (July 7, 1899 – January 24, 1983), wins the academy award for best picture and best director. It was an open secret in Hollywood that Cukor was gay at a time when society was against it, although he was discreet about his sexual orientation. His home, redecorated in 1935 by gay actor-turned-interior designer William Haines (January 2, 1900 – December 26, 1973) was the scene of many gatherings for the industry’s homosexuals. The close-knit group reputedly included Haines and his partner Jimmie Shields (January 2, 1900 – December 26, 1973), writer Somerset Maugham (25 January 1874 – 16 December 1965), director James Vincent (July 19, 1882 – July 12, 1957), screenwriter Rowland Leigh (1902 – 1963), costume designers Orry-Kelly (31 December 1897 – 27 February 1964) and Robert Le Maire, and actors John Darrow (17 July 1907 – 24 February 1980), Anderson Lawler (May 5, 1902 – April 6, 1959), Grady Sutton (April 5, 1906 – September 17, 1995), Robert Seiter and Tom Douglas.

 

1982

Newsweek Magazine reports on “Gays on Campus” which highlights how accepted gay organizations and lifestyles are on campuses around the county.

 

APRIL 6

 

1895

The New York Times covers the Oscar Wilde (16 October 1854 – 30 November 1900) sodomy trial.

 

1954, Germany

Monika Treut (born April 6, 1954) is a German lesbian filmmaker. Famous for her queer films, Treut also makes documentaries. Her films have explored many interests around the world. The subject matter varies from film to film; whether queer-themed, or about one woman’s efforts to help street kids in Rio de Janeiro, or about the culinary arts of Taiwan-her documentaries find interesting, real people to focus on. Since 1990, Treut has been teaching, lecturing and curating retrospectives of her work at colleges across the United States.

 

1983, Zimbabwe

Rick Cosnett (born April 6, 1983) is born. The Zimbabwean-Australian actor, whose credits include The Flash and The Vampire Diaries, revealed to fans in February of 2020 that he is gay.

 

2007

Transgender musician Alexander James Adams (born November 8, 1962), formerly known as Heather Alexander, has his first performance using his new name, in Seattle at Norwescon 30. He is an American singer, musician and songwriter in the Celtic and World music genres. He blends mythical, fantasy, and traditional themes in performances, switching between instrumental fiddle and songs accompanied by guitar, bodhr√°n, and fiddle playing. He has also been a popular and influential artist in the field of folk music and won multiple Pegasus awards. Adams performed as Heather Alexander for 25 years before beginning to tour as Alexander James Adams. His website refers to him as the ‘heir’ to Heather Alexander and continues to credit songs originally released as Heather Alexander under that name.

 

2009

Carl Joseph Walker-Hoover (1998-2009), 11, hangs himself after daily harassment for being perceived as gay.

 

APRIL 7

 

529, Italy

Justinian I re-writes Roman Law making it distinctly Christian and states that all same-sex acts are contrary to nature and punishable by death.

 

1837, Denmark

The Little Mermaid was written by Hans Christian Andersen (2 April 1805 – 4 August 1875) as a love letter to Edvard Collin (1808-1896).

 

1891

Martha May Eliot (April 7, 1891 – February 14, 1978) was a foremost pediatrician and specialist in public health, an assistant director for WHO, and an architect of New Deal and postwar programs for maternal and child health. Her first important research, community studies of rickets in New Haven, Connecticut, and Puerto Rico, explored issues at the heart of social medicine. Together with Edwards A. Park, her research established that public health measures (dietary supplementation with vitamin D) could prevent and reverse the early onset of rickets. Eliot shared her personal life in a long emotional and domestic partnership with Ethel Collins Dunham  (1883-1969), also a pioneering female pediatrician, who was made the first female member of the American Pediatric Society and was awarded its highest award, the Howland Medal, in 1957.

 

1907, France

Violette Leduc (7 April 1907 – 28 May 1972) was born in Arras Pas de Calais. She continually went after gay men. One of them, Maurice Sachs told her to write just to get rid of her. She did. Her book Le Batarde was the story of her upbringing as an illegitimate child which she blamed on the sexuality of her mother. She once told a friend she wanted to wear a tight body stocking to hold in her breasts and then attach a “strap on” in order to bed gay writer Jean Genet. Leduc’s formal education began in 1913 but was interrupted by World War I. After the war, she went to a boarding school, the Coll√®ge de Douai, where she experienced leshad a lesbian affairs with her classmate “Isabelle,” which Leduc later adapted into a novel, Th√©r√®se and Isabelle. In 1968, Radley Metzger made a film of that novel. The film was a commercial feature about adolescent lesbian love, starring Essy Persson and Anna Gael.

 

1912

Harry Hay (April 7, 1912 – October 24, 2002) is born. He was a prominent American gay rights activist, communist, labor advocate, and Native American civil rights campaigner. He was a co-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. Hay passed away in 2002, survived by his partner of 40 years, John Burnside (born 19 March 1955).

 

1916

Oreste Francesco Pucciani (April 7, 1916 – April 28, 1999) was a pioneer teacher of Jean-Paul Sartre’s philosophy at UCLA. He was the last partner of Rudi Gernreich (August 8, 1922 – April 21, 1985), fashion designer, and at the latter’s death, established the ACLU Rudi Gernreich-Oreste Pucciani Endowment Fund to support the fight for LGBT rights.

 

1966

The first Gay Community Center in the United States opens. It is located in San Francisco, led by The Society for Individual Rights.

 

1974

Pacific Center for Human Growth is founded in Oakland in response to a brutal gay bashing in Berkeley.

 

1997

Musician George Michael (25 June 1963 – 25 December 2016) comes out. He was an English singer, songwriter, record producer, and philanthropist who rose to fame as a member of the music duo Wham! He was best known for his work in the 1980s and 1990s, including hit singles such as Wake Me Up Before You Go-Go and Last Christmas, and albums such as Faith (1987) and Listen Without Prejudice Vol. 1 (1990). Michael, who came out as gay in 1998, was an active LGBT rights campaigner and HIV/AIDS charity fundraiser. Michael’s personal life and legal troubles made headlines during the late 1990s and 2000s, as he was arrested for public lewdness in 1998 and was arrested for multiple drug-related offenses after that time. The 2005 documentary A Different Story covered his career and personal life. In the early hours of 25 December 2016, Michael, aged 53, was found dead at his home in Goring-on-Thames, Oxfordshire. A coroner’s report attributed his death to natural causes.

 

2013, South Africa

First traditional African legal same-sex wedding. Tshepoi Cameron Modisane and Thoba Calvin Sithole marry in the town of KwaDukuza.

 

APRIL 8

 

1787, Russia

The Russian Empire annexes the Crimean Khanate thus legalizing same-sex intercourse in the annexed territory.

 

1942

In 1978 comedian Robin Tyler (born April 8, 1942) becomes the first out lesbian on U.S. national television, appearing on a Showtime comedy special hosted by Phyllis Diller. The same year she released her comedy album, Always a Bridesmaid, Never a Groom the first comedy album by an out lesbian. Robin was the main stage producer of the 1979, 1987, and 1993 Marches on Washington for LGBT rights. In 2000, she was the co-founder and national rally coordinator for StopDrLaura.com, a campaign against the quackery of Dr. Laura Schlesinger, a radio personality who routinely spread homophobia over the airwaves. Canadian-born, Tyler was also the first North American speaker to address major LGBT rallies in England, Canada, France, Mexico, and South Africa. She performed her comedy show in Moscow in 1990, at the first LGBT international conference in Russia. Robin was the executive director of The Equality Campaign, and the first lesbian plaintiff to sue the state of California challenging the state’s ban on same-sex marriage (2004-2008). After a successful win, she and her partner Diane Olsen were the first to receive their marriage license in the state.

 

1949

In 2007 Theresa Sparks (born on April 8, 1949) was elected president of the San Francisco Police Commission by a single vote, making her the first openly transgender person ever to be elected president of any San Francisco commission, as well as San Francisco’s highest ranking openly transgender official. Sparks is the Executive Director of the San Francisco Human Rights Commission and was a candidate for San Francisco Supervisor for District 6 in the November 2010 election. She is a former president of the San Francisco Police Commission and former CEO of Good Vibrations. She was a Grand Marshal in the 2008 San Francisco Pride Parade.

 

1974

The American Psychiatric Association removes its “sickness” definition of homosexuality, outraging homophobic bigots across America.

 

1990

Ryan White (December 6, 1971 – April 8, 1990), 18, dies from complications of AIDS after a five-year battle with the disease.  Ryan became the national child for HIV/AIDS in the United States, after being expelled from middle school in Kokomo, Indiana, because of his infection. As a hemophiliac, he became infected with HIV from a contaminated blood treatment and, when diagnosed in December 1984, was given six months to live. Doctors said he posed no risk to other students, but AIDS was poorly understood at the time, and when White tried to return to school, many parents and teachers in Kokomo rallied against his attendance. A lengthy legal battle with the school system ensued, and media coverage of the case made White into a national celebrity and spokesperson for AIDS research and public education. Surprising his doctors, Ryan lived five years longer than predicted but died in April 1990, one month before his high school graduation.

 

2013, Zambia

Gay rights activist Paul Kasonkomona is arrested after appearing on live TV calling for same-sex relations to be decriminalized.

 

2014, Spain

The Galician Parliament passes LGBT anti-discrimination law.

 

APRIL 9

 

1476, Italy

Leonardo Da Vinci (15 April 1452 – 2 May 1519) and three other young men are accused of sodomy anonymously, subsequently acquitted. Da Vinci was an Italian polymath of the Renaissance whose areas of interest included invention, drawing, painting, sculpting, architecture, science, music, mathematics, engineering, literature, anatomy, geology, astronomy, botany, writing, history, and cartography. He has been variously called the father of paleontology, ichnology, and architecture, and he is widely considered one of the greatest painters of all time. Sometimes credited with the inventions of the parachute, helicopter, and tank, he epitomized the Renaissance humanist ideal.

 

1966

Cynthia Nixon (born April 9, 1966) is an American actress known for her portrayal of Miranda Hobbes in the HBO series, Sex and the City (1998-2004) for which she won the 2004 Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Supporting Actress in a Comedy Series. She reprised the role in the films Sex and the City (2008) and Sex and the City 2 (2010). Her other film credits include Amadeus (1984), James White (2015), and playing Emily Dickinson in A Quiet Passion (2016). On March 19, 2018, Nixon announced her campaign for governor of New York as a challenger to Democratic incumbent Andrew Cuomo. She lost in the Democratic primary to Cuomo with 34% of the vote to his 66%. Nixon and Christine Marinoni (born March 14, 1967) became engaged in April 2009, and married in New York City on May 27, 2012, with Nixon wearing a custom-made, pale green dress by Carolina Herrera.

 

1984

The San Francisco Department of Public Health closes the city’s bathhouses in the belief that they contribute to the spread of AIDS. The decision comes after a heated, divisive debate between gay men who believe the baths can be used as a forum for safe(r) sex education and those who see them as contributing to the spread of the epidemic.

 

1986

On this day Bayard Rustin (March 17, 1912 – August 24, 1987) gives a speech entitled “The New N*ggers Are Gays.” The civil rights leader was arrested more times for being gay than for his civil disobedience. In this speech he says, “Today, blacks are no longer the litmus paper or the barometer of social change. Blacks are in every segment of society and there are laws that help to protect them from racial discrimination. The new ‘n*ggers’ are gays‚Ķ It is in this sense that gay people are the new barometer for social change‚Ķ The question of social change should be framed with the most vulnerable group in mind: gay people.”

 

1990

Kristen Stewart (born April 9, 1990) is born. She is an American actress and model who received widespread recognition in 2008 for playing Bella Swan in The Twilight Saga film series. Since late 2016, she has been dating New Zealander Victoria’s Secret  model Stella Maxwell (born 15 May 1990). In her February 4, 2017 appearance on Saturday Night Live, Stewart described herself as “so gay.” In an interview with The Guardian she clarified that she was bisexual.

 

1992

Kenneth Dawson (1947 – April 9, 1992), a leader and adviser of gay and lesbian and AIDS organizations, dies on this day in Manhattan of complications from AIDS. He was on the founding board of the Lesbian and Gay Community Services Center in Manhattan in 1983 and served as Executive Director of Seniors Action in a Gay Environment (SAGE).

 

1992, UK

Clive Betts (born 13 January 1950), a gay man, assumes office in Parliament. He’s a member of the Labour Party and lives with partner James Thomas.

 

1997, Singapore

The Register of Societies rejects the application of the LGBT rights group People Like Us without explanation.

 

1999

Montero Lamar Hill (born April 9, 1999), known as Lil Nas X, comes out as gay, making him the first artist to have done so while having a number-one record. He later became the first openly gay man to be nominated at the Country Music Association Awards. He is an American rapper, singer, and songwriter who rose prominence with the release of his country rap single “Old Town Road,” which first achieved viral popularity on the social media app TikTok in early 2019 before climbing music charts internationally and becoming diamond certified by November of that same year.

 

2008, South Korea

Choi Hyun-sook (born July 6, 1972) is the first openly gay political candidate who stands for election. Her bid was unsuccessful.

APRIL 10

 

1644, UK

Bisexual British poet John Wilmot (9 April 1647 – 26 July 1680), Earl of Rochester, is born at Ditchley Manor in Oxfordshire. Wilmot’s poems are bawdy and beautifully simple. He was an English poet and courtier of King Charles II’s Restoration court. The Restoration reacted against the “spiritual authoritarianism” of the Puritan era. Rochester embodied this new era, and he became as well known for his rakish lifestyle as his poetry, although the two were often interlinked. He died as a result of venereal disease at the age of 33.

 

1880

Frances Perkins (April 10, 1880- May 14, 1965) was an American workers-rights advocate who served as the U.S. Secretary of Labor from 1933 to 1945, the longest serving in that position, the first woman and first known LGBT person to serve in the U.S. Cabinet. As a loyal supporter of her longtime friend, Franklin D. Roosevelt, she helped pull the labor movement into the New Deal coalition. She and Interior Secretary Harold L. Ickes were the only original members of the Roosevelt cabinet to remain in office for his entire presidency. Perkins had a romantic and intimate relationship with Mary Harriman Rumsey (November 17, 1881 – December 18, 1934), founder of the Junior League, from 1922 to 1934. The women lived together in Perkins’ home in Washington, D.C. until Rumsey’s death in 1934.

 

1974

The Gay Activists Alliance publication Out-The Gay Perspective debuts with Ernest Peter Cohen as editor in chief.

 

1982

Chyler Leigh (born April 10, 1982), the Supergirl and Grey’s Anatomy actor, came out as a member of the LGBTQ community in June 2020, steering clear of traditional labels like “lesbian” or “bisexual.” Leigh said she was inspired to come out upon learning her Supergirl character Alex Danvers was a lesbian. “When I was told that my character was to come out in season 2, a flurry of thoughts and emotions flew through and around me because of the responsibility I personally felt to authentically represent Alex’s journey,” she wrote in a post on the “Create Change” website. “What I didn’t realize was how the scene where she finally confessed her truth would leap off the pages of the script and genuinely become a variation of my own. 

 

1998

Golfer Patty Sheehan (born October 27, 1956) comes out as lesbian. She is the second golfer to ever make such an announcement. Sheehan, a member of the World Golf Hall of Fame, is a winner of six major golf championships.

 

2003, Argentina

Civil union law is approved by the Provincial Legislature of Rio Negro.

 

2006, Italy

Vladimir Luxuria (born June 24, 1965) is the first transgender member of Parliament.

 

APRIL 11

 

1780, England

William Smith and Theodosius Reed are put in the deadly revolving stockyards for sodomy. People gather to watch.

 

1864, Germany

Johanna Elberskirchen (11 April 1864 – 17 May 1943) was a feminist writer and activist for the rights of women, gays and lesbians as well as blue-collar workers. She published books on women’s sexuality and health among other topics. Her last known public appearance was in 1930 in Vienna where she gave a talk at a conference organized by the World League for Sexual Reform. She was open about her own homosexuality which made her a somewhat exceptional figure in the feminist movement of her time. Her career as an activist was ended in 1933 when the Nazi Party rose to power. There is no public record of a funeral but witnesses report that Elberskirchen’s urn was secretly put into her life partner Hildegard Moniac’s (1891 – 1967) grave.

 

1890

Marion Dickerman (April 11, 1890 – May 16, 1983) was an American suffragist, educator, and an intimate of Eleanor Roosevelt. In 1913 she moved to Fulton, New York, where she taught American history at Fulton High School. It was here that she met Syracuse classmate Nancy Cook (August 26, 1884 – August 16, 1962) who taught arts. Nancy Cook was an American suffragist, educator, political organizer, businesswoman, and also a friend of Eleanor Roosevelt. The women were co-owner of Val-Kill Industries, the Women’s Democratic News, and the Todhunter School. Dickerman and Cook were lifelong partners, spending almost their entire adult lives together, although Dickerman was also involved in other lesbian relationships off and on. They are buried next to each other at Westfield Cemetery, Westfield, New York.

 

1901

Glenway Wescott is born in Kewaskum, Wisconsin. One of America’s clearest and lyrical writers, he is best known for The Grandmothers, published in 1927. Throughout his life Wescott kept journals about everything. He is reputed to have had affairs with photographer George Platt Lynes  (April 15, 1907 – December 6, 1955) and museum curator Monroe Wheeler (13 February 1899 – 14 August 1988).

 

1932

Joel Grey (born April 11, 1932) is born. He is an American actor, singer, dancer, and photographer. He is best known for portraying the Master of Ceremonies in both the stage and film versions of the Kander and Ebb musical Cabaret. He has won an Academy Award, Tony Award, and Golden. He also originated the role of George M. Cohan in the musical George M! in 1968, and the Wizard of Oz in the musical Wicked. He also starred as Moonface Martin in the Broadway revivals of Anything Goes and as Amos Hart in Chicago. In January 2015, Grey discussed his sexuality in an interview with People, stating: “I don’t like labels, but if you have to put a label on it, I’m a gay man.”

 

1949

Dorothy Allison (born April 11, 1949) is an American writer from South Carolina whose writing expresses themes of class struggle, sexual abuse, child abuse, feminism and lesbianism. She is a self-identified lesbian femme. She has won a number of awards for her writing, including several Lambda Literary Awards. In 2014, Allison was elected to membership in the Fellowship of Southern Writers. Allison remains dedicated to safer sex and is active in feminist and lesbian communities. She is one of the founders of the Lesbian Sex Mafia, along with Kirstie Friddle of Quincy, Illinois. This is an information and support group for women of all sexual orientations and identities. She lives in Monte Rio, California with her female partner, Alix Layman, and son, Wolf.

 

1953

The Mattachine Society holds its first constitutional convention at a church 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 Chicago’s Society for Human Rights. Communist and labor activist Harry Hay formed the group with a collection of male friends 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.

 

1956

Michael Callen (April 11, 1955 – December 27, 1993) is born. Singer, songwriter, AIDS activist and author, Michael is recognized as a co-inventor of safe(r) sex. He was a co-founder of the People With AIDS self-empowerment movement and was the lead singer in the group The Flirtations.

 

1956

Christine Hallquist (born April 11, 1956) is an American politician and former CEO of Vermont Electric Cooperative (VEC). She is the first openly transgender nominee for governor in the United States, winning the 2018 Democratic nomination for Governor of Vermont with over 40% of the vote. The Associated Press reported she had been getting death threats and personal attacks from all over the United States and around the world. On November 6, 2018, Hallquist lost the election to Republican candidate and incumbent Phil Scott. Drawing national attention as a pioneering example of a CEO transitioning while in office, her transition was documented by her son in an award-winning documentary Denial.

 

2001

GLAD files the Goodridge v. Department of Public Health case in Massachusetts which leads to Massachusetts becoming the first U.S. state to legalize same-sex marriage in 2004

 

2013, France

The French Senate in Paris approves the law for equal marriage and adoption rights for gay and lesbian couples.

 

 APRIL 12

 

1526, France

Marc-Antoine Muret (12 April 1526 – 4 June 1585) is born near Limoges. The 16th century humanist was accused by the church of being a sodomist and a Protestant.

 

1932

The film Grand Hotel is released. Star Greta Garbo (18 September 1905 – 15 April 1990) originally did not want to the role but her partner Mercedes de Acosta (March 1, 1893 – May 9, 1968) convinced her to take it. The film wins the Oscar for Best Picture

 

1953

Sixty-three men are arrested in Waco, Texas at a “homosexual convention.” Tommy Gene Brown, the Waco Bride, led a mock wedding when police raided the two-room private resident in South Waco.

 

1964

Amy Ray (born April 12, 1964) of the Indigo Girls is born. She is also a solo artist and owner of her own socially and politically conscious record label. About her song “Laramie” she said in a 2001 gay.com interview, “‚Ķ What I was trying to go for was a song about hate in general, not just about homophobia, but about classism too, about who’s to blame in society and who’s complicit. It’s also these people in the higher echelons of the financial bracket who think they are so damned progressive, but they never do anything to really help anybody out. They sort of think they are tolerant of gay people, because they have a gay person in their yoga class or something. (Laughs) It takes a lot more than that. You’ve got to speak out, you’ve got to work and vote and really try to make a difference for people. A lot of times there’s these hidden attitudes that no one ever expresses that nurture an environment of hate. And then some kid goes off and murders somebody else and they all act so surprised about it, but we all contributed to it because we didn’t do anything to change our attitude in general. ‚Ķ I think it’s something we all need to think about and work on. So that song was supposed to deal with a lot more than (Matthew Shepard), that’s why I say, ‘This town ain’t nothing different.’ It could happen anywhere. Ray currently lives in the foothills of North Georgia. She and her partner, Carrie Schrader, have a daughter.

 

1982

Golden Globe-nominated film actor Lenny Baker (January 17, 1945 – April 12, 1982) succumbs to AIDS-related cancer at the age of 37. Baker was best known for his Tony Award-winning performance in I Love My Wife in 1977.

 

1994

In response to a Hawaii Supreme court decision questioning the state’s right to bar same-sex marriage, the state senate passes a bill declaring that the need to “foster and protect the propagation of the human” is justification for the ban.

 

2013

Autumn Sandeen, a U.S. veteran and transgender woman, received a letter from a Navy official stating, “Per your request the Defense Enrollment Eligibility Reporting System (DEERS) has  been updated to show your gender as female effective April 12th, 2013.” Allyson Robinson of Outserve declared, “To our knowledge, this is the first time that the Department of Defense has recognized and affirmed a change of gender for anyone affiliated, in a uniformed capacity-in this case a military retiree.”

 

APRIL 13

 

1947

Deborah Batts  (born April 13, 1947) is born. She is a Senior United States District Judge of the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York and was the nation’s first openly LGBT African American federal judge. She was appointed by President Bill Clinton to the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York and confirmed by the Senate in a voice vote in 1994.  Batts was the sole openly LGBT judge on the federal bench for seventeen years until President Barack Obama appointed a series of gay and lesbian judges to the district courts. (Judge Vaughn Walker of California served from 1989 to February, 2011, but did not come out until April 2011, after his retirement.)

 

1955

Iowa enacts its “Sexual Psychopath” law in the wake of moral panic brought on by the sexual assault and murder of a boy in 1954.

 

1955

Openly gay Carl-Friedrich Arp Ole Freiherr von Beust, generally called Ole von Beust (born 13 April 1955), is a German politician who was first mayor of Hamburg from October 31, 2001 to August 25, 2010. He served as President of the Bundesrat from November 1, 2007 for one year.

 

1970

In New York City, the Gay Activists Alliance borrows a tactic of the New Left and unleashes the first gay zap, a surprise disruption of a public event to call attention to a political issue. Activists begin shouting “gay power” during a public appearance by Mayor John Lindsay, who has resisted meeting with them.

 

1982

In Los Angeles, U.S. congress representatives open the first committee hearings on the disease that will come to be known as AIDS.

  

1990

The first public action by Queer Nation takes place at Flutie’s Bar in New York, a straight hangout at South Street Seaport. The goal is to make clear to patrons that queers will not be restricted to gay bars for socializing and for public displays of affection. This action becomes known as “Nights Out.”

 

1997

Comedian and talk show host Ellen DeGeneres (born January 26, 1958) appears on TIME magazine’s cover with the words,  ∫Yep, I’m Gay. ∫ These words were spoken during the coming-out episode of her sitcom Ellen, titled “The Puppy Episode” which was one of the highest-rated episodes of the show.

 

2014, Finland

The Finnish Post announces that Tom of Finland (Touko Valio Laaksonen, born 8 May 1920 – 7 November 1991) will appear on postage stamps.

 

APRIL 14

 

1600, Italy

Philosopher Tomasso Campanella (5 September 1568 – 21 May 1639) is jailed and spends twenty-seven years imprisoned in Naples, in various fortresses. He was a Dominican friar, Italian philosopher, theologian, astrologer, and poet. He is overheard saying to his cellmate: “O Father Pietro, why don’t you do something so that we may sleep together, and we may get pleasure?” Pietro replied “I wish I could, and I’d even bribe the goalers with ten ducats. But to you, my heart, I would like to give twenty kisses every hour.” Campanella was finally released from prison in 1626, through Pope Urban VIII, who personally interceded on his behalf with Philip IV of Spain. Taken to Rome and held for a time by the Holy Office, Campanella was restored to full liberty in 1629. He lived for five years in Rome, where he was Urban’s advisor in astrological matters.

 

1865

President Abraham Lincoln (February 12, 1809 – April 15, 1865) is shot and mortally wounded by John Wilkes Booth while attending the comedy Our American Cousin at Ford’s Theater in Washington, D.C. He dies the next day. C.A. Tripp’s  (Oct. 4, 1919-2003) book Lincoln makes the case that Lincoln had several homosexual relationships throughout his life. Tripp states that Lincoln’s relationships with women were either invented by biographers (his love of Ann Rutledge) or were desolate botches (his courtship of Mary Owens and his marriage to Mary Todd). Tripp is not the first to argue that Lincoln was secretly gay. Earlier writers have parsed his friendship with Joshua Speed, the young store owner he lived with after moving to Springfield, Ill. Lincoln’s story becomes interesting when Tripp looks at the year 1831, when Lincoln was 22 and moved to New Salem, an Illinois frontier town, where he met Billy Greene. Greene coached Lincoln in grammar and shared a narrow bed with him. “When one turned over the other had to do likewise,” Greene told Herndon. Bed-sharing was common enough in raw settlements, but Greene also had vivid memories of Lincoln’s physique: “His thighs were as perfect as a human being could be.” Six years later, Lincoln moved to Springfield, where he met Joshua Speed, who became a close friend; John G. Nicolay and John Hay, two early biographers, called Speed “the only – as he was certainly the last – intimate friend that Lincoln ever had.”

 

1904, UK

British actor Sir John Gielgud (14 April 1904 – 21 May 2000) is born in London. Perhaps the greatest actor to grace a stage in the English-speaking world, Gielgud never came out publicly. Interior designer Paul Anstee was his lover for much of the 1950s.

 

1912

The RMS Titanic strikes an iceberg just before midnight on April 14th.  By 2:20 AM, she broke apart and foundered, taking over one thousand three hundred people still aboard to their deaths.  Just under two hours after the Titanic foundered, the Cunard liner Carpathia arrived on the scene of the sinking, where she brought aboard an estimated 705 survivors. Among the known gay people who died on the Titanic were crew members second carpenter Michael Brice and Third Officer Sam Maxwell as well as  Archibald Willingham Butt (September 26, 1865 – April 15, 1912) who served as an influential military aide to U.S. presidents Theodore Roosevelt and William Howard Taft.

 

1968

Mart Crowley’s (born August 21, 1935) play The Boys in the Band opens on Broadway in New York. Considered to be a groundbreaking work in American theater, the first truly “honest” portrayal of the lives of contemporary homosexuals. It ran for 1002 performances before being adapted to a successful motion picture. Few gay characters were seldom seen in commercial media except as crude stereotypes, although later in history some in the LGBT community would say that is indeed what Crowley’s play presented. Some LGBT advocates later denounced it as Uncle Tomism because they were worried about attempts to assimilate the community into straight society, ignoring what a groundbreaking piece of LGBT history the play was for the 1960s.

1980, Cuba

In Havana, thousands of citizens invade the Peruvian embassy to try to obtain permission to leave the country. Over the next few months, Fidel Castro lets more than 100,000 people leave from the port of Mariel on leaky boats and makeshift rafts. Among the refugees, many of whom have been released from prisons and mental institutions, are an estimated 25,000 gay men seeking asylum from persecution.

 

1983, UK

In the same year that Great Britain reports its first 17 cases of AIDS, the only UK gay magazine, Gay News, stops publication.

 

1985

The first Gay Erotic Film Awards is held in Los Angeles.

 

1986, France

Simone de Beauvoir (January 1908 – 14 April 1986) dies. Born in Paris, France, she was a French writer, intellectual, existentialist philosopher, political activist, feminist, and social theorist. De Beauvoir had a significant influence on both feminist existentialism and feminist theory. She is known for her 1949 treatise, The Second Sex, a detailed analysis on women’s oppression. It served as a foundation for contemporary feminism. Her novels include She Came to Stay and The Mandarins. She is also known for her open relationship with French philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre. De Beauvoir had a number of female lovers including some of her students. In 1943, de Beauvoir was suspended from her teaching job after she was accused of seducing her 17 year-old student Natalie Sorokin. Sorokin’s parents filed formal charges against de Beauvoir for debauching a minor. It resulted in her teaching license to be permanently revoked. In the early 1960s, Beauvoir began a relationship with Sylvie le Bon (born January 17, 1941) which lasted to the end of Beauvoir’s life.

 

2014, Malta

Malta becomes the first European state to include gender identity as a protected class in its constitution.

APRIL 15

 

1843

American writer Henry James (15 April 1843 – 28 February 1916) is born in New York City. He was an American author regarded as a key transitional figure between literary realism and literary modernism, and is considered by many to be among the greatest novelists in the English language. He was nominated for the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1911, 1912, and 1916. James regularly rejected suggestions that he should marry, and after settling in London proclaimed himself “a bachelor.” As more material became available to scholars, including the diaries of contemporaries and hundreds of affectionate and sometimes erotic letters written by James to younger men, the picture of neurotic celibacy gave way to a portrait of a closeted homosexual.

 

1894

Singer Bessie Smith (April 15, 1894 – September 26, 1937) is born in Chattanooga, Tennessee. She was an American blues singer. Nicknamed the Empress of the Blues, she was the most popular female blues singer of the 1920s and 1930s. She is often regarded as one of the greatest singers of her era and was a major influence on other jazz singers. In Foolish Man Blues Smith sang: “There’s two things got me puzzled, there’s two things I don’t understand; That’s a mannish-actin’ woman, and a skippin’, twistin’ woman-actin’ man.” Strange words for a woman whose best friend was male impersonator Gladys Fergusson and who had been introduced to the world of ‘women-lovin’ women’ by blues singer Ma Rainey (April 26, 1886 – December 22, 1939). Smith married Jack Gee on June 7, 1923, just as her first record was being released. During the marriage Smith became the highest-paid black entertainer of the day, heading her own shows, which sometimes featured as many as 40 troupers, and touring in her own custom-built railroad car. Their marriage was stormy with infidelity on both sides, including numerous female lovers for Bessie. Gee was impressed by the money but never adjusted to show business life or to Smith’s bisexuality. Smith ended the relationship in 1929 although neither of them sought a divorce. Smith later entered a common-law marriage with an old friend, Richard Morgan, who was Lionel Hampton’s uncle. She stayed with him until her death. Smith’s grave was unmarked until a tombstone was erected on August 7, 1970, paid for by bisexual singer Janis Joplin and Juanita Green who as a child had done housework for Smith.

 

1931

Sally Miller Gearhart (born April 15, 1931) is an American teacher, radical feminist, science fiction writer, and political activist. In 1973 she became the first open lesbian to obtain a tenure-track faculty position when she was hired by the University of Oregon where she helped establish one of the first women and gender study programs in the country. She later became a nationally known gay rights activist. She has been controversial for her statement that “The proportion of men must be reduced to and maintained at approximately 10% of the human race”, made in her essay “The Future-If There is One-is Female.” The Sally Miller Gearhart Fund for lesbian studies was created to promote research and teaching in lesbian studies through an annual lecture series and an endowed professorship at the University of Oregon. The annual Sally Miller Gearhart Lecture in Lesbian Studies at the University of Oregon was first held on May 27, 2009; this first lecture was titled The Incredibly Shrinking Lesbian World and Other Queer Conundra, given by Arlene Stein of Rutgers University.

 

1972, Canada

In Ottawa, a visible gay contingent joins the Viet Nam Mobilization Committee demonstration protesting the visit of U.S. president Richard Nixon to Canada.

 

1979

The Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence is founded in San Francisco by Ken Bunch (Sister Vicious PHB), Fred Brungard (Sister Missionary Position), and Baruch Golden. Their mission is “to promulgate universal joy and expiate stigmatic guilt.”

  

1987

ACT UP’s First Use of “Silence = Death,” the iconic pink triangle and slogan, is debuted to thousands waiting in line at New York City’s General Post Office to file their taxes.

 

1995, Argentina

Buenos Aires police raid Boicot, a lesbian disco, and arrest 10 women ostensibly to check their police records. Lesbian activist Monica Santino obtains their release after three hours during which time the women are subjected to verbal abuse and threats.

 

2009

GOProud, an organization representing conservative LGBT people, was founded by Christopher R. Barron (born December 15, 1973) and Jimmy LaSialvia (born December 15, 1970), two former Log Cabin Republican staffers who expressed dissatisfaction with that organization’s centrist political positions. It is now defunct. The Log Cabin Republicans (LCR) is an organization that works within the Republican Party to advocate equal rights for LGBT people in the United States. Log Cabin Republicans was founded in 1977 in California as a rallying point for Republicans opposed to the Briggs Initiative which attempted to ban homosexuals from teaching in public schools and authorize the firing of those teachers that supported homosexuality.

 

2014, India

Supreme Court of India recognizes third gender not as a social nor medical issues but a human right.

 

2019

Pete Buttigieg (January 19, 1982), the 37-year-old mayor of South Bend, Ind., runs for president of the United States. Pete is openly gay and married to his husband, Chasten. However, he’s not the first openly LGBT person to run for U.S. president. In 2012, Republican Fred Karger campaigned in 26 states and beat Mitt Romney and Donald Trump in the first New Hampshire Straw Poll. He was featured in thousands of news stories around the world and constantly in the LGBTQ press. He was even interviewed by legendary journalist David Frost on Aljazeera TV. After the Republican New Hampshire primary he competed in the Michigan, Maryland, and Puerto Rico primaries where he beat Congressman Ron Paul. He appeared on his home state ballot in California and was the last candidate standing to compete against eventual nominee Mitt Romney in the June 26, 2012 Utah primary. Overall he finished in ninth place. Buttigieg made it through the primaries then lost to Biden. In December, 2020, President-Elect Joe Biden named Buttigieg as Secretary of Transportation, the first  openly LGBT person to sit on a U. S. president’s cabinet.

APRIL 16

 

1061, Spain

The first recorded same-sex wedding occurred when Pedro Díaz and Muño Vandilaz were married by a priest at a small chapel in Rairiz de Veiga, Galicia, Spain. The records and historic documents about the church wedding were found at the Monastery of San Salvador de Celanova. It is not known whether the priest was aware of the gender of both.

 

1453, Italy

Leonardo da Vinci (16 April 1452 – 2 May 1519) is born. He was a prolific painter, scientist, mathematician, philosopher, architect and inventor. His most famous works are the Mona Lisa and The Last Supper. Along with three other young men, he was anonymously accused of sodomy (and acquitted) with Jacopo Saltarelli, a notorious prostitute, which in Florence was a criminal offense, even though the general culture attached little social stigma to homosexuality. DaVinci never married and wrote in his notebooks that male-female intercourse disgusted him. His anatomical drawings naturally include the sexual organs of both genders, but those of the male exhibit much more extensive attention. Finally, Leonardo surrounded himself with beautiful young male assistants.

 

1934, Australia

Robert Colin Stigwood (16 April 1934 – 4 January 2016) was an Australian-born British-resident music entrepreneur, film producer and impresario. He was best known for managing Cream and the Bee Gees, theatrical productions like Hair and Jesus Christ Superstar and film productions including the extremely successful Grease and Saturday Night Fever.

 

1957

Essex Hemphill (April 16, 1957 – November 4, 1995) was an openly gay American poet and activist. He is known for his contributions to the Washington, D.C. art scene in the 1980s, and for openly discussing the topics pertinent to the African American gay community. He died on November 4, 1995, of AIDS-related complications. December 10, 1995 was announced to be a National Day of Remembrance for Essex Hemphill at New York City’s Lesbian and Gay Community Services Center. In 2014, Martin Duberman (born August 6, 1930) wrote Hold Tight Gently: Michael Callen, Essex Hemphill, and the Battlefield of AIDS in which Duberman documents the life of Essex Hemphill along with author and activist, Michael Callen (April 11, 1955 – December 27, 1993). The book won the Lambda Literary Award for LGBT Nonfiction.

 

1997

Sherry Barone sues Har Jehuda Cemetery (Barone v. Har Jehuda Cemetery). Barone and Cynthia Friedman had been together for 13 years when Friedman passed away from cancer at the age of 35. In several discussions before her death, Friedman had asked that Barone include the inscription on her headstone: “Beloved life partner, daughter, granddaughter, sister and aunt.” Days after Friedman’s death, Barone signed a contract with Har Jehuda Cemetery for two adjoining plots and a headstone. Friedman’s religious principles meant the headstone should have been unveiled one year after she died, but the cemetery had refused to act on Barone’s instructions to follow her loved one’s wishes that “life partner” be included. After filing suit on Barone’s behalf, Lambda Legal Defense and Education Fund’s David S. Buckel (June 13, 1957 – April 14, 2018) settled with the cemetery outside of the courtroom. The cemetery agreed to erect the headstone in accordance with Friedman’s wishes and also to compensate Barone $15,000.

 

2012

Katie Ricks becomes the first open lesbian ordained by the Presbyterian Church. She is the Associate Pastor of the Church of Reconciliation in Chapel Hill.

 

2018

Donna Red Wing (1951 – April 16, 2018), a civil rights activist who campaigned for LGBTQ equality, died on this day at her home in Des Moines after an eight-month battle with cancer. She was 67.  Red Wing, who was once called as “the most dangerous woman in America” by the Christian Coalition, spent more than three decades advocating for civil rights. She was described in an obituary as a well-known national leader in the fight for LGBTQ equality. She served as executive director of One Iowa from 2012 to 2016, expanding the organization’s work into new arenas after the battle for marriage equality ended, the group said in a statement. “Donna was a force to be reckoned with and will be greatly missed by individuals across the country,” said Daniel Hoffman-Zinnel, the organization’s executive director. “Donna inspired so many, including myself.” Red Wing, the first recipient of the Walter Cronkite Award for Faith and Freedom, worked on numerous projects, initiatives and councils that included co-chairing the Obama for America 2008 LGBT Leadership Council. Donna died of lung cancer at the age of 67. She is survived by her wife and partner for more than 30 years, Sumitra.

 

APRIL 17

 

1725, South Africa

Leendert Hasenbosch  (c.1695-probably end of 1725), a Dutch East India Company employee, is convicted of sodomy on a ship in Capetown. He’s left on Ascension Island as punishment and dies of thirst six months later. He kept a diary entitled Sodomy Punish’d which was published in 1726. In 2006 the full story was published by Alex Ritsema in the book entitled A Dutch Castaway on Ascension Island in 1725. A revised edition was printed in 2010.

 

1863, Egypt

Constantine Peter (C.P.) Cavafy (April 17, 1863 – April 29, 1933) is born in Alexandria, Egypt. He was an Egyptian Greek poet, journalist and civil servant. His consciously individual style earned him a place among the most important figures not only in Greek poetry, but in Western poetry as well. His sensual poems are filled with the lyricism and emotion of same-sex love, inspired by recollection and remembrance. The past and former actions, sometimes along with the vision for the future underlie the muse of Cavafy in writing these poems. He died of cancer of the larynx on April 29, 1933, his 70th birthday. Since his death, Cavafy’s reputation has grown. His poetry is taught in school in Greece and Cyprus, and in universities around the world. In 1966, David Hockney (born 9 July 1937) made a series of prints to illustrate a selection of Cavafy’s poems. During his lifetime, Cavafy was considered the poet of Alexandria. Today he is primarily identified with Lawrence Durrell’s characterization of him in the Alexandria Quartet.

 

1897

Thornton Wilder (April 17, 1897 – December 7, 1975) was an American playwright and novelist. He won three Pulitzer Prizes-for the novel The Bridge of San Luis Rey, and for the plays Our Town and The Skin of Our Teeth – and a U.S. National Book Award for the novel The Eighth Day. Although Wilder never discussed being homosexual publicly or in his writings, his close friend author Samuel Steward (July 23, 1909 – December 31, 1993) acknowledged having sexual relations with him. The third act of Our Town was allegedly drafted after a long walk, during a brief affair with Steward in Z√ºrich, Switzerland.

 

1965

Ten gay men and lesbians silently picket the White House on April 17th and the United Nations on the 18th after learning that Cuba was placing homosexuals in forced labor camps. Staged by the East Coast Homophile Organization (ECHO), it’s one of the first ever public demonstrations for gay and lesbian rights.

1999

Ellen Corby (June 3, 1911 – April 17, 1999) was an American actress. She is best remembered for the role of grandma Esther Walton on the CBS television The Waltons for which she won three Emmy Awards. She was also nominated for an Academy Award and won a Golden Globe Award for her performance as Aunt Trina in I Remember Mama. Corby died at the age of 87, survived by her partner of 45 years Stella Luchetta of Los Angeles.

 

2013, New Zealand

Marriage equality passes in the New Zealand Parliament 77-44.

APRIL 18

 

382, BC

Phillip of Macedonia (382-336 BC) is born. He was the military genius who defeated the combined armies of Athens and Thebes, conquering all of Greece. Along the way he availed himself of the 800 young eunuchs that had been brought with the army for his pleasure.

 

1952

The American Psychiatric Association lists homosexuality as a disturbance in its first publication of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM). Immediately following the manual’s release, many professionals in medicine, mental health and social sciences criticize the categorization due to lack of empirical and scientific data. Homosexuality was removed from the DSM in 1973. Homophobia, however, is certainly a disorder!

 

1990

Greta Garbo, born Greta Lovisa Gustafsson (18 September 1905 – 18 April 1990), dies. She was a Swedish-born American film actress during the 1920s and 1930s. Garbo was nominated three times for the Academy Award for Best Actress and received an Academy Honorary Award in 1954 for her “luminous and unforgettable screen performances.” In 1999, the American Film Institute ranked Garbo fifth on their list of the greatest female stars of classic Hollywood cinema, after Katharine Hepburn, Bette Davis, Audrey Hepburn, and Ingrid Bergman. Recent biographers and others believe that Garbo was bisexual or lesbian, that she had intimate relationships with women as well as with men. In 1927, Garbo was introduced to stage and screen actress Lilyan Tashman (October 23, 1896 – March 21, 1934) and they may have had an affair, according to some writers. Silent film star Louise Brooks (November 14, 1906 – August 8, 1985) stated that she and Garbo had a brief liaison the following year. In 1931, Garbo befriended the writer and acknowledged lesbian Mercedes de Acosta (March 1, 1893 – May 9, 1968), introduced to her by her close friend, Salka Viertel, and, according to Garbo’s and de Acosta’s biographers, began a sporadic and volatile romance.

 

APRIL 19

 

1929

In New York City, an appellate court rules that, contrary to a verdict reached earlier in the year by a lower court, the book The Well of Loneliness is not obscene. The decision clears the way for even wider distribution of the best-selling novel. The Well of Loneliness is a lesbian novel by British author Radclyffe Hall (12 August 1880 – 7 October 1943) that was first published in 1928 by Jonathan Cape. 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”

 

1967

The Student Homophile League of Columbia University becomes the first gay college group to obtain a campus charter. The SHL had twelve members who fought with university administrators for a year before the group was officially recognized. Stephen Donaldson, a bisexual-identified LGBT rights activist is commemorated by a plaque in the Queer Lounge that bears his name in one of Columbia’s residence halls for spearheading the creation of the group. When the charter was ultimately granted in April 1967, it earned media attention with the New York Times printing a story on the front page. The Columbia Daily Spectator reported that some students believed that the creation of the group was an April Fool’s joke. The group is still in existence to this day and is now called the Columbia Queer Alliance

 

1982

The Gay Officers Action League, Inc. is founded by NYPD Sergeant Charles Cochrane (August 5, 1943 – May 5, 2008) and retired Detective Sam Ciccone (1944-May 10, 2015), establishing the first official police fraternal society in the world to represent LGBT people within the criminal justice system. Sergeant Cochrane, a 14-year veteran of the NYPD, created shock waves by testifying before a NYC Council hearing in favor of a gay rights bill. Following the testimony of a Patrolmen’s Benevolent Association Vice President, who denounced the bill and declared, “I didn’t know of any homosexual police officers.” Cochrane stunned all present as well as NYC as a whole by his testimony: “I am very proud of being a New York City Police Officer, and I am equally proud of being gay.” In 1987, at the persistent urging of GOAL, NYPD began a concerted effort to actively enlist qualified gay candidates. In 2002, GOAL was admitted into COPS, the Committee of Police Societies, an organization consisting of all recognized NYPD religious, ethnic fraternal organizations. Since its inception, GOAL has evolved not only as a fraternal organization, but also as an activist organization that represents the interests of its LGBT members in all agencies and branches within the criminal justice system.

 

2012

The Israeli Conservative movement joined the Reform Judaism movement in agreeing to admit LGBT students into rabbinical school.

APRIL 20

 

1492, Italy

Renaissance writer and dramatist Pietro Aretino (20 April 1492 – 21 October 1556) is born in Tuscany. He was an Italian author, playwright, poet, satirist and blackmailer, who wielded influence on contemporary art and politics and developed modern literary pornography. He was a lover of men, having declared himself “a sodomite” since birth.

 

1893, Italy

Bisexual Ferdinand I of Bulgaria (26 February 1861 – 10 September 1948) enters into a marriage of convenience with Princess Marie Louise of Bourbon-Parma, daughter of Robert I, Duke of Parma and Princess Maria Pia of Bourbon-Two Sicilies, on this day at the Villa Pianore in Lucca. In his private relations, Ferdinand was a somewhat hedonistic individual. He was an author, botanist, entomologist and philatelist. Bisexual throughout his life, up until early middle age his inclination was more towards women. His regular holidays were on Capri, then a popular holiday destination with wealthy gay men. His sexuality was common knowledge in royal courts throughout Europe.

 

1937

George Takei (born April 20, 1937) is born. He is an American actor, director, author, and activist. He is best known for his role as Hikaru Sulu, helmsman of the USS Enterprise in the television series Star Trek. In October 2005, Takei revealed in an issue of Frontiers magazine that he is gay and had been in a committed relationship with his partner, Brad Altman, for 18 years. In May 2014, the Gay & Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation honored Takei with the GLAAD Vito Russo Award, which is presented to an openly LGBT media professional who has made a significant difference in promoting equality for the LGBT community. In May 2015, the Japanese American National Museum honored Takei with the Distinguished Medal of Honor for Lifetime Achievement and Public Service at the Japanese American National Museum’s 2015 Gala Dinner in Los Angeles.

 

1969

Frank Kameny (May 21, 1925 – October 11, 2011) orders 100 “Gay is Good” buttons, indicating a move from his position of “fitting in” to promoting and celebrating gay existence. He was an American gay rights activist and has been referred to as “one of the most significant figures” in the American gay rights movement. In 1957, Kameny was dismissed from his position as an astronomer in the U.S. Army’s Army Map Service in Washington, D.C. because of his homosexuality, leading him to begin “a Herculean struggle with the American establishment” that would “spearhead a new period of militancy in the homosexual rights movement of the early 1960s.” Kameny formally appealed his firing by the U.S. Civil Service Commission. Although unsuccessful, the proceeding was notable as the first known civil rights claim based on sexual orientation pursued in a U.S. court.

 

1970

The Boys in the Band movie trailer is released. The Boys in the Band is a 1970 American drama film directed by William Friedkin. The screenplay by Mart Crowley (born August 21, 1935) is based on his Off-Broadway play The Boys in the Band. It is among the first major American motion pictures to revolve around gay characters and is often cited as a milestone in the history of queer cinema.

 

2001, China

The Chinese remove homosexuality from list of mental disorders.

 

2018 Australia

Same-sex adoption becomes legal. Adoption is not a federal law but state-based. Since April 2018, same-sex couples can adopt children in all jurisdictions within Australia.

APRIL 21

 

1946

John Maynard Keynes, 1st Baron Keynes (5 June 1883 – 21 April 1946) died on this day. He was a British economist whose ideas fundamentally changed the theory and practice of macroeconomics and the economic policies of governments. He built on and greatly refined earlier work on the causes of business cycles, and was one of the most influential economists of the 20th century and the founder of modern macroeconomics theory. His ideas are the basis for the school of thought known as Keynesian economics, and its various offshoots. Keynes’s early romantic and sexual relationships were exclusively with men. Significant among his early partners was British classics scholar and code breaker Alfred Dillwyn “Dilly” Knox (23 July 1884 – 27 February 1943). Keynes was open about his affairs, and, from 1901 to 1915, kept diaries in which he tabulated his many sexual encounters.

 

1953

Philanthropist and Microsoft pioneer Ric Weiland (April 21, 1953 – June 24, 2006) is born. One of the first five employees of Microsoft, Weiland was a lead programmer and developer for the company’s BASIC and COBOL programming languages. After leaving Microsoft in 1988, he dedicated most of his time to philanthropy, donating millions of dollars to charities, including the Pride Foundation, the Lifelong AIDS Alliance, the Gay, Lesbian and Straight Education Network, and the American Foundation for AIDS Research. Weiland committed suicide by gunshot on June 24, 2006. Besides his long-standing HIV diagnosis, he was reported to have suffered from clinical depression. His is survived by his partner Mike Schaefer.

 

1966

The N.Y. Mattachine Society, spearheaded by president Dick Leitsch  (born May 11, 1935), staged a “Sip-In” at the Julius Bar in Greenwich Village. This led to court actions that overturned the New York State Liquor Authority’s provisions declaring it illegal for homosexuals to congregate and be served alcoholic beverages in bars. Although Leitch’s complaint to the State Liquor Authority resulted in no action, the city’s human rights commission declared that such discrimination could not continue. The National Park Service Register of Historic Places for the Julius’ Bar states that “Scholars of gay history consider the sip-in at Julius’ as a key event leading to the growth of legitimate gay bars and the development of the bar as the central social space for urban gay men and lesbians.” The bar now holds a monthly party called “Mattachine” honoring the early gay rights pioneers.

1970

Alice Wu (April 21, 1970) is born. She is a Chinese American film director and screenwriter. Wu pursued a career in computer science but began writing a novel while working at Microsoft. Deciding the story would work better as a film, she signed up for a screenwriting class, in which she penned the feature script Saving Face. Encouraged by her screenwriting teacher, she left Microsoft in the late 1990s to try to turn the script into a film, giving herself a five-year window. Production had begun when she reached the fifth year. In 2001, the script for Saving Face won the Coalition of Asian Pacifics in Entertainment screenwriting award. Saving Face was released in 2004 and is her most noted work. The film was inspired by her own experiences coming out as a lesbian in the Chinese American community.

 

1976, Canada

In Saskatoon the Board of Governors of the University of Saskatchewan overturns recommendation of the University Council that homosexuality should not be considered in the selection of dons of residence. But it accepts that sexual orientation not be a factor in treatment of faculty or students in faculty positions

 

1981, Canada

In Toronto six people, including activists George Hislop (June 3, 1927 – October 8, 2005) and lawyer Peter Maloney and head of Club Bath chain in the U.S., Jack Campbell (1932-2012??) are charged with conspiracy to live off avails of crime. All three were listed as owners of the Club Toronto. These were the final charges following the February 5th bathhouse raids. Almost all charges are later dropped in court. The event marked a major turning point in the history of the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender community in Canada; the raids and their aftermath are today widely considered to be the Canadian equivalent of the 1969 Stonewall riots in New York City. Mass protests and rallies were held denouncing the incident. These evolved into Toronto’s current Pride Week, which is now one of the world’s largest gay pride festivals. Almost all the charges against the 300+ men including Hislop, Maloney and Campbell are later dropped in court and the Toronto Metro Police become a laughingstock.

 

1982, Canada

Metro Toronto Police Morality Squad officers seize two magazines, charge assistant manager Kevin Orr of Glad Day Bookshop with “possession of obscene material for purpose of resale.”

 

1999, Czech Republic

The first openly gay person, V√°clav Fischer (born 22 June 1954), is elected to Czech Senate. Fischer is a Czech-German businessman and politician. He was the founder of the companies CK Fischer and Fischer Air.

APRIL 22

 

1766, France –

Anne Louise Germaine de Sta√´l-Holstein, known as Madame De Stael (22 April 1766 – 14 July 1817) is born near Paris. She was a French woman of letters of Swiss origin whose lifetime overlapped with the events of the French Revolution and the Napoleonic era. For many years she lived as an exile under the Reign of Terror and under Napoleonic persecution. Known as a witty and brilliant conversationalist, often dressed in flashy and revealing outfits, she participated actively in the political and intellectual life of her times. She was an active bisexual who lived for 19 years with  Parisian socialite Juliette Recamier (4 December 1777 – 11 May 1849), the most celebrated beauty of her time. Upon Recamier’s death, De Stael wrote “I love you with a love that surpasses that of friendship‚Ķwere I to embrace you with all that remains of me.”  Celebrated for her conversational eloquence, she participated actively in the political and intellectual life of her times. Her works, both critical and fictional, made their mark on the history of European Romanticism.

 

1969

Frank Bartley is shot and killed by police in Berkeley, CA. The shooting is declared accidental. After this, gay rights groups begin to take notice of the number of shootings that were declared ‘accidental.’

 

2012

Jack Denton Reese (Jan. 25, 1995-April 22, 2012), a gay Mormon teen, commits suicide in Mountain Green, Utah. He was 17 years old.  According to Jack’s boyfriend, Alex Smith, Jack was bullied at school. On April 23, Alex, who didn’t know yet that his boyfriend had taken his life, spoke at a panel about the bullying Jack experienced. The panel was held in connection with the screening of the documentary film Bullied. Jack attended Morgan and Weber High Schools.

 

2014

Harvey Milk (May 22, 1930 – November 27, 1978) is the first openly gay elected official on a U.S. stamp. He was an American politician in the history of California where he was elected to the San Francisco Board of Supervisors in 1977. He fought and defeated the anti-gay Prop 6. Milk was assassinated in 1978 by Supervisor Dan White.

APRIL 23

 

1791

James Buchanan, Jr. (April 23, 1791 – June 1, 1868) is born near Mercerburg, Pennsylvania. The 15th president of the United States was the only bachelor to serve in that office. His closest friend and long-time live-in companion was Alabama Senator William Rufus De Vane King (April 7, 1786 – April 18, 1853) who briefly served as vice president under Franklin Pierce. Buchanan and King lived together in a Washington boardinghouse for 10 years from 1834 until King’s departure for France in 1844. King referred to the relationship as a “communion,” and the two attended social functions together. Contemporaries also noted the closeness. Andrew Jackson called King “Miss Nancy” and prominent Democrat Aaron V. Brown referred to King as Buchanan’s “better half,” “wife” and “Aunt Fancy” (the last being a 19th-century euphemism for an effeminate man). Around Washington, the pair were known as the “Siamese twins,” slang at the time for gays and lesbians. The director of Wheatland, the home and presidential library of President James Buchanan, admits that it can’t be refuted that Buchanan might have been gay. During Buchanan’s presidency, his orphaned niece, Harriet Lane, whom he had adopted, served as official White House hostess.

 

1859

Margaret Georgina Todd (23 April 1859 – 3 September 1918) was a Scottish doctor and writer. She coined the term isotope in 1913 in a suggestion to chemist Frederick Soddy. Todd was born in Kilrenny, Fife, Scotland. A Glaswegian schoolteacher, in 1886 Todd became one of the first students at the Edinburgh School of Medicine for Women after hearing that the Scottish Royal College of Physicians and Surgeons had opened their exams to women. She took eight years to complete the four-year course because, using the pseudonym Graham Travers, during her studies she wrote a novel, Mona Maclean, Medical Student. She later published Fellow Travellers and Kirsty O’ The Mill Toun in 1896, followed by Windyhaugh in 1898, always using her male pen name, although her real identity was known by then and mentioned in reviews of her books. By 1906, even her publishers added “Margaret Todd, M.D.” in parentheses after her pseudonym. In addition to six novels, she wrote short stories for magazines. Todd was the romantic partner of Dr. Sophia Jex-Blake (21 January 1840 – 7 January 1912). After Jex-Blake’s death she wrote The Life of Dr Sophia Jex-Blake (1918) under her own name, describing the fight of women in the 19th century to enter the medical profession.

 

1967

The Student Homophile League of Columbia University pickets and disrupts a panel of psychiatrists discussing homosexuality.

 

1980, Canada

Montreal Police raid Sauna David, a gay bathhouse, and arrest sixty-one men on bawdyhouse charges.

 

1986

U.S. Health and Human Services Secretary Margaret Heckler announces that an American scientist, Robert Gallo, has discovered the virus that causes AIDS: a retrovirus is subsequently named HTLV-3, known today as HIV (human immunodeficiency virus). AIDS was originally named called GRID – Gay Related Immune Deficiency. Heckler had announced the probable cause in 1982 and said a vaccine would be available in two years. It wasn’t, and still isn’t as of this publication (2021).

 

1990

The Hate Crimes Statistic Act is signed into law by President George H. W. Bush. It is the first U.S. bill to use the phrase ‘sexual orientation.’ The act requires the Department of Justice to collect and publish statistics for five years on Hate Crime motivated by prejudice based on race, religion, sexual orientation, or ethnic origin. It is the first law to extend federal recognition to gay men and lesbians. Bush: “We must work together to build an America of opportunity, where every American is free finally from discrimination. And I will use this noble office, this bully pulpit, if you will, to speak out against hate and discrimination everywhere it exists.” Eight years later his son’s presidential administration is one of the most anti-gay in United States recorded history.

 

 

2012

Marc Acito (born January 11, 1966) wins the Charles MacArther Award for Outstanding New Play or Musical for his play Birds of a Feather. He lives in New York City with his husband Floyd Sklaver.

 

2013, France

The French Senate approves same-sex marriage.

APRIL 24

 

1858, UK

Dame Ethel Smyth (24 April 1858 – 8 May 1944) is born in Surrey, England. A composer, writer, and feminist, Smyth wrote seven torrid volumes of explicit memoir. Smyth’s relationship with acclaimed British harpsichordist and clavichordist Violet Gordon-Woodhouse (23 April 1872 – 9 January 1948) is depicted satirically in Roger Scruton’s 2005 opera, Violet.

 

1980

San Francisco resident Ken Horne, the first AIDS case in the United States to be recognized at the time, is reported to the Center for Disease Control with Kaposi’s sarcoma (KS). By the end of 1981, 270 cases had been reported among gay men. Of these, 121 had died.

 

1993

The third Gay and Lesbian March on Washington is prefaced by a mass wedding ceremony, conducted by Reverend Troy Perry (born July 27, 1940) at the IRS building, joining 1,500 lesbian and gay couples in marriage. In addition, twenty thousand lesbians joined in the Dyke March, organized by the Lesbian Avengers, to march on the White House in what is the largest lesbian demonstration ever.

 

1994, Russia

Yaroslav Mogutin (born April 12, 1974), the country’s most visible openly gay journalist, makes headlines when he attempts to register his marriage to American artist Robert Filippini. The head of Moscow’s Wedding Palace No. 4 refuses his application.

 

2015

In a televised interview with ABC’s Diane Sawyer, U.S. Olympic gold medal winner Bruce Jenner (born October 28, 1949) says, “Yes, for all intents and purposes, I’m a woman.” Jenner later reveals that she is now Caitlyn Jenner.

 

APRIL 25

 

1284, UK

King Edward II  (25 April 1284 – 21 September 1327) is born in Caernavon, Wales. He was King of England from 1307 until he was deposed in January of 1327. Ancient Christianity had tolerated homosexuality but by the mid 13th century life was harder on gays and Edward was made an example. His first lover, Piers Gaveston (c. 1284 – 19 June 1312) was murdered by courtiers. His second affair, with Hugh le Despenser (c. 1286 – 24 November 1326), ended with the Baron’s arrest and imprisonment. Le Despenser had his genitals cut off and burned in front of him and then was beheaded. Edward was murdered by having a red-hot poker inserted in his anus.

 

1918, South Africa

Graham Payn (25 April 1918 – 4 November 2005) is born. He was a South African English actor and singer, also known for being the life partner of the playwright No√´l Coward (16 December 1899 – 26 March 1973). Beginning as a boy soprano, Payn later made a career as a singer and actor in the works of Coward and others. After Coward’s death, Payn ran the Coward estate for 22 years.

 

1964

Andrew Ivan Bell (born 25 April 1964) is the lead singer of the English synth-pop duo Erasure. His solo career includes the albums Non-Stop, Electric Blue, and iPop. Bell is openly gay, and had a longtime partner in Paul M. Hickey. Bell told Melody Maker in 1986, “I don’t want to go out of my way to talk about it but I’m not going to pretend I’m not [gay]. I won’t portray a heterosexual in videos and we’re consciously doing lyrics that could apply to either sex”.

 

1965

An estimated 150 people participated in a sit-in when the manager of Dewey’s Restaurant in Philadelphia refused service to several people he thought looked gay. Four people were arrested, including homophile rights leader Clark Polak (15 October 1937-18 September 1980) of Philadelphia’s Janus Society. All four were convicted of disorderly conduct. Members of the society also leafleted outside the restaurant the following week and negotiated with the owners to bring an end to the denial of service.

 

1978

St. Paul, Minnesota votes to repeal its four-year old gay-rights ordinance by a margin of 2-1, another Anita Bryant fallout.

 

1979

Jury selection begins in the trial of Dan White for the murder of San Francisco Mayor George Moscone and gay activist Supervisor Harvey Milk (May 22, 1930 – November 27, 1978).  In a controversial verdict that led to the coining of the legal slang “Twinkie defense,” White was convicted of manslaughter rather than murder in the deaths of Milk and Moscone. White served five years of a seven-year prison sentence. Less than two years after his release, he returned to San Francisco and committed suicide. 

 

1987, Ireland

David Norris (born 31 July 1944) is the first openly gay person elected to public office. He is an Irish scholar, independent Senator and civil rights activist. Internationally, Norris is credited with having “managed, almost single-handedly, to overthrow the anti-homosexuality law which brought about the downfall of Oscar Wilde,” a feat he achieved in 1988 after a fourteen-year campaign.

 

1993

The 1993 March on Washington for Lesbian, Gay, and Bi Equal Rights and Liberation was a large political rally that took place in Washington, D.C. on April 25, 1993. Organizers estimated that 1,000,000 attended the March. The D.C. Police Department put the number between 800,000 and more than 1 million, making it one of the largest protests in American history. A powerful and moving piece documenting the LGBTQ movement for equality in the early 1990s, A Simple Matter of Justice: The 1993 March on Washington for Lesbian, Gay and Bi Equal Rights and Liberation expresses all the emotions of the joyful protest that was the 1993 March on Washington. This feature-length film features sections on civil rights, AIDS and health care, the military, and families are woven together from coverage of the music, comedy, speeches and marchers. Performers include Melissa Etheridge, RuPaul, BETTY, Holly Near and The Flirtations. Martina Navratilova, Sir Ian McKellan, Rev. Ben Chavis, and Eartha Kitt are just a few of the speakers.

 

1995

Lawrence, Kansas passes an ordinance prohibiting discrimination based on sexual orientation. The law, the culmination of a 7-year struggle, is the only one of its type in the state of Kansas.

 

2014, Pakistan

Pakistani Supreme Court rules in favor of a third gender.

 

2018

Soni Wolf (1949-April 25th, 2018) of the Dykes on Bikes dies at the age of 69 from complications due to pneumonia and pulmonary disease. Soni was a native of Rhode Island. She served as a medic in the U.S. Air Force during the Vietnam War, treating veterans in a Texas hospital. After she was discharged, she moved to the San Francisco Bay area in the 1970s. She lived in the Castro district and worked managing copy centers for brokerages and law firms. Wolf came to the fore when she first rode with a group of lesbians during the 1976 San Francisco’s Pride Parade. To avoid overheating their bikes, they rode in front of the parade. During the parade, someone coined the term ‘dykes on bikes’ and it stuck when The San Francisco Chronicle used it. Wolf said of the name, “It rhymes. Just kind of rolls off the tongue.” One of San Francisco’s greatest queer legends, Soni Wolf not only founded Dykes on Bikes, but also took on the U.S. Supreme Court twice in a battle over the right to trademark the group’s name. Wolf is survived by Dykes on Bikes around the world.

  

APRIL 26

Lesbian Visibility Day

 

1564

William Shakespeare (26 April 1564-23 April 1616) is born at Stratford-on-Avon. He was an English poet, playwright and actor, widely regarded as the greatest writer in the English language and the world’s pre-eminent dramatist. He is often called England’s national poet and the “Bard of Avon.” The debate rages as to whether or not he was gay. It will likely never be resolved. The word “drag” is a stage direction coined by Shakespeare and his contemporaries meaning ‘Dressed Resembling A Girl’.

 

1886

Creator of “The Blues” Gertrude “Ma” Rainey (April 26, 1886 – December 22, 1939) is born Gertrude Pridgett in Columbus, Georgia. Accompanied by her “Georgia Band,” which included such jazz greats as Louis Armstrong, Thomas Dorsey, and Coleman Hawkins, she belted out song after song with titles like Rough and Tumble Blues, Jealous Hearted Blues, and Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom Blues. In spite of her marriage to “Pa” Rainey, she made no secret of her relationships with women. Indeed, her famous Prove it on Me Blues, recorded in 1928, sounds more like the testimony of a lesbian than a bisexual: “Went out last night with a crowd of my friends, They must have been women, ’cause I don’t like no men. Wear my clothes just like a fan, Talk to gals just like any old man ‘Cause they say I do it, ain’t nobody caught me, Sure got to prove it on me” The political activist and scholar Angela Y. Davis noted that Prove It on Me is a cultural precursor to the lesbian cultural movement of the 1970s, which began to crystallize around the performance and recording of lesbian-affirming songs.”

 

1895, UK

Author Oscar Wilde (16 October 1854 – 30 November 1900) is prosecuted in Regina v. Wilde. Wilde pleads not guilty to charges of sodomy and gross indecency. On the stand, he says of homosexuality, “It is beautiful. It is fine. It is the noblest of affection. There is nothing unnatural about it.”

 

1944

Violette Morris (18 April 1893 – 26 April 1944) is killed. She was a French athlete who won two gold and one silver medals at the Women’s World Games in 1921-1922. In 1936, she became a spy for Nazi Germany,which continued during World War II. She was killed in 1944 in a Resistance-led ambush as a traitor to France. Morris had been banned from the 1928 Olympics for her lesbianism.

 

1970

The first known print use of the term “transgender” appears in The V Guide describing author Gore Vidal’s (October 3, 1925 – July 31, 2012) Myra Breckenridge.

 

2000

Vermont becomes the first state in the U.S. to legalize civil unions and registered partnerships between same-sex couples.

 

APRIL 27

 

1911

Jack Cole (April 27, 1911- February 17, 1974) was an American dancer, choreographer, and theatre director known as the founder of the idiom of American show dancing called Theatrical Jazz Dance. If not for Cole, many now-immortal stage and screen actresses probably would not be remembered as dancers today. Cole’s choreography in the “Diamonds are a Girl’s Best Friend” sequence in the film Gentlemen Prefer Blondes was reinterpreted by Madonna for her music video of “Material Girl”.

 

1951, Mexico

Luis Zapata (born April 27, 1951), Mexico’s most productive and successful gay writer, is born.  In his best-known work Las aventuras, desaventuras y sue√±os de Adonis Garc√≠a, el vampiro de la colonia Roma(1979; Adonis Garc√≠a: A Picaresque Novel) he chronicled the lives of urban homosexuals.

 

1953

President Dwight D. Eisenhower signs Executive Order 10450 which establishes grounds for investigation and dismissal:  “Any criminal, infamous, dishonest, immoral, or notoriously disgraceful conduct, habitual use of intoxicants to excess, drug addiction, or sexual perversion.” Without explicitly referring to homosexuality, the executive order responded to several years of charges that the presence of homosexual employees in the State Department posed blackmail risks. As a result, more than 640 federal employees lose their jobs over the next year and a half.

 

1967

The Student Homophile League at Columbia University is founded, making them the first college in the United States to officially recognize a gay student group. Robert Martin, Jr, known as Stephen Donaldson (July 27, 1946 – July 18, 1996), was a bisexual-identified LGBT rights activist who founded the group. He is commemorated by a plaque and a portrait in the queer student lounge that bears his name in one of Columbia’s residence halls. He is best known for his pioneering activism in LGBT rights and prison reform, and for his writing about punk rock and subculture.

1978, Canada

John Argue, a swimming instructor with Toronto Board of Education, is fired from his job at public school because he is gay. Argue, a gay activist, later becomes active in Metro Toronto New Democratic Party.

 

1978

Rachel Morrison (born April 27, 1978) is an American cinematographer. For her work on Mudbound (2017), Morrison earned a nomination for an Academy Award for Best Cinematography, making her the first woman ever-and thus the first lesbian-nominated in that category. She has twice worked with director Ryan Coogler, first on Fruitvale Station (2013) then on Black Panther (2018)

 

2009, Iowa

Iowa becomes the third state to allow same-sex marriage.

APRIL 28

 

1929

Gay journalist John Paul Hudson (April 28, 1929 – February 20, 2002) is born.  Hudson is one of the first gay writers to take up gay rights and become involved in the media. He also wrote under the pseudonym John Francis Hunter. He wrote for the periodical Gay in 1969, the Advocate in 1970 and contributed to David, Gayweek, News West, Flash and Vector. A tireless activist, he is credited with being one of the founders of the gay rights movement that grew out of the Stonewall riots and was one of the principal organizers of the Christopher Street Liberation Day committee which put together the first  Pride March in 1970 on the first anniversary of Stonewall. He died in 2002.

 

1954, UK

The Home Office announces that a special committee, later called the Wolfenden Committee, will be formed to study the issue of sex Law reform. The Report of the Departmental Committee on Homosexual Offences and Prostitution, better known as the Wolfenden report, after Sir John Wolfenden (26 June 1906 – 18 January 1985), the chair of the committee, was published in the United Kingdom on 4 September 1957 after a succession of well-known men, including Lord Montagu of Beaulieu (20 October 1926 – 31 August 2015), Michael Pitt-Rivers (27 May 1917 – December 1999), and Peter Wildeblood (19 May 1923 – 14 November 1999) were convicted of homosexual offences.

 

1977, Canada

Ontario MPP Margaret Campbell’s private member’s bill to include sexual orientation in Ontario Human Rights Code, introduced April 4th, fails in legislature.

 

1977

Florida Governor Rubin Askew asks Miami voters to rescind a recently passed gay rights ordinance saying, “I would not want a known homosexual teaching my children.” Askew was an ally of Florida Orange Juice spokesperson Anita Bryant who conducted a national anti-gay crusade. He signed legislation prohibiting any gay or lesbian person in Florida from adopting children.

 

1981

Marilyn Barnett (born January 28, 1948) files a palimony suit against tennis icon Billie Jean King (born November 22, 1943). At the time, King denies that she is a lesbian, although she acknowledges the affair. King lost all her endorsements in a 24-hour period (an estimated $2 million), wins the case and comes out officially. Today King has residences in New York City and Chicago with her doubles partner Liana Kloss.

 

1990

Over 1000 people attend Queer Nation’s first major demonstration. Queer Nation, founded by AIDS activists from ACT UP, mobilized over a 1000 protesters in a matter of hours outside Uncle Charlie’s Downtown in New York City, responding to a pipe bomb. The explosion occurred at about 12:10 A.M, injuring three men in the very popular Greenwich Village gay bar. The protestors marched their way to the NYPD’s 6th Precinct, blocking traffic. Five years later, in 1995, it was discovered that terrorist El Sayyid Nosair, who was convicted of involvement in the 1993 World Trade Center bombing, was responsible for the pipe bomb attack.

 

2015

The U.S. Supreme Court hears oral arguments on the question of the freedom to marry in Kentucky, Tennessee, Ohio and Michigan. The decision may bring a national resolution on the issue of same-sex marriage.

APRIL 29

 

1870, UK

Thomas Ernest Boulton (Feb. 2, 1848-Dec. 1904) and Frederick William Park (1849-?) were Stella and Fanny to their friends. They were drag queens who were arrested the night after a performance and charged “with conspiring and inciting persons to commit an unnatural offence”. They appear in court in women’s clothing. After the prosecution failed to establish that they had anal sex, which was then a crime, or that wearing women’s clothing was in any sense a crime, both men were acquitted.

 

1930

Jim Toy (born April 29, 1930) is born. He is a long-time LGBT activist, considered a pioneer among LGBT activists in Michigan. Jim came out during his speech at an anti-Vietnam-War rally in Kennedy Square, Detroit, in April 1970. At the rally Toy was representing the Detroit Gay Liberation Movement, of which he was a founding member. He was also a founding member of the Ann Arbor Gay Liberation Front. In 1971 he helped establish the Human Sexuality Office (HSO) at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor (later renamed The Spectrum Center). The HSO was the first staffed office in a United States institution of higher learning, and presumably the first of its kind in the world to respond to sexual orientation concerns. Jim served as its Co-Coordinator, and Gay Male advocate, from 1971 until 1994 when Dr. Ronni Sanlo became the director of that center.

 

1933

Singer Rod McKuen (April 29, 1933 – January 29, 2015) is born in Oakland, California. His “new age” songs made him a celebrity in the late 60s. He told an interviewer “I have had sex with men. Does that make me gay?”

 

1978, Canada

Homophobic singer Anita Bryant’s visit to Edmonton prompts demonstrations.

1993, Russia

Homosexual acts between consenting adult males are legalized. Yeltsin signs the law to obtain a place in the Council of Europe, a human rights organization.

 

1997

The State of Hawaii creates a “domestic partners registry.”

 

2013

NBA player Jason Collins (born December 2, 1978) comes out in Sports Illustrated. He’s the first currently-playing pro male athlete to come out. In April 2014, Collins featured on the cover of Time Magazine’s “100 Most Influential People in the World.” On November 19, 2014, Collins announced his retirement from professional basketball after 13 seasons in the NBA. Since June 2014, Collins has been in a relationship with Brunson Green (born November 1967). Green is a film producer and president of Harbinger Pictures, an American feature film production company based in Los Angeles. On January 24, 2012, he was nominated for an Academy Award for the movie The Help.

APRIL 30

 

1877

Alice B. Toklas (April 30, 1877 – March 7, 1967) is born in San Francisco.  Toklas becomes the lover of Gertrude Stein (February 3, 1874 – July 27, 1946), becoming gay history’s most legendary lesbian couple. After moving to Paris, Stein met Toklas in 1907. Their apartment on the Rue de Fleurus which became a famous meeting place for artists and writers. During the period Toklas and Stein were together, they frequently exchanged love letters. Alice was an early riser, and Gertrude, who wrote late into the night, left her tender, passionate notes to cheer up her mornings. Toklas gained wide attention with the publication of The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas (1933), which is actually Gertrude Stein’s memoir. It records Toklas’s first-person observations of Stein’s life and her friends, among them Ernest Hemingway, Sherwood Anderson, Pablo Picasso, Henri Matisse, and Georges Braque. The Alice B. Toklas Cookbook came out when Toklas was 77. It contained 300 recipes and became famous because of one special dish, Toklas’s Haschich Fudge “which anyone could whip up on a rainy day,” she wrote.

 

1921, France

Marcel Proust (10 July 1871 – 18 November 1922) publishes the first part of Sodome et Gomorrhe (Cities of the Plain), part of his 16-volume opus A la Recherche du Temps Perdu (Remembrance of Things Past). The themes of male and female same-sex passion interwoven into the previous volumes now come to the fore in an extended essay on the homosexual.

 

1973, Canada

In Toronto, Newsweb Enterprises, a printing company controlled by The Toronto Star, refuses to print Issue 8 of the gay paper The Body Politic following a battle over classified ads which the printer said were “obscene.”.

 

1980, Canada

Two Winnipeg chain bookstores, Coles and Classics, remove copies of Joy of Gay Sex and Joy of Lesbian Sex from shelves following threats from police of obscenity charges.

 

1988, UK

Some 30,000 demonstrators, including rock stars and other celebrities, march in London to protest the passage of Clause 28 which affected England, Wales and Scotland. This is the largest lesbian and gay rally in the history of the UK. Clause 28 stated that a local authority “shall not intentionally promote homosexuality or publish material with the intention of promoting homosexuality” or “promote the teaching in any maintained school of the acceptability 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.

 

1989

In Austin, Texas, more than 20,000 people march on the state capital in the largest gay and lesbian rights demonstration in the state’s history.

 

1997

‘Yep, I’m gay’ – Ellen DeGeneres (born January 26, 1958) comes out on her television show Ellen in The Puppy Episode that drew in 42 million viewers. Her ratings plunged, which she said was due to a lack of promotion, and the show was pulled the next season, according to The Hollywood Reporter. Her “coming out” heralded an era of other gay celebrities following suit.

Published February 8, 2024

THIS DAY IN LGBTQ HISTORY – MARCH

March 1

 

1642

The Plymouth Colony Court heard a case brought against Edward Michell and Edward Preston for “lewd & sodomitical practices tending to sodomy.”

1649

The earliest known conviction for lesbian activity in North America occurs on this day when Sarah White Norman (ca. 1623-1654) is charged with “Lewd behaviour with each other upon a bed” with Mary Vincent Hammon (1633-1705) in Plymouth, Massachusetts. Since Mary was younger than 16 years old, she was only admonished, but Sarah, probably 10 years older, stood trial. Originally, Richard Berry (1626-1681), a neighbor, accused the two women and one man, Teage Joanes, of sodomy and other unclean practices. Later Berry said he had borne false witness against Joanes but he did not withdraw what he said against Sarah White Norman. Much later, the same Berry and other men, including Joanes, were prosecuted for homosexuality and ordered to “part their uncivil living together”.

 

1656

The New Haven, CT law is the first in the American colonies to make same-sex acts between women punishable by the death penalty. The code quotes Romans 1:26 – “if any woman change the natural use into that which is against nature” – as the basis for the law.

 

1880, UK

Giles Lytton Strachey (1 March 1880 – 21 January 1932) is born. He was a British writer and critic. A founding member of the Bloomsbury Group and author of Eminent Victorians, he is best known for establishing a new form of biography in which psychological insight and sympathy are combined with irreverence and wit. His biography Queen Victoria(1921) was awarded the Pulitzer Prize. Though Strachey spoke openly about his homosexuality with his Bloomsbury friends, and had relationships with a variety of men including Ralph Partridge (1894 – 30 November 1960), details of Strachey’s sexuality were not widely known until the publication of a biography by Michael Holroyd in the late 1960s. His sister was a lesbian.

  

1882

Boston district attorney Oliver Stevens calls Walt Whitman’s  (May 31, 1819 – March 26, 1892) Leaves of Grass obscene literature and suggest some poems be removed. It doesn’t happen.

 

1893

Mercedes de Acosta (March 1, 1893 – May 9, 1968) is born. She was an American poet, playwright, and novelist. De Acosta wrote almost a dozen plays only four of which were produced, and she published a novel and three volumes of poetry. She was professionally unsuccessful but is known for her many lesbian affairs with famous Broadway and Hollywood personalities and numerous friendships with prominent artists of the period. But as Alice B. Toklas (April 30, 1877 – March 7, 1967), lover of Gertrude Stein (February 3, 1874 – July 27, 1946), and de Acosta’s long-term friend, wrote to a disapproving critic, “Say what you will about Mercedes, she’s had the most important women of the twentieth century.”

1935

Bessie Smith (April 15, 1894 – September 26, 1937) records the song “B-D Woman” in praise of ‘bulldaggers,’ perhaps the first popular release to pay tribute to butch lesbians.

 

1977

Blueboy Forum, which bills itself as the U.S.’s first gay-oriented TV show, debuts on New York cable.

 

1978, Canada

The Toronto Lambda Business Council is incorporated. It was the first association of gay businesses in Canada.

 

1993

Leslie Feinberg’s (September 1, 1949 – November 15, 2014) Stone Butch Blues is published. It goes on to win the 1994 Stonewall Book Award. The story is about a young Jewish working-class butch protagonist and highlights butch-femme culture. Feinberg was an American, butch lebian and transgender activist, communist, and author. Her writing and her pioneering non-fiction book Transgender Warriors (1996) 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.

 

2004

The Harry Benjamin International Gender Dysphoria Association founds the International Journal of Transgenderism, published by Haworth Press.

 

2008, Nicaragua

Nicaragua legalizes same-sex sexual activity.

 

2011, Portugal

The Portugal President signs the most advanced gender identity law in the world, simplifying the process of sex and name changes.

 

2012

Maryland passes legislation to legalize same-sex marriage, becoming the eighth state to do so.

 

 

March 2

 

1905

Marc Blitzstein (March 2, 1905 – January 22, 1964) is born in Philadelphia. He wrote the definitive Depression Era opera “The Cradle Will Rock” in 1936. His English version of “Three Penny Opera” ran for years on Broadway. Blitzstein was openly gay.

 

1975, Canada

In Toronto an Ontario Human Rights Code review committee was established to consider gay protections for gays and lesbians.

 

1982

Wisconsin becomes the first U.S. state to outlaw discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation.

 

1985

The FDA licenses the first HIV blood test.

 

1996, Australia

Robert James Brown (born 27 December 1944), representing Tasmania, is elected to the Australian Senate. He was the first openly gay member of the Parliament of Australia, and the first openly gay leader of an Australian political party.

 

2002

Jason West, mayor of New Paltz, New York, is charged with 19 criminal counts of solemnizing same-sex marriages in his town without a license.

 

 

March 3

  

1938

Don Kilhefner (born March 3, 1938) is born. He founded and co-founded multiple gay organizations including the Radical Faeries and the LA Community Services Center (now the Los Angeles LGBT Center). He was among the first volunteers in the Peace Corps in 1962. As a response to what he believed was an assimilationist attitude in the mainstream gay rights movement, he co-founded the spiritual/countercultural Radical Faeries movement. This loose network explored queer consciousness, one that Kilhefner believed was fundamentally different than that of heterosexuals. He wrote a column for Frontiers, Southern California largest gay newspaper, called “Edging Out: Exploring the Frontiers of Gay Consciousness” with Don Kilhefner.

 

1973, Luxembourg

Luxembourg Prime Minister Xavier Bettel (born 3 March 1973) is born today. He and architect Gauthier Destenay entered into a civil partnership in 2010 and married on May 5, 2015 after Luxembourg’s legislators approved same-sex marriage. Bettel became the first openly gay Prime Minister in December 2013, after an election campaign in which his sexuality was not a secret nor an issue. Bette previously served as Mayor of Luxembourg City, member of the Chamber of Deputies and member of the Luxembourg City communal council. Bettel is a member of the Democratic Party. He is the third openly gay head of government following Iceland’s Prime Minister Jóhanna Sigurðardóttir (2009–2013) and Belgium’s Prime Minister Elio Di Rupo (2011–2014). Leo Varadkar (born 18 January 1979) joined this list as the prime minister of Ireland in 2017.

 

1993

The organization Lesbian and Gay Immigration Rights Task Force is founded. Its purpose is to work toward equal rights for LGBTQ and HIV-positive immigrants and binational couples, equal immigration, and asylum.  It was first convened in 1993 by Lambda Legal Defense and Education Fund and The Center , and is advocating the reform of discriminatory immigration laws in the USA.

 

2010

Congress approves a law signed in December, 2009, that legalizes same-sex marriage in the Washington, D.C.

 

 

March 4

  

1948

Jean O’Leary (March 4, 1948 – June 4, 2005) was an American LGBT rights activist. She was the founder of Lesbian Feminist Liberation, one of the first lesbian activist groups in the women’s movement, and was an early member and co-director of the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force. She co-founded National Coming Out Day with Rob Ekberg. Before becoming a lesbian and gay rights activist, she was a Roman Catholic Religious Sister. She would later write about her experience in the 1985 anthology, Lesbian Nuns: Breaking Silence by Rosemary Curb (1940 – May 26, 2012) and Nancy Manahan (born 1946). O’Leary died on Saturday, June 4, 2005, in San Clemente, California of lung cancer, at age 57. She is survived by her partner, Lisa Phelps, their daughter Victoria, their son David de Maria , his life partner James Springer, and David’s and James’ son, Aiden de Maria.

 

1952, Canada

Svend Robinson (born March 4, 1952) is a Canadian former politician. He was a member of Parliament in the Canadian House of Commons from 1979 to 2004, representing the suburban Vancouver-area constituency of Burnaby for the New Democratic Party. When he chose not to run again in the June 2004 election, he was one of the longest-serving members in the House of Commons, having been elected and re-elected for seven consecutive terms. He is noted as the first member of Parliament in Canadian history to come out as gay while in office. In April, 2004, shortly before 2004 election, Robinson admitted to the theft of an expensive ring from a public auction site. He turned himself in to the Royal Canadian Mounted Police. Robinson was charged and pleaded guilty. The Crown and defense agreed that he was undergoing major personal stress and mental health issues at the time; Robinson was given a discharge, meaning that he would have no criminal record, but he volunteered for some time at the Burnaby Wildlife Centre as part of a public service commitment. He terminated his candidacy and was replaced by his longtime constituency assistant Bill Siksay, who won the election. Robinson was subsequently diagnosed as suffering from cyclothymia, a form of bipolar disorder, and began to speak as an activist on mental health issues.

 

1966

The word “Lesbian” is heard for the first time in the Hollywood movie The Group. The Group is a 1966 ensemble film directed by Sidney Lumet based on the novel of the same name by Mary McCarthy about the lives a group of eight female graduates from a Vassar-like college South Tower from 1933 to 1940. The cast of this social satire included Candice Bergen, Joan Hackett, Elizabeth Hartman, Shirley Knight, Jessica Walter, Kathleen Widdoes, and Joanna Pettet. The film also features small roles for Hal Holbrook, Carrie Nye, James Broderick, Larry Hagman and Richard Mulligan. For its time, the film touched on controversial topics, such as free love, contraception, abortion, lesbianism, and mental illness.

 

1971

Village Voice columnist Jill Johnston (May 17, 1929 – September 18, 2010) comes out in her article Lois Lane is a Lesbian, sparking a controversy between feminism and lesbianism that results in various Johnston antics including simulating an orgy during a panel discussion moderated by Norman Mailer. Jill was an American feminist author and cultural critic who wrote Lesbian in 1973 and was a longtime writer for The Village Voice. She was also a leader of the lesbian separatist movement of the 1970s.

 

1972

The California DMV reports that while the majority of the 65,000 vanity license plates have presented no censorship issues for the department, a few plates, including “HOMO”, “GAYLIB”, “EAT ME”, and “LOVE69″ have been banned.

 

1973

Two weeks after the National Organization for Women passed a resolution establishing the fight for lesbian rights as a “top priority,” feminist Betty Friedan publicly accuses “man-hating” lesbians of trying to take over the organization.

 

1975, Canada

Eighteen gay men, the owner and customers of an Ottawa model agency and dating service, are arrested and charged with sexual offences in what became known as “Ottawa sex scandal.” Names are released by police and published by the press. Police allege “homosexual vice ring.”

 

2018

Yance Ford and Joslyn Barnes are nominated for the Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature for producing Strong Island, which Ford directed. As such, Ford was the first openly transgender man to be nominated for any Academy Award, and the first openly transgender director to be nominated for any Academy Award. Strong Island is about the murder of his brother William Ford, which occurred in 1992. Yance Ford is an African American transgender producer and director. Ford graduated from Hamilton College in 1994, and beginning in 2002, he worked as a series producer at PBS for ten years. In 2011, he was named one of Filmmaker magazine’s 25 New Faces of Independent Film. He also received the 2011–2012 Fledgling Fund Fellowship at MacDowell. In 2017 he was #97 on The Root 100, an annual list of the most influential African Americans, ages 25 to 45. Joslyn Barnes is a film producer and director and co-founder of Louverture Films with Danny Glover. She is the author or co-author of numerous commissioned screenplays for feature films including the upcoming epic Toussaint.

 

 

March 4

  

1898

In San Bernardino, California, William Burke and Harry Fisher were found guilty of a crime against nature and given 25 years each in prison.

 

1922, Italy

Pier Paolo Pasolini (5 March 1922 – 2 November 1975) is born in Bologna. He was an Italian film director, poet, writer, and intellectual. Pasolini also distinguished himself as an actor, journalist, philosopher, philologist, novelist, playwright, painter, and political figure. While openly gay from the very start of his career (thanks to a gay sex scandal that sent him packing from his provincial hometown to live and work in Rome), Pasolini rarely dealt with homosexuality in his movies. He remains a controversial personality in Italy due to his blunt style and the focus of some of his works on taboo sexual matters, but he is an established major figure in European literature and cinematic arts. His murder prompted an outcry in Italy and its circumstances continue to be a matter of heated debate.

 

1933, Germany

One of the largest LGBT clubs of hundreds in Berlin is shut down nine days after a “Public Morality” directive that gay bars and clubs be closed.

 

1974, Canada

In Milton, Ontario, fundamentalist minister Ken Campbell, outraged by Hamilton-McMaster Homophile Association members addressing his daughter’s high school class, forms the Halton Renaissance Committee, forerunner of Renaissance Canada. Eventually it becomes one of strongest opponents of gay rights movement.

 

1999

Young playwright Samantha Gellar wins a writing contest in Charlotte, NC, but her play is banned from production by the Children’s Theater of Charlotte because of the play’s theme of love between two women. As a result, her play is produced off-Broadway by a group of actors and Ms. Gellar goes on to be named one of the most influential women under 20 by Ms. Magazine in 2000.

  

2006

Ang Lee wins the academy award for Best Director for the film Brokeback Mountain, an American neo-Western romantic film directed by 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 sexual relationship between Ennis Del Mar and Jack Twist in the American West from 1963 to 1983.

 

2018

Daniela Vega (born June 3, 1989), the star of Oscar-winning foreign film “A Fantastic Woman,” becomes the first openly transgender presenter in Academy Awards history when she introduces a performance by Sufjan Stevens, whose song “Mystery of Love” from the “Call Me By Your Name” soundtrack, is nominated for best original song.

  

March 6

  

1475, Italy

Michelangelo Buonaroti (6 March 1475 – 18 February 1564) is born in Caprese. He will one day paint the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel and sculpt the David. The great painter had several lovers but none so loved as Tommasso Cavalieri (1509–1587) to whom he wrote exquisite love sonnets.

 

1923

Shortly after Sholem Asch’s The God of Vengeance moves to Broadway to the Apollo Theater, the producer, the theater owner, and 12 cast members are arrested and charged with “presenting an obscene, indecent, immoral and impure theatrical production.” God of Vengeance is a 1906 play that explores religious hypocrisy, prostitution, and lesbianism. The play had previously been performed successfully and without interference in nine countries in Europe. Although a jury rules against the play two months later, the verdict is later overturned on appeal. It is about a Jewish brothel owner who attempts to become respectable by commissioning a Torah scroll and marrying off his daughter to a yeshiva student, but the daughter falls in love with one of the women in the brothel.

 

1972

The American Bar Association passes a resolution recommending that consensual sex acts between people of the same sex be decriminalized.

 

1981, Canada

The founding meetings of the Toronto Gay Community Council are held. It was the first city-wide coordinating organization of gay and lesbian groups in Canada. The council remained in operation until Sep 1984.

 

1987

Vermont becomes the first state to hand out condoms to prisoners on request.

 

1994

Jonathan Schmitz and Scott Amedure tape a Jenny Jones Show about secret crushes. Schmitz expected his admirer to be a woman, not his gay neighbor. When Schmitz found Amedure, a 32-year-old unemployed gay man, telling a television audience about a fantasy that involved Schmitz, he became embarrassed and, his lawyers said, enraged. Three days after the taping, on March 9, 1995, Schmitz received an anonymous, sexually suggestive note on his doorstep and assumed it came from Amedure. Schmitz purchased a 12-gauge shotgun, went to Amedure’s mobile home and fired two shots at close range into Amedure’s chest. A few minutes later, Schmitz dialed 911 from a pay phone at a gas station near his sister’s house. He said, “I just walked in the room and killed him.” Schmitz was later convicted of second-degree murder. Although the conviction was overturned, Schmitz was again found guilty in a second trial and sentenced to 25 to 50 years in prison. In a civil suit, a jury found the Jenny Jones Show liable for the murder and awarded the Amedure family $25 million.  

 

March 7

  

1855, France

Robert Comte de Montesquiou-Fezensac (7 March 1855, Paris – 11 December 1921) is born in Paris. He was a French aesthete, Symbolist poet, art collector and dandy. He is reputed to have been the inspiration both for Jean des Esseintes in Joris-Karl Huysmans‘ À rebours (1884) and, most famously, for the Baron de Charlus in Proust’s À la recherche du temps perdu (1913–1927). His portrait Arrangement in Black and Gold: Comte Robert de Montesquiou-Fezensac was painted by his close friend, and model for many of his eccentric mannerisms, James Abbott McNeill Whistler in 1891-1892. He had aristocratic women friends but much preferred the company of bright attractive young men. In 1885, he began a close long-term relationship with Gabriel Yturri (March 12, 1860 – July 6, 1905), a handsome South American immigrant, from Tucuman, Argentina who became his secretary, companion, and lover. After Yturri died of diabetes, Henri Pinard replaced him as secretary in 1908 and eventually inherited Montesquiou’s much reduced fortune. Montesquiou and Yturri are buried alongside each other at Cimetière des Gonards, Versailles, Île-de-France, France.

 

1934, Russia

Article 121 makes sodomy between men illegal in all the republics of the USSR. Maxim Gorky, a popular writer and the leading Soviet intellectual of the period, praises the “proletarian humanism” of the law which punishes sex between consenting male adults with up to five years’ “deprivation of freedom.”

 

1934, Italy

Marcella Di Folco, born Marcello Di Folco (March 7, 1943 – September 7, 2010), was an activist, actress and Italian politician.  In cinema, she worked for directors such as Federico Fellini and Roberto Rossellini. In August 1980, after a long period of self-conflict with her gender identity, she had a sex change operation in Casablanca.  She was an active participant in the Movimento Italiano Transessuali, and was influential in having sex changes made legal in Italy, in 1982.

 

1967

CBS airs “The Homosexuals,” an episode of CBS Reports. This first-ever national television broadcast on the subject of homosexuality has been described as “the single most destructive hour of antigay propaganda in our nation’s history.” Host Mike Wallace concluded: “The dilemma of the homosexual: told by the medical profession he is sick; by the law that he’s a criminal; shunned by employers; rejected by heterosexual society. Incapable of a fulfilling a relationship with a woman, or for that matter with a man. At the center of his life he remains anonymous. A displaced person, an outsider.

 

1972

The first gay rights legislation is enacted in America. In East Lansing, Michigan, the city council approved by a vote of 4-to-1 an act declaring the city must seek to “employ the best applicant for each vacancy on the basis of his [sic] qualifications for the job and without regard to race, color, creed, national origin, sex or homosexuality.”

 

1986

Desert Hearts, considered the first positive lesbian film, is released. It is an American romantic drama film directed by Donna Deitch (born June 8, 1945). The screenplay, written by Natalie Cooper, is an adaptation of the 1964 lesbian-themed novel Desert of the Heart by Jane Rule (28 March 1931 – 27 November 2007). Set in Reno, Nevada in 1959, it tells the story of a university professor awaiting a divorce who finds her true self when she meets a free-spirited younger woman confident in her romantic and sexual attraction. The film stars Helen Shaver and Patricia Charbonneau with a supporting performance by Audra Lindley. It is regarded as the first film to present a positive portrayal of lesbian sexuality.

 

1988

Shortly after the release of his first big mainstream hit Hairspray, its star, Divine, dies on this day of heart disease in Los Angeles at the age of 42. Harris Glenn Milstead, better known by his stage name Divine (October 19, 1945 – March 7, 1988), was an American actor, singer and drag queen. Closely associated with the independent filmmaker John Waters (born April 22, 1946), Divine was a character actor, usually performing female roles in cinematic and theatrical appearances, and adopted a female drag persona for his music career. Divine considered himself to be male, not transgender. He was gay, and during the 1980s had an extended relationship with a married man named Lee who accompanied him almost everywhere. They later separated and Divine went on to have a brief affair with gay porn star Leo Ford (July 5, 1957 – July 17, 1991). Divine sometimes hinted that he was bisexual, but in the latter part of the 1980s he was being open about his homosexuality. Nonetheless, he avoided discussing gay rights, partially at the advice of his manager, realizing that it would have had a negative effect on his career.

 

1996

The Birdcage opens in theaters nationwide. The Birdcage is a 1996 American comedy film directed by Mike Nichols, written by Elaine May, and starring Robin Williams, Gene Hackman, Nathan Lane (February 3, 1956), and Dianne Wiest. Dan Futterman, Calista Flockhart, Hank Azaria, and Christine Baranski appear in supporting roles. It is a remake of the 1978 Franco-Italian film La Cage aux Folles by Édouard Molinaro starring Michel Serrault and Ugo Tognazzi.

 

2014, Jamaica

Police once again attempted to evict homeless LGBT youth from the sewers of New Kingston. A judge ruled that since sewers were a public place, and the youth had nowhere else to go, they could stay there. Youth who were arrested were charged with swearing and had to pay a fine which was covered by Dwayne’s House.

 

2020

Mart Crowley (born August 21, 1935– March 7, 2020) dies. He was an American playwright. He worked for a number of television production companies in Hollywood before meeting Natalie Wood on the set of her film Splendor in the Grass. Wood hired him as her assistant, primarily to give him free time to work on his gay-themed play The Boys in the Band, which opened off-Broadway on April 14, 1968 and enjoyed a run of 1,000 performances. Crowley has appeared in at least three documentaries: The Celluloid Closet (1995), about the depiction of homosexuality in cinema; Dominick Dunne: After the Party (2007), a biography of Crowley’s friend and producer Dominick Dunne; and Making the Boys (2011), a documentary about the making of The Boys in the Band. Crowley is openly gay.

 

 

March 8

  

203 AD, Syria

Heliogablus (March 8, 203-March 11, 222), who became Marcus Aurelius Antoninus, was born in Syria. The boy Emperor of Rome loved his men but was forced to create an heir so he married. He was so impressed with the pomp and circumstance of the marriage ceremony that he did it again, twice in one night, taking as his husband a young charioteer named Gorianus who was described by a contemporary as “hung like his horse” and as his wife, a boy named Hierocles. The wedding night with both was consummated before the wedding guests. Eventually Heliogablus was killed by his enemies with a sword up his posterior. He was 19.

 

1702, UK

Anne (6 February 1665 – 1 August 1714) becomes queen of Great Britain. She was the Queen of England, Scotland and Ireland between 8 March 1702 and 1 May 1707. On 1 May 1707, under the Acts of Union, two of her realms, the kingdoms of England and Scotland, united as a single sovereign state known as Great Britain. She continued to reign as Queen of Great Britain and Ireland until her death. Around 1671, she had met Sarah Jennings with whom she had a close relationship for nearly 50 years. Their relationship turned negative over time due to politics. Sarah started rumors that Anne was a lesbian and threatened to make their love letters public. Anne dismissed Sarah from the court forever. Sarah was supplanted in Anne’s affections by a cousin, Abigail Hill. She had caught the Queen’s attention during Sarah’s frequent absences from Court, and Sarah was never again to be the Queen’s closest confidant.

 

1887, UK

Una Vincenzo, Lady Troubridge, born Margot Elena Gertrude Taylor (8 March 1887 – 24 September 1963), was a British sculptor and translator. She is best known as the long-time lesbian partner of Marguerite Radclyffe Hall (12 August 1880 – 7 October 1943), author of The Well of Loneliness. Una Troubridge was an educated woman with achievements in her own right. Most notably she was a successful translator and introduced the French writer Colette to English readers. Her talent as a sculptor prompted Nijinsky to sit for her several times.

  

1948

In New York City, the Veterans Benevolent Association incorporates “to unite socially and fraternally, all veterans and their friends, of good and moral character.” The group, which had about 100 members at its height, helps gay male veterans with legal and employment problems, besides holding social events attended by as many as 500.

 

1978

The Lesbian Mothers Defense Fund is launched in Toronto by the group Wages Due Lesbians. It maintained women should be paid for rearing children pointing out that female parenting is a job that is 24/7. Seattle had a chapter as well.

 

1951

Monica F. Helms (born March 8, 1951) is a transgender activist, author, and veteran of the United States Navy. She created the transgender pride flag in 1999. It was first flown at a Pride Parade in Phoenix, Arizona, in 2000. Helms donated the original Transgender Pride Flag at the first ceremony honoring the addition of a collection of LGBT historical items at the Smithsonian on August 19, 2014.

 

1954

Pat Califia (born 1954) is an American writer of non-fiction essays about sexuality and of erotic fiction and poetry. Califia is a bisexual trans man. Prior to transitioning, he identified as a lesbian. He wrote a sex advice column for the gay men‘s leather magazine Drummer. His writings explore sexuality and gender identity, and have included lesbian erotica and works about BDSM subculture. Califia is a member of the third-wave feminism movement.

 

1970

In the early morning hours, New York City police raid a gay bar called the Snake Pit for not having a license for dancing and selling alcohol, arresting 167 patrons. At the police station, one of the arrestees, an Argentine national named Diego Vinales so feared the possibility of deportation that he leapt from a second-story window of the police station, impaling himself on the spikes of an iron fence. He survived, though firemen were forced to cut out a section of the fence with Vinales still skewered on it, in order to move him to the hospital. One journalist remarked, “It is no crime to be *in* a place that is serving liquor illegally, the only crime is to run such a place. There were no grounds for hauling the customers away.” Though charges against other patrons were dropped, Vinales was rebooked for “resisting arrest” and officers were stationed outside his hospital room to prevent another escape. The community organized a protest march.

 

1979

The New York Times runs a front-page photograph of six men being executed by firing squad in Iran for allegedly having committed crimes of “homosexual rape.” Since the Ayatollah Khomeini’s rise to power just four weeks earlier, there had been growing reports of gay men, as well as Jews, Baha’is, “blasphemers,” “heretics,” former members of the Iranian aristocracy, and others being blackmailed, imprisoned, tortured, dismembered, hanged and/or shot. By the time Khomeini gets around to celebrating his first anniversary of his Islamic revolution, the body count is in the thousands.

  

March 9

  

1892, UK

Vita Sackville-West, Lady Nicolson, (9 March 1892 – 2 June 1962) is born in Knole, England. She was an English poet, novelist, and designer. The lesbian writer married gay diplomat Harold Nicolson (21 November 1886 – 1 May 1968). The story of her passionate but disastrous affair with Violet Trefusis is beautifully told in Portrait of a Marriage by her son Nigel Nicolson. She was the inspiration for the androgynous protagonist of Orlando: A Biography, by her famous friend and lover, Virginia Woolf (25 January 1882 – 28 March 1941). Vita was more deeply involved with author Violet Keppel (6 June 1894 – 29 February 1972). The sexual relationship began when they were both in their teens and strongly influenced them for years. Both later married and became writers. In 1927, Sackville-West had an affair with Mary Garman (1898–1979), a member of the Bloomsbury Group, and between 1929 and 1931 with Hilda Matheson (June 7, 1888 – October 30, 1940), head of the BBC Talks department. In 1931, Sackville-West was in a ménage à trois with journalist Evelyn Irons (17 June 1900 – 3 April 2000) and Irons’ lover, Olive Rinder.

 

1947

Carrie Chapman Catt (Jan. 9, 1859-March 9, 1947) dies. She was an American women’s suffrage leader who campaigned for the Nineteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, which gave American women the right to vote in 1920. Catt was the founder of the League of Women Voters and the International Alliance of Women. She was one of the best-known women in the United States in the first half of the twentieth century. For over twenty years she lived with fellow suffragist, Mary Garrett Hay (August 29, 1857- August 29, 1928). On March 9, 1947, Catt died of a heart attack in her home in New Rochelle, New York. She was buried alongside her longtime partner, Hay, at Woodlawn Cemetery in The Bronx, New York City.

 

1969

Los Angeles police savagely beat a gay man to death during the Dover Hotel raid. The Dover operated as an early version of the soon-to-become-popular bathhouse scene. It was also the scene of a number of raids by LAPD’s vice squad for the easy bust of “faggots.” During a raid by the LAPD Vice Squad on March 9, 1969, four months prior to the Stonewall riots in New York City, Howard Efland, a male nurse checked into the hotel under the pseudonym of J. McCann. By the end of that day Efland would be brutally beaten outside the hotel by police in front of numerous witnesses. While several witnesses claimed that Efland died at the scene, arresting officers Chauncy and Halligan said Elfland was alive then claimed that halfway to the station from where they had arrested him, he kicked open the door and fell out onto the Hollywood Freeway. No one was ever held accountable for the murder of Howard Efland. On March 2, 2016, Back2Stonewall’s Will Kohler talked with LAPD’s  Gay, Bisexual & Transgender Community Liaison in the Community Relations Department who promised to look into the Efland case after 46 years.

 

1989

Noted gay artist Robert Mapplethorpe (November 4, 1946 – March 9, 1989) dies of AIDS in Boston at the age of 42. Mapplethorpe’s work is later at the center of a major arts funding controversy in the United States. He was an American photographer, known for his sensitive yet blunt treatment of controversial subject-matter in the large-scale, highly stylized black and white medium of photography. His work featured an array of subjects including celebrity portraits, male and female nudes, self-portraits and still-life images of flowers. His most controversial work is that of the underground BDSM scene in the late 1960s and early 1970s in New York City. The homoeroticism of this work fueled a national debate over the public funding of controversial artwork.

 

2004

Asbury Park, New Jersey, begins issuing marriage licenses to same-sex couples but they’re later nullified because they were illegally issued.

 

 

March 10

  

1778

From George Washington’s letters: Lt. Enslin of Col. Malcolm’s regiment tried for attempting to commit sodomy with John Monhort, a soldier. His Excellency the Commander in Chief approves the sentence and with the Abhorrence and Detestation of such Infamous Crimes orders Lt. Enslin to be drummed out of Camp tomorrow morning by all the Drummers and Fifers in the Army never to return. Enslin was “dismissed with Infamy.” Little is known about the early life of Frederick Gotthold Enslin (born 1740), but it is believed he was educated and from a family of high standing in Europe, possibly southern Germany, due to reports that his command of the English language was outstanding and his penmanship was well formed. His approximate year of birth was 1740. When Enslin enlisted, he was given the appointment of lieutenant in the Continental Army. His assignment was under the command of Col. William Malcolm and Lt. Col. Aaron Burr. Malcolm’s regiment was formed in mid-1777 and placed into the 3rd Pennsylvania Brigade after a lengthy encampment at Valley Forge. Enslin would become known as the first person to be dishonorably discharged due to his sexual orientation.

 

1924, UK

Angela Morley (10 March 1924 – 14 January 2009) is born as Walter “Wally” Stott. She was an English composer and conductor. She attributed her entry into composing and arranging largely to the influence and encouragement of the Canadian light music composer Robert Farnon. In 1972, Morley underwent sex reassignment surgery. Later in life, she lived in Scottsdale, Arizona. She became the first openly transgender person to be nominated for an Academy Award when she was nominated for one in the category of Best Music, Original Song Score/Adaptation for The Little Prince (1974), a nomination shared with Alan Jay Lerner, Frederick Loewe, and Douglas Gamley.

 

1934

John Rechy (born March 10, 1931) is born in El Paso, Texas. He is a Mexican American novelist, essayist, memoirist, dramatist and literary critic. In his novels, he has written extensively about gay culture in Los Angeles and wider America, among other subject matters, and is among the pioneers of modern LGBT literature. City of Night, his debut novel published in 1963, was a best seller and is widely considered a seminal work in 20th century in literature. Drawing on his own background, he has contributed to Chicano literature, notably with his novel The Miraculous Day of Amalia Gomez which has been taught in several Chicano literature courses throughout the United States.

 

1971, France

Guy Hocquenghem  (10 December 1946– 28 August 1988) and others, mostly lesbian activists, disrupt a Paris conference on the “problem” of homosexuality. The demonstration leads to the formation the following month of a Gay Liberation group, Front Homosexual d’Action Revolutionnaire. Guy was a French writer, philosopher, and queer theorist. Though Hocquenghem had a significant impact on leftist thinking in France, his reputation has failed to grow to international prominence. Only the first of his theoretical tracts, Homosexual Desire (1972) and his first novel, L’Amour en relief (1982) have been translated into English. Although Race d’Ep! was shown at Roxie Cinema in San Francisco in April 1980 and released in America as The Homosexual Century, like Hocquenghem, the film is virtually unknown. Hocquenghem died of AIDS-related complications on 28 August 1988, at age 41.

 

1979, Canada

International Women’s Day in Toronto includes a call for an end to harassment of lesbians as one of four demands. It is the first time lesbian rights becomes an upfront issue.

1983

Janet Mock (born March 10, 1983) is an American writer, TV host, and transgender rights activist. Her debut book, the memoir  Redefining Realness, became a New York Times bestseller. She is a contributing editor for Claire and a former staff editor of People magazine’s website. In November 2012, the Sylvia Rivera Law Project gave Mock their Sylvia Rivera Activist Award. Mock was included in the Trans 100, the first annual list recognizing 100 transgender advocates in the United States, and gave the keynote speech at the launch event on March 29, 2013 in Chicago. On November 14, 2013, Mock was honored as a member of the OUT100, Out Magazine‘s 100 “most compelling people of the year” and introduced Laverne Cox as the recipient of the Reader’s Choice Award at the event. She was also named one of GOOD Magazine’s GOOD 100 for “Building An Online Army to Defend #GirlsLikeUs.” Mock was included in the video accompanying the Google Doodle for International Women’s Day 2014. In April 2014,GLSEN presented Mock with the Inspiration Award at the GLSEN Respect Awards and in October, the Feminist Press honored her activism at the Women & Power Gala.

 

1985

William M. Hoffman’s (April 12, 1939 – April 29, 2017) play about AIDS “As Is” opens at New York City’s Circle Rep Theater. Less than six weeks later, Larry Kramer’s (born June 25, 1935) The Normal Heart opens at the Public Theater. Hoffman, who was an American playwright, editor and educator, died on April 30, 2017. Until the time of his death, he was an Associate Professor of Theatre at Lehman College at The City University of New York.

 

1987

AIDS advocacy group ACT UP – The AIDS Coalition to Unleash Power – is formed in response to the devastating affects the disease has had on the gay and lesbian community in New York. The group holds demonstrations against pharmaceutical companies profiteering from AIDS-related drugs as well as the lack of AIDS policies protecting patients from outrageous prescription prices.

 

1994, Germany

Paragraph 175, the section of the German Penal Code that outlaws sexual acts between men, is finally repealed. It was used heavily by the Nazis to persecute gay and bisexual men.

 

2009, Israel

In Tel Aviv, Uzi Even (born 18 October 1940) and his life partner Amit Kama were the first same-sex male couple in Israel whose right of adoption was legally acknowledged. The Israeli Court ruled in their favor. Even is an Israeli professor emeritus of physical chemistry at Tel Aviv University and a former politician well known for being the first openly gay member of the Knesset (the Israeli Parliament). In 2004, Even and Kama married in Canada. In December 2012, Even set yet another legal precedent by divorcing Kama. The divorce was granted by the Family Court since the Rabbinical Court does not recognize same-sex marriage. This might lead the way for straight couples to bypass the religious establishment as well, which, in Israel, holds monopoly on marriage and divorce affairs. 

 

March 11

 

222, Italy

Elagabalus (c. 203 – March 11, 222)I s assassinated at age 18 because of his relationship with Hierocles, a charioteer. Elagabalus was a Roman emperor from 218 to 222. A member of the Severan dynasty, he was Syrian, the second son of Julia Soaemias and Sextus Varius Marcellus. In his early youth he served as a priest of the god Elagabalus in the hometown of his mother’s family, Emesa. As a private citizen, he was probably named Sextus Varius Avitus Bassianus. Elagabalus, barely 14 years old, became emperor, initiating a reign remembered mainly for sex scandals and religious controversy. Elagabalus developed a reputation among his contemporaries for extreme eccentricity, decadence, and zealotry. This tradition has persisted, and with writers of the early modern age, he suffers one of the worst reputations among Roman emperors.

 

1967

Doctor Who actor John Barrowman (born 11 March 1967) is born. He  is a Scottish-American actor, singer, presenter and writer. Born in Glasgow, Scotland, he moved to the United States with his family in 1975. Encouraged by his high school teachers, Barrowman studied performing arts at the United States International University in Diego before landing the role of Billy Crocker in Cole Porter‘s  Anything Goes in London’s West End. Barrowman is openly gay. He met his husband, Scott Gill, during a production of Rope at the Chichester Festival Theatre in 1993, after Gill came to see Barrowman in the play. He nearly got the role of Will in “Will and Grace” in 1998, but he lost the part when producers thought he was ‘too straight’. Eric McCormack, who got the part, is straight.

 

1975

Madison, Wisconsin passes a bill granting civil rights protection to gays and lesbians.

 

1998, Denmark

Torben Lund (born November 6, 1950) and Yvonne Herlov Andersen  (born 1942), the first two openly gay and lesbian members of the Danish Parliament, took office. Lund came out as gay in 1998, becoming Denmark’s first openly gay member of the Folketing. In 1999, he married his partner Claus Lautrup. He served in the Folketing from 1981 to 1998 and in the European Parliament from 1999 to 2004. Herlov Andersen was elected to the Folketing (Danish parliament) in 1977 from Sorø, serving until 1979, again from 1981 to 1984 from Slagelse, and from 1987–88 from Odense. In 1994 she was appointed Social Minister in the first Nyrup Rasmussen cabinet. She subsequently served as Minister of Health in the second Nyrup Rasmussen cabinet, from 1994 to 1996, where she focused particularly on reform of HIV policy, and compensation for previous mistreatment of hemophiliacs. Herløv Andersen was outed as lesbian in 1996 by Palle Juul-Jensen, the former head of the National Board of Health, who had clashed with Herløv Andersen and her predecessor Torben Lund over AIDS policy, leading to Juul-Jensen’s forced resignation in 1995.

 

2003

The first transgender person, Reuben Zellman, is accepted in the Reform Judaism Seminary in Cincinnati, Ohio. Rabbi Zellman is now the assistant rabbi and music director of Congregation Beth El in Berkeley, CA.

 

2007

The first openly LGBTQ person, Rabbi Toba Spitzer, is chosen to head an American Rabbinical Association, in Arizona. She was elected president of the Reconstructionist Rabbinical Association at the group’s annual convention, in Scottsdale, Arizona. Spitzer leads Congregation Dorshei Tzedek in West Newton, Massachusetts.

March 12

  

1890, Russia

Vaslav Nijinsky (March 12, 1890 – 8 April 1950) is born in Kiev. He was a ballet dancer and choreographer cited as the greatest male dancer of the early 20th century. His love affair with choreographer Diaghilev (19 March] 1872 – 19 August 1929), his marriage, and his eventual madness led to his becoming an icon in the arts.

 

1928

Edward Franklin Albee III (March 12, 1928 – September 16, 2016) was an American playwright known for works such as The Zoo Story (1958), The Sandbox (1959), Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? (1962), and A Delicate Balance (1966). Three of his plays won the Pulitzer Prize for Drama, and two of his other works won the Tony Award for Best Play. Albee was openly gay and stated that he first knew he was gay at age 12. Albee insisted that he did not want to be known as a “gay writer”, stating in his acceptance speech for the 2011 Lambda Literary Foundation’s Pioneer Award for Lifetime Achievement: “A writer who happens to be gay or lesbian must be able to transcend self. I am not a gay writer. I am a writer who happens to be gay.” His longtime partner, Jonathan Thomas (1946-May 2, 2005), a sculptor, died from bladder cancer. They had been partners from 1971 until Thomas’s death. Albee also had a relationship of several years with playwright Terrence McNally (born November 3, 1938) during the 1950s.

 

1976

At a campaign stop in Los Angeles, Democratic presidential candidate Jimmy Carter tells an audience that, if elected, he would be willing to issue an executive order banning discrimination against gay people in housing, employment, immigration and the military.

 

1981, Canada

MCC pastor Brent Hawkes ends a twenty-five day hunger fast when Toronto City Council asks Daniel Hill to investigate police/gay relations. Hawkes began his fast to create pressure for independent inquiry into the Toronto bath raids. But Hill, the mayor’s advisor on community and race relations, said he would not take on that job.

 

1984, Europe

The European Parliament approves its first resolution in support of lesbian and gay rights. The resolution is based on a report previously accepted by the Parliament from Italian member Vera Squarcialupi.

 

1995, Cambodia

A same sex couple is married in the village of Kro Bao Ach Kok. It was allowed because one of the partners already had children from a previous marriage. If they were both childless, they would not have been allowed to get married because they couldn’t produce children. There were about 250 guests at the wedding including Buddhist monks and high officials from the province.

 

2004

Oregon’s attorney general issues an opinion on same-sex marriage, stating that issuing marriage licenses to same-sex couples would contradict current state law. At the same time, he also concluded that the Oregon Supreme Court would probably strike down those statutes as violating the state’s constitution. Partially as a result of this, the Wisconsin State Senate voted to approve an amendment to the state constitution banning same-sex marriages and civil unions.

 

 

March 13

 

1906

Susan B. Anthony (February 15, 1820 – March 13, 1906) dies. Anthony was an abolitionist, a teacher and education reformer, a labor activist, a temperance worker, a feminist and, of course a suffragist. She never married and she is believed by historians to have had three intimate relationships with women in her life.

 

1980, Canada

The Association of Gay Electors chooses George Hislop (June 3, 1927 – October 8, 2005) as candidate for the Ward 6 aldermanic race in downtown Toronto. The civic election would be held in November. Hislop had been co-founder and long-time president of the Community Homophile Association of Toronto. A co-owner of the Club Baths of Toronto and The Barracks Bathhouse, he had been charged as “keeper of a common bawdyhouse” following the notorious Bathhouse raids. He was one of Canada‘s most influential gay activists.

 

1984

Claiming an “absence of compelling need” for such legislation, California governor George Deukmejian vetoes a gay rights bill that would have prohibited job discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation.

  

1991

Paris is Burning premieres in the U.S. It is a documentary that shows New York’s drag scene in the 1980s, directed by Jennie Livingston. It chronicles the ball culture of New York City and the African-American, Latino, gay, and transgender communities involved in it. Some critics consider the film to be an invaluable documentary of the end of the “Golden Age” of New York City drag balls, and a thoughtful exploration of race, class, gender, and sexuality in America. In 2016, the film was selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry by the Library of Congress as being “culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant”.

 

2007, France

Nicole Stéphane, Baroness Nicole de Rothschild (27 May 1923 – 13 March 2007) dies. She was a French actress, producer and director. In the early 1970s, Stéphane was the lover of the American writer and critic Susan Sontag (January 16, 1933 – December 28, 2004).

 

March 14

  

1860, Sweden

Eric Stanislaus, Count Stenbock (14 March 1860 –14 April 1895) is born. He was a Baltic Swedish poet and writer of macabre fantastic fiction. Stenbock attended Balliol College in Oxford but never completed his studies. While at Oxford, he was deeply influenced by the homosexual Pre-Raphaelite artist and illustrator Simeon Solomon (9 October 1840 – 14 August 1905). He is also said to have had a relationship with the composer and conductor Norman O’Neill (14 March 1875 – 3 March 1934) and with other young men.

 

1971

An estimated 2,000 people march on the New York state capitol in protest of anti-gay and anti-lesbian laws and policies.

 

1977, Canada

Windsor, Ontario becomes the third Canadian city council to pass resolution banning discrimination against gay and lesbian city employees.

 

1987

The New York City AIDS Coalition to Unleash Power (Act Up) is formed as a direct-action group by Larry Kramer and some 300 other activists.

 

1993, Brazil

Armed men abduct, torture, and behead Renildo Jose dos Santos (1964 – March 14, 1993), an openly bisexual local city councilor in the state of Alagoas. Santos, who had been under attack from the local mayor and the mayor’s allies, had repeatedly been denied police protection, despite a previous attempt on his life.

 

2006, India

Prince Manvendra Kumar Singh Gohil (born 23 September 1965) of the former state of Rajpipla comes out as a gay man making him the first openly gay prince in the world. He is the son and probable heir of the Maharaja of Rajpipla in Gujarat. He runs a charity, The Lakshya Trust, which works with the LGBT community.

2012, Denmark

The gender-neutral marriage equality legislation is proposed in the Danish Parliament, goes on to be passed on June 15th, granting rights to civil marriage as well as marriage in the Church of Denmark.

 

2012, New York

On behalf of Sexual Minorities Uganda, the Center for Constitutional Rights files a lawsuit claiming that hate preacher Scott Lively violated international law with conspiracy to engineer a genocide of LGBT people in Uganda. In the summer of 2016. The case continued and a summary judgement hearing before Judge Ponsor was scheduled for September 14, 2016 in Springfield, Massachusetts. In June 2017, Ponsor dismissed the case due to lack of jurisdiction.

 

March 15

  

559, Turkey

“Men-corruptors” are blamed for the earthquake and plague in Constantinople by the Emperor of the Byzantine Empire. 

 

1633, Sweden

Christina  (8 December 1626 – 19 April 1689) becomes Queen at age six. She always wished to be a boy and is given the nickname “Girl King.” When she was fourteen her tutor remarked that “she is not at all like a female.” Christina is remembered as one of the most educated women of the 1600s, being educated as a royal male would have been. With her interest in religion, philosophy, mathematics and alchemy, she attracted many scientists to Stockholm, wanting the city to become the “Athens of the North.” She was intelligent, fickle and moody; she rejected what the sexual role of a woman was at the time. She caused a scandal when she decided not to marry and, in 1654, when she abdicated her throne and converted to Roman Catholicism. She changed her name from Kristina Augusta Wasa to Christina Alexandra. Christina revealed in her autobiography that she felt “an insurmountable distaste for marriage” and “for all the things that females talked about and did.” As she was chiefly occupied with her studies, she slept three to four hours a night, forgot to comb her hair, donned her clothes in a hurry and wore men’s shoes for the sake of convenience. Her unruly hair became her trademark. Her closest female friend was Ebba Sparre (1629 – 19 March 1662), a Swedish waiting and noble, with whom she shared “a long time intimate companionship”.

 

1811, UK

The trial for two Scottish teachers Miss Marianne Woods and Miss Jane Pirie begins. They are accused of lesbian acts. One of the judges said that sex between women was “equally imaginary with witchcraft, sorcery or carnal copulation with the devil.”

1867, UK

Lionel Pigot Johnson (15 March 1867 – 4 October 1902) is born in Broadstairs, England. An influential poet and literary critic in his time, he was also the victim of one of the oldest ironies in the history of love. He made the mistake of introducing his young lover to a friend who quickly snatched him away. The young lover was Lord Alfred Douglas (22 October 1870 – 20 March 1945), and the friend, Oscar Wilde (16 October 1854 – 30 November 1900).

 

1926

Ruth Simpson (March 15, 1926 – May 8, 2008) was the founder of the United States’ first lesbian community center, an author, and former president of Daughters of Bilitis, New York (DOB). Simpson organized gay rights demonstrations and educational programs for DOB members during the period of 1969–71. Several times when NYC police, without warrants, illegally entered DOB’s lesbian center in lower Manhattan, Simpson stood between the police and the DOB women. On three occasions she was cited for court appearances by the police. She was also arrested at a Women Against Richard Nixon (WARN) rally, along wither partner of 37 years videographer Ellen Povill, author Ti-Grace Atkinson (born November 9, 1938) and lawyer Flo Kennedy (February 11, 1916 – December 21, 2000), and spent most of a day in jail until the women’s attorney gained their release. Ruth’s book From the Closet to the Courts was published in 1977 and republished in 2007. She also produced the weekly hour-long program “Minority Report” in Woodstock, New York from 1982 until her death in 2008.

 

1977

The ABC sitcom, Three’s Company, premieres.  The “sit” in the sitcom is that an unemployed straight chef (John Ritter’s Jack Tripper) moves in with two female roommates, but in order to satisfy the landlord’s suspicions that there might be sexual impropriety, pretends he is gay. The show stays in the Nielsen Top Ten for the next six years.

 

1983

A West Virginia kindergarten teacher, Linda Conway, is forced to resign from her job after parents complain that she “looks” like a lesbian.  She files a $1 million lawsuit against the school board. However, three years later the state supreme court confirms the school board’s right to dismiss her because of her appearance.

 

1985

The American Medical Association concludes that AIDS is NOT spread by casual contact.

 

2006, Czech Republic

The Czech House and Senate pass a bill allowing same-sex partner registration but President Vaclav Klaus vetoes it. The veto is overturned on this day and the law goes into effect on July 1, 2006.

 

 

March 16

  

1680

Legislators of New Hampshire pass the colony’s first capital laws, copied almost word for word from the Plymouth laws of 1671: If any man lie with mankind as he lies with a woman; both of them have committed abomination; They both shall surely be put to death: unless one party were forced, or were under fourteen years of age. And all other Sodomitical filthiness shall be severely punished according to the nature of it

 

1885, Australia

Novelist Ida Alexa Ross Wylie (16 March 1885 – 4 November 1959) is born in Melbourne. She is known by her pen name I. A. R. Wylie. She was an Australian-British-American novelist, screenwriter, short story writer, and poet who was honored by the journalistic and literary establishments of her time. Between 1915 and 1953, more than thirty of her novels and stories were adapted into films, including Keeper of the Flame (1942) directed by George Cukor and starred Spencer and Hepburn. In 1940, she published My Life With George, at the time a groundbreaking work about her life with another woman. In the 1930s, Wylie, Dr. Sara Josephine Baker and another pioneering woman physician, Dr. Louise Pearce, settled on a property near Skillman, New Jersey called Trevenna Farm. They lived there together until Baker died in 1945, followed by Pearce, and then later Wylie who died on November 4,1959 at the age of 74. Wylie and Pearce are buried alongside each other at Henry Skillman Burying Ground, Trevenna Farm’s family cemetery. Dr. Sara Josephine Baker  (November 15, 1873 – February 22, 1945) was a pioneering public health specialist best known for capturing “Typhoid Mary.” Dr. Louise Pearce (March 5, 1885 – August 10, 1959) was an American pathologist at the Rockefeller Institute who helped develop a treatment for African sleeping sickness (trypanosomiasis)

 

1938

John Richard “Jack” Nichols Jr. (March 16, 1938 – May 2, 2005) is born. He was an American gay rights activist who co-founded the Washington, D.C. branch of the Mattachine Society in 1961 with Franklin E. Kameny (May 21, 1925 – October 11, 2011). He appeared in a 1967 documentary under the pseudonym Warren Adkins.

  

1954

The Army-McCarthy hearings convene to investigate conflicting charges made by the United States Army and Senator Joseph McCarthy about allegations of preferential treatment that McCarthy and his aide Roy Cohn (February 20, 1927 – August 2, 1986) had secured for Cohn’s friend David Schine (September 11, 1927 – June 19, 1996). The hearings include inquiries into the supposed security risks posed by homosexuals employed by the federal government and include instances of gay-baiting by Special Counsel for the Army Joseph Welch. Notably, Welch defines a pixie as being “a close relative of a fairy”. “Fairy” is a slang term for “homosexual” and Welch’s remark is interpreted as a jibe at Cohn, a closeted homosexual who later died of AIDS.

 

2018

Love, Simon is a 2018 American romantic teen comedy-drama film directed by Greg Berlanti, written by Isaac Aptaker and Elizabeth Berger, and based on the novel Simon vs. the Homo Sapiens Agenda by Becky Albertalli. The film stars Nick Robinson, Josh Duhamel, and Jennifer Garner. It centers on Simon Spier, a closeted gay high school boy who is forced to balance his friends, his family, and the blackmailer threatening to out him to the entire school while simultaneously attempting to discover the identity of the anonymous classmate with whom he has fallen in love online. Love, Simon premiered at the Mardi Gras Film Festival on February 27, 2018, and was released in the United States on March 16, 2018, by 20th Century Fox. Critics praised the film for its “big heart, diverse and talented cast, and revolutionary normalcy,” describing it as “tender, sweet, and affecting” and a “hugely charming crowd-pleaser” that is “funny, warm-hearted and life-affirming,” with reviews comparing it to the romantic comedy-drama films of John Hughes. Notable as the first film by a major Hollywood studio to focus on a gay teenage romance, it has grossed $66.3 million worldwide.

 

 

March 17

 

1912

Bayard Rustin (March 17, 1912 – August 24, 1987) is born. He was an American leader in social movements for civil rights, socialism, nonviolence, and gay rights. He worked in the pacifist groups Fellowship of Reconciliation (FOR) and the War Resisters League (WRL). A member of the Communist Party before 1941, he collaborated with A. Philip Randolph on the March on Washington Movement to press for an end to discrimination in employment. He was a leading activist of the early Civil Rights Movement, helping to initiate a 1947 Freedom Ride to challenge, with civil disobedience the racial segregation issue related to interstate busing. He recognized Martin Luther King, Jr.‘s leadership, and helped to organize the Southern Christian Leadership Conference to strengthen King’s work. Rustin promoted the philosophy of nonviolence and the practices of nonviolent resistance which he had observed while working with Mahatma Gandhi’s movement in India, and helped teach Martin Luther King, Jr. about nonviolence. Rustin was a gay man who had been arrested throughout his early career for engaging in public sex with white male prostitutes. Rustin’s sexuality, or at least his public criminal charge, was criticized by some fellow pacifists and civil-rights leaders because it detracted from his effectiveness. Rustin was attacked as a “pervert” or “immoral influence” by political opponents from segregationists to conservative black leaders from the 1950s through the 1970s. In addition, his pre-1941 Communist Party affiliation when he was a young man was controversial, having caused scrutiny by the FBI. To avoid such attacks, Rustin served rarely as a public spokesperson. He usually acted as an influential adviser behind the scenes to civil-rights leaders. In the 1980s, he became a public advocate on behalf of gay and lesbian causes. On November 20, 2013, President Barack Obama posthumously awarded Rustin the Presidential Medal of Freedom.

 

1938, Russia

Rudolf Nureyev (17 March 1938 – 6 January 1993) is born to Muslim peasant parents in Ulfa, East Siberia. Perhaps the greatest dancer who ever lived, Nureyev danced hard, partied hard, and spent long hours in gay bathhouses. Nureyev defected from the Soviet Union and lived in France and the U.S. on and off. He was director of the Paris Opera Ballet from 1983 to 1989. Nureyev met Erik Bruhn (3 October 1928 – 1 April 1986), the celebrated Danish dancer, with whom he remained off and on with a very volatile relationship for 25 years, until Bruhn’s death in 1986.Nureyev died in Paris of AIDS-related complications on January 6, 1993.

 

1968

Two drag queens known as “The Princess” and “The Duchess” held a St. Patrick’s Day party at Griffith Park, a popular cruising spot and a frequent target of police activity in Los Angeles. More than 200 gay men socialized through the day to protest entrapment and harassment by the LAPD.

 

1970

The film version of Mart Crowley’s (August 21, 1935-March 7, 2020) play Boys in the Band opens in New York, directed by William Friedkin. It is the first major Hollywood look at gay life. The director remarks, “I hope there are happy homosexuals. There just don’t happen to be any in my film.” The screenplay is based on Crowley’s Off-Broadway play The Boys in the Band. It is among the first major American motion pictures to revolve around gay characters and is often cited as a milestone in the history of queer cinema. Crowley is openly gay.

 

1977

Two years after having repealed its state sodomy laws, Arkansas’s state legislature recriminalizes same sex acts between consenting adults. The new law, approved two years after Arkansas had repealed its anti-sodomy laws, is the first of a series of setbacks for gay and lesbian civil rights that evidence the rise of a conservative backlash in the US.

 

1987

The White House reveals that President Reagan has undergone AIDS testing out of fear that he may have contracted the disease during blood transfusions after his 1981 assassination attempt

 

1989

Actor Merritt Butrick (September 3, 1959 – March 17, 1989), best known for his portrayal of James Kirk’s son in the films “Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan” and “Star Trek III: The Search for Spock,” dies of AIDS in Los Angeles at the age of twenty-nine. He was also known for his role on the 1982 teen sitcom Square Pegs, starring a young Sarah Jessica Parker and Jami Gertz.

  

March 18

  

1308, France

France orders the arrest of all Knights Templar on charges of heresy, idolatry and sodomy, but these charges are only a pretext to seize the riches of the order. Order leaders are sentenced to death and burned at the stake on March 18, 1314, including Jacques de Molay (1243 – 18 March 1314) who was found guilty of homosexuality. Though little is known of de Molay’s actual life and deeds except for his last years as Grand Master, he is one of the best known Templars.

 

1796

The State of New Jersey adopted a statute that reduced the penalty for same-sex intercourse from death to a fine and a maximum of 21 years of solitary imprisonment with hard labor. This is the first sodomy law in the United States of America to use the term “crime against nature.”

 

1886

Actor Edward Everett Horton (March 18, 1886 – September 29, 1970) is born in Brooklyn. He  was an American character actor with a long career in film, theater, radio, television, and voice work for animated cartoons. It’s impossible to think of the comedies of the ’20s, ’30s, or ’40s without recollecting the lanky Nervous Nellie characters he portrayed. A whole new generation discovered him in the ’70’s and ’80s as the voice in Fractured Fairy Tales on the Rocky and Bullwinkle cartoon show. Horton’s companion for many years was actor Gavin Gordon (April 7, 1901 – April 7, 1983) who was 15 years his junior. They both appeared (but shared no scenes) in only one film, Pocketful of Miracles (1961). They also appeared together in at least one play, a 1931 production of Noël Coward‘s Private Lives.

 

1922, Germany

Magnus Hirschfeld’s (14 May 1868 – 14 May 1935) petition for the repeal of Paragraph 175 is presented to the Reichstag. Although 6,000 people had signed the petition, including Sigmund Freud, the late Leo Tolstoy, and Albert Einstein, it fails to persuade German lawmakers to decriminalize sex between men.

 

1971

Idaho decriminalizes “gay” sex acts between consenting adults. However, before the law can take effect, in response to pressure from conservative groups, Iowa reverses itself and keeps the felony statute on the books.

 

1975, Canada

Warren Zufelt (1879 – March 18, 1968), one of eighteen men arrested in an Ottawa “sex scandal,” commits suicide by jumping from his apartment building balcony after his name was published in local newspapers. The effect of Warren Zufelt’s death was to create an atmosphere of shock in both the gay and the straight communities in Ottawa. All charges against the men were proved false and they all were dismissed in 1976.

 

1982

Police raid a Washington, D.C. male escort service called “Friendly Models” and cart away more than a dozen boxes of business records, including the names and addresses of several hundred of the service’s clients.

 

1990

OutWeek outs Malcolm Forbes (19 August 1919 – 24 February 1990). He was an American entrepreneur most prominently known as the publisher of Forbes magazine, founded by his father B. C. Forbes. He was known as an avid promoter of capitalism and free market trade, and for an extravagant lifestyle, spending on parties, travel, and his collection of homes, yachts, aircraft, art, motorcycles, and Fabergé eggs. In March, 1990, soon after his death, OutWeek magazine published a story with the cover headline “The Secret Gay Life of Malcolm Forbes,” by Michelangelo Signorile, which outed Forbes as a gay man. Signorile was critical of the media for helping Forbes publicize many aspects of his life while keeping his homosexuality a secret. The writer asked, “Is our society so overwhelmingly repressive that even individuals as all-powerful as the late Malcolm Forbes feel they absolutely cannot come out of the closet?” Even in death, the media was reluctant to disclose his sexuality. Trump stated that Forbes “lived openly as a homosexual… but expected the media and his famous friends to cover for him.”

 

1996

Hellene Harrington “Muffin” Spencer-Devlin was born Oct. 25, 1953, in Piqua, Ohio. She is the first Ladies Professional Golf Association (LPGA) pro to come out.

 

March 19

 

1872, Russia

Sergei Diaghilev (19 March 1872 – 19 August 1929) was born in Novgorod, Russia. He was a ballet impresario and founder of the Ballets Russes from which many famous dancers and choreographers would arise. It is impossible to estimate the influence of his Ballets Russes on the development of 20th century art, yet the fact that he was gay is often overlooked. Had he not been gay, had he not been attracted to the great artists of his day, the century might have taken a different turn. Diaghilev’s emotional life and the Ballets Russes were inextricably entwined. His most famous lover was Nijinsky (12 March 1889/1890– 8 April 1950). However, according to Serge Lifar, of all Diaghilev’s lovers, only Léonide Massine (9 August 1896 – 15 March 1979) who replaced Nijinsky, provided him with “so many moments of happiness or anguish.” Diaghilev’s other lovers included Anton Dolin (27 July 1904 – 25 November 1983), Serge Lifar (2 April1905 – 15 December 1986) and his secretary and librettist Boris Kochno (3 January 1904 – 8 December 1990) . Ironically, his last lover, composer and conductor Igor Markevitch (July 27, 1912 – March 7, 1983) later married the daughter of Nijinsky.

 

1894

Loretta Mary Aiken (March 19, 1894 – May 23, 1975), known by her stage name Jackie “Moms” Mabley, was an American standup comedian. A veteran of the Chitlin’ Circuit of African-American vaudeville, she later appeared on the Ed Sullivan Show and The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour. She came out as a lesbian at the age of twenty-seven, becoming one of the first openly gay comedians. During the 1920s and 1930s she appeared in androgynous clothing (as she did in the film version of The Emperor Jones with Paul Robeson) and recorded several of her early “lesbian stand-up” routines. Despite Mabley’s popularity, wages for Black women in show business were meager. Nonetheless, she persisted for more than sixty years. At the height of her career, she was earning $10,000 a week at Harlem’s Apollo Theater.

 

1953

The Diana Foundation was founded in Houston, TX, by a small group of friends. The Diana Foundation is a nonprofit organization and recognized as the oldest continuously active gay organization in the United States. It hosts two annual fundraising events including its Diana Awards. On Thursday, March 19, 1953, the annual Academy Awards were to be broadcast on television for the first time. David Moncrief, a gay man in Houston, who loved to entertain, was so excited about the upcoming broadcast that he purchased a new television set. He invited ten friends to watch the first televised Oscar broadcast. However, the broadcast signal failed. Undaunted by the 1953 failure, on Thursday, March 25, 1954, Moncrief organized a second party to watch the Academy Awards television broadcast. A man with a spirited sense of humor, David Moncrief had bought a gag award for one of his guests. The award was seemingly insignificant at the time, but it struck a human chord that would lead to the founding of Houston’s Diana Foundation. A nearly life size plaster model of Diana, the Roman goddess of the hunt, stood in one corner of his living room. Guests noticed the same statue of the goddess Diana that they had seen the year before. Moncrief would festively decorate the statue with leis around her neck. It was a funny, campy sight and guests thought Diana appeared to be partying right along with the rest of the group during their gatherings. The Diana Foundation was born (March 19, 1953) and the first Diana Award was presented (March 25, 1954). Nonprofit 501(c)3 status was given on February 9, 1976. The legendary organization of friends continues today and is the oldest continuously active gay organization in the U.S.

 

1982

Victor/Victoria opens nationwide to generally rave reviews. Blake Edward’s farce, based on a 1933 German film, Viktor und Viktoria, features Robert Preston as perhaps the most relaxed and affable homosexual ever scripted into a major Hollywood motion picture. The movie becomes a box office hit and accomplishes what many years of gay liberation have not – an impression on the general public’s consciousness of homosexuals as compassionate and likable people

 

1987

The FDA approves AZT for the treatment of HIV /AIDS. It is the first drug for the treatment of HIVAIDS approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration.

 

2004, Canada

In Quebec, the Court of Appeal upholds a superior court ruling that same-sex marriages are legal under Canada’s Charter of Rights and Freedoms. The Canadian provinces of Ontario and British Columbia already permitted same-sex marriage

 

2012

The US Supreme Court declines to hear John Lotter’s case. In 1993, he killed transgender man Brandon Teena (December 12, 1972 – December 31, 1993) and was sentenced to the death penalty.

 

March 20

Native AIDS Awareness Day

  

1749

A group of single women called “The Petticoat Club” felt they were paying a severe economic penalty for not marrying while they saw large numbers of “eligible” men who, for whatever reason, also chose to not marry and were doing well in the world. In a petition to the New York Gazette, the club proposed that those “old bachelors” were not carrying out their proper duties and should be severely taxed for their selfishness and that tax would go to support unmarried women. It didn’t happen.

 

1890, Denmark

Opera star Lauritz Melchior (20 March 1890 – 19 March 1973) was born in Copenhagen. He was a Danish-American opera singer. He was the pre-eminent Wagnerian tenor of the 1920s, 1930s, and 1940s and has since come to be considered the quintessence of his voice type. Late in his career, Melchior appeared in movie musicals and on radio and television. He also made numerous recordings. He was virtually a household name for his singing at New York’s Met. Between 1944 and 1952, Melchior performed in five Hollywood musical films for Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer and made numerous U.S. radio and television appearances. In 1947, he put his hand and footprints in cement in the forecourt of Grauman’s Chinese Theatre in Hollywood. Novelist Hugh Walpole (13 March 1884 – 1 June 1941) had been his lover and patron.

 

1901

Gavin Arthur (March 20, 1901 – April 28, 1972) was born Chester A. Arthur II in Colorado. He was a San Francisco astrologer and sexologist. The grandson of President Chester Arthur, he dropped his famous name and headed out on his own at an early age, working his way around the world in the merchant marine. Along the way, he discovered he was bisexual and became friends with many of the gay gurus of the period — Edward Carpenter (29 August 1844 – 28 June 1929), Havelock Ellis (2 Februa ry 1859 – 8 July 1939), and Magnus Hirschfeld (14 May 1868 – 14 May 1935). 

 

1915

Sister Rosetta Tharpe (March 20, 1915 – October 9, 1973) was an American singer, songwriter, guitarist, and recording artist. As a pioneer of mid-20th-century music, she attained popularity in the 1930s and 1940s with her gospel recordings, characterized by a unique mixture of spiritual lyrics and rhythmic accompaniment that was a precursor of rock and roll. She was the first great recording star of gospel music and among the first gospel musicians to appeal to rhythm-and-blues and rock-and-roll audiences, later being referred to as “the original soul sister” and “the Godmother of rock and roll.” She influenced early rock-and-roll musicians including Little Richard, Johnny Cash, Carl Perkins, Chuck Berry, Elvis Presley and Jerry Lee Lewis. In 1946 Tharpe saw Marie Knight (June 1, 1920 – August 30, 2009) perform at a Mahalia Jackson concert in New York. Tharpe recognized a special talent in Knight. Two weeks later, Tharpe showed up at Knight’s doorstep. People speculated that Knight and Tharpe maintained a romantic and sexual relationship.

1928

Fred McFeely Rogers (March 20, 1928 – February 27, 2003) was an American television personality, musician, puppeteer, writer, producer, and Presbyterian minister. He was known as the creator, composer, producer, head writer, showrunner and host of the preschool television series Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood (1968–2001). The show featured Rogers’s kind, neighborly persona, which nurtured his connection to the audience. Rogers would end each program by telling his viewers, “You’ve made this day a special day, by just your being you. There’s no person in the whole world like you; and I like you just the way you are.” Rogers met Sara Joanne Byrd (called Joanne) from Jacksonville, Florida, while he attended Rollins College. They were married in 1952 and remained married until his death in 2003. They had two sons, James and John. According to biographer Maxwell King, close associates said that Rogers was “absolutely faithful to his marriage vows.” Also according to King, in an interview with Rogers’ friend William Hirsch, Rogers said that if sexuality was measured on a scale, then: “Well, you know, I must be right smack in the middle. Because I have found women attractive, and I have found men attractive,” leading some readers to describe Rogers as bisexual. In January 2018, it was announced that Tom Hanks would portray Rogers in an upcoming biographical film titled A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood directed by Marielle Heller. That same year, the documentary film Won’t You Be My Neighbor?, based on the life and legacy of Rogers, was released to critical acclaim and became the highest-grossing biographical documentary film of all time.

 

1947

Author, LGBT historian, and playwright Dr. Ronni Sanlo (March 20, 1947) is born. Ronni is the Director Emeritus of the UCLA Lesbian Gay Bisexual Transgender Center (LGBT) Center and a frequent keynote speaker and consultant on LGBT issues in Higher Education. Now retired, Dr. Sanlo directed the UCLA LGBT Center, was professor and director of the UCLA Masters of Education in Student Affairs, and was a Faculty in Residence at UCLA. Prior to going to UCLA in 1997, Dr. Sanlo was the director of the LGBT Center at the University of Michigan. In a previous life, Dr. Sanlo was an HIV/AIDS surveillance officer (epidemiologist) in Florida from 1987-1994. From 1981 to 1983, Ronni was the executive direct of the Florida (LGBT civil rights) Task Force. Ronni earned a bachelor’s degree at the University of Florida, and a masters and doctorate in education from the University of North Florida in Jacksonville. She developed the initial standards and guidelines for LGBT work with the Council for the Advancement of Standards in Higher Education (CAS), was founding chair of the Consortium of LGBT Professionals in Higher Education, and is the originator of the award-winning Lavender Graduation, a commencement event that celebrates the lives and achievements of graduating LGBT college students (founded in 1995). Ronni continues to research and write with a focus on LGBT history which is the foundation for the award-winning documentary Letter to Anita and her play Dear Anita Bryant. While Ronni has over 100 academic publications, her post-retirement books include her memoir The Purple Golf Cart: The Misadventures of a Lesbian Grandma and an historical novel about the last five months of WWII entitled The Soldier, the Avatar, and the Holocaust. Her current projects include Readers’ Theater plays with LGBT and/or historical themes including The Soldier and the Time Traveler (2018), Sing Meadowlark (2018), Hunted (2020 and Lesbian Voices (2021). Ronni married a man in 1971, came out as a lesbian in 1979, and lost custody of her two young children in Florida that same year. Ronni and her wife Kelly Watson were married in 2016.

 

1961

The United States Supreme Court denies certiorari to Frank Kameny’s (May 21, 1925 – October 11, 2011) petition to review the legality of his firing by the United States Army’s Map Service in 1957, bringing his four-year legal battle to a close.

 

1970

Twenty-three year old David Bowie (8 January 1947 – 10 January 2016) marries nineteen year old Mary Angela Barnett. A few years later, Bowie explains how they met. “Angela and I knew each other because we were both going out with the same man.” Angie Bowie went on to a career in Hollywood. The two divorced in 1980. Bowie was an English singer-songwriter and actor. He was a leading figure in popular music for over five decades, acclaimed by critics and fellow musicians for his innovative work. His career was marked by reinvention and visual presentation, his music and stagecraft significantly influencing popular music.

 

1975, Canada

Gays of Ottawa (GO) picket the police station and office of the Ottawa Journal to protest arrests and homophobic media coverage of arrests in a so-called Sex Scandal.

 

1977

The Arkansas State House of Representatives unanimously passes a resolution in praise of Anita Bryant and her anti-gay and lesbian rights campaign.

 

1978

The San Francisco Board of Supervisor passes what is described as “the most stringent gay rights law in the country.”  Only one of the eleven supervisors — Dan White — votes against the ordinance. Later that year, he murders Harvey Milk  (May 22, 1930 – November 27, 1978).

 

1986

After fourteen years, the New York City Council finally passes a gay rights ordinance with a vote of 21 to 14.  Mayor Ed Koch tells reporters, “The sky is not going to fall.  There isn’t going to be any dramatic change in the life of this city.”

 

1988

Butterfly opens on Broadway. The play by David Henry Hwang is about a civil servant attached to the French embassy in China who falls in love with a beautiful Chinese opera diva who is a “man masquerading as a woman.” They are together for twenty years until the truth is revealed. The civil servant is convicted of treason and imprisoned, then kills himself.

 

1990

Queer Nation forms in New York to eliminate homophobia and increase visibility of LGBT people. It was founded by AIDS activists from ACT UP. The four founders were outraged at the escalation of anti-gay 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. On March 20, 1990, sixty LGBTQ people gathered at the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender Community Services Center in New York’s Greenwich Village to create a direct action organization. The goal of the unnamed organization was the elimination of homophobia, and the increase of gay, lesbian and bisexual visibility through a variety of tactics. The organization of Queer Nation, being non-hierarchical and decentralized, allowed anyone to become a member and have a voice. The group’s use of the word “queer” in its name and slogan was at first considered shocking, though the reclamation has been called a success, used in relatively mainstream television programs such as Queer Eye and Queer as Folk. The use of the word “queer” disarmed homophobes by reversing its derogatory nature

 

March 21

 

1804, France

The Napoleonic Code went into effect, one of the earliest codes to permit same-sex activity.

 

1962, South Africa

Abdurrazack “Zackie” Achmat (born 21 March 1962) is a South African activist and film director. He is a co-founder the Treatment Action Campaign and known worldwide for his activism on behalf of people living with HIV and AIDS in South Africa. He currently serves as Board member and Co-director of Ndifuna Ukwazi (Dare to Know), an organization which aims to build and support social justice organizations and leaders, and is the Chairperson of Equal Education. Achmat co-founded the National Coalition for Gay and Lesbian Equality in 1994, and as its director he ensured protections for gays and lesbians in the new South African Constitution, and facilitated the prosecution of cases that led to the decriminalization of Sodom and granting of equal status to same-sex partners in the immigration process. Achmat was diagnosed HIV-positive in 1990. In 2005 he suffered an attack which his doctor said was unlikely to be caused by his HIV-positive status or treatment. He recovered sufficiently to return to his activism work. On 5 January 2008, Achmat married his same-sex partner and fellow activist Dalli Weyers at a ceremony in the Cape Town suburb of Lakeside. The ceremony was attended by then Mayor Helen Zille and presided over by Supreme Court of Appeal Judge Edwin Cameron. The couple divorced amicably in June 2011.

 

1962

Rosie O’Donnell (born March 21, 1962) is born. She is an American comedian, actress, author, and television personality. She has been a magazine editor and continues to be a celebrity blogger, a lesbian rights activist, a television producer, and a collaborative partner in the LGBT family vacation company, R Family Vacations.

 

1975, Canada

Former jockey John Damien (1933 – 1986) sues Ontario Racing Commission and individuals involved in his firing as a racing steward. Damien’s suit filed in Ontario Supreme Court alleged he was fired because he was gay. In 1986, the first legal action, a suit of wrongful dismissal against the Commission, was settled in Damien’s favor; he was awarded one year’s wages plus interest, a total of about $50,000. By this time Damien was in poor health, and he died of pancreatic cancer.

 

1987, Finland

Pekka Haavisto (born 23 March 1958), the first openly gay member of parliament, takes office. He is a Finnish politician and minister representing the Green League. He returned to the Finnish Parliament in the Finnish parliamentary election of March 2007 after an absence of 12 years and was re-elected again in 2011. In October 2013 he was appointed as the Minister for International Development after Heidi Hautala resigned from the job. He has also been a member of the Helsinki City Council.

 

1994

Tom Hanks wins best actor Oscar for Philadelphia. The film was one of the first mainstream Hollywood films to acknowledge HIV/AIDS, homosexuality, and homophobia. It was written by Ron Nyswaner, directed by Jonathan Demme and stars Tom Hanks and Denzel Washington.

 

2000

The remains of Steen Keith Fenrich (1981 – September 9, 1999) are discovered. The gay African-American teen was tortured and murdered by his white homophobic racist stepfather who committed suicide.

 

2001

Asexual Visibility and Education Network (AVEN) is founded by David Jay. AVEN hosts the world’s largest online asexual community as well as a large archive of resources on asexuality. AVEN strives to create open, honest discussion about asexuality among sexual and asexual people alike. An asexual person does not experience sexual attraction – they are not drawn to people sexually and do not desire to act upon attraction to others in a sexual way. Unlike celibacy, which is a choice to abstain from sexual activity, asexuality is an intrinsic part of who one is.

 

2007

First national Native AIDS Awareness Day. National Native HIV/AIDS Awareness Day is observed each year on the first days of Spring. This day is an opportunity for people across the United States to learn about HIV/AIDS, the need for HIV testing among Native Americans, and ways that everyone can help decrease the stigma associated with HIV/AIDS in their own communities. It was moved to March 20th.

 

2018

San Francisco renames Terminal 1 at the San Francisco International Airport after slain LGBT supervisor Harvey Milk and installs artwork memorializing the civil rights icon. The name change was first introduced in 2013 by then-Supervisor David Campos who had initially hoped to name the entire airport after Milk but the proposal met with opposition. Instead, an airport naming committee was established, which recently recommended naming SFO’s Terminal 1 after Milk who was elected to the Board of Supervisors in 1977. He served in the post until he was gunned down at City Hall in 1978 along with Mayor George Moscone by former Supervisor Dan White.

 

March 22

 

1822, France

Rosa Bonheur (22 March 1822 – 25 May 1899) was born in Bordeaux, France. She was a French artist, an animalière (painter of animals) and sculptor, known for her artistic realism. Her most well-known paintings are Ploughing in the Nivernais, first exhibited at the Paris Salon of 1848, and now at Musée d’Orsay in Paris, and The Horse Fair (in French: Le marché aux chevaux), which was exhibited at the Salon of 1853 (finished in 1855) and is now in the Art in New York City. Bonheur was widely considered to be the most famous female painter during the nineteenth century. In her romantic life, she was fairly openly a lesbian; she lived with her first partner, Nathalie Micas  (1824 – June 24, 1889) for over 40 years until Micas’ death, and later began a relationship with the American painter Anna Elizabeth Klumpke (October 28, 1856 – February 9, 1942). At a time when lesbian sex was regarded as animalistic and deranged by most French officials, Bonheur’s outspokenness about her personal life was groundbreaking. Bonheur was buried together with Nathalie Micas at Père Lachaise Cemetery, Paris, and later Klumpke joined them.

 

1930

Stephen Sondheim (born March 22, 1930) is born. He is an American composer and lyricist known for more than a half-century of contributions to musical theater. Sondheim has received an Academy Award, eight Tony Awards (more than any other composer, including a Special Tony Award for Lifetime Achievement in the Theatre), eight Grammy Awards, a Pulitzer Prize, a Laurence Olivier Award, and a 2015 Presidential Medal of Freedom. He has been described by Frank Rich of The New York Times as “now the greatest and perhaps best-known artist in the American musical theater.” Sondheim is in a relationship with Jeff Romley (born 1978), and lived with dramatist Peter Jones for eight years (until 1999).

 

1972

The Equal Rights Amendment, banning discrimination on the basis of sex, passes the U.S. Senate. Opponents of the amendment claim it will destroy the nuclear family, give broad civil rights to homosexuals, and even mandate unisex rest rooms in public.  Though by the end of 1972, twenty-two of the required thirty-eight states had ratified it, the ERA failed to receive the requisite number of ratifications before the final deadline mandated by Congress of June 30, 1982 expired, so it was never adopted.

 

1976

New Jersey Superior Court rules that transsexual people may marry based on their reassigned sex.

 

1993

Lawrence Poirier comes out to his best friend Michael in cartoonist Lynn Johnston’s popular comic strip For Better or for Worse. Some 40 newspapers in the U.S. and Canada refuse to run the four-week story; thousands cancel subscriptions to papers that do; in the end, however, 70 percent of the more than 2,500 letters Johnston receives about the series are positive.

 

1995

The Montana state senate amends a bill mandating registration of persons previously convicted of “violent” crimes to include “deviate sexual conduct.” The bill would require anyone convicted of oral or anal sex with a member of his or her own sex to register with the local Law Enforcement authority.

 

2004

In Oregon, the commissioners of Benton County decided not to start issuing marriage licenses to same-sex couples. This reversal of an earlier vote was due to receiving a letter from state attorney general Hardy Myers on the matter. In place of same-sex marriage licenses, the commissioners decided to stop issuing any marriage licenses to anyone at all until the Oregon Supreme Court rules on the constitutionality of the discriminatory provisions of Oregon’s marriage laws.

  

March 23

  

1555, Italy

Pope Julius III (10 September 1487 – 23 March 1555) dies. He ruled from 1550 to 1555. Famous as “a skilled expert in canon law” and a patron of the arts, Julius also “created one of the most notorious homosexual scandals in the history of the papacy.” While still Cardinal Giovanni Maria del Monte, the pontiff fell in love with a 15-year old named Innocenzo. Two years later del Monte, now Pope, made Innocenzo a cardinal and his “chief diplomatic and political agent.”

 

1874, Germany

C. Leyendecker (March23,1974 – July 25,1951) is born. He was one of the preeminent American illustrators of the early 20th century. He is best known for his poster, book and advertising illustrations, the trade character known as The Arrow Collar Man, and his numerous covers for The Saturday Evening Post. Between 1896 and 1950, Leyendecker painted more than 400 magazine covers. During the Golden Age of American Illustration, for The Saturday Evening Post alone, J. C. Leyendecker produced 322 covers as well as many advertisement illustrations for its interior pages. No other artist, until the arrival of Norman Rockwell two decades later, was so solidly identified with one publication. Leyendecker “virtually invented the whole idea of modern magazine design. Leyendecker never married and lived with Charles Beach (1886 – 1952) for much of his adult life. Beach is assumed to have been his lover and who was the original model of the famous Arrow Collar Man.

 

1903, Morocco

A letter from Frances Hodgkin (28 April 1869 – 13 May 1947) to Dorothy Kate Richmond (12 September 1861 – 16 April 1935) begging her to join her in Morocco was written on this day. The two New Zealand painters were travel partners and lived together in Wellington. Hodgkins was a painter chiefly of landscape and still life, and for a short period was a designer of textiles. She was born in New Zealand but spent most of her working life in Britain. She is considered one of New Zealand’s most prestigious and influential painters, although it is the work from her life in Europe, rather than her home country, on which her reputation rests. Richmond was a New Zealand painter noted for her watercolor paintings of natural plants and animals and panoramic landscapes.

 

1950

Terrance “Terry” Sweeney (born March 23, 1950) is an American writer, comedian and actor. He was SNL’s first openly gay male cast member and was “out” prior to being hired as a cast member. Sweeney’s run on the show came at a time when there were few openly gay characters or actors on television. For roughly 27 years, there were no other openly gay cast members on SNL until Kate McKinnon (born January 6, 1984), a former cast member of Logo’s The Big Gay Sketch Show, was added to the cast in April 2012. Terry Sweeney’s partner is Lanier Laney (born 03/18/1956), a comedy writer who also wrote for SNL in the 1985–1986 season.

 

1971

Frank Kameny  (May 21, 1925 – October 11, 2011) is the first openly gay person to run for a U.S. Congressional seat, representing Washington D.C. He loses the election. Kameny was an American gay rights activist and referred to as “one of the most significant figures” in the American gay rights movement. In 1957, Kameny was dismissed from his position as an astronomer in the U.S. Army‘s Army Map Service in Washington, D.C. because of his homosexuality, leading him to begin “a Herculean struggle with the American establishment” that would “spearhead a new period of militancy in the homosexual rights movement of the early 1960s.” Kameny formally appealed his firing to the U.S. Civil Service Commission due to homosexuality. Although unsuccessful, the proceeding was notable as the first known civil rights claim based on sexual orientation pursued in a U.S. court.

 

1988, Israel

Israel decriminalizes same-sex acts between consenting adults.

 

1995

Threatened with an economic boycott and faced with strong opposition from state and national lesbian and gay activists, the Montana Senate unanimously votes to delete same-sex acts from a list of crimes for which convicts have to register with local authorities.

 

2004

President Bush’s proposed ban on same-sex marriage is denounced by Coretta Scott King (April 27, 1927 – January 30, 2006) who was an American author, activist, civil rights leader, and the wife of Martin Luther King, Jr.

 

2005, St. Kitts and Nevis

The Windjammer Barefoot Cruise ship with 110 gay men is not allowed to dock on the island. Officials stated that they don’t want homosexuality to be part of their culture.

 

2018

The Trump administration announces a new policy that bans most transgender people from serving in military. After several court battles, the Supreme Court allows the ban to go into effect in January 2019.

 

 

March 24

  

1794, France

Anacharsis Cloots (24 June 1755 – 24 March 1794), originally known as Jean-Baptiste du Val-de-Grâce, Baron de Cloots, was an orator and a New Atheist long before New Atheism was a thing. He was embroiled in revolutionary politics before being used as a scapegoat by the same revolutionaries who guillotined him on this day.  Some of his oratory indicates that he was likely an outspoken ally of lesbians and gay men.

 

1942

Margarethe “Grethe” Cammermeyer (born March 24, 1942) served as a colonel in the Washington National Guard and became a gay rights activist. In 1989, responding to a question during a routine security clearance interview, she disclosed that she is a lesbian. The National Guard began military discharge proceedings against her. On June 11, 1992, she was honorably discharged. Cammermeyer filed a lawsuit against the decision in civil court. In June 1994, Judge Thomas Zilly of Washington ruled that her discharge and the ban on gays and lesbians serving in the military were unconstitutional. She returned to the National Guard and served as one of the few openly gay or lesbian people in the U.S. military while the “don’t ask don’t tell” policy was in effect, until her retirement in 1997. In 2012, after same-sex marriage was legalized in Washington state, Cammermeyer and her wife Diane Divelbess became the first same-sex couple to get a license in Island County.

 

1971

In defiance of the U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service, a federal judge grants U.S. citizenship to a 24-year old gay man from Cuba, ruling that an applicant’s homosexuality cannot in itself bar a person from becoming a citizen.

 

1976, Argentina

A military coup leads to seven years of brutal dictatorship during which gay and lesbian meeting places are frequently raided, and some 400 gay men are “disappeared,” that is, kidnapped, tortured, and killed by military commandos.

 

1986

William Hurt wins the Oscar for Best Actor for his role as a homosexual window dresser in Kiss of the Spider Woman. It’s the first time someone wins an Oscar for portraying a gay character.

 

1987

ACT UP (AIDS Coalition to Unleash Power) stages its first major political action in the financial heart of New York City to demand that the federal government stop dragging its feet on the approval of new drugs that might benefit people with AIDS. Seventeen protesters are arrested for obstructing traffic when they sit down in the intersection of Broadway and Wall Street.

 

2018

The March for Our Lives is led by 18 year-old Marjory Stoneman Douglas student Emma Gonzales. She is president of her school’s Gay-Straight Alliance (GSA). She told the Washington Post that she identifies as bisexual. Suddenly her fierce badassery just made that much more sense for a whole lot of people, particularly fellow LGBTQ folks and queer activists for whom self-identity and a willingness to stand up for justice has long been inextricably linked.

 

March 25

  

1947, UK

Multiple Grammy-winning singer/songwriter Sir Elton John (25 March 1947) is born Reginald Kenneth Dwight in Pinner Middlesex. He is an English singer, pianist, and composer. He has worked with lyricist Bernie Taupin as his songwriting partner since 1967; they have collaborated on more than 30 albums to date. In his five-decade career Elton John has sold more than 300 million records, making him one of the best-selling music artists in the world. He has more than fifty Top 40 hits, including seven consecutive No. 1 U.S. albums, 58 Billboard Top 40 singles, 27 Top 10, four No. 2 and nine No. 1. For 31 consecutive years (1970–2000) he had at least one song in the Billboard Hot 100. His tribute single “Candle in the Wind 1997,” re-penned in dedication to the late Princess Diana, sold over 33 million copies worldwide and is the best-selling single in the history of the U.K. and U.S. singles charts. He came out in Rolling Stone Magazine in 1978. In 1993, he began a relationship with David Furnish (born 25 October 1962), a former advertising executive and now filmmaker originally from Toronto, Ontario, Canada. On 21 December 2005 (the day the Civil Partnership Act came into force), John and Furnish were amongst the first couples in the UK to form a civil partnership which was held at the Windsor Guildhall. After gay marriage became legal in England in March 2014, John and Furnish married in Windsor, Berkshire, on 21 December 2014, the ninth anniversary of their civil partnership.

 

1955

Gene Walsh, founder of FireFlag, was born in Brooklyn, NY. Walsh was the first New York City Firefighter to risk his career by publicly coming out “on the job” in the traditionally homophobic Fire Department of New York, and later did so at the national level appearing on syndicated television’s  Joan Rivers Show. With the support of other closeted gay Firefighters and members of Gay Officers Action League-NY, Walsh founded FireFlag, an organization that serves to raise awareness, provide official representation, education and peer support for LGBT fire services personnel. The organization was later renamed FireFlag/EMS to include Emergency Service personnel. Walsh secured the organizations formal incorporation on February 28, 1992, and thereafter achieved FireFlag/EMS equal and official fraternal organization status within the City of New York and FDNY .

 

1958

Susannah “Susie” Bright, also known as Susie Sexpert (born March 25, 1958), is an American feminist, author, journalist, critic, editor, publisher, producer, and performer, often on the subject of sexual politics and sexuality. She is one of the first writers/activists referred to as a sex-positive feminist. Her papers are part of the Human Sexuality Collection at Cornell University Library along with the archives of On Our Backs.  She has lived with her partner Jon Bailiff since 1993, and previously lived with her partner Honey Lee Cottrell in the 1980s. She has written extensively about her sexuality and family relationships in her memoirs, creative nonfiction, and blog, Susie Bright’s Journal, including topics of bisexuality, non-monogamy, lesbian life, homeschooling, and extended families and lovers.

 

1963

Danton R. Remoto (born March 25, 1963) is a Filipino writer, essayist, reporter, editor, columnist, and professor. Remoto was a first prize recipient at the ASEAN Letter-Writing Contest for Young People. The award made Remoto a scholar at the Ateneo de Manila University in the Philippines. As a professor, Remoto teaches English and Journalism at the Ateneo de Manila University. Remoto is the chair emeritus of Ang Ladlad, a lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) political party in the Philippines.

 

1971

WNBA star Sheryl Swoopes is born. Sheryl Denise Swoopes (born March 25, 1971) is a retired American professional basketball player. She was the first player to be signed in the WNBA, is a three-time WNBA MVP, and was named one of the league’s Top 15 Players of All Time at the 2011 WNBA All-Star Game. Swoopes has won three Olympic gold medals. She was elected to the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame in 2016. In 2017, she was inducted into the Women’s Basketball Hall of Fame. In October 2005 announced she was gay, becoming one of the highest-profile athletes in a team sport to do so publicly. Swoopes said, “it doesn’t change who I am. I can’t help who I fall in love with. No one can. … Discovering I’m gay just sort of happened much later in life. Being intimate with [Alisa] or any other woman never entered my mind. At the same time, I’m a firm believer that when you fall in love with somebody, you can’t control that.” She and her partner, former basketball player and Houston Comets assistant coach Alisa Scott, together raised Swoopes’ son. The couple broke up in 2011. Swoopes later that year got engaged to Chris Unclesho, a longtime male friend, to whom she is now married.

 

1983

Andrew Scott Goldstein (born March 25, 1983) is the first American male team-sport professional athlete to be openly gay during his playing career. He came out publicly in 2003 and was drafted by his hometown team, the Boston Cannons of Major League Lacrosse, in 2005. Goldstein played goal tender for the Long Island Lizards from 2005 to 2007, appearing in two games in 2006. In 2013, Goldstein was inducted into the inaugural class of the National Gay and Lesbian Sports Hall of Fame.

 

1985

This was a pivotal year for the Oscars: Vanessa Redgrave is the first woman to be nominated for Best Actress playing a lesbian role in The Bostonians; The Times of Harvey Milk wins Best Documentary, the first documentary on a gay subject to do so, and nearly a billion viewers hear director, Richard Schmeichen (July 10, 1947 – April 7, 1993) express his thanks to his partner in life, John Wright.

 

1988

Robert Joffrey (December 24, 1930 – March 25, 1988), founder and artistic director of the Joffrey Ballet, dies in New York City at the age of fifty-seven of AIDS related illness. Originally named Abdulla Jaffa Anver Bey Khan, Joffrey was a dancer, teacher, producer, and choreographer, known for his highly imaginative modern ballets. As the founder and artistic director of the Joffrey Ballet—a company renowned for its wide-ranging repertory and exuberant young performers—Joffrey was an advocate for gender balance in the dance world. His lover was Gerald Arpino (January 14, 1923 – October 29, 2008), an American dancer and choreographer. He was co-founder of the Joffrey Ballet and succeeded Robert Joffrey as its artistic director in 1988. In 2014 Arpino was inducted into the Chicago Gay and Lesbian Hall of Fame.

 

March 26

  

1859, UK

E. Houseman (26 March 1859 – 30 April 1936) was born in Worcestershire, England. He was an English classical scholar and poet, best known to the general public for his cycle of poems A Shropshire Lad. Lyrical and almost epigrammatic in form, the poems wistfully evoke the dooms and disappointments of youth in the English countryside. Their beauty, simplicity and distinctive imagery appealed strongly to late Victorian and Edwardian taste, and to many early 20th-century English composers both before and after the First World War. Through their song-settings, the poems became closely associated with that era, and with Shropshire itself. Housman was one of the foremost classicists of his age and has been ranked as one of the greatest scholars who ever lived. His homosexuality and his love for Moses Jackson often appeared in his poetry.

 

1911

Thomas Lanier “Tennessee” Williams (March 26, 1911 – February 25, 1983) was an American playwright. Along with Eugene O’Neill and Arthur Miller he is considered among the three foremost playwrights in 20th-century American drama. After some early attempts at relationships with women, by the late 1930s Williams had finally accepted his homosexuality. In New York City he joined a gay social circle which included fellow writer and close friend Donald Windham (1920–2010) and his then partner Fred Melton. In the summer of 1940 Williams initiated an affair with Kip Kiernan (1918–1944), a young Canadian dancer he met in Provincetown, Massachusetts. When Kiernan left him to marry a woman, he was distraught, and Kiernan’s death four years later at 26 delivered another heavy blow. On February 25, 1983, Williams was found dead in his suite at the Elysée in New York at age 71.

 

1969

The San Francisco Society for Individual Rights (SIR) president Leo Laurence and his lover are featured in a photo-illustrated article in the Berkeley Barb. Calling for “the Homosexual Revolution of 1969,” Laurence exhorts gay men and lesbians to join the Black Panthers and other left-wing groups and to “come out” en masse.

 

1973

Gay playwright Noel Coward (16 December 1899 – 26 March 1973) dies in Jamaica at the age of 73. He  was an English playwright, composer, director, actor and singer, known for his wit, flamboyance, and what Time magazine called “a sense of personal style, a combination of cheek and chic, pose and poise”. In 1914, when Coward was fourteen, he became the protégé and probably the lover of Philip Streatfeild, a society painter. Coward was homosexual but, following the convention of his times, this was never publicly mentioned. Coward’s most important relationship, which began in the mid-1940s and lasted until his death, was with the South African stage and film actor Graham Payn (25 April 1918 – 4 November 2005).

 

1973

The first formal meeting of PFLAG  – Parents and Friends of Lesbians and Gays (later broadened to Parents, Families and Friends of Lesbians and Gays) – took place on 26 March 1973 at the Metropolitan-Duane Methodist Church in Greenwich Village (now the Church of the Village). Approximately 20 people attended, including founder Jeanne Manford (December 4, 1920 – January 8, 2013), her husband Jules, her son Morty (1951-1992), Dick and Amy Ashworth, Metropolitan Community Church founder Reverend Troy Perry (born July 27, 1940), and more.

 

1975

After the local district attorney’s office rules that there are no county laws preventing two people of the same-sex from getting married, Boulder, Colorado county clerk Clela Rorex issues a marriage license to two gay men, Dave McCord and Dave Zamora. It is the first same-sex marriage license issued in the United States. She says in a statement, “I don’t profess to be knowledgeable about homosexuality or even understand it, but it’s not my business why people get married.  No minority should be discriminated against.”

 

1977

First time openly lesbian and gay people are welcomed into the White House and the first official discussion of lesbian and gay rights takes place. The leaders include Charlotte Bunch (born October 13, 1944), Frank Kameny (May 21, 1925 – October 11, 2011), Elaine Noble (born January 22, 1944), Troy Perry (born July 27, 1940), Betty Powell, George Raya, Myra Riddell, Charlotte Spitzer and Bruce Voeller (1935-1994).

 

1985

A 4-4 tie vote in the U.S. Supreme Court effectively overturns an Oklahoma law that would have banned homosexuals, or those defending or “promoting” the homosexual “lifestyle,” from teaching in the state’s public schools

 

1990

Common Threads: Stories from the Quilt  wins the Academy Award for Best Feature-Length Documentary. It is the second Oscar for gay filmmaker Rob Epstein (born April 6, 1955) who received the first one six years earlier for The Times of Harvey Milk. Epstein is the currently the co-chair of the Film Program at California College of the Arts in San Francisco and Oakland, California.

 

1990

Fashion designer Halston (Roy Halston Frowick) (April 23, 1932 – March 26, 1990) dies of AIDS at age fifty-seven. He was an American fashion designer who rose to international fame in the 1970s. His minimalist, clean designs, often made of cashmere or ultrasuede, were popular fashion wear in mid-1970s discotheques and redefined American fashion. An American designer, Halston was well known for creating a style for “American Women.” From his point of view, the “American Woman” was about having a relaxed urban lifestyle. He created a new phenomenon in the 1970s. Halston believed that women can wear the same clothing for the entire day on any occasion. Halston became a well-recognized fixture of the 1970s club scene in Manhattan. He was frequently photographed at Studio 54 with his close friends Liza Minnelli, Bianca Jagger and artist Andy Warhol. Halston’s on again-off again lover was Venezuelan-born artist Victor Hugo (1942 – 1993). The two met while Hugo was working as a make-up artist in 1972. The two began a relationship and Hugo lived on and off in Halston’s home. Halston soon hired Hugo to work as his window dresser.

 

1997

The first official meeting of people brought together to discuss gay and lesbian rights is held at the White House. Bill Clinton is president.

 

2000

Hilary Swank wins Oscar for the film Boys Don’t Cry. She thanks Brandon Teena (December 12, 1972 – December 31, 1993) during her acceptance speech. Teena’s mother takes offense at Swank’s use of the male name and reference to Teena as male: “That set me off. She should not stand up there and thank my child. I get tired of people taking credit for what they don’t know.”

 

2007

Jewish Theological Seminary of America begins accepting openly lesbian, gay, and bisexual students.

 

2009, Serbia

Serbian Parliament approves an anti-discrimination law which prohibits discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation and gender identity in every area.

 

2013

The Gay pride flag is flown by Alan Lowenthal (D) in Washington D.C., the first member of Congress to do so. Lowenthal (D-Long Beach), a long-time supporter of the LGBTQ community and the first member of Congress to display the pride flag outside his Washington D.C. office, pledged to continue “to fly the Pride Flag outside my office as a symbol of tolerance, love, and inclusivity to every visitor to Capitol Hill.”

 

March 27

  

1943, The Netherlands

A group of resistance activists led by Willem Arondeus (22 August 1894 – 1 July 1943), a gay man, dress as German soldiers, infiltrate the citizen registration building, and destroy it, hindering the Nazi German effort to identify Dutch Jews. The attack inspires similar ones throughout The Netherlands. Arondeus was a Dutch artist and author who joined the Dutch anti-Nazi resistance movement during World War II. Arondeus was caught and executed soon after his arrest. He was openly gay before the war and defiantly asserted his sexuality before his execution. His final words were “Let it be known that homosexuals are not cowards”.

 

1952, France

Actress Maria Schneider (27 March 1952 – 3 February 2011) was born in Paris. The highlight of her career came playing opposite Marlon Brandon in Last Tango in Paris. Schneider worked in more than 50 films and television productions between 1969 and 2008. Throughout her career, she was a strong advocate for improving the work of women in film. In 1974, Schneider came out as bisexual. In early 1976, she abandoned the film set of Caligula and checked herself into a mental hospital in Rome for several days to be with her lover, photographer Joan Townsend. This, coupled with her refusal to perform nude, led to Schneider’s dismissal from the film.

 

1977

On Face the Nation, White House press secretary Jody Powell defends charges that the Carter Administration panders to gay activists by saying, “For an organized group who feel they have a grievance that they are not treated fairly, for them to have a right to put that grievance before high officials and say ‘We want redress,’ that to me is what the essence of America is all about.  What I feel about gay rights or any other group doesn’t have a thing in the world to do with it.”

 

March 28

  

1929

Lesbian Katharine Lee Bates (August 12, 1859 – March 28, 1929), author of the song America the Beautiful, dies. Bates was a full professor of English literature at Wellesley College. 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.

 

1931

Writer Jane Rule (28 March 1931 – 27 November 2007) is born in New Jersey. In 1956, Rule moved to Canada. Her 1975 work “Lesbian Images” set down what it meant for her to be a lesbian and compared her experiences with other famous women. It was hailed as a landmark and helped earn her an Order of British Columbia medal. In 1964, Rule published Desert of the Heart after 22 rejections from publishers. Rule’s novel was later made into a movie by Donna Deitch, released as Desert Hearts (1985). The Globe and Mail said, “the film is one of the first and most highly regarded works in which a lesbian relationship is depicted favorably.” Rule taught at Concord Academy in Massachusetts where she met Helen Sonthoff (September 11, 1916 – January 3, 2000). Rule and Sonthoff lived together until Sonthoff’s death in 2000. Rule surprised some in the gay community by declaring herself against gay marriage, writing, “To be forced back into the heterosexual cage of coupledom is not a step forward but a step back into state-imposed definitions of relationship. With all that we have learned, we should be helping our heterosexual brothers and sisters out of their state-defined prisons, not volunteering to join them there.” The ashes of Jane Vance Rule were interred in the Galiano Island Cemetery next to those of her beloved Helen Hubbard Wolfe Sonthoff.

 

1962

Alexandra Scott Billings (born March 28, 1962) is an American actress, teacher, singer, and activist. Billings is among the first openly transgender women to have played a transgender character on television, which she did in the 2005 made-for-TV movie Romy and Michele: In The Beginning.

 

1979, Canada

Toronto’s police chief and the police association president both issue statements apologizing after an anti-gay article called The Homosexual Fad appears in the police association newsletter

 

1986

Stefani Joanne Angelina Germanotta (born March 28, 1986), known professionally as Lady Gaga, is an American singer, songwriter, and actress. She is known for her unconventionality and provocative work as well as visual experimentation. Gaga began her musical career performing songs at open mic nights and school plays. She studied at Collaborative Arts Project 21 (CAP21) through New York University‘s Tisch School of the Arts before dropping out to become a professional musician. After Def Jam Recordings canceled her contract, Gaga worked as a songwriter for Sony/ATV Music Publishing. She rose to prominence in 2008 with her debut album, a dance-pop and electropop record titled The Fame, and its chart-topping singles “Just Dance” and “Poker Face“. A follow-up EP, The Fame Monster (2009), featuring the singles “Bad Romance“, “Telephone“, and “Alejandro“, also proved successful. Gaga’s second full-length album Born This Way (2011) explored electronic rock and techno. In 2012, Gaga launched the Born This Way Foundation (BTWF), a non-profit organization that focuses on youth empowerment. As a bisexual woman, Gaga actively supports LGBT rights worldwide. She attributes much of her early success as a mainstream artist to her gay fans and is considered a gay icon.

 

1989

2500 ACT-UP activists demonstrate at the New York City hall protesting Mayor Koch’s handling of the AIDS crisis. Over 100 protestors went to jail.

 

1990

With the opening of the Robert Mapplethorpe (November 4, 1946 – March 9, 1989) exhibit less than two weeks away, law enforcement officials in Cincinnati, Ohio, warn the local Contemporary Arts Center to cancel the exhibit or risk prosecution under the city’s stringent anti-obscenity laws. “These photographs are just not welcome in this community,” says the local chief of police. “The people of this community do not cater to what others depict as art.”  After the exhibit finally opens, a Cincinnati grand jury indicts the center’s director, Dennis Barrie, on charges of obscenity and pandering.

 

2002

In Mississippi, the George County Times publishes a letter from George County Justice Court Judge Connie Wilkerson which read, in part, “In my opinion, gays and lesbians should be put in some type of mental institution.” Because of the bias expressed in such a statement, an ethics violation complaint was filed against Wilkerson.

  

March 29

  

1953

The Los Angeles Times accuses the Mattachine Society of “dangerously subversive activities.” The Mattachine Society, founded in 1950, was one of the earliest LGBT (gay rights) organizations in the United States, probably second only to Chicago‘s Society for Human Rights. Communist and labor activist Harry Hay formed the group with a collection of male friends 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. At the beginning of gay rights protest, news on Cuban prison work camps for homosexuals inspired Mattachine Society to organize protests at the United Nations and the White House, in 1965. 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.

 

1976

By a vote of 6-3, the U.S. Supreme Court upholds the constitutionality of Virginia’s sodomy laws.

 

1985

The Los Angeles Times comes out in favor of gay rights and urges the U.S. Supreme Court to take a stand on more gay-related issues.

 

1988

Georgetown University, the nation’s oldest Roman Catholic university, loses an eight-year legal battle to keep from having to provide facilities and financial support to the campus’s gay student groups.

 

1989

The Academy Awards, produced this year by gay producer Allan Carr (May 27, 1937 – June 29, 1999), showcases a now infamous rendition of “Proud Mary” sung by Rob Lowe and an actress dressed as the Disney version of Snow White.  Says Carr before the ceremony, “It really was my childhood dream to produce the Oscars. I’m a child of the movies.” In 1966, Carr founded the talent agency Allan Carr Enterprises, managing actors Tony Curtis, Peter Sellers, Rosalind Russell, Dyan Cannon, Melina Mercouri, and Marlo Thomas and many more. In 2017 a documentary about Carr’s life was released entitled The Fabulous Allan Carr. The director of The Fabulous Allan Carr Jeffrey Schwarz said, “Although it was no secret that Allan Carr was gay, he never formally acknowledged it publicly. The word ‘flamboyant’ was used to describe him, a code word.”

 

1990

Delivering his first speech on AIDS since he took office fourteen months earlier, President Bush is heckled by National Gay and Lesbian Task Force director Urvashi Vaid (October 8, 1958), who hollers, “We need your leadership! We need more than one speech every fourteen months!” Vaid, holding a sign reading “TALK IS CHEAP, AIDS FUNDING IS NOT,” is quickly “escorted” from the auditorium by police

 

2009

Oscar Wilde Memorial Bookstore in New York, the first LGBTQ bookstore in the country, closes. It had opened in 1967. Craig Rodwell (October 31, 1940 – June 18, 1993) opened the New York City-based Oscar Wilde Memorial Bookshop in 1967. It was the first bookstore devoted to gay and lesbian authors. Initially located at 291 Mercer Street, it moved in 1973 to Christopher Street and Gay Street in New York City‘s Village neighborhood. It was named after author Oscar Wilde.

 

March 30

  

1958

The first performance of the Alvin Ailey American Dance theater in New York occurred on this day. Alvin Alley (January 5, 1931 – December 1, 1989) was a gay man who died from complications of AIDS in 1989 at the age of 58. He was an African-American choreographer and activist who founded the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater in New York City. He is credited with popularizing modern dance and revolutionizing African-American participation in 20th-century concert dance. His company gained the nickname “Cultural Ambassador to the World” because of its extensive international touring. Ailey’s choreographic masterpiece Revelations is believed to be the best known and most often seen modern dance performance. In 1977, Ailey was awarded the Spingarn Medal from the NAACP. He received the Kennedy Center Honors in 1988. In 2014, President Barack Obama selected Ailey to be a posthumous recipient of the Presidential Medal of Freedom.

 

1964

Tracy Chapman (born March 30, 1964) is an American singer-songwriter and a multi-platinum and four-time Grammy Award-winning artist. She is known for her hits “Fast Car” and “Give Me One Reason” along with other singles “Talkin ’bout a Revolution,” “Baby Can I Hold You,” “Crossroads,” “New Beginning” and “Telling Stories.” Although Chapman has never publicly disclosed her sexual orientation, during the mid-1990s she was in a same-sex relationship with writer Alice Walker (born February 9, 1944). Chapman maintains a strong separation between her personal and professional life. “I have a public life that’s my work life and I have my personal life,” she said. “In some ways, the decision to keep the two things separate relates to the work I do. Chapman often performs at and attends charity events such as Make Poverty History, amfAR, and AIDS/LifeCycle, to support social causes. She identifies as a feminist.

 

2017

Gilbert Baker (June 2, 1951 – March 31, 2017), an artist based in San Francisco who created the rainbow flag as a symbol for the gay community, dies at age 65. He created the gay pride flag in 1978. Baker’s flag became widely associated with LGBT rights causes, a symbol of gay pride that has become ubiquitous in the decades since its debut. California state senator Scott Wiener said Baker “helped define the modern LGBT movement”. In 2015, the Museum of Modern Art ranked the rainbow flag as an internationally recognized symbol as important as the recycling symbol. The colors on the Rainbow Flag reflect the diversity of the LGBT community. When Baker raised the first rainbow flags at San Francisco Pride (his group raised two flags at the Civic Center) on June 25, 1978, it comprised eight symbolic colors. The design has undergone several revisions to remove two colors for expediency and later re-add those colors when they became more widely available. As of 2008, the most common variant consists of six stripes, with the colors red, orange, yellow, green, blue, and violet. Baker referred to this version of the flag as the “commercial version,” because it came about due to practical considerations of mass production. Specifically, the rainbow flag lost its hot pink stripe when Baker approached the Paramount Flag Company to begin mass-producing them, and the hot pink fabric was too rare and expensive to include. The rainbow flag lost its turquoise stripe before the 1979 Gay Freedom Day Parade, as the committee organizing the parade wanted to fly the flag in two-halves, from the light poles along both sides of Market Street, so it became a six-striped flag with equal halves. American Revolutionary War writer Thomas Paine proposed that a rainbow flag be used as a maritime flag, to signify neutral ships in time of war. In 2017, two new shades have been added to the rainbow flag: black and brown. The “new” flag debuted at the beginning of June (Pride Month) in Philadelphia to expressively represent the Black and brown members of the LGBTQ community. Although it was an effort to support and acknowledge an even more oppressed group, the new flag has received resistance and disapproval and has not yet been universally accepted.

 

March 31

International Transgender Day of Visibility

 

1940

Barney Frank (born March 31, 1940) is born. A United States Congressman since 1980, Frank was one of the first openly gay elected officials in the world. He served as a member of the U.S. House of Representatives from Massachusetts from 1981 to 2013. As a member of the Democratic Party, he served as chairman of the House Financial Services Committee (2007–2011) and was a leading co-sponsor of the 2010 Dodd–Frank Act, a sweeping reform of the U.S. financial industry. Frank, a resident of Newton, Massachusetts, is considered the most prominent gay politician in the United States. On July 7, 2012, Frank married Jim Ready, his longtime partner.

 

1961

Suzanne Westenhoefer (born March 31, 1961) is an out lesbian stand-up comedian. After accepting a dare, she began her career delivering gay-themed material to straight audiences in mainstream comedy clubs in New York City in the early 1990s. She became the first openly lesbian comic to appear on television, in 1991 on an episode of Sally Jesse Raphael entitled “Breaking the Lesbian Stereotype…Lesbians Who Don’t Look Like Lesbians.” In 1991 and 1992, her stand-up comedy appeared on Comedy Central‘s Short Attention Span Theater. She became the first openly gay comic to host her own HBO Comedy Special in 1994, which earned her a Cable Ace Award nomination, and to appear on the Late Show with David Letterman in 2003.  In 2004 she was featured in the Andrea Meyerson film Laughing Matters along with Kate Clinton (born November 9, 1947), Karen Williams, and Puerto Rican/Cuban–American comedian Marga Gomez.

  

1964, Canada

Ed Northe founds the Imperial Court of Canada, a monarchist society comprised primarily of drag personalities, and becomes a driving force in the effort to achieve equality in Canada. The Court of Canada now has at least 14 chapters across the country and is the oldest, continuously running GLBT Organization in Canada.

 

1997, UK

Premiere of the Teletubbies. Tinky Winky with his purple color, his triangle icon, and his purse, caused some to claim that Tinky is a gay role model. Southern Baptist pastor, televangelist, and conservative activist Jerry Falwell publicly denounces Tinky in 1999.

 

2014, Canada

Model and activist Geena Rocero (born 1983) comes out as transgender during her TED talk filmed in Vancouver on the Transgender Day of Visibility. She is a Filipino American supermodel, TED speaker, and transgender advocate based in New York City. Rocero is the founder of Gender Proud, an advocacy and aid organization that stands up for the right of transgender people worldwide to “self-identify with the fewest possible barriers”.

Published February 8, 2024

THIS DAY IN LGBTQ HISTORY – FEBRUARY

February 1

  

1900

Marion Barbara ‘Joe’ Carstairs (1 February 1900 – 18 December 1993) was a wealthy British power boat racer known for her speed and her eccentric lifestyle.

 

1902

James Mercer Langston Hughes (February 1, 1902 – May 22, 1967) is born. He was an African American poet, social activist, novelist, playwright, and columnist from Joplin, Missouri. He was one of the earliest innovators of the then-new literary art form called poetry and best known as a leader of the Harlem Renaissance in New York City. During his time in England in the early 1920s, Hughes became part of the Black expatriate community. Some academics and biographers believe that Hughes was homosexual and included homosexual codes in many of his poems, as did Whitman whom Hughes said influenced his poetry. Hughes’s story “Blessed Assurance” deals with a father’s anger over his son’s effeminacy and “queerness”. Unlike the generation of Black poets who came after him, Hughes approach to American racism was more wry than angry, but he helped set the mood for today’s Black movement. With his friend Countee Cullen who was also gay, he was the center of Harlem’s literary renaissance in the 1920s. On May 22, 1967, Hughes died in New York City at the age of 65 from complications after abdominal surgery related to prostate cancer. His ashes are interred beneath a floor medallion in the middle of the foyer in the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture in Harlem.

 

1942, Germany

A legal amendment formally extends the death penalty to men found guilty of  having sex with other men.

 

1949, France

The Paris Prefect of Police issues a decree forbidding men from dancing together in public.

 

1960

In Greensboro, North Carolina, four African American students sat down and ordered coffee at a lunch counter at the Woolworths Drug Store. They were refused service but did not leave. Instead, they waited all day. The scene was repeated over the next few days, with protests spreading to other southern states, resulting in the eventual arrest of over 1,600 persons for participating in sit-ins. The Black Freedom movement was the inspiration for most of the early gay rights activists in North America.

 

1976, UK

In 1974, Maureen Colquhoun (born 12 August 1928) came out as the first Lesbian MP for the Labour Party in the UK. When elected she was married in a heterosexual marriage. Colquhoun was deselected due to her sexuality and her feminist views; in late September 1977, members of her constituency party’s General Management Committee voted by 23 votes to 18, with one abstention, to deselect her citing her “obsession with trivialities such as women’s rights”. The local party chairman Norman Ashby said at the time that “She was elected as a working wife and mother … this business has blackened her image irredeemably. “My sexuality has nothing whatever to do with my ability to my job as an MP,” Colquhoun insisted in an article for Gay News in October 1977.

 

1978

Tom of Finland, born Touko Valio Laaksonen (8 May 1920 – 7 November 1991) has his first U.S. exhibit at Robert Opel’s Fey Way Gallery in San Francisco. He was known for his stylized highly masculinized homoerotic art, and for his influence on late twentieth century gay culture. He has been called the “most influential creator of gay pornographic images” by cultural historian Joseph W. Slade. Over the course of four decades, he produced some 3,500 illustrations, mostly featuring men with exaggerated primary and secondary sex traits, wearing tight or partially removed clothing.

 

1979

A gang of teenage boys stood outside Tennessee Williams ’s (March 26, 1911 – February 25, 1983) home in Key West, Florida, and began throwing beer cans and firecrackers at the house while chanting “Come on out, faggot!” The incident was the latest in a string of bizarre homophobic attacks aimed at the openly gay playwright. Five days later, his dog was kidnapped from his backyard, never to be seen again.

 

1980

Paul Schrader’s (born July 22, 1946) film American Gigolo opens nationwide. Though rather homophobic, the whole film is steeped in a gay aesthetic. Years later, Schrader noted, “At the time we were at the apex of the gay movement in all its manifestations, especially in the arts. The influence was everywhere–in our fashion, in disco, in the drug scene. It affected that film’s aesthetic, too. All my friends at the time were gay.” Schrader is an American screenwriter, film director, and film critic. He wrote or co-wrote screenplays for four Martin Scorsese films: Taxi Driver (1976), Raging Bull (1980), The Last Temptation of Christ (1988), and Bringing Out the Dead (1999). Schrader has also directed 18 feature films.

 

2009, Iceland

Johanna Siguroardottir (born 4 October 1942) becomes Iceland’s first female Prime Minister and the world’s first openly lesbian head of government

 

 

February 2

  

1711, Austria

The great Austrian statesman Prince Wenzel Anton von Kaunitz (2 February 1711 – 27 June 1794) was born in Vienna. He was an Austrian-Czech diplomat and statesman in the Habsburg Monarchy. A proponent of enlightened absolutism, he held the office of State Chancellor for four decades and was responsible for the foreign policies during the reigns of Maria Theresa, Joseph II, and Leopold II. In 1764, he was elevated to the noble rank of a Prince of the Holy Roman Empire. Single-handedly he engineered an alliance between traditional enemies France and England. Eccentric, arrogant, conceited and always happy to hear the sound of his own voice, he is said to have had a virtual harem of young men.

 

1859, UK

Havelock Ellis (2 February 1859 – 8 July 1939) was born in Croydon, England. He was an English physician, writer, progressive intellectual and social reformer who studied human sexuality. He was co-author of the first medical textbook in English on homosexuality in 1897, and also published works on a variety of sexual practices and inclinations as well as transgender psychology. He is credited with introducing the notions of narcissism and autoeroticism, later adopted by psychoanalysis. Ellis was among the pioneering investigators of psychedelic drugs and the author of one of the first written reports to the public about an experience with mescaline which he conducted on himself in 1896. Like many intellectuals of his era, he supported eugenics and he served as president of the Eugenics Society. His monumental seven volume Studies in the Psychology of Sex (1897- 1928) changed the Western attitude toward sex in the late Victorian age. In November of 1891, at the age of 32, and reportedly still a virgin, Ellis married the English writer and proponent of women’s rights, Edith Lees (1861-1916). From the beginning, their marriage was unconventional as Edith Lees was openly lesbian. At the end of the honeymoon, Ellis went back to his bachelor rooms in Paddington and Edith lived at Fellowship House. Their “open marriage” was the central subject in Ellis’s autobiography, My Life.

 

1988, UK

Three women protest the potential Clause 28 by swinging on ropes off the public gallery into the chamber of the House of Lords. Their shouts of “Lesbians are angry!” and “It’s our lives you’re dealing with” distill the current mood of British lesbian and gay activists, galvanized as never before in opposition to the bill. Clause 28 was enacted on May 24, 1988, and stated that a local authority “shall not intentionally promote homosexuality or publish material with the intention of promoting homo-sexuality” or “promote the teaching in any maintained school of the acceptability 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.The law’s existence caused many groups to close or limit their activities. For example, a number of lesbian, gay and bisexual student support groups in schools and colleges across Britain were closed owing to fears by council legal staff that they could breach the act.

 

2005, Austria

Transgender Europe (TGEU)is funded in Vienna during the first European Transgender Council. This NGO works “to support or work for the rights of transgender/transsexual/gender variant people.” It also runs the Trans Murder Monitoring project, which records and reports the many people who are killed each year as a result of transphobia.

 

 

February 3

 

 

1821

The first female physician in the U.S., Elizabeth Blackwell (3 February 1821 – 31 May 1910) was born near Bristol, England. As a girl, her family moved to New York State. She was awarded her MD by the Medical Institute of Geneva, New York, in 1849. She was the first woman to graduate from medical school, a pioneer in promoting the education of women in medicine in the United States, and a social and moral reformer in both the United States and in the United Kingdom. She was active in training women to be nurses for service in the U.S. Civil War. She established a hospital in New York City run by an all-female staff. Her sister Emily was the third woman in the US to get a medical degree. None of the five Blackwell sisters ever married. Since 1949, the American Medical Women’s Association has awarded the Elizabeth Blackwell Medal annually to a woman physician. The Judy Chicago artwork The Dinner Party features a place setting for Elizabeth Blackwell.

 

1874

Lesbian writer Gertrude Stein (February 3, 1874 – July 27, 1946) was born in Allegheny, Pennsylvania. She was an American novelist, poet, playwright, and art collector. Multifaceted, complicated, and impenetrable, Stein was like the cubist paintings she admired so much. She once summed up her long life with partner Alice B. Toklas  (April 30, 1877 – March 7, 1967) by writing “I love my love because she is peculiar.”

 

1913

The 16th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution was ratified, granting Congress the authority to collect income taxes. Just wondering: How much have gays and lesbians paid in taxes without full civil rights?

 

1938

Jonathan Ned Katz (born Feb. 3, 1938) is an American historian of human sexuality who has written about same-sex attraction and changes in the social organization of sexuality over time. His works focus on the idea, rooted in social constructionism, that the categories with which we describe and define human sexuality are historically and culturally specific, along with the social organization of sexual activity, desire, relationships, and sexual identities. His works include The Invention of Heterosexuality, the Gay/Lesbian Almanac and Gay American History: Lesbians and Gay Men in the U.S.A.

 

1956

Nathan Lane (born February 3, 1956) is an American stage, film and television actor and writer. He is known for his roles as Albert in The Birdcage, Bialystok in the musical The Producers, Ernie Smuntz in Mouse Hunt, Nathan Detroit in Guys and Dolls, Pseudolus in A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum, his voice work in Stuart Little as Snowbell and The Lion King as Timon, and his recurring roles on Modern Family, The Good Wife, and American Crime Story: The People v. O. J. Simpson as F. Lee Bailey. In 2006, Lane received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, and in 2008, he was inducted into the American Theatre Hall of Fame. Lane, who came out officially after the death of Matthew Shepard (December 1, 1976 – October 12, 1998), has been a long-time board member of and fundraiser for Broadway Cares/Equity Fights AIDS, and has been honored by the Human Rights Campaign and the Matthew Shepard Foundation for his work in the LGBT community. On November 17, 2015, Lane married his long-time partner, theater producer, actor and writer Devlin Elliott (born April 13, 1972).

 

1978, Canada

In Toronto, the House of Bishops of the Anglican Church of Canada affirmed that gay people “are entitled to equal protection under the law with all other Canadian citizens.”

 

1988

Cameron “Butchie” Tanner (died April 21, 1992) was a bartender and drag performer in San Francisco. On this day, he was elected Empress of San Francisco and awarded the Certificate of Honor by the City of San Francisco through the efforts of Supervisor Hongisto. On March 11, 1992, after having seen a movie at a theater in the Latin area below Castro, he was beaten by two thugs with baseball bats. He died from his injuries on April 21, 1992. Although he was not transgender, and it is believed that his killers were not aware that he was gay, he is often included in several transgender memorial lists.

 

2011

The National Gay and Lesbian Task Force publishes its report on transgender discrimination, entitled “Injustice at Every Turn: Report on the National Transgender Discrimination Survey.”

 

2012

On this day the United States Department of Housing and Urban Development’s Office of Fair Housing and Equal Opportunity issued a regulation to prohibit discrimination in federally-assisted housing programs. The new regulations ensure that the Department’s core housing programs are open to all eligible persons, regardless of sexual orientation or gender identity.

 

 

February 4

  

1747

Social reformer Jeremy Bentham (4 February 1747– 6 June 1832) wrote the first known argument for homosexual law reform in England around 1785, at a time when the legal penalty for buggery was death by hanging. His advocacy stemmed from his utilitarian philosophy, in which the morality of an action is determined by the net consequence of that action on human well-being. He argued that homosexuality was a victimless crime, and therefore not deserving of social approbation or criminal charges. He regarded popular negative attitudes against homosexuality as an irrational prejudice, fanned and perpetuated by religious teachings. However, he did not publicize his views as he feared reprisal; his powerful essay was not published until 1978.

 

1915

On a speaking tour, Edith Lees Ellis (1861-Sept. 14, 1916), open lesbian wife of Havelock Ellis (2 February 1859 – 8 July 1939), exhorts women to begin “organizing a new love world.” She was an English writer and women’s rights activist. From the beginning, their marriage was unconventional; at the end of the honeymoon Havelock went back to his bachelor rooms and Edith had several affairs with women, of which her husband was aware. Their open marriage was the central subject in Havelock Ellis’s autobiography My Life(1939).

 

1923, Austria

Nazi Thugs fire guns into a Vienna homophile gathering attended by Magnus Hirschfeld (14 May 1868 – 14 May 1935) and wound a number of people in the crowd. Hirschfeld was a German Jewish physician and sexologist educated primarily in Germany; he based his practice 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.”

  

1934

Eleanor Roosevelt (October 11, 1884 – November 7, 1962) writes to her lover journalist Lorena Hickok (March 7, 1893 – May 1, 1968) about how lucky they. “Someday perhaps fate will be kind and let us arrange a life more to our liking [but] for the time being we are lucky to have what we have. Dearest, we are happy together and strong relationships have to grow deep roots.” The nature of Hickok and Roosevelt’s relationship has been a subject of dispute among historians. Roosevelt was close friends with several lesbian couples, including Marion Dickerman (April 11, 1890 – May 16, 1983), educator Esther Lape (October 8, 1881 – May 17, 1981) and scholar and suffragist Elizabeth Fisher Read (1872 – December 13, 1943), suggesting that she understood lesbianism. Marie Souvestre (28 April 1830 – 30 March 1905), Roosevelt’s childhood teacher and a great influence on her later thinking, was also a lesbian.

 

1938

Gay writer and historian Martin Greif (February 4, 1938 – November 17, 1996) was born in New York City. He was an American editor, lecturer, publisher and writer. A prolific writer, Greif was one of the first people to compile a history of gays and lesbians and biographies of some of the most illustrious people in time. Main Street Press was founded in 1978 by Greif and his life partner, Lawrence Grow, in Clinton, New Jersey. Grow died of a stroke associated with AIDS in 1991. Greif died of an AIDS-related illness in November 1996.

 

1973

Twenty year old French actress and star of The Last Tango in Paris, Maria Schneider(27 March 1952 – 3 February 2011) admits to the New York Times that she is bisexual, stating “I’ve had quite a few lovers for my age. More men than women…women I love more for beauty than for sex.  Men I love for grace and intelligence.” In early 1976, she abandoned the film set of Caligula and checked herself into a mental hospital in Rome for several days to be with her lover, photographer Joan Townsend. Schneider died of breast cancer on 3 February 2011 at age 58.

 

1975, Canada

Police raid Sauna Aquarius in Montreal and arrest thirty-six people as found-ins in a common bawdyhouse. It was the beginning of a police “clean-up” for the 1976 Montreal Olympic Games.

 

1981

Congressman Jon Hinson (R-Mississippi) (March 16, 1942 – July 21, 1995) is arrested for performing an act of “oral sodomy” with a twenty-eight-year-old man in the restroom of a House of Representatives office building. He pleads no contest and is given a thirty-day suspended sentence. Following his 1981 resignation, he became an LGBT activist in metropolitan Washington D.C. Hinson died of respiratory failure resulting from AIDS in Silver Spring, Maryland, at the age of fifty-three.

 

1987

On this day, author Randy Shilts’ (August 8, 1951 – February 17, 1994) investigative journalism book And the Band Played On is published. It chronicles the 1980–1985 discovery and spread of HIV/AIDS, government indifference, and political infighting in the United States to what was initially perceived as a gay disease. Shilts himself would die of the disease on February 17, 1994.

 

1987

Liberace (May 16, 1919 – February 4, 1987) dies at the age of 62 in Palm Springs from AIDS-related illnesses. Just two weeks earlier his publicists had denied a Las Vegas Sun story which claimed he had the disease. He is buried in the Los Angeles Forest Lawn Cemetery. Władziu Valentino Liberace was known as Liberace. He was an American pianist, singer, and actor. A child prodigy and the son of working-class immigrants, 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. Liberace embraced a lifestyle of flamboyant excess both on and off stage, acquiring the sobriquet “Mr. Showmanship.” In 1982, Scott Thorson (born January 23, 1959), 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. Liberace continued to deny that he was homosexual and HIV-positive, and during court depositions in 1984, he insisted that Thorson was never his lover. The case was settled out of court in 1986, with Thorson receiving a $75,000 cash settlement plus three cars and three pet dogs worth another $20,000. Thorson stated after Liberace’s death that he settled because he knew that Liberace was dying and that he had intended to sue based on conversion of property rather than palimony. 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. Behind the Candelabra, a film adaptation of Scott Thorson’s autobiography debuted on HBO in May 2013. Michael Douglas plays Liberace and Matt Damon played Thorson in a story centered on the relationship the two shared and its aftermath.

 

2004

The Massachusetts high court rules that only full, equal marriage rights for gay couples, not civil unions, would be constitutional. “The history of our nation has demonstrated that separate is seldom, if ever, equal,” an advisory opinion from the four justices who ruled in favor of gay marriage stated. A bill creating only civil unions, not full marriage rights, would be “unconstitutional, inferior, and discriminatory status for same-sex couples.”

 

February 5

 

1914

Author William S. Burroughs (February 5, 1914 – August 2, 1997) was born in St Louis. 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. Burroughs wrote eighteen novels and novellas, six collections of short stories and four collections of essays. He shunned the wealth of his business machine-making family to work a number of jobs but his most famous accomplishment was as a writer. His addiction to drugs led to his first novel Junkie. His highlight was the 1959 hit Naked Lunch, 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. The 25th anniversary edition of Queer, published in 2010, edited by Oliver Harris, called into question Burroughs’s claim, and clarified the importance for Queer of Burroughs’s traumatic relationship with the boyfriend fictionalized in the story as Eugene Allerton.

 

1981, Canada

Toronto police raid gay bathhouses throughout the downtown arresting 286 people and causing hundreds of thousands of dollars damage. Beginning at 11 p.m., more than 150 police simultaneously raided the Club Baths, the Romans II Health and Recreation Spa, the Richmond Street Health Emporium (heavily damaged, it never reopened), and, for the second time, the Barracks. The raids marked a turning point for Toronto’s gay community; as the protests that followed indicated, people weren’t willing to endure derogatory treatment deriding their lifestyle from the police or from any others in spheres of influence, causing more than one participant to consider this the Canadian Stonewall

 

1982

The film Personal Best opens in New York City. It depicts two women, Mariel Hemingway and Patrice Donnelly, as competing athletes who have a lesbian affair while training for the Olympics.

1988

Arizona Governor Evan Mecham, who at the beginning of his administration tried to purge lesbians and gay men from state government, is impeached by the Arizona House of Representatives.

 

2005, Iraq

The Integrated Regional Information Networks reports that “honor killings” by Iraqis against gay family members are common in a report entitled “Iraq: Male homosexuality still a taboo.” The Integrated Regional Information Networks, based in Kenya, states that the 2001 amendment to the criminal code stipulating the death penalty for homosexuality “has not been changed,” despite Paul Bremer’s clear order that the criminal code to go back to its 1980s edition.

 

 

February 6

 

1899, Mexico

Screen actor Ramon Novarro (February 6, 1899 – October 30, 1968) was born in Durango, Mexico. He was a Mexican film, stage and television actor who began his career in silent films in 1917 and eventually became a leading man and one of the top box office attractions of the 1920s and early 1930s. Novarro was promoted by MGM as a “Latin lover” and became known as a sex symbol after the death of Rudolph Valentino (May 6, 1895 – August 23, 1926). Despite being the heart throb of countless women, his real passion was men. In the early 1920s, Novarro had a romantic relationship with composer Harry Partch (June 24, 1901-September 3, 1974) who was working as an usher at the Los Angeles Philharmonic at the time, but Novarro broke off the affair as his acting career began to become successful. He was romantically involved with journalist Herbert Howe (1893–1959) who was also his publicist in the late 1920s, and with a wealthy man from San Francisco, Noël Sullivan. Novarro was murdered on October 30, 1968, by brothers Paul and Tom Ferguson, aged 22 and 17, who called him and offered their sexual services. He had in the past hired prostitutes from an agency to come to his Laurel Canyon home for sex. The Fergusons obtained Novarro’s telephone number from a previous guest.

  

1971, Sydney, Australia

CAMP (Campaign Against Moral Persecution) holds its first public meetings.

 

1979, Italy

Angelo Pezzana (born September 15, 1940) is the first openly gay person elected to Parliament. He wrote several books including Dentro e fuori – Una autobiografia omosessuale (1996) about the gay liberation movement in Italy.

  

1981, Canada

More than 3,000 people brave the winter cold to protest the previous night’s raid in a demonstration in downtown Toronto. A sit-in at Yonge and Wellesley Streets was the biggest protest of its kind in Toronto.

 

1982, Canada

A decade to the day after John Damien (1933-Dec. 24, 1986) was fired from his job as a racing steward with the Ontario Racing Commission for being gay, his wrongful dismissal suit was to have come to trial but legal maneuvers on the part of racing commission officials stopped it. The civil trial was delayed for seven years. The case was settled out of court for $50,000. Damien died at age 53 of pancreatic cancer on Dec 24, 1986. His death came only 22 days after amendments to the Ontario Human Rights Code gave gays protection against dismissal on the grounds of sexuality.

 

1989

By a vote of 251-121, the American Bar Association’s House of Delegates approves a referendum in favor of federal rights legislation for lesbians and gay men.

 

1989, Canada

A full-page ad in Globe and Mail, supported by over 800 individuals and groups, calls on Attorney General Roy McMurtry to drop the appeal of the acquittal of The Body Politic. It was the first time an advocacy ad for a gay cause was published in Canadian daily.

 

1993, The Netherlands

The Netherlands votes to ban discrimination against gays and lesbians.

 

February 7

  

1046 BC

Jonathan, the son of King Saul, was born. The love affair between Jonathan and David was so great that David betrayed his father for his lover. On his deathbed David is recorded in the Biblical reference 2 Samuel 1:26 as saying “My brother Jonathan, thy love to me was wonderful, passing the love of women.” It could be the first significant reference to a gay love affair ever recorded.

 

1931

James Dean (February 8, 1931 – September 30, 1955) was born in Marion, Ohio. He was the first major screen idol for gay/bisexual men. His brooding rebellious presence typified the McCarthy era, and was the harbinger of the socio-political voice of youth in America. Despite stories of his trysts with men, no proof has ever appeared.

 

1970

Sometime in the 1940s a sign appeared over the popular Los Angeles bar Barney’s Beanery that read “FAGOTS – STAY OUT.” The message so offended the locals that Life magazine did an article on opposition to the sign in 1964, which included a photograph of the owner steadfastly holding on to it. The owner died in 1968, and efforts continued to have the sign removed. The Gay Liberation Front organized a zap of the restaurant on February 7, 1970 to push for its removal. The sign disappeared that day. The sign was put up and taken down several times over the next 14 years, but the practice ended in December, 1984, days after West Hollywood voted itself into existence. The then-mayor Valerie Terrigno, the entire city council and gay-rights activists marched into Barney’s and relieved the wall of the offending sign. It was held by Morris Kight for many years and now rests in the ONE Archives in Los Angeles.

 

1977

The U.S. lifts its ban on the employment of lesbian and gay people. It announces that it will consider job applications of open lesbian and gay people on a case-by-case basis going forward for lesbians and gay men for employment in the foreign service and other international agencies.

 

1977

Tucson changes its Chapter 17 of the City Code to prohibit discrimination and adds the category of “sexual and affectional preference.

 

1977 – Diandrea “Dee” Rees (born February 7, 1977) is an American screenwriter and director. She is known for her feature films Pariah (2011), Bessie (2015), and Mudbound (2017). The latter was adapted from the 2008 novel by the same name by Hillary Jordan and earned Rees an Academy Award nomination for Best Adapted Screenplay. Rees was the first queer Black woman to be nominated for any Academy Award in a writing category. Rees is a lesbian, and described Pariah as semi-autobiographical. Since at least 2017, Rees has been in a relationship with poet and writer Sarah M. Broom.

  

1978

The Oklahoma State House of Representatives passes a so-called “Teacher Fitness” statute which allows local school boards to fire homo-sexual teachers or any teacher “advocating, encouraging or promoting public or private homosexual activities.” The National Gay Task Force later files suit to challenge the law’s constitutionality.

 

1980, Canada

County Court Judge George Ferguson hears a Crown appeal in Toronto of decision by a Provincial Court judge acquitting The Body Politic of charges related to using the mail to transmit immoral and indecent material.

 

1991, Russia

In an interview reported in the popular press, the president of the USSR Academy of Medical Sciences asserts that homosexuality is a disease that must be fought by all legal means.

1991

The first U.S. lesbian kiss on television occurs between Amanda Donohoe and Michelle Green on L.A. Law.

 

2012

The Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals in California rules 2–1 that Proposition 8 is unconstitutional because it violates the Equal Protection Clause of the 14th Amendment. In the ruling, the court said the law “operates with no apparent purpose but to impose on gays and lesbians, through the public law, a majority’s private disapproval of them and their relationships.”

 

February 8

  

1790

The State of New Hampshire enacts a statute that changed the language of the law to read that “if any Man shall carnally lie with a Man as Man carnally lieth with a Woman.” Thus it was made clear that only sodomy between two men was a crime.

 

1798

The Commonwealth of Kentucky adopts a statute reducing the penalty for same-sex intercourse from the death penalty to 2-5 years in the jail and penitentiary house.

 

1911

Elizabeth Bishop (February 8, 1911 – October 6, 1979) was an American poet and short-story writer. She was Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress from 1949 to 1950, the Pulitzer Prize winner for Poetry in 1956, the National Book Award winner in 1970, and the recipient of the Neustadt International Prize for Literature in 1976. Bishop did not see herself as a “lesbian poet” or as a “female poet” in part because she refused to have her work published in all-female poetry anthologies. Other female poets involved with the women’s movement thought she was hostile to the movement. She lived with at least two female lovers in Key West.

 

1933, Japan

“Kanojo no Michi,” a novel by Nobuko Yoshiya (12 January 1896 – 11 July 1973), documents two women in love and was made into a film. Yoshiya was a Japanese novelist active in Taishō and Showa period Japan. She was one of modern Japan’s most commercially successful and prolific writers, specializing in serialized romance novels and adolescent girls’ fiction as well as a pioneer in Japanese lesbian literature, including the Class S genre. Several of her stories have been made into films. In January 1923, Yoshiya met Monma Chiyo, a mathematics teacher at a girls’ school in Tokyo. They remained together  for over 50 years.

 

1945, France

The administration of General Charles de Gaulle decides to maintain the Vichy government’s decree establishing a discriminatory age of consent for same-sex acts.

 

1964

Nicole LeFavour (born February 8, 1964) is an American politician and educator from Idaho who served as an Idaho State Senator from 2008 to 2012. LeFavour previously served in the Idaho House of Representatives from 2004 until 2008. LeFavour’s partner of 12 years, Carol Growhoski, was, in the later years of LeFavour’s service in the legislature, invited to participate in the “Legisladies, a social organization of legislative spouses. LeFavour was the first ever openly gay member of the Idaho Legislature; her election campaigns have won the backing of the Gay & Lesbian Victory Fund.

 

1977

White House aide Midge Costanza (November 28, 1932 – March 23, 2010) meets with officers of the National Gay Task Force to discuss what the Carter administration can do to further the cause of gay rights. Margaret “Midge” Costanza was an American presidential advisor, social and political activist. A lifelong champion of gay and women’s rights, she was known for her wit, outspoken manner and commitment to her convictions. She was nominated and inducted into the San Diego County Women’s Hall of Fame in 2011 by Women’s Museum of California, Commission on the Status of Women, University of California, San Diego Women’s Center, and San Diego State University Women’s Studies.

 

1989

At the University of Arizona, Liz Kennedy (born 1939) and Madeline Davis (born 1940) present on butch-fem Imagery and the lesbian fight for public spaces in the 1940s and 1950s. Dr. Elizabeth Lapovsky Kennedy was one of the founding feminists of the field of Women’s Studies and is a lesbian historian whose book Boots of Leather, Slippers of Gold: A History of the Lesbian Community (co-authored with Madeline Davis) documents the lesbian community of Buffalo, New York in the decades before Stonewall. Madeline Davis is a noted 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 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.

 

1990

The U.S. Senate passes the hate-crimes statistics act, requiring the federal government to compile data on hate crimes against gays and lesbians. It’s the first U.S. law that recognizes gays and lesbians.

 

1994, France

The European Parliament, meeting in Strasbourg, approves a resolution initiated by Claudia Roth (born 15 May 1955), representing Germany’s Green Party, that affirms a broadly defined gay and lesbian rights agenda, including the right to marry.

 

February 9

1874

Amy Lowell  (February 9, 1874 – May 12, 1925) was born in Brookline. Massachusetts. She was an American poet of the imagist school from Brookline, Massachusetts and posthumously won the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry in 1926. A militant literary leader, she thumbed her nose at the Boston Brahmans who raised her and outed herself. Her lover was actress Ada Dwyer (1863–1952) whom she called “Peter.”

 

1927

Three plays with same-sex love content are raided and the casts and producers are arrested. The plays are “The Captive,” a controversial play about two women with an “abnormal relationship”; “Sex” starring Mae West; and “The Virgin Man.” The three-act melodrama The Captive by Édouard Bourdetwas among the first Broadway plays to deal with lesbianism and caused a scandal in New York City. The play was shut down after 160 performances and prompted the adoption of a state law dealing with obscenity; Sex by Jane Mast was “obscene, indecent, immoral, and impure” and put Mae West in prison for 10 days; The Virgin Man was a 1956 Argentine comedy film directed by Román Viñoly Barreto and starring Luis Sandrini.

 

1941

Sheila James Kuehl (born February 9, 1941) is an American politician and former child actor, currently a member of the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors for the 3rd District. In 1994, she became the first openly gay California legislator and in 1997, she was the first woman to be named Speaker pro Tempore in California. Kuehl served as a Democratic member of the California State Senate, representing the 23rd district in Los Angeles County and parts of southern Ventura County. A former member of the California State Assembly, she was elected to the Senate in 2000 and served until December 2008. She was elected to her supervisorial post in 2014. As a child actress she performed under the stage name Sheila James. The role for which she is probably best known is her portrayal of teen-aged genius Zelda Gilroy, the wannabe girlfriend of the title character in the television series The Many Loves of Dobie Gillis, which aired on CBS from 1959 to 1963. Zelda was originally intended to be a one-shot character in the early Dobie Gillis episode “Love is a Science”, but Dobie creator Max Shulman liked Kuehl and had her sign on as a semi-regular cast member. Since 2010, Kuehl has hosted “Get Used To It”, a national cable show on LGBT issues, filmed in West Hollywood.

 

 

1944

Alice Walker (born February 9, 1944) is born. She is an African-American novelist, short story writer, poet, and activist. She wrote the novel The Color Purple (1982) for which she won the National Book Award and the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction. She also wrote the novels Meridian (1976) and The Third Life of Grange Copeland (1970), among other works. Walker dislikes labels but acknowledges having been in love with both men and women and, in a 1996 Essence article, described herself as bisexual. In the mid-1990s, Walker was involved in a romance with singer-songwriter Tracy Chapman  (born March 30, 1964), saying “It was delicious and lovely and wonderful and I totally enjoyed it and I was completely in love with her but it was not anybody’s business but ours.”

 

1971

Barely a month after the TV show All in the Family takes to the air, Archie discovers that one of his bar buddies, an ex-football player, is gay. This is the first instance in which a network television program aired a positive plotline involving a gay issue.

 

1977

The world’s first gay and lesbian film festival premieres in San Francisco. Frameline is the oldest ongoing film festival devoted to lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) programming currently in existence.

 

1994, Italy

Pope John Paul II attacks the European Parliament resolution in favor of lesbian and gay rights.

 

1999

The leader of the “moral majority” and founder of the anti-gay hate bastion Liberty University, the “Reverend” Jerry Falwell, claims on this day that the purple-colored Teletubby named Tinky-Winky is gay.

 

2011, Canada

The Canadian House passes a law protecting gender expression rights.

 

2018

Adam Rippon (born November 11, 1989) is an American figure skater. He won the 2010 Four Continents Championships and the 2016 U.S. National Championships. Rippon was selected to represent the United States at the 2018 Winter Olympics in Pyeongchang, Korea where he won a bronze medal thus becoming the first openly gay U.S. male athlete to win a medal in a Winter Olympics. Later that year, he won season 26 of Dancing with the Stars with professional dancer Jenna Johnson, making Rippon the first openly gay celebrity to win the competition.

 

February 10

 

1893

William “Big Bill” Tilden (February 10, 1893 – June 5, 1953) is born in Philadelphia. Almost as popular as Babe Ruth, Tilden was America’s tennis hero. He is often considered one of the greatest tennis players of all time. Tilden was the World No. 1 player from 1920 through 1925. During his lifetime, however, he was a flamboyant character who was never out of the public eye, acting in both movies and plays as well as playing tennis. He also had two arrests for sexual misconduct with teenage boys in the late 1940s; these led to incarcerations in the Los Angeles area. After his convictions he was shunned in public. He was inducted into the International Tennis Hall of Fame in 1959, six years after his death.

 

1911, Germany

The German League for the Protection of Mothers and Sexual Reform’ (‘Deutscher Bund für Mutterschutz und Sexualreform’) condemns anti-gay Paragraph 175 and voices its rejection of attempts to extend the law to cover women as well as men.

 

1916

Mansel Vardaman Boyle (1877-1945), the “Gay Deceiver,” appears in a burlesque show. He was a famous and successful female impersonator of the day and was living with gay silent film star J. Warren Kerrigan (July 25, 1879 – June 9, 1947) in Los Angeles from at least 1936 to 1938, though Kerrigan’s long-time lover was actor James Carroll Vincent (November 9, 1897 – May 15, 1948).

 

1946

Ellen Marie Barrett (born February 10, 1946) is an American priest of the Episcopal Church. She was the first open lesbian to be ordained to the priesthood following the Episcopal Church’s General Convention approval of the ordination of women in 1977. Barrett’s candor about her homosexuality caused great controversy within the church. Even prior to her ordination, she was a prominent spokesperson for the rights of gays and lesbians in the church, especially regarding their ordination.

 

1976

Garry Trudeau’s “Doonesbury” introduces a gay character, Andy Lippincott who had first appeared a month earlier.  Five newspapers refuse to carry the story arc of Andy’s coming out to Joanie Caucus. Lippincott appears on and off in the daily strip for years. In 1989, he returned to the strip 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.

 

1981

The Moral Majority (which was neither) announces it will spend three million dollars in anti-gay advertising.

 

1982

President Reagan nominates that evangelist and noted homophobe Sam Hart will fill a vacancy on the U.S. Civil Rights Commission. Hart withdraws as protests mount, blaming the homosexuals for “sabotaging” his nomination.

 

1983

A spokesman for the San Francisco Giants tells a banquet audience that the Giants are planning to set up a special seating section for their gay fans. Instead of the grandstand, he ‘jokes’ by saying, “We’re going to call it the ‘fruit stand.”

 

1990

Bill Sherwood (June 14, 1952 – February 10, 1990), director of Parting Glances, dies of AIDS at age thirty-seven. He was an American musician, screenwriter and film director.

 

 

2020

The 9th Circuit Court of Appeals upholds a ruling that the state of Idaho must provide gender confirmation surgery for Adree Edmo, an inmate in the custody of the Idaho Department of Correction. The ruling marks the first time a federal appeals court has ruled that a state must provide gender assignment surgery to an incarcerated person.

 

 

February 11

  

1873, UK

Simeon Solomon  (9 October 1840 – 14 August 1905) was an English Pre-Raphaelite painter noted for his depictions of Jewish life and same-sex desire as well as a poet. Solomon and George Roberts, a stableman, are arrested at a public urinal in London and charged with the Crime of Buggery.

 

1965

At the San Francisco trial of the four people arrested at the Council on Religion and the Homosexual’s New Year’s Ball, the judge orders the jury to find the defendants not guilty. The decision is widely seen as a turning point in the homophile movement’s fight for gay and lesbian civil rights.

 

1967

Organized by the owner of the gay bar Pandora’s Box and built on the Black Cat protests of weeks earlier, about 200 LGBT people watch as 40 picketers demonstrate in front of the Black Cat in coordination with hippies and other counterculture groups who had been targeted by police for harassment and violence.

 

1974, Canada

In Winnipeg, Richard North and Chris Vogel are married by a Unitarian-Universalist minister. First publicized as “gay marriage” in Canada, it was not recognized by the government.

 

1977

Anita Bryant gives her first Save Our Children press conference in Florida. She claims she can prove that homosexuals are “trying to recruit our children to homosexuality.”

 

2013, Canada

Kathleen Wynne (born May 21, 1953) is a Canadian politician and the 25th Premier of Ontario. In office since 2013, she is a member of the Legislative Assembly of Ontario. She is the first female premier of Ontario and the first openly LGBT head of a provincial or federal government in Canada.

 

 

February 12

  

1847, Germany

Philipp Friedrich Alexander, Prince of Eulenburg and Hertefeld, Count von Sandels (12 February 1847 – 17 September 1921) was a diplomat and composer of Imperial Germany who achieved considerable influence as the closest friend of Wilhelm II. He was the central member of the so-called Liebenberg Circle, a group of artistically minded German aristocrats within Wilhelm’s entourage. Eulenburg played an important role in the rise of Bernhard von Bülow, but fell from power in 1907 due to the Harden–Eulenburg affair when he was accused of homosexuality.

 

1976

Gay actor Sal Mineo (January 10, 1939 – February 12, 1976), 37, is stabbed to death in the garage of his West Hollywood apartment building at 8569 Holloway Drive. The crime went unsolved for a number of years until his murderer, Lionel Ray Williams, is caught and convicted. Mineo was known for his performance as John “Plato” Crawford opposite James Dean in the film Rebel Without a Cause (1955). He was twice nominated for the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor for his roles in Rebel Without a Cause and Exodus (1960). At the time of his death, he was in a six-year relationship and was living with male actor Courtney Burr III.

 

1982

The film Making Love, starring Kate Jackson, Harry Hamlin and Michael Ontkean, and one of the first positive Hollywood depictions of bisexuality and gay male romance, opened in theaters across the U.S. Producers timed the release of the film with Valentine’s Day weekend. In response to complaints about the film’s depiction of gay love, star Hamlin rather presciently comments “The more radical elements of the gay culture are going to be disappointed by all the films coming out now sponsored by the major studios.  A lot of [these people] feel they’re way beyond where these films take us. But the more intelligent know there has to be a groundbreaking ceremony, which is what this is.”

 

2004

Under the direction of Mayor Gavin Newsom, the City of San Francisco begins performing same-sex marriages, starting with Phyllis Lyon (born November 10, 1924) and Del Martin (May 5, 1921 – August 27, 2008), who had been a couple for 51 years. That marriage was invalidated by the California Supreme Court, but Lyon and Martin married once again on June 16, 2008, a couple of months before Del Martin’s death on August 27, 2008. Over 80 couples were given quick ceremonies. Robin Tyler and Troy Perry (born July 27, 1940), with attorney Gloria Allred, file a lawsuit for marriage equality shortly after the San Francisco marriages were dissolved.  One month later, the cases were consolidated. The marriage equality case actually started in Los Angeles rather than San Francisco.

 

2015

On February 12, 2015, USA Today reported that the commandant of Fort Leavenworth wrote in a February 5th memo, “After carefully considering the recommendation that (hormone treatment) is medically appropriate and necessary, and weighing all associated safety and security risks presented, I approve adding (hormone treatment) to Inmate [Chelsea] Manning’s treatment plan.” According to USA Today, Chelsea Manning remains a soldier, and the decision to administer hormone therapy is a first for the U.S. Army.

 

 

February 13

  

1953

Christine Jorgensen (May 30, 1926 – May 3, 1989) returns to New York after receiving sex reassignment surgery in Denmark by Dr. Christian Hamburger. Christine was an American trans woman who was the first person to become widely known in the United States for having sex reassignment surgery. Jorgensen grew up in the Bronx, New York City. 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. 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.

 

1972

The film version of Kander and Ebb’s “Cabaret,” based on Christopher Isherwood’s (26 August 1904 – 4 January 1986) writings about his time in pre-WWII Berlin, has its world premiere in New York City. Unlike the stage version, the film version adheres slightly more closely to the source material and portrays Michael York’s character, Brian (based on Isherwood himself), as bisexual

 

1990

Thirteen airmen are expelled from the U.S. Air Force after a four-month investigation into homosexual activity at Carswell Air Force base in Texas.

 

1996

Rent opens on Broadway. It is a rock musical with music, lyrics, and book by Jonathan Larson (February 4, 1960 – January 25, 1996), loosely based on Giacomo Puccini’s opera La Bohème. It tells the story of a group of impoverished young artists struggling to survive and create a life in New York City‘s East Village in the thriving days of Bohemian Alphabet City, under the shadow of HIV/AIDS. Larsen  was an American composer and playwright noted for exploring the social issues of multiculturalism, addiction, and homophobia in his work. Typical examples of his use of these themes are found in his works, Rent and tick, tick… BOOM!  He received three posthumous Tony Awards and a posthumous Pulitzer Prize for Drama for Rent. Larson died unexpectedly the morning of Rent‘s first preview performance Off Broad-way on January 25, 1996.

 

1999, UK

London’s first Bi-Fest march and festival is held.

 

February 14

 

1953

Del Martin (May 5, 1921 – August 27, 2008) and Phyllis Lyon (born November 10, 1924) meet in 1950, become partners in 1952. On this day in 1953 they moved in together. They founded Daughters of Bilitis and, decades later, were the first couple in the U.S. to be legally married.

 

1953

British-American writer, Christopher Isherwood (26 August 1904 – 4 January 1986), 48, meets  portrait artist Don Bachardy (born May 18, 1934), 18, in California. They were partners until Isherwood’s death in 1986.

 

1972

First meeting of the Alice B. Toklas Democratic Club, named for the partner of Gertrude Stein (February 3, 1874 – July 27, 1946), takes place in San Francisco. It was founded by political activist Jim Foster, becoming the country’s first gay Democratic political club. 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 Toklas (April 30, 1877 – March 7, 1967) was an American-born member of the Parisian avant-garde of the early 20th century, and the life partner of American writer Gertrude Stein.

 

1979, Canada

In Toronto Judge Sydney Harris finds Pink Triangle Press, publisher of The Body Politic, and three officers not guilty of publishing obscenity.

 

1984, Australia

Elton John (25 March 1947) marries German recording tech Renate Blauel in Sydney. They divorce in 1988 after he comes out as gay. John is an English singer, pianist, and composer. He has worked with lyricist Bernie Taupin as his songwriting partner since 1967; they have collaborated on more than 30 albums to date. In his five-decade career Elton John has sold more than 300 million records, making him one of the best-selling music artists in the world. In 1993, he began a relationship with  David Furnish(born 25 October 1962), a former advertising executive and now filmmaker originally from Toronto, Canada. On December 21, 2005 (the day the UK Civil Partnership Act became law), John and Furnish were among the first couples in the UK to form a civil partnership, which was held at the Windsor Guildhall. After marriage equality became legal in England in March 2014, John and Furnish married in Windsor, Berkshire, on December 21, 2014, the ninth anniversary of their civil partnership. They have two sons.

 

1988

Three lesbians appear on The Oprah Winfrey Show.  Yolanda Retter Vargas (December 4, 1947 – August 18, 2007) and two other women spoke of  “lesbian separatism,” an offshoot of a feminist movement that strikes against male patriarchy in all levels of society. Vargas, then Director of Women’s Programs at LA’s Lesbian Center, and her friends were introduced as “women who hate men,” a label that made it all the easier for bigots to hate them and for LGBT activists to compare the women to conservatives. It was not a high point for lesbians, feminists or Oprah, and was just one of the many sensationalized gay stories Oprah covered during this era. In addition to a comparatively progressive 1986 episode on homophobia, Oprah aired “Women Who Turn to Lesbianism” (1988), “All The Family is Gay” (1991), “Straight Spouses and Gay Ex-Husbands” (1992) and “Lesbians and Gay Baby Boom” (1993). Oprah has since become a vocal supporter for equality and LGBT civil rights off-camera, too, and in 2013 suggested that same-sex couples can actually help strengthen the institution of marriage.

 

1991

San Francisco becomes the first city to register same-sex domestic partners.

 

2012, Uganda

Police raid an LGBT Rights conference after the state minister orders the conference to be stopped.

  

February 15

 

1952

Bill T. Jones (born February 15, 1952) is an American artistic, choreographer and dancer. Jones has received numerous awards for his work including the 2010 Tony Award for Best Choreography for his work in Fela! Jones and his lover of 17 years, Arnie Zane (September 26, 1948 – March 30, 1988) danced and choreographed together. As an openly gay interracial couple they pushed the envelope and challenged their audiences’ preconceived notions about gender, race and sexuality. In 1982, they cofounded the Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane Dance Company. In 1986, Zane was diagnosed with AIDS which claimed his life two years later. Watching his life partner die gave Jones a new sense of passion and urgency. Jones continues to dance and choreograph for the Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane Dance Company.

 

1980

William Friedkin’s Cruising opens nationwide and is blasted by critics (gay and straight) for its depiction of homosexuality, but also, as one critic puts it, “[its] narrative loopholes [and] unconvincing plot twists.”

 

1983

Lesbian playwright Jane Chambers (27 March 1937 – February 15, 1983), author if A Late Snow and Last Summer at Bluefish Cove dies of a brain tumor at the age of 45. She was a “pioneer in writing theatrical works with openly lesbian characters.” Beth Allen was her lover, companion and manager.

 

1989

A Los Angeles jury awards Rock Hudson ’s (November 17, 1925 – October 2, 1985) ex-lover, Marc Christian (born on June 23, 1953) $21.75 million in damages for the emotional distress he claims to have suffered upon learning that Hudson had AIDS. The award is later reduced to $5.5 million.

 

1995, Canada

The Celluloid Closet premiers. The film is a 1995 American documentary film directed and written by Rob Epstein (born April 6, 1955) and Jeffrey Friedman (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 in 1972 through 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 theatres, including the Castro Theatre in San Francisco, in April 1996, and then shown on the cable channel HBO.

  

1999, Denmark

Stephen Brady  (born 11 June 1959) and his partner Peter Stephens were the world’s first openly gay ambassadorial couple. Accompanied by Stephens, Brady presented his credentials as Australian Ambassador to Denmark to Queen Margrethe II on February  15,1999.

 

2008

Fifteen-year-old Lawrence King (January 13, 1993 – February 15, 2008) was shot on Feb. 12, 2008 and died two days later after a verbal exchange with 14-year-old Brandon McInerney in Oxnard, CA. King, an eighth-grader who identified as gay and occasionally wore makeup, high heels and other feminine attire to E. O. Green Junior High School, was shot in the head while in class at school. The story is captured in the documentary Valentine Road by director Marta Cunningham.

 

2009, Canada

Premier of RuPaul’s Drag Race American reality TV series. RuPaul Andre Charles (born November 17, 1960) is an American drag queen, actor, model, singer, songwriter, television personality, and author. Since 2009, he has produced and hosted the reality competition series RuPaul’s Drag Race for which he received two Primetime Emmy Awards in 2016 and 2017. RuPaul is widely considered to be the most commercially successful drag queen of all time. In 2017, he was included in the annual Time 100 list of the most influential people in the world. RuPaul has been with his Australian partner, Georges LeBar, since 1994, when they met at the Limelight nightclub in New York City. They married in January, 2017. LeBar is a painter and runs their 50-acre ranch in Wyoming.

 

2013

Robbie Rogers (born May 12, 1987) is a television producer and former American professional soccer player. On this day, Rogers came out as gay, becoming the second male soccer player in Britain to do so after Justin Fashanu  (19 February 1961 – 2 May 1998) in 1990. On May 26, 2013, he became the first openly gay man to compete in a top North American professional sports league when he played his first match for the LA Galaxy. Rogers began dating television writer/producer Greg Berlanti  (born May 24, 1972). In 2013, and again on February 18, 2016, they welcomed their children via surrogacy, They were married on December 2, 2017, in Malibu, California.

 

February 16

  

1820

American feminist Susan B. Anthony  (February 15, 1820 – March 13, 1906) was born in Adams, Massachusetts. She 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.

 

1886

The term “Boston Marriage,” which describes a long-term cohabiting relationship between two women, is written for the first time. Novelist Henry James uses it in his book The Bostonians. Henry James (15 April 1843 – 28 February 1916) was an American author regarded as a key transitional figure between literary realism and literary modernism, and is considered by many to be among the greatest novelists in the English language. Born in the United States, James largely relocated to Europe as a young man and eventually settled in England, becoming a British subject in 1915, one year before his death. James was nominated for the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1911, 1912, and 1916. Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick‘s (May 2, 1950 – April 12, 2009) 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.

 

1893

Katharine Cornell (February 16, 1893 – June 9, 1974) was an American stage actress, writer, theater owner and producer. She married Guthrie McClintic  (August 6, 1893 – October 29, 1961) in 1921, a successful theatre director, film director, and producer based in New York, but it is generally acknowledged that Cornell was a lesbian and McClintic was gay, and their union was a lavender marriage. She was a member of the “sewing circle” in New York, and had relationships with Nancy Hamilton (July 27, 1908 – February 18, 1985), Tallulah Bankhead (January 31, 1902 – December 12, 1968), and Mercedes de Acosta (March 1, 1893 – May 9, 1968), among others.

 

1926

The great English film director John Schlesinger (16 February 1926 – 25 July 2003) was born on this date. His Midnight Cowboy (1969) was panned by critics for being too gay, and by gay activists for not being gay enough. Schlesinger died in Palm Springs at the age of 77. He was survived by his partner of over 30 years, photographer Michael Childers.

 

1947

John Grannan (Feb. 16, 1947-Jan. 31, 2018) was born. An activist in Florida, he died without any remembrance from the LGBT community. John served in the United States Navy at the Pentagon in Washington D.C. and then attended the University of South Florida (USF) in Tampa, Florida. He worked at USF for the State of Florida as a Licensed Mental Health Counselor for 27 years before retiring and moving to his hometown in Citrus County where his roots and history ran deep. Grannan graduated from Crystal River High School in 1965 where he was senior class president and yearbook editor. John had another life as well. John was a powerful mover and shaker in the LGBT rights movement in Florida from about 1978 to probably 2010. John served as both the treasurer and then director of the board of the Florida (LGBT civil rights) Task Force in Tallahassee from the late 1970s and into the 80s. When he left the Task Force, he and three others – Bill Cagle, Herbert Murray and John Snyder – created the Tampa Bay Area Human Rights Council. John was one of the early initial brokers in developing Florida’s LGBT community. There is very little known about him now. If you have news of John or information about is life, please share it here. We must remember and memorialize our lost heroes.

 

1990

Famed pop artist Keith Haring (May 4, 1958 – February 16, 1990) dies from AIDS-related diseases at age 31.  Six months earlier he had been quoted as saying, “The hardest thing is just knowing that there’s so much more stuff to do.” 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 of homosexuality and AIDS – through his own unique iconography.

 

1991, London

The Direct Action group OUTRAGE! organizes a gay and lesbian kiss-in at Piccadilly Circus in protest of a section of the Sexual Offences Act that makes public displays of affection between men illegal. Also on this day in London, 7,000 demonstrators march to protest the recent arrest of gay male s/m devotees and other anti-gay/lesbian initiatives.

 

1997

An episode of the Simpsons called “Homer’s Phobia” airs, exploring gay themes.

 

2015

Lesbian singer Leslie Gore (May 2, 1946 – February 16, 2015) dies at 68.  She was an American singer, songwriter, actress, and activist. At the age of 16 (in 1963) she recorded the pop hit “It’s My Party” and followed it up with other hits including “Judy’s Turn to Cry,” “She’s a Fool,” “You Don’t Own Me,” “Maybe I Know” and “California Nights.” Gore also worked as an actress and composed songs with her brother Michael Gore for the 1980 film Fame for which she was nominated for an Academy Award. She hosted an LGBT-oriented public television show, In the Life, on American TV in the 2000s, and was active until 2014. In a 2005 interview with After Ellen, she stated she was a lesbian and had been in a relationship with luxury jewelry designer Lois Sassoon since 1982. She had known since she was 20 and stated that although the music business was “totally homophobic,” she never felt she had to pretend she was straight. At the time of her death, Gore and Sassoon had been together for 33 years.

 

2016

Washington State Supreme Court rules against discrimination based on sexual orientation in the “gay wedding flowers” case. The Washington Supreme Court ruled unanimously that a florist who refused to provide services for a same-sex wedding broke the state’s antidiscrimination law, even though she claimed doing so would violate her religious beliefs.

 

February 17

 

1854, Germany

Friedrich Alfred Krupp (17 February 1854 – 22 November 1902) was a German steel manufacturer of the company Krupp. He was the son of Alfred Krupp and inherited the family business when his father died in 1887. Whereas his father had largely supplied iron and steel, Friedrich shifted his company’s production back to arms manufacturing. Friedrich greatly expanded Krupp and acquired the Germaniawerf in 1896 which gave him control of warship manufacturing in Germany. He oversaw the development of nickel steel, U-boats, the diesel engine, and much more. He died in 1902 of apparent suicide after his homosexual activities and orgies were published in a newspaper. In the Second Reich, homosexuality was considered one of the worst crimes. Under paragraph of the German Penal Code Paragraph 175, it was punishable by years of hard labor.

 

1962

Cheryl Ann Jacques (born February 17, 1962), an American politician and attorney who served six terms in the Massachusetts Senate, was the president of the Human Rights Campaign (HRC) for 11 months, and served as an administrative judge in the Massachusetts Department of Industrial Accidents. Jacques became president of HRC in 2004, succeeding Elizabeth Birch. She addressed the 2004 Democratic National Convention. She resigned on November 30, 2004, citing “a difference in management philosophy” with her board following criticism of the HRC’s failure to defeat voter referendums in 11 states banning same-sex marriage and, in some cases, civil unions. After leaving HRC, she was counsel to the law firm of Brody, Hardoon, Perkins and Kesten and a consultant on diversity issues to corporations and non-profit organizations. In 2008 Jacques was named a Department of Industrial Accidents Administrative Judge by Governor Deval Patrick. On March 12, 2012 the State Ethics Commission charged her with violating Massachusetts’ conflict-of-interest law after she allegedly tried to use her clout as a judge to have a dentist office reduce her brother’s-in-law bill. Jacques contended that she never intended to introduce her position, but did so “inadvertently”. The ethics commission found in favor of Jacques on the grounds that the enforcement division failed to prove that Jacques used her official position to intervene in the dispute. In 2013, Jacques and two other administrative judges filed charges with the Massachusetts, alleging the agency provided a higher salary and a parking space to a male judge appointed after them. In 2014, Governor Patrick chose not to reappoint Jacques, which she alleged was in retaliation for the gender discrimination lawsuit. In 2004, Jacques married Jennifer Chrisler.

 

1977, Canada

The first public gay demonstration in Atlantic Canada is held in Halifax. It was part of a nationally coordinated protest against CBC Radio’s refusal to air gay public service announcements that also included demonstrations in Montreal, Ottawa, Toronto, Winnipeg, and Vancouver.

 

1989

Chicago’s new gay rights ordinance takes effect. It mandates fines up to $500 for discrimination based on sexual orientation

 

2011

Facebook expands relationship language to add civil unions and domestic partners

 

2012, Iraq

“Emo Killings” begin in Iraq. The series of killings targets young men who appear outside the mainstream, especially gay and “emo” youth. Emo is a style of fashion which includes skinny jeans. On this day, Saif Raad Asmar Abboudi, 20, is beaten to death with a brick. Like many places in the Muslim world, homosexuality is extremely taboo in Iraq. Anyone perceived to be gay is considered a fair target, and the perpetrators of the violence often go free. The militants likely behind the violence intimidate the local police and residents so there is even less incentive to investigate the crimes.

 

February 18

 

1840

Henry David Thoreau (July 12, 1817 – May 6, 1862) 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. On this day, he writes about same-sex love in his journal. “All romance is grounded on friendship” is one of his many references to love and friendship between men. Thoreau never married and was childless. He strove to portray himself as an ascetic puritan. However, his sexuality has long been the subject of speculation, including by his contemporaries. 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.

 

1934

Audre Lorde (February 18, 1934 – November 17, 1992) is born. Lorde described herself as “a black feminist lesbian mother poet” and sometimes “warrior.” Her first poem was published while she was still in high school. Besides poetry, she wrote essays and novels. Eventually she became a professor and was given the great honor of being named Poet Laureate of New York State. She was known to describe herself as African-American, Black, dyke, feminist, poet, mother, etc. In her novel Zami: A New Spelling of My Name Lorde focuses on how her many different identities shape her life and the different experiences she has because of them. Lorde died of liver cancer at age 58 on November 17, 1992, in St. Croix, where she had been living with Gloria I. Joseph. In an African naming ceremony before her death, she took the name Gamba Adisa which means “Warrior: She Who Makes Her Meaning Known.”

 

1938

The film “Bringing Up Baby” with Cary Grant premieres. It’s the first time the word “gay” is used in reference to homosexuality.

 

1966

The first meeting of the coalition of 14 gay rights groups that will become the Organization stakes place in Kansas City, Missouri.

 

1985

Nancy Hamilton (July 27, 1908 – February 18, 1985) dies on this day. She was an American actress, playwright, lyricist, director and producer. Hamilton was the lifelong partner of legendary actress Katharine Cornell (February 16, 1893 – June 9, 1974). Hamilton is perhaps best known as the lyricist for the popular song, “How High the Moon.

 

1974, Canada

Members of GATE, the Gay Alliance Toward Equality, picket the Ontario Human Rights Commission on University Avenue for inclusion of gays and lesbians in human rights protections.

 

2017

Norma Leah McCorvey (September 22, 1947 – February 18, 2017), better known by the legal pseudonym “Jane Roe,” dies. She was the plaintiff in the landmark American lawsuit Roe v. Wade in 1973. Later, McCorvey’s views on abortion changed substantially; she became a Roman Catholic active in the pro-life movement. While working at a restaurant, Norma met Woody McCorvey and married him at the age of 16. She later left him and moved in with her mother and gave birth to her first child, Melissa, in 1965. After Melissa’s birth, McCorvey developed a serious drinking problem. Soon after, she came out and identified as a lesbian. For many years, she had lived quietly in Dallas with her long-time partner Connie Gonzales. “We’re not like other lesbians, going to bars,” she explained in a New York Times interview. Later in life, McCorvey stated that she was no longer a lesbian.

  

February 19

 

1917

American novelist Carson McCullers (February 19, 1917 – September 29, 1967) is born. . She was an American novelist, short story writer, playwright, essayist, and poet who and wrote some of the best novels in the English language: The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter, The Member Of The Wedding, and Reflections In A Golden Eye. She married a gay man, Reeves McCullers, and fell in love with a number of women. Her most documented and extended love obsession was with Swiss journalist, photographer Annemarie Schwarzenbach (23 May 1908 – 15 November 1942) of whom she once wrote, “She had a face that I knew would haunt me for the rest of my life.” McCullers had rheumatic fever at the age of 15 and suffered from strokes that began in her youth. By the age of 31 her left side was entirely paralyzed. She lived the last twenty years of her life in Nyack, New York, where she died on September 29, 1967, at the age of 50, after a brain hemorrhage.

 

1974

The Pat Collins Show, a morning program on New York’s WCBS, broadcasts live from the Continental Baths. The station receives only one complaint about the episode.

 

1983

Womyn on Wheels Valentines Dance is held at the Unitarian Church in Tucson featuring the band Labrys.

 

1993

The Crying Game, a film written and directed by Neil Jordan, portrays the relationship between a transsexual woman and an IRA fighter in London. In 1999, the British Film Institute named it the 26th greatest British film of all time.

 

2002

Sylvia Rivera (July 2, 1951 – February 19, 2002) dies at age 50. She 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, Rivera co-founded the Street Transvestite Action Revolutionaries (STAR), a group dedicated to helping homeless young drag queens and trans women of color. As a transgender (MTF) teen, Rivera was among those who resisted police brutality in the Stonewall Rebellion, the days of rioting that launched the modern gay rights movement. Later in her life, she was instrumental in opening shelters for homeless and drug-addicted transgender people and worked to help pass LGBT- inclusive non-discrimination legislation. Rivera died during the dawn hours of February 19, 2002 at New York’s St. Vincent’s Hospital, of complications from liver cancer. Transgender activist Riki Wilchins (born 1952) noted, “In many ways, Sylvia was the Rosa Parks of the modern transgender movement, a term that was not even coined until two decades after Stonewall”.

 

2007

This is the first day same sex couples can lawfully register in the state of New Jersey for the recognized legal status of “Civil Union.”

 

2018

The South Carolina legislature introduced a bill entitled the “Marriage and Constitution Restoration Act”  which classifies same-sex marriage as “parody” marriage. “Parody” marriage means any form of marriage that does not involve one man and one woman,” read the bill. “Marriage means a union of one man and one woman.”

 

February 20

  

1872, UK

William Lygon, the Seventh Earl Beauchamp (20 February 1872 – 14 November 1938) was born in London. He was Governor of New South Wales between 1899 and 1901, a member of the Liberal administrations of Sir Henry Campbell-Bannerman and H. H. Asquith between 1905 and 1915 and leader of the Liberal Party in the House of Lords between 1924 and 1931. When political enemies threatened to make public his homosexuality, he resigned from office to go into exile.

 

1927

Roy Cohn (February 20, 1927 – August 2, 1986) is born. 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. Cohn was vehemently anti-gay. When Cohn brought on G. David Schine as chief consultant to the McCarthy staff, speculation arose that Schine and Cohn had a sexual relationship. Speculation about Cohn’s sexuality intensified following his death from AIDS in 1986. In 2008, Roger Stone said, “Roy was not gay. He was a man who liked having sex with men. Gays were weak, effeminate. He always seemed to have these young blond boys around. It just wasn’t discussed. He was interested in power and access.” The Names Project’s AIDS memorial quilt features one anonymously-added square that read: “Roy Cohn: Bully, Coward, Victim.”

 

1927, France

Count Hubert James Marcel Taffin de Givenchy (20 February 1927– 10 March 2018) was a French fashion designer who founded the house of Givenchy in 1952. He was famous for having designed much of the personal and professional wardrobe of Audrey Hepburn and clothing for Jacqueline Bouvier Kennedy. He was named to the International Best Dressed List Hall of Fame in 1970. His partner was Philippe Venet.

1979, Canada

Seven men, including Winnipeg Free Press publisher Richard Malone, (Sept. 18, 1909 – June 24, 1985) are charged with buggery and gross indecency and twelve boys are turned over to juvenile authorities after a five-month investigation of a “juvenile sex ring.”

 

1981, Canada

Over four thousand gays and supporters rally at Toronto’s Queen’s Park and march to Metro Toronto Police’s 52 Division to protest the February 5th bathhouse raids and to call for independent inquiry.

 

1982

An article in the medical journal “Lancet” suggests that there is evidence to show inhaling poppers damages the immune system.

 

2004

Victoria Dunlap, Republican county clerk of rural Sandoval County, New Mexico, begins issuing marriage licenses to same-sex couples, citing lack of legal grounds for denial.

 

2004, Cambodia

King Norodom Sihanouk, constitutional monarch of Cambodia, declares that he thought his country should legalize same-sex marriage. He said that he reached this conclusion after watching footage of same-sex couples marry in San Francisco. He also stated that transvestites should be well-treated in Cambodia.

 

February 21

  

1801, UK

John Henry, Cardinal Newman, (21 February 1801 – 11 August 1890) was born in London. He was an Anglican priest, poet and theologian, and later a Catholic cardinal, who was an important and controversial figure in the religious history of England in the 19th century. His greatest accomplishment was the Apologia pro Vita Sua which contains numerous homoerotic references. Devoted to his friend, Brother Ambrose, the Cardinal was torn by grief at his death in 1875. He spent the night with the corpse. When Newman died 15 years later, he left instructions to be buried in the same grave as Ambrose.

 

1892

Harry Stack Sullivan (February 21, 1892 – January 14, 1949) was born in Norwich, New York. He was an American Neo-Freudian psychiatrist and psychoanalyst who held that the personality lives in, and has his or her being in, a complex of interpersonal relations. Having studied therapists Sigmund Freud, Adolf Meyer, and William Alanson White, he devoted years of clinical and research work to helping people with psychotic illness. He believed that psychoanalysis, although essentially valid, needed to be supplemented by an understanding of the cultural forces at work in the personality. Much of his work was dismissed because he was gay, but today he is considered the prime developer of the interpersonal approach to psychiatry. Beginning in 1927, Sullivan had a 22-year relationship with James Inscoe Sullivan, known as “Jimmie,” 20 years his junior.

 

1903

New York City police conduct the first recorded raid on a gay bathhouse in the US, the Ariston Hotel Baths, which had been in operation since 1897. Twenty-six men were arrested and 12 brought to trial on sodomy charges; seven men received sentences ranging from 4 to 20 years in prison.

 

1907, UK

British writer W. H. Auden (21 February 1907 – 29 September 1973) is born in York, England. He was an English-American poet whose poetry was noted for its stylistic and technical achievement, its engagement with politics, morals, love, and religion, and its variety in tone, form and content. He is perhaps today best known for his poem The Platonic Blow. For decades British scholars debated whether it referred to oral sex. He never admitted authorship until the 1960s.

 

1936

Barbara Charline Jordan (February 21, 1936 – January 17, 1996) is born. Barbara Jordan was the first African-American to be elected in Texas, in 1973. She was a Democrat. and  the first Black woman to give the keynote address at the Democratic National Convention. She was a lawyer and a leader of the Civil Rights Movement, and  the first African American elected to the Texas Senate after Reconstruction, and the first Southern African-American woman elected to the United States House of Representatives. She received the Presidential Medal of Freedom, among numerous other honors. Jordan’s companion of twenty years was Nancy Earl, an educational psychologist, whom she met on a camping trip in the late 1960s. Jordan never discussed her sexual orientation and was not out. Nancy Earl was an occasional speech writer for Jordan, and later was a caregiver when Jordan began to suffer from multiple sclerosis in 1973. In a KUT radio documentary Rediscovering Barbara Jordan, President Bill Clinton said that he wanted to nominate Jordan for the United States Supreme Court, but by the time he could do so, Jordan’s health problems prevented him from nominating her. Jordan also suffered from leukemia. She’s been described as “one of the most revered leaders and orators of her time.” She was outed in the press after her death from leukemia and multiple sclerosis in 1996.

 

1976

A Detroit jury awards more than $200,000 in damages to a man who contends that he was “turned into” a homosexual by a 1975 automobile accident in which his car was rear-ended by another vehicle.

 

February 22

 

1892

Popular openly bisexual poet Edna St. Vincent Millay (February 22, 1892 – October 19, 1950) is born. She was an American poet and playwright who received the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry in 1923 for “The Ballad of the Harp-Weaver,” only the third woman to do so. She was also known for her feminist activism. Millay entered Vassar College in 1913 and had relationships with several students during her time there. In 1923, she married 43-year-old Eugen Jan Boissevain (1880–1949), the widower of the labor lawyer and war correspondent Inez Milholland, a political icon Millay had met during her time at Vassar. Both Millay and Boissevain had other lovers throughout their twenty-six-year marriage. Millay was named by Equality Forum as one of their 31 Icons of the 2015 LGBT History Month

 

1979

Studio 54 throws a gala 52nd birthday party for closeted gay attorney and former McCarthyist Roy Cohn. The event draws several hundreds of the city’s luminaries including Donald Trump, Barbara Walters, members of both Democratic and Republican parties and most of the city’s elected officials.

 

1982

Kimball Allen (born February 22, 1982) is an American writer, journalist, playwright, and actor. He is the author of two autobiographical one-man plays: Secrets of a Gay Mormon Felon (2012) and Be Happy Be Mormon (2014). The latter premiered at Theatre Row in Manhattan on September 24 and 27, 2014, as part of the United Solo Theatre Festival. He also hosts the recurring Triple Threat with Kimball Allen, a 90-minute variety talk show at The Triple Door in Seattle. Allen lived for many years in the Capitol Hill neighborhood of Seattle. He married Scott Wells in October, 2016. They moved to Scottsdale, Arizona.[

 

1987

Andy Warhol (August 6, 1928 – February 22, 1987) dies at the age of 58. 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). Warhol was gay. His lovers included poet John Giorno (born December 4, 1936), photographer Billy Name (February 22, 1940 – July 18, 2016), production designer 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. Many of Warhol’s works and possessions are on display at The Andy Warhol Museum in Pittsburgh.

 

2007, Netherlands

Gerda Verbug (born 19 August 1957) is the first open lesbian elected to government. She becomes the minister of Agriculture, Nature, and Food Quality. She is a Dutch diplomat and former politician and trade union leader. She lives with her wife Willy Westerlaken in Woerden, whom she married in 2012.

 

2009

Actor Sean Penn wins an Oscar for his role as Harvey Milk in the film Milk. The film also won for Best Original Screenplay. Milk is a 2008 American biographical film based on the life of gay rights activist and politician Harvey Milk, who was the first openly gay person to be elected to public office in California, as a member of the San Francisco Board of Supervisors. Directed by Gus Van Sant (born July 24, 1952) and written by Dustin Lance Black (born June 10, 1974), the film stars Sean Penn as Milk and Josh Brolin as Dan White, the city supervisor who assassinated Milk and Mayor George Moscone.

 

2018

The U. S. Health and Human Services Department removed the Lesbian and Bisexual Health Fact Sheet from its website.

 

 

February 23

  

1685, Germany

George Frederick Handel (23 February,1685 – 14 April, 1759) is born in Halle, Lower Saxony. He was a baroque composer who spent the bulk of his career in London, becoming well known for his operas, oratorios, anthems, and organ concertos. Handel received important training in Halle and worked as a composer in Hamburg and Italy before settling in London in 1712. After he moved to England, a contemporary wrote “His social affectations were not strong; and to this may be imputed that he spent his whole life in a state of celibacy; that he had no female attachments of another kind may be ascribed to a better reason.” We never learned who that “better reason” was. Handel never married and kept his personal life private.

 

1778

Prussian military genius Baron Friedrich Wilhelm von Steuben (September 17, 1730– November 28, 1794) arrives at Valley Forge, Pennsylvania. Fearing prosecution for alleged indiscretions with young men back in Prussia, Steuben signed on to train George Washington’s ragtag Continental Army. Most historians consider his success at this task a major factor in the American victory. He was a Prussian and later an American military officer. He served as inspector general and a major general of the Continental Army during the American Revolutionary War. He is credited with being one of the fathers of the Continental Army in teaching them the essentials of military drills, tactics, and disciplines. He wrote Regulations for the Order and Discipline of the Troops of the United States, the book that served as standard United States drill manual until the American Civil War. He served as General George Washington’s chief of staff in the final years of the war. Von Steuben was most likely gay. His exits from the court of Hohenzollern-Hechingen and from Paris were under clouds of accusation of homosexual activity. Von Steuben arrived in the United States with his 17-year-old secretary, Peter Stephen Du Ponceau, who is rumored to have been his lover. At Valley Forge, he began close relationships with Benjamin Walker and William North, then both military officers in their 20s, which are assumed by many to have been romantic. Because homosexuality was criminalized at the time, records of his relationships are limited to references in correspondences. Von Steuben formally adopted Walker and North and made them his heirs. A third young man, John W. Mulligan Jr. (1774–1862), also considered himself one of Steuben’s “sons,” inherited Von Steuben’s vast library, collection of maps and $2,500 in cash.

1892

Alice Mitchel (November 26, 1872- March 31, 1898), 19, kills Freda Ward (1875-1892), 17, at the docks in Memphis as a result of jealousy. The story made national headlines for months. The two girls had planned to marry but Alice was furious that Freda had admitted to romantic feelings for two men. 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, 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 and influenced the popular literature of the era which began to depict lesbians as “murderous” and “masculine”. One identity was the “mannish lesbian,” creating dialogue of gender expression.

 

1933, Germany

Adolf Hitler’s government launches the Nazi persecution of homosexuals with directives to close gay and lesbian clubs, ban pornography and homophile publications, and dissolve homosexual rights groups.

 

1943

Carl Wittman (February 23, 1943 – January 22, 1986) is born. He was a member of the national council of Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) and later an activist for LGBT rights. He co-authored “An Interracial Movement of the Poor?” (1963)  with Tom Hayden and wrote “A Gay Manifesto” (1970). In 1971, Wittman moved to Wolf Creek, OR, with his then-partner, Stevens McClave. Two years later, he began a long-term relationship with a fellow war resister Allan Troxler. In the early 1980s, Wittman created the North Carolina Lesbian and Gay Health Project (LGHP) with David Jolly, Timmer McBride, and Aida Wakil to address the health needs of sexual minorities in that state. Wittman declined hospital treatment for AIDS and committed suicide by drug overdose at home in North Carolina.

 

1977

After a television producer cancels plans to develop a weekly series around her, Anita Bryant complains to the press that she is being “blacklisted” in Hollywood because of her crusade against homosexuals.

 

1990, Taiwan

The first Lesbian organization for Chinese-speaking women in Asia is formed. The group is called Women zhi jizn (Between Us).

 

2011

Hawaii’s Gov. Linda Lingle vetoed a civil union law in 2010 but her successor, Gov. Neil Abercrombie, makes it the first law he signs on this day.

 

2011

Attorney General Eric Holder releases a statement regarding lawsuits challenging The Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA) Section 3. He wrote: “After careful consideration, including a review of my recommendation, the President has concluded that given a number of factors, including a documented history of discrimination, classifications based on sexual orientation should be subject to a more heightened standard of scrutiny. The President has also concluded that Section 3 of DOMA, as applied to legally married same-sex couples, fails to meet that standard and is therefore unconstitutional. Given that conclusion, the President has instructed the Department not to defend the statute in such cases.” In United States v. Windsor (2013), the U.S. Supreme Court declared Section 3 of DOMA unconstitutional under the Due Process Clause of the Amendment. Obergefell (2015) struck down the act’s provisions disallowing same-sex marriages to be performed under federal jurisdiction.

  

February 24

 

1939

Doric Wilson (February 24, 1939 – May 7, 2011) is born in Los Angeles. He was an American playwright, director, producer, critic and gay rights activist. Perhaps the greatest playwright of the “alternative” theatre, he was a pioneer in Off Broadway. He is best known for Forever After, A Perfect Relationship, and The West Side Gang. A veteran of the anti-war and civil rights demonstrations of the early 1960s-mid 1970s, Wilson was a participant in the Stonewall Riots (1969) and became active in the early days of the New York Gay Liberation movement as a member of GAA (Gay Activist Alliance). He supported his theatrical endeavors by becoming a “star” bartender and manager of the post-Stonewall gay bar scene, opening such landmark institutions as The Spike, TY’s and Brothers & Sisters Cabaret. In 2004, Wilson was named a Grand Marshal of the 35th Anniversary Pride Day Parade in New York City. He was featured in the documentary Stonewall Uprising (2010) by Kate Davis and David Heilbroner. Wilson died on May 7, 2011, aged 72, from natural causes at his home in Manhattan.

 

1954, UK

Winston Churchill’s cabinet discusses homosexuality, asking, “Could we not limit publicity for homosexuality, as was done for divorce?” Secretary David Maxwell Fyfe says of the growing gay population in the UK, “…homosexuals make a nuisance of themselves. But I can’t account for the increase.”

 

1969

The U.S. Supreme Court rules in favor of three public school students who wore an armband to school to protest the Viet Nam War. Writing for the majority in Tinker v. Des Moines Independent Community School District, Justice Abe Fortas, declares, “First Amendment rights, applied in light of the special characteristics of the school environment, are available to teachers and students. It can hardly be argued that either students or teachers shed their constitutional rights to freedom of speech or expression at the schoolhouse gate. This has been the unmistakable holding of this Court for almost fifty years.” This was a landmark freedom of speech case for students. It involved two Des Moines, Iowa high school students, John Tinker, 15, and Christopher Eckhardt, 16, and John’s 13-year-old sister, Mary Beth Tinker, a Des Moines junior high school student.

 

1982

Homophobe Jerry Falwell (August 11, 1933 – May 15, 2007) is hit in the face with two fruit pies by a protester at the annual convention of the Bible Baptist Fellowship. He was an American Southern Baptist pastor, televangelist, and conservative activist. He was the founding pastor of the Thomas Road Baptist Church, a megachurch in Lynchburg, Virginia. He founded Lynchburg Christian Academy (now Liberty Christian Academy) in 1967 and Liberty University in 1971 and co-founded the Moral Majority in 1979.

 

1995

Olympic-medal-winning diver Greg Louganis (born January 29, 1960) is an American Olympic diver, LGBT activist, and author who won gold medals at the 1984 and 1988 Summer Olympics, on both the springboard and platform. He is the only male and the second diver in Olympic history to sweep the diving events in consecutive Olympic Games. He has been called both “the greatest American diver” and “probably the greatest diver in history.” On this day, he announces that he’s HIV-positive.

 

2004

President George W. Bush announces that he supports a constitutional amendment to ban same-sex marriage.

  

February 25

 

1982

Wisconsin Governor Republican Lee Dreyfus signs the bill which added the prohibition against discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation to the state’s civil rights statute, making Wisconsin the first state in the country to do so!

 

1983

Tennessee Williams dies at the age of 71 in his suite at the Hotel Elysee in New York City. Thomas Lanier “Tennessee” Williams III (March 26, 1911 – February 25, 1983) was a Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright whose works include A Streetcar Named Desire and Cat on a Hot Tin Roof. Williams and his partner, actor Frank Marlo (1922-1963) were together for more than 10 years. Their relationship ended when Marlo died of cancer in 1963.

 

1993, Canada

The Supreme Court of Canada rules that a gay man who was denied bereavement leave to attend the funeral of his companion’s father could not claim discrimination. This is Canada’s first gay right’s case.

 

February 26

  

1556, Italy

Benvenuto Cellini (3 November 1500 – 13 February 1571) was an Italian goldsmith, sculptor, draftsman, soldier, musician, and artist who also wrote a famous autobiography and poetry. He was one of the most important artists of Mannerism. He is remembered for his skill in making pieces such as the Cellini Salt Cellar and Perseus with the Head of Medusa. On this day, he was accused of sodomy with his apprentice, Fernando di Giovanni de Montepulciano. This was not the first accusation against Cellini. His penalty was a fine of 50 golden scudi and four years in prison which was remitted to four years of house arrest after intercession by the Medicis.

 

1564, UK

Christopher Marlowe (26 February 1564 – 30 May 1593) is baptized in Canterbury, England. He was an English playwright, poet and translator of the Elizabethan era. Marlowe was the foremost Elizabethan tragedian of his day. He greatly influenced William Shakespeare, who was born in the same year as Marlowe and who rose to become the pre-eminent Elizabethan playwright after Marlowe’s mysterious early death. Marlowe’s plays are known for the use of blank verse and their overreaching protagonists. Little is known about Marlowe’s life, so much has been written about him over the centuries to create a persona to match his work. He’s now considered gay by default. What is known is that he was a firebrand as a youth, that he was an anti-clerical rebel, that he was in trouble with the law, and that he was dead of a stab wound at the age of 29. Many of his surviving works contain homoerotic references. His epigram reads “All they that love not tobacco and boys are fools.”

 

1649, Sweden

Queen Christina (8 December 1626 – 19 April 1689), citing her wish to not marry, abdicates the throne. Elected queen at the age of six after her father King Gustav II Adolph died in battle, Christina was raised and educated as a boy until she took the throne in 1632 at the age of 18. In addition to refusing to marry or have children, Christina had a deeply intimate and passionate relationship with one of her ladies-in-waiting, Countess Ebba Sparre (1629 – 19 March 1662), whom she called “Belle.” She wrote extensively about Sparre’s beauty, and referred to her as a bedfellow.

 

1935

Jane Wagner (born February 26, 1935) is born. She is an American writer, director and producer, and best known as Lily Tomlin’s  (born September 1, 1939) comedy writer, collaborator and wife.

 

1990

Refusing to consider the cases of Ben-Shalom v. Stone and Woodward v. U.S., the U.S. Supreme Court effectively upholds the right of the U.S. military to discharge gays and lesbians of the armed forces.

 

2013

Marco McMillian (April 23, 1979 – February 26, 2013), 34, was the first openly gay political candidate in Mississippi. He was murdered by Lawrence Reed, possibly after McMillian showed romantic interest in him. Marco was a businessman and candidate for mayor of Clarksdale, Mississippi in 2013. He was “the first openly gay man to be a viable candidate for public office in Mississippi”. McMillian was CEO of MWM & Associates, a firm that provided consulting to non-profit organizations.

  

February 27

  

6th Century BC

Sappho (c. 630 – c. 570 BC) is born in Mytilene on the Isle of Lesbos. Most of Sappho’s poetry is now lost, and what is extant has survived only in fragmentary form, except for one complete poem – the “Ode to Aphrodite.” She has been called the greatest lyric poet of early Greece. Some historians believe she loved women romantically or erotically but, of course, interpreting fragments of poetry from other times in history across cultural and linguistic divides is more an art than a science. Plato called her the “Tenth Muse.” An aristocrat she was completely self-contained in her love for other women.

 

1880

African-American lesbian poet, essayist and playwright Angelina Weld Grimké (February 27, 1880 – June 10, 1958) is born. She was an American journalist, teacher, playwright and poet who came to prominence during the Harlem Renaissance. She was one of the first women of color to have a play publicly performed. Analysis of her work by modern literary critics has provided strong evidence that Grimke was lesbian or bisexual. Scholars found more evidence after her death when studying her diaries and more explicit unpublished works. The Dictionary of Literary Biography: African-American Writers Before the Harlem Renaissance states: “In several poems and in her diaries Grimké expressed the frustration that her lesbianism created; thwarted longing is a theme in several poems.” Some of her unpublished poems are more explicitly lesbian, implying that she lived a life of suppression, both personal and creative.

 

1952

Tam Elizabeth O’Shaughnessy (born January 27, 1952) is an American children’s science writer, former professional tennis player and co-founder of the science education company Sally Ride Science. O’Shaughnessy was the life partner of astronaut Sally Ride (May 26, 1951 – July 23, 2012), the first American woman in space, from 1985 until Ride’s death in 2012.

 

1953

Libby Davies (born February 27, 1953) is a Canadian politician from British Columbia. She was the Member of Parliament for Vancouver East from 1997 to 2015, House Leader for the New Democratic Party (NDP) from 2003 to 2011, and the Deputy Leader of the party from 2007 until 2015 (alongside Mulcair under the leadership of Jack Layton and alongside Megan Leslie, and David Christopherson since Mulcair became leader in 2012). She was the first female Canadian Member of Parliament to come out as a member of the LGBT community. Prior to entering federal politics, Davies helped found the Downtown Eastside Residents Association and served as a Vancouver City Councillor from 1982 to 1993.

 

1957

Sherry Harris (born February 27,1957) was elected to the Seattle city council in 1991, making her the first openly lesbian African-American elected official. She was the first candidate endorsed by the then newly-founded Gay & Lesbian Victory Fund, a national organization supporting LGBTQ (Lesbian Gay Bisexual Transgendered Queer) persons in politics. By a 70% majority, Harris defeated the 24-year incumbent, Sam Smith, who had been the first African American elected to the Seattle City Council. She served as an at-large City Council member from 1992 to 1995. Sherry Harris lost her re-election bid in 1995. She attempted a political comeback two years later but did not win the general election. Since then Harris has focused on a holistic vision of persons, politics, and society. In 2010, Harris published her book, Changing the World from the Inside Out: Politics for the New Millennium. She founded her own company in Seattle, Spirit Mind Body Educational Resources. She lectures and conducts workshops locally, nationally, and internationally.

 

1988

A “War Conference” of 200 gay leaders was held in Warrenton, VA in 1988. The closing statement of the conference set out a plan for a media campaign. It included a nation-wide media campaign to promote a positive image of gays and lesbians. Every national, state, and local entity “must accept the responsibility. We must consider the media in every project we undertake. We must, in addition, take every advantage we can to include public service announcements and paid advertisements, and to cultivate reporters and editors of newspapers, radio, and television. To help facilitate this we need national media workshops to train our leaders. And we must encourage our gay and lesbian press to increase coverage of the national process. Our media efforts are fundamental to the full acceptance of us in American life. But they are also a way for us to increase the funding of our movement. A media campaign costs money, but ultimately it may be one of our most successful fund-raising devices.” The statement also called for an annual planning conference “to help set and modify our national agenda.” The Human Rights Campaign lists this event as a milestone in gay history and identifies it as where National Coming Out Day originated.

 

1989, Russia

The U.S.S.R. reports the case of twenty-nine infants and six mothers all of whom contracted AIDS. They were in the same hospital and contracted the disease through a single unsterile syringe that was used over and over again.

 

1997

The Centers for Disease Control reports a major decline in AIDS-related deaths for the first time.

 

2001

Two female characters on Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Willow and Tara, kiss. Though there had been other lesbian kisses on television, this was the first realistic lesbian relationship on screen.

 

2004

New Palz, NY, Mayor Jason West begins issuing marriage licenses to same-sex couples, following San Francisco. The licenses were later nullified.

 

2017

When We Rise, an ABC mini-series, premiers on this day.  It was a docudrama miniseries bout LGBT rights, created by Dustin Lance Black (born June 10, 1974). The 45-year saga tells the evolving history of the modern gay rights movement, starting just after the Stonewall riots in 1969. Black is an American screenwriter, director, film and television producer, and LGBT rights activist. He has won a Writers Guild of America Award and an Academy Award for the 2008 film Milk.

 

February 28

  

1656

The New Haven Colony, now Connecticut, mandates the death penalty for both women and men for acts “against nature,” as well as for masturbation and anal sex among heterosexual couples. The New Haven Colony also applied the death penalty for adultery. These laws remained in effect for the next ten years until 1665 when the New Haven Colony joined Connecticut and came under Connecticut law which specified the death penalty for “man lying with man” and adultery.

 

1950

Testifying before the U.S. Senate Committee on Expenditures in the Executive Department, whose members included Joseph R. McCarthy, Undersecretary of State John Peurifroy reveals that the majority of dismissals of State Department employees are based on accusations of homosexuality. Over the next few months, McCarthy and other conservatives accuse the administration of laxity in rooting out homosexuals in government, bringing the McCarthy Era into high gear.

 

1969

Danielle Egnew (born February 28, 1969) is a lesbian musician, actress, producer, and psychic who endorsed and provided campaign materials to Virginia’s Vote NO campaign, protecting the legalities of same-sex civil unions in Virginia. She is the spiritual leader and founder of The Church of the Open Christ, an inclusive and progressive LGBT ministry. Born in Billings, Montana on February 28, 1969, Danielle Egnew currently resides there with her wife. At the 2017 Native American Music Awards (NAMMYS), Egnew’s solo album “You’ve Got To Go Back The Way That You Came” won as Best Country Recording. The singer was also nominated for “Best Female”.

 

1975, Canada

The first public hearing of a gay civil rights case under British Columbia’s provincial human rights legislation is heard in Vancouver.

 

1992

Founded as FireFLAG by Gene Walsh, New York City’s first openly gay FDNY firefighter, this LGBT organization was formally incorporated on February 28, 1992. It was later renamed FireFLAG/EMS to include emergency medical services personnel, and has achieved official FDNY fraternal organization status. Under retired FDNY Firefighter Tom Ryan, President Emeritus, former President retired FDNY Capt. Brenda Berkman, and the organization’s current President, FDNY Firefighter Mike Vissichelli, FireFLAG/EMS works tirelessly for the rights of LGBT fire and emergency service personnel as well as the rights of the LGBT community.

 

2008, Venezuela

The Supreme Court issues a statement saying that “while same-sex partners enjoy all the rights, they do not have special protection similar to concubinage or marriage between a man and a woman, that is, in the same terms that heterosexual partners have.”

 

2018, Cambodia

Same-sex marriage becomes legal.

 

February 29

  

1988, Canada

Svend Robinson (born March 4, 1952) becomes the first member of the House of Commons of Canada to come out as gay.

 

1972

Pedro Pablo Zamora (born Pedro Pablo Zamora y Díaz, February 29, 1972 – November 11, 1994) was a Cuban-American AIDS educator and television personality. As one of the first openly gay men with AIDS to be portrayed in popular media, Zamora brought international attention to HIV/AIDS and LGBTQ issues and prejudices through his appearance on MTV’s reality television series, The Real World: San Francisco.

Published February 8, 2024

THIS DAY IN LGBTQ HISTORY – JANUARY

JANUARY 1 

1879, UK

M. Forster (1879 – 1970) is born in London. After his brilliant novel A Passage to India in 1924, he produced no new works. His gay novel Maurice was written in 1914, but not published until after his death. For 50 years his lover was a married London police officer named Bob Buckingham.

 

1886, UK

English Criminal Law Amendment Act of 1885 takes effect. “Indecencies” between adult males in private become crimes punishable by up to two years imprisonment.

 

1892

Ellis Island in New York harbor opens. Over 20 million new arrivals to America were processed until its closing in 1954. It is unknown how many of the new immigrants were gay or lesbians. Some estimates are as high as one million.

 

1895

Edgar Hoover (1 January 1895 – 2 May 1972) is born in Washington. He was an American detective and the first Director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) of the United States where he remained director until his death in 1972 at the age of 77. Hoover has been credited with building the FBI into a larger crime-fighting agency than it was at its inception and with instituting a number of modernizations to police technology, such as a centralized fingerprint file and forensic laboratories. From the 1940s, rumors circulated that Hoover, who was still living with his mother, was homosexual. His ever-constant companion and fellow FBI man Clyde Tolson was speculated to have been his lover. Hoover described Tolson as his alter ego. The men worked closely together during the day and, both single, frequently took meals, went to night clubs, and vacationed together. There are numerous stories of Hoover appearing in drag in New York, usually in a red dress. He liked to be called “Mary.”

1906

Imre: A Memorandum is published. It is one of the first gay American novels with a happy ending, about two gay men in Budapest. Written by Edward Prime-Stevenson (1858-1942), it was republished in 2003.

 

1933, UK

John Kingsley (1 January 1933 – 9 August 1967) was born in Leicester, England. Writing under the name Joe Orton he became one of Britain’s most popular comic playwrights. He was murdered by his lover, actor Kenneth Halliwell (23 June 1926 – 9 August 1967) who then committed suicide in the London flat they had occupied for 15 years. In 1967, Orton had written in his diary “I have high hopes of dying in my prime.”

 

1933, Germany

Lovers Erika Mann (November 9, 1905 – August 27, 1969) and Therese Giehse (6 March 1898 – 3 March 1975) write and direct the anti-fascist Cabaret in Germany. The Nazis shut it down on Jan. 30th. It re-opened in Zurich and became a rallying point for exiles. Mann was a German actress and writer. She was the eldest daughter of the novelist Thomas Mann. Giehse was a German actress.

 

1933

James Hormel (born January 1, 1933) is born. In 1999, he became the first openly gay U.S. ambassador, appointed by President Bill Clinton. This was around the time then-Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott (R-Miss.) compared homosexuality to alcoholism, kleptomania and sex addiction. Hormel is a noted LGBT activist.

 

1959

Fidel Castro seizes power in Cuba after leading a revolution that drove out dictator Fulgencio Batista. Castro then established a Communist dictatorship. Although homosexuality was illegal under the Batista government, the laws were largely ignored in fun loving Cuba. Under Castro, tens of thousands of gays were rounded up and imprisoned.

 

1962

Illinois repeals its sodomy laws, becoming the first U.S. state to decriminalize homosexuality.

 

1965

Gays and lesbians are arrested at the New Year’s Day Mardi Gras Ball in San Francisco. The ball was a fundraiser for the Council on Religion and the Homosexual at California Hall. The event galvanizes the local gay and lesbian community.

 

1966

Dr. Harry Benjamin (January 12, 1885 – August 24, 1986) publishes the first book devoted to a treatment of transsexuals, a term he also coined. The Transsexual Phenomenon becomes an influential voice in defense of that community.

 

1967

The Los Angeles Police Department raid the New Year’s Eve parties at two gay bars, the Black Cat Tavern and New Faces. Several patrons were injured and a bartender was hospitalized with a fractured skull. Several hundred people spontaneously demonstrate on Sunset Boulevard and picket outside the Black Cat. The raids prompted a series of protests that began on January 5th.

 

1967

P.R.I.D.E. (Personal Rights in Defense and Education) was the first use of the term “Pride” that came to be associated with LGBTQ rights and fuels the formation of gay rights groups in California.

 

1970

Chinese-American bisexual singer, songwriter, painter, educator, inventor and poet Magdalen Hsu-Li (born Jan. 1, 1970) is born. She would create Chickpop Records.

 

1971

First issue of The Empty Closet is published. It was a free newspaper originally published by the University of Rochester Gay Liberation Front, It is now published by the Gay Alliance of the Genesee Valley based in Rochester, New York. In February, 2011, the New York State Senate passed Resolution K130-2011 “Commemorating the 40th Anniversary of The Empty Closet,” noting the contributions of the newspaper to creating an atmosphere of social tolerance in the Rochester region.

 

1971

Colorado and Oregon decriminalize private consensual adult homosexual acts.

 

1972

Science Magazine publishes a report that suggests male homosexuality may be determined in the womb due to chemical and/or hormonal stress of the pregnant woman.

 

1972

Hawaii decriminalizes private consensual adult homosexual acts.

 

1973

Maryland becomes the first state to statutorily ban same-sex marriage.

 

1974

Ohio repeals its sodomy laws and decriminalizes private consensual adult homosexual acts.

 

1975

New Mexico decriminalizes private consensual adult homosexual acts.

 

1976

Iowa decriminalizes private consensual adult homosexual acts.

 

1977

Vermont decriminalizes private consensual adult homosexual acts.

 

1977

Harvey Milk (May 22, 1930 – November 27, 1978) takes office. He 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. Although he was 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. Milk served almost eleven months in office and was responsible for passing a stringent gay rights ordinance for San Francisco. On November 27, 1978, Milk was assassinated. Milk was posthumously awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2009 by President Obama.

 

1977

The first lesbian mystery novel in America, Angel Dance by Mary F. Beal (1937), is published.

 

1978

Good Housekeeping readers name anti-gay Anita Bryant “The Most Admired Woman in America.”

 

1978

North Dakota decriminalizes private consensual adult homosexual acts.

 

1980

Arizona decriminalizes private consensual adult homosexual acts.

 

1989, France

Adèle Haenel (born 1 January 1989) is a French actress. She has been nominated twice for the César Award for Most Promising Actress; in 2008 for her performance in Water Lilies (2007), and in 2012 for House of Tolerance (2011). In 2014, Haenel began a romantic relationship with the director Céline Sciamma whom she met on the set of Water Lilies. Haenel publicly acknowledged their relationship in her acceptance speech for her César award in 2014.

 

1990, Iran

The government of Iran beheads three gay men and stones two lesbians to death as part of an intensified campaign against “vice.”

 

1993

The World Health Organization officially deletes “homosexuality” from its list of “diseases.”

1998, Turkmenistan

Article 135 of the new criminal code takes effect making male-male sex punishable by imprisonment.

 

2003

Phat Family Records, an organization of LGBT hip-hop artists and fans, releases the groundbreaking CD Phat Family Volume 2: Down 4 the Swerve, featuring 14 tracks by gay, lesbian and bisexual hip-hop artists from across the U.S. and Europe, including Rainbow Flava, Tori Fixx, Miss Money, Tim’m T. West and others.

 

2008

The Arizona LGBTQ Storytelling Project is founded by Jamie Ann Lee. The purpose of the project is to teach LGBTQ communities media production skills.

 

2009, Norway

Same-sex marriage becomes legal making Norway the first Scandinavian country and sixth country world-wide to legalize same-sex marriage.

 

2017

The U. S. Department of Labor and the State Department, under orders from the White House, removed LGBT content from their websites.

 

 

JANUARY 2

 

1801

Alexander Henry and David Thompson make an entry in their journal titled Exploration and Adventure among the Indians on the Red, Saskatchewan, Missouri, and Colombia Rivers describe a Native American known as Berdache, son of Sucrie, who is a “curious compound between a man and a woman.”

 

1857

Martha Carey Thomas (January 2, 1857 – December 2, 1935) is born in Baltimore, Maryland. She was an American educator and suffragist, later the dean and then president of Bryn Mawr University. She is also credited as the founder of the Johns Hopkins Medical School. Thomas lives for many years in a relationship with Mamie Gwinn (February 2, 1860 – Nov. 11, 1940). After Gwinn left Thomas in 1904 to marry (a love triangle fictionalized in Gertrude Stein’s “Fernhurst”), Thomas starts another relationship with Mary Garrett (March 5, 1854 – April 3, 1915). They share the campus presidential home, living together until Garrett’s death. Miss Garrett, who had been prominent in suffrage work and a benefactor of Bryn Mawr, left Martha $15,000,000 to be disposed of as she saw fit.

 

1900

Actor Billy Haines (January 2, 1900 – December 26, 1973) is born. He was the first celebrity to come out as openly gay, in 1933. He was an American film actor and interior designer. Haines was discovered by a talent scout and signed with Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer (MGM) in 1922. His career gained momentum when he was lent to Columbia Pictures, where he received favorable reviews for his role in The Midnight Express. Haines returned to MGM and was cast in the 1926 film Brown of Harvard. The role solidified his screen persona as a wisecracking, arrogant leading man. By the end of the 1920s, Haines had appeared in a string of successful films and was a popular box-office draw. His career was cut short by the 1930s due to his refusal to deny his homosexuality. Haines quit acting in 1935 and started a successful interior design business with his partner Jimmie Shields, and was supported by friends in Hollywood. Haines died of lung cancer in December, 1973, at the age of 73.

 

1929

Charles Beaumont (January 2, 1929 – February 21, 1967) is born Charles Leroy Nutt. He was an American author of speculative fiction, including short stories in the horror and science fiction subgenres. In 1954, Playboy magazine selected his story “Black Country.” Playboy has been loved by straight men for decades but it was this gay short story that built its reputation. Hugh Hefner was the only one to accept a science fiction story about heterosexuals being the minority against homosexuals. When letters poured in, he said: ‘If it was wrong to persecute heterosexuals in a homosexual society, then the reverse was wrong too.’

 

1938

Lynn Ann Conway (born January 2, 1938) is an American computer scientist, electrical engineer, inventor, and transgender activist. Conway is notable for a number of pioneering achievements, including the Mead & Conway revolution in VLSI design, which incubated an emerging electronic design automation industry. She worked at IBM in the 1960s and is credited with the invention of generalized dynamic instruction handling, a key advance used in out-of-order execution, used by most modern computer processors to improve performance.

 

2005

Bonnie Bleskachek became the first openly lesbian fire chief of a major city, Minneapolis. She was demoted two years later amid claims of harassment and discrimination, but returned to the department as a staff captain. She co-founded the Minnesota Women Fire Fighters Association.

 

2009

Christopher Conwell is arrested for killing Taysia Elzy (1975-2009) and Michael Hunt in their apartment because Taysia, though male, presents as female.

 

 

JANUARY 3

  

1752, Switzerland

Swiss historian Johannes Von Muller (3 January 1752 – 29 May 1809) is born in Neunkirch. He spent 40 years writing a history of his homeland, but more interesting are his love letters to Charles Victor de Bonstetten (3 September 1745 – 3 February 1832), a handsome young Swiss writer. Outed by Goethe, Muller’s poems to Bonstetten were not published until 1835, long after his death.

 

1897

Dorothy Emma Arzner (January 3, 1897 – October 1, 1979) was an American film director whose career in feature films spanned from the silent era of the late 1920s into the early 1940s. In fact, Dorothy Arzner was the only female director working in the 1930s in the United States. She was one of the very few women who established a name for herself as a director in the American film industry during this time. Arzner had been linked romantically with a number of actresses, including Alla Nazimova (May 22, 1879 – July 13, 1945) a Russian actress who immigrated to the United States in 1905, and Billie Burke (August 7, 1884 – May 14, 1970), an American actress who was famous on Broadway, but lived the last 40 years of her life with her companion, choreographer Marion Morgan (January 4, 1881, New Jersey – November 10, 1971). Arzner died at age 82 in La Quinta, California. Her ashes were scattered by the Chapel of the Desert over her home at 49-800 Avenida Obregon in La Quinta.

 

1948

Dr. Alfred Kinsey publishes the landmark report “Sexual Behavior in the Human Male,” stating that 10% of all men are homosexual for at least three consecutive years. He uses a scale from zero (exclusively hetero-sexual) to six (exclusively homosexual). His research, very flawed by today’s standards, was nevertheless the first ever widely published and discussed research to explore such taboos as masturbation and same-sex sexual behavior.

 

1962

Illinois decriminalizes same-sex acts between consenting adults.

 

1971

Ti-Grace Atkinson (born November 9, 1938) advocates political lesbianism which is a total and exclusive commitment to women that may or may not include sex; at a Daughters of Bilitis New York meeting.

 

1981

Barney Frank (born March 31, 1940) is elected to congress. He is the first US congressperson to come out. He is re-elected consecutively until he retires in 2013.

 

 

JANUARY 4

 

1750, France

Bruno Lenoir and Jean Diot are caught having sex in public for which they are arrested. A year later they are executed. There was general surprise in France at the severity of their sentence. Their execution was the last in France for consensual sodomy.

 

1877

Marsden Hartley (January 4, 1877 – September 2, 1943), an American Modernist painter, poet, and essayist, is born in Lewiston, Maine. Hartley was in Paris at the creation of the cubist movement. His many gay friends were William Sloan Kennedy (1850–1929) who was one of Whitman’s most devoted friends and admirers; Thomas Bird Mosher (1852–1923) who was a publisher out of Portland, Maine and notable for his contributions to the private press movement in the United States; author Oscar Wilde (16 October 1854 – 30 November 1900); and Gertrude Stein (February 3, 1874 – July 27, 1946), to name a few. The love of Hartley’s life was Karl von Freyburg (15 July 1889 – 7 October 1914), a young German soldier who was killed in battle in 1914.

 

1977, Canada

The first issue of After Stonewall: A Critical Journal of Gay Liberation is published in Winnipeg. The magazine continued into the early 1980s. In 1977 to 1980, After Stonewall was a unique entry into a crowded field of western queer newsletters and small periodicals. It was created by George Edin, Mark Kaluk, John Allec, Walter Davis, and Bill Fields. When After Stonewall launched its “critical journal of gay liberation” in 1977, the collective had modest goals and a wry self-deprecating sense of humor about its enterprise. It anticipated readers might question the need for “yet another left publication,” this time by “critical faggots” from Winnipeg, Manitoba. Inspired by Boston’s Fag Rag, the collective’s goal was to offer a queer journalistic forum intended to stimulate discussion amongst gay men and lesbians. (Information provided by Dr. Valerie J. Korinek)

 

2010, Austria

Same sex couples may now marry in Vienna under the new civil union bill but do not have the right to adopt children or use artificial insemination.

 

JANUARY 5

  

1833, Italy

Giacomo Leopardi (29 June 1798 – 14 June 1837) consoles Antonio Ranieri (8 September 1806 – 4 June, 1888) in one of their many love letters. Giacomo was an Italian philosopher, poet, essayist, and philologist. He is widely seen as one of the most radical and challenging thinkers of the 19th century.

 

1925

Nellie Tayloe Ross (November 29, 1876 – December 19, 1977) of Wyoming becomes the first female governor inaugurated in the U.S. and is still the only female governor of Wyoming. She was director of the United States Mint from 1933 to 1953. She forged a strong bond with U. S. Mint, the Assistant Director of the Mint and one of the United States’ highest-ranking female civil servants of her time. Ross served five terms as Director, retiring in 1953. During her later years, she wrote for various women’s magazines and traveled. Ross died in Washington, D.C., at the age of 101. At the time of her death, she was the oldest ex-governor in the United States. She may not have been a lesbian, but she was one of the first feminists to gain political office.

 

1931

Alvin Ailey (January 5, 1931 – December 1, 1989) was an African-American choreographer and activist who founded the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater in New York City. He is credited with popularizing modern dance and revolutionizing African-American participation in 20th-century concert dance. Ailey died on December 1, 1989 at the age of 58. To spare his mother the social stigma of his death from HIV/AIDS, he asked his doctor to announce that he had died of terminal blood dyscrasia. Despite his professional success, Ailey’s personal life was beset with difficulties. Though his proclivities were an open secret, he rarely spoke of his personal relationships and seemed ill at ease with his sexuality. In the mid-1960s, he was in a romantic relationship with a young white schoolteacher who helped manage the dance company, but this ended after a couple of years. Thereafter, Ailey spent his time socializing in gay bars and hanging out with street people, and had numerous short-term liaisons with young men who his friends felt took advantage of his generosity. Ailey suffered from bipolar disorder which worsened over time as did his drinking and drug use. In 1980, he was arrested for causing a disturbance at the Columbia University residence of a former paramour which landed him in Bellevue hospital.

 

1967

Pride, a Los Angeles homophile group, mobilizes a crowd of several hundred demonstrators on Sunset Boulevard to protest police raids on gay bars.

 

1974, Canada

Four lesbians–Adrienne Potts, Pat Murphy, Sue Wells, and Heather (Beyer) Elizabeth–are told to leave the Brunswick tavern in Toronto. They refuse and are arrested for obstruction of justice. As they exit, they sang, “I enjoy being a dyke!” They’re known as the Brunswick Four.

 

1977, Canada

The Lesbian Organization of Toronto moves to a new center at 342 Jarvis Street, sharing with feminist publication The Other Woman and coffeehouse called Three of Cups.

 

1988

Raleigh, North Carolina enacts a gay rights ordinance. Raleigh is the hometown of the famous homophobe Jesse Helms.

 

 

JANUARY 6

 

1412, France

Joan of Arc (6 January c. 1412– 30 May 1431) is born in Domremy, France. 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. She was a soldier who on May 23, 1430, was captured at Compiègne by the Burgundian faction which was allied with the English. She was later handed over to the English and tried for heresy. She was burned at the stake on May 30, 1431, dying at about nineteen years of age. There’s no evidence of St. Joan’s sexual orientation, but she was male in her gender expression, living as a soldier and leader of men in a time when women didn’t serve in the military, dressed in men’s clothes, and wore her hair short. In 1920, Joan of Arc was canonized a saint by the Roman Catholic church.

 

1967

New York City’s Civil Service Commission makes public its year-old policy of allowing city agencies to hire and employ lesbians and gay men. The new policy comes partly in response to the lobbying efforts of the Mattachine Society of New York.

 

1977, Canada

The first issue of the gay magazine Directions is published. It lasts one year.

 

1984

Kate McKinnon (born January 6, 1984) is born. She is an American actress, comedian and impressionist who is best known as a regular cast member on Saturday Night Live. McKinnon is known for her celebrity impressions of Hillary Clinton, Kellyanne Conway, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, and Jeff Sessions. She has been nominated for five Primetime Emmy Awards; one for Outstanding Original Music and Lyrics and four for Outstanding Supporting Actress in a Comedy Series, winning in 2016 and 2017. McKinnon is SNL‘s first openly lesbian cast member as well as the series’ third known LGBTQ cast member after Terry Sweeney (born March 23, 1950) and Danitra Vance (July 13, 1954 – August 21, 1994). Kate’s girlfriend is actor and photographer Jackie Abbott. They came out as a couple at the 2017 Emmys.

 

2015 – Florida recognizes same-sex marriages.

 

JANUARY 7

 

 

1891

Zora Neale Hurston (January 7, 1891– January 28, 1960) was an African-American novelist, short story writer, folklorist, and anthropologist. Of Hurston’s four novels and more than 50 published short stories, plays, and essays, she is best known for her 1937 novel Their Eyes Were Watching God. Living in Harlem in the 1920s, Hurston befriended the likes of Langston Hughes (February 1, 1902 – May 22, 1967) and Countee Cullen (May 30, 1903 – January 9, 1946), among others. Her apartment, according to some accounts, was a popular spot for social gatherings. During a period of financial and medical difficulties, Hurston was forced to enter St. Lucie County Welfare Home, where she suffered a stroke. She died of hyper-tensive heart disease on January 28, 1960, and was buried at the Garden of Heavenly Rest in Fort Pierce, Florida. Her remains were in an unmarked grave until 1973. Novelist Alice Walker (born February 9, 1944) and literary scholar Charlotte D. Hunt found an unmarked grave in the general area where Hurston had been buried, and decided to mark it as hers. There were rumors that Zora was lesbian or at least bisexual.

 

1946

Jann Simon Wenner (born January 7, 1946) is the co-founder and publisher of the popular culture biweekly magazine Rolling Stone, and former owner of Men’s Journal magazine. Since 1995, Wenner’s domestic partner has been Matt Nye, a fashion designer. Together, Wenner and Nye have three adopted children.

 

 

1957

The board of directors of the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) approves a national policy statement asserting that laws against sodomy and federal restrictions on employment of lesbians and gay men are constitutional.

 

1973

Jack Baker (born 1942) adopts his partner Mike McConnell (born 1942) in Minnesota for tax benefits. Baker was the president of the University of Minnesota student body. They had applied for a marriage license in 1970 but were denied. They are still together as of this publication.

 

1985

Blaine Elswood writes about experimental AIDS drugs. Elswood founded the Guerilla Clinic in San Francisco, an underground group for AIDS activists who sold experimental AIDS drugs to those who wanted them.

 

1994, UK

The first-ever televised lesbian kiss in the UK airs on this day. Brookside is a British soap opera set in Liverpool, England. The series began on the launch night of Channel 4 on November 2, 1982, and ran for 21 years until November 4, 2003. The kiss was  between Beth Jordache and Margaret Clemence.

 

2004

Six former students–Alana Flores and five others—from Morgan Hill School district (in California) settle a lawsuit against the district for $1.1 million. “[The settlement also] requires the school district to implement mandatory annual training regarding harassment based on sexual orientation or gender identity for administrators, teachers, middle school and high school students, and staff. The settlement ends five years of wrangling during which a state law was passed—with the Morgan Hill students’ input—prohibiting anti-gay harassment of students. The case also prompted a U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals ruling in April that stated public school administrators who fail to take effective steps to counter anti-gay harassment could be violating the U.S. Constitution’s guarantee of equal protection—even if they have an anti-discrimination policy in place. That ruling covered districts in California and eight other Western states and, according to plaintiffs’ attorneys, finally brought district officials to the negotiating table, according to the L.A. Times.

 

 

2015, India

Transgender Mandu Bai Kinnar (born 1980), who was expelled from their family, is elected mayor of Raigarh in the state of Chhattisgarh.

 

 

JANUARY 8

 

 

1544, Italy

Cecchino de Bracci (died 1544), a teenage pupil of Michelangelo (6 March 1475 – 18 February 1564) and nephew and lover of Luigi del Riccio, dies. His death inspires Michelangelo to write 48 funeral epigrams.

 

1907, Germany

Karl M. Baer (20 May 1885 – 26 June 1956) was a German-Israeli author, social worker, reformer, suffragette and Zionist. Assigned female at birth and named Martha Baer, Karl became one of the first people to undergo sex-change surgery, and one of the first, on this day in 1907, to gain full legal recognition of his gender identity and to have a new birth certificate issued reflecting his new gender, confirmed by the German courts. Baer also gained the right to marry and did so in October 1907.He began living as a man in 1905 and underwent multistage rudimentary sex-change surgery in October of 1906. He was released from the hospital that December with a medical certificate certifying his male identity. From 1908 to 1911 Baer was an insurance sales agent. On January 1, 1911 he took up a post as Consul for Jewish Life in Berlin. In December 1920, he became director of the Berlin section of the loge B’nai B’rith, a post he held until the Section’s forcible closure by the Gestapo on April 19, 1937. Baer was by then an important figure in Jewish society, and his influence on cultural life brought him into conflict with the Nazi administration. He was allowed to emigrate with his wife in June, 1938, to Palestine, later to become Israel, where he worked between 1942 and 1950 as an accountant. By 1950 he was going blind and had to give up his job. Nothing more is documented about him up to his death in 1956. He is buried in the Kiryat-Shaul cemetery in Tel Aviv under the name Karl Meir Baer.

 

1947, UK

David Bowie (8 January 1947 – 10 January 2016) is born David Jones in London. The enfante terrible of punk, he was an English singer, songwriter and actor. He was a figure in popular music for over five decades, becoming acclaimed by critics and other musicians for his innovative work, and marked by reinvention and visual presentation, his music and stagecraft significantly influencing popular music. During his lifetime, his record sales, estimated at 140 million albums worldwide, made him one of the world’s best-selling music artists. Though married to women twice, Bowie declared himself gay in an interview with Michael Watts for a 1972 issue of Melody Maker, coinciding with his campaign for stardom as Ziggy Stardust. In a 1983 interview with Rolling Stone, Bowie said his public declaration of bisexuality was “the biggest mistake I ever made” and “I was always a closet heterosexual.” On January 10, 2016, two days after his 69th birthday and the release of the album Blackstar, Bowie died from liver cancer in his New York City apartment.

 

1977

Pauli Murray (November 20, 1910 – July 1, 1985), a civil rights activist from North Carolina, becomes the first African-American woman to be ordained as an Episcopal priest. She was an American civil activist, women’s rights activist, lawyer, Episcopal priest, and author. Drawn to the ministry, in 1977 Murray became the first black woman to be ordained as an Episcopal priest and she was among the first group of women to become priests in that church. U.S. President John F. Kennedy appointed Murray to the Presidential Commission on the Status of Women in 1961. In 1963 she became one of the first to criticize the sexism of the civil rights movement, in her speech “The Negro Woman and the Quest for Equality.” In 1966 she was a cofounder of the National Organization for Women (NOW) which she hoped could act as an NAACP for women’s rights. Although acknowledging the term “homosexual” in describing others, Murray preferred to describe herself as having an “inverted sex instinct” that caused her to “behave as a man attracted to women would.” She wanted a “monogamous married life” but one in which she was the masculine partner. The majority of her relationships were with women whom she described as “extremely feminine and heterosexual.” On July 1, 1985, the Rev. Dr. Pauli Murray died of pancreatic cancer in the house she owned with a lifelong friend, Maida Springer Kemp.

 

 

1978

Harvey Milk (May 22, 1930 – November 27, 1978) takes office on the Board of Supervisors in San Francisco, representing District 5. He 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. Although he was 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. On November 27, 1978, Milk and Mayor George Moscone were assassinated by Dan White, who was another city supervisor. Milk was posthumously awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2009.

 

2003

Dante ‘Tex’ Gill (April 2, 1930 – January 8, 2003) dies. Tex was transgender and a pimp, gangster and massage parlor owner. Tex was sent to prison for 13 years for tax evasion but died in prison at the age of 72 after serving 7 years. Tex’s spouse was Cynthia Bruno.

 

2011

U.S. Rep. Gabrielle Giffords is injured in a mass shooting in Arizona. Daniel Hernandez (born Jan. 25, 1990), Giffords’ openly gay intern, helps save her life then contacts her husband.

 

 

JANUARY 9

 

 

1859

Carrie Lane Chapman (1859-1947) was born in Ripon, Wisconsin. Although there is nothing to suggest she was a lesbian, she was the women’s rights pioneer who founded the National League of Women Voters in 1919.

 

1941

Joan Baez (born January 9, 1941) is born. Baez, who is Mexican-American and describes herself as bisexual, is one of the most famous folk singers of all time. She is a songwriter, musician, and activist whose con-temporary folk music often includes songs of protest or social justice. She sang at Martin Luther King’s 1963 March on Washington and stood with Cesar Chavez in the struggle for the rights of migrant farm workers. She protested the Viet Nam war and capital punishment and helped establish a west coast branch of Amnesty International. She’s been a vocal advocate of gay and lesbian civil rights.

 

1959

Linda Villarosa is an American writer, editor, and author. In the early 1990s, while a senior editor at Essence Magazine, she wrote Coming Out. The article was written by her and her mother, from their own perspectives, what it felt like to be a lesbian and what it felt like to have a lesbian daughter. She is also the co-author of Body & Soul: The Black Woman’s Guide to Physical Health and Emotional Well-being. Her novel, Passing for Black (2008) was nominated for a Lambda Literary Award. She has trained journalists from around the world to better cover the international HIV/AIDS epidemic. She lives in Brooklyn, New York with her partner and their two children.

 

1977

The Episcopal Church ordains Ellen Marie Barrett (born February 10, 1946). She was the first open lesbian to be ordained to the priesthood following the Episcopal Church’s General Convention approval of the ordination of women in 1977. Barrett’s candor about her homosexuality caused great controversy within the church. Even prior to her ordination, she was a prominent spokesperson for the rights of gays and lesbians in the church, especially regarding their ordination.

 

1978

Sir John Gielgud, Jean-Paul Sartre, Simone de Beauvoir and 26 other international celebrities take out a full-page ad in Time Magazine (Jan. 9, 1978, V.73) to protest the recent series of political backlashes against gays in the U.S. The ad was entitled “What’s Going on in America” and sponsored by the Stichting Vrije Relatierechten Foundation (Foundation for Free Human Partnership).

 

1988, UK

More than 10,000 lesbians and gay men demonstrate their opposition to Clause 28 in a march through central London. Clause 28 of the Local Government Act 1988 affected England, Wales and Scotland. The amendment was enacted on 24 May 1988, and stated that a local authority “shall not intentionally promote homosexuality or publish material with the intention of promoting homosexuality” or “promote the teaching in any maintained school of the acceptability of homosexuality as a pretended family relationship”.  It was repealed on 21 June 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 18 November 2003 in the rest of the United Kingdom by section 122 of the Local Government Act 2003.

 

1991, UK

An unprecedented number of prominent gay and lesbian artists come out in a public forum. Wishing to “respectfully distance” themselves from Derek Jarman’s criticism of gay actor Ian McKellen’s (born 25 May 1939) acceptance of a knighthood from the Conservative government of Margaret Thatcher, they publish a widely discussed statement in support of McKellen in the Guardian. Among the signees are Simon Callow, Michael Cashman, Nancy Diuguid, Simon Fanshawe, Stephen Fry, Philip Hedley, Bryony Lavery, Michael Leonard, David Lun, Tim Luscombe, Alec McCowen, Cameron Mackintosh, Pam St. Clement, John Schlesinger, Antony Sher, and Martin Sherm.

 

2009, Honduras

Prominent transgender activist Cynthia Nicole (1977-2009) is fatally shot in Comayagua. Human Rights Watch issues a statement saying that “Cynthia Nicole fought tirelessly to secure basic rights protections for transgender sex workers.”

 

2016

When Hubert Edward Spires was twenty years old, he decided to serve his country by joining the military. Because he was a gay man in a very different time, though, he was removed through an “undesirable” discharge. On this day, the 91-year-old Connecticut man finally received the honorable discharge he was denied 68 years earlier. In 1946, he joined what was then called the U.S. Army Air Force and became a chaplain’s assistant at Lackland Air Force Base in San Antonio. Spires quickly took to the work which included writing letters to families worried about their loved ones, playing organ during Catholic Mass and preparing the chapel for various services. Because of the repeal of Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell in 2010, it became possible for Spires to apply to have the status of his discharge changed. The 91-year-old Spires filed a federal lawsuit seeking an honorable discharge so he can receive a military burial. The Air Force has changed the 91-year-old’s records to an honorable discharge. Spires said, “I can go to my grave with my head held high.”

 

JANUARY 10

  

1956

About 30 people attend the first public meeting of the Mattachine Society, at the Diplomat Hotel in New York City.

 

1975

The Chicago Board of Education approves a plan that allows, for the first time, the city’s teachers to answer students’ questions about homosexuality.

 

1978

Thirty-five men in Bethesda, MD, who are married to women and have attractions to men, meet and create the Gay Married Men’s Association. Now named the Gay and Married Men’s Association, for over thirty years, GAMMA has been offering support to men who are or have been involved in long-term heterosexual relationships and who are now coming to terms with their sexual attraction to other men.

 

1980

The Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence forms in San Francisco. They are a gay male “religious order” whose motto is “Give Up the Guilt.” Originally a form of Camp Street Theater, the controversial nuns later become highly visible promoters of safe(r) sex. It is a charity, protest, and street performance organization that uses drag and religious imagery to call attention to sexual intolerance and satirizes issues of gender and morality. At their inception in 1979, a small group of gay men in San Francisco began wearing the attire of nuns in visible situations using high camp to draw attention to social conflicts and problems in the Castro District.

 

2005

U.S. Supreme Court turns down an appeal by Florida foster dads Steve Lofton and Roger Croteau, denying their children the right to be adopted by the parents who love them. Steve and Roger didn’t plan on having children. But in 1988, they were asked to take in an infant foster child with HIV from the hospital where Steve worked in pediatric AIDS. Within months, they had three babies in the house, all of whom had HIV. Because the kids’ medical needs were so intense, the state asked Steve to quit his job and care for the children full time, which he did without hesitation. The family was thrown into disarray when the state of Florida told them they had to give up one of their foster children, Bert, whom they had raised for 10 years. Lofton and Croteau want to adopt Bert, but under Florida law they can’t because they are gay. Until 2010, Florida was the only state to have a blanket statutory prohibition against gay adoption until a 2010 Third District Court of Appeals changed the ruling.

 

2007

The Federal Way, Washington, school board decides that teachers who show the film “An Inconvenient Truth,” (Al Gore’s documentary about global warming), must also get the approval of the principal and superintendent and must present an “opposing view” along with the film. Though not specifically a gay issue, global warming is a human rights issue.

 

2005, Israel

The Israeli Supreme Court allows each partner of a lesbian couple to adopt the other’s children. The case involves Tal and Avital Yaros-Hakak who are raising three children conceived through donor insemination. Tal gave birth to two children, Avital to the third. They unsuccessfully sought to adopt each other’s children in the Family Court in Ramat Gan. The Supreme Court ruled that the Family Court should grant these adoptions if it were in the best interest of the children to do so. The ruling came at the end of a long legal battle, decided at the High Court. The Yaros-Hakak couple had lived together for16 years.

 

  

JANUARY 11

  

1757

Alexander Hamilton (January 11, 1757 – July 12, 1804) is born in Nevis, British West Indies and was probably at least bisexual. Rumor had it he was a “boy” to George Washington who called his young patriots his family; Hamilton was the favorite. Hamilton also exchanged love letters with another revolutionary, John Laurens (October 28, 1754 – August 27, 1782), an American soldier and statesman from South Carolina during the American Revolutionary War, best known for his criticism of slavery and his efforts to help recruit slaves to fight for their freedom as U.S. soldiers.

 

1825

Bayard Taylor (January 11, 1825 – December 19, 1878) is born. He was an American poet, literary critic, translator, travel author, and diplomat. Though not gay, in 1870 he wrote and published Joseph and His Friend: A Story of Pennsylvania, which is possibly the first American novel about a homosexual relationship. It presented a special attachment between two men and discussed the nature and significance of such a relationship, romantic but not sexual. Critics are divided in interpreting Taylor’s novel as a political argument for gay relationships or an idealization of male spirituality.

 

1973

An American Family, a documentary series focusing on the Loud family of Santa Barbara, CA, premieres on PBS. Not only does it pre-sage the era of reality TV, son Lance Loud (June 26, 1951 – December 22, 2001) comes out publicly on the show, characterizing himself as “Homo of the Year.” Lance Loud later died of liver failure as a result of hepatitis C and a co-infection with HIV/AIDS.

 

1974

L’Association homophile de Montréal/Gay Montreal Association holds its first public meeting.

  

1982

Paul Lynde (June 13, 1926 – January 11, 1982), known to many as “the Center Square” for his years on game show Hollywood Squares, and considered “openly closeted,” dies of a heart attack in Beverly Hills at age 55. He was an American comedian, actor, voice artist and TV personality. A noted character actor with a distinctively campy and snarky persona that often poked fun at his barely closeted homosexuality, Lynde was well known for his roles as Uncle Arthur on Bewitched and the befuddled father Harry MacAfee in Bye Bye Birdie.

 

1984

The Wall Street Journal allows staff writers to now use the word “gay,” as a synonym for “homosexual” in article and headlines.

 

2000

Britain lifts its ban on gays in the military.

 

2007

The Mexican northern state of Coahuila passes a bill legalizing same-sex civil unions under the name Pacto Civil de Solidaridad (Civil Union Pact).

 

2013

Stacy Offner becomes Rabbi of Temple Beth Tikvah in Madison, CT. Rabbi Offner had been fired from an associate rabbi position in 1987 when she came out as lesbian. She then helped found Shir Tikvah, a Reform congregation in Minneapolis. She was the first woman to be vice president of the Union for Reform Judaism. Rabbi Offner is married to Nancy Abramson who has  extensive experience in the fields of mental health and non-profit management. Their daughter, Cantor Jill Abramson, is the Senior Cantor at Westchester Reform Temple in Scarsdale, NY.

 

2013

African American Marco McMillian (April 23, 1979 – February 26, 2013) is the first openly gay candidate for political office in Mississippi when he announces his candidacy for mayor of Clarksdale, MS. He is slain a month later.

 

  

JANUARY 12

 

1564, UK

Queen Elizabeth I reinstates the buggery law in England which makes sodomy illegal.

 

1597, Brussels

Martyred Flemish sculptor François Duquesnoy (January 12, 1597 – July 12, 1643) is born. He was a Baroque sculptor in Rome. His more idealized representations are often contrasted with the emotional character of Bernini’s works, while his style shows greater affinity to Algardi’s sculptures. He was regarded as one of the finest sculptors of the seventeenth century. In 1644, Duquesnoy was commissioned to create statues for the nave of the Cathedral of St. Michael and St. Gudula in Brussels, and the following year he was appointed “architecte, statuaire et sculpteur de la Cour” to Archduke Leopold William, Regent of the Nether-lands. Some of his most famous works depicted strong, muscled male figures in the Hellenic tradition. In 1651, he became Court Architect and Sculptor, and in 1654 he went to Ghent to fulfill several commissions when he was accused of indecencies with his assistants. The Privy Council of Ghent convicted Duquesnoy of sodomy and sentenced him to death. He was bound to a stake in the Grain Market in the center of the city, strangled, and reduced to ashes. His reputation was destroyed and his memory repressed.

 

1903

Grace Marion Frick (January 12, 1903 – November 18, 1979) was a translator and researcher for her lifelong partner French author Marguerite Yourcenar (June 8, 1903 – December 17, 1987). Grace Frick taught languages at U.S. colleges and was the second academic dean to be appointed to Hartford Junior College. Frick and Yourcenar lived together for forty years until Frick died of cancer on November 18, 1979. Together they bought a house, “La Petite Plaisance,” in 1943 in Northeast Harbor, Maine, on Mount Desert Island. They are both buried at Brookside Cemetery in Mount Desert. Buried alongside them is Jerry Wilson, the last companion of Yourcenar, who died of AIDS in 1986.

 

1939

The Georgia Supreme Court rules that women cannot commit sodomy.

 

1976, Canada

In Vancouver a British Columbia Board of Inquiry rules in a case called Gay Tide vs Vancouver Sun that British Columbia human rights code provides protection for gays and lesbians.

 

1977

The Advocate reveals that the CIA has been collecting information on some three hundred thousand people who had been arrested in the U.S. for committing homosexual acts.

 

1981

Premiering on ABC, Dynasty features gay character Steven Carrington. Steven is noteworthy as one of the earliest gay main characters on American television. Despite identifying as homosexual, Steven has relationships with both men and women throughout the series. The role was originated by Al Corley in the show’s first episode in 1981; Corley left at the end of the second season in 1982 after complaining about Steven’s “ever-shifting sexual preferences” and wanting “to do other things.” The character was recast in 1983 with Jack Coleman, the change in appearance attributed to plastic surgery after an oil rig explosion. Coleman remained on the show until 1988, but Corley returned to the role of Steven for the 1991 miniseries Dynasty: The Reunion when Coleman was unavailable due to scheduling conflicts. In the 2017 reboot of the series, Steven is played by actor James Mackay.

 

1982

Gay men in New York City gather at Larry Kramer’s (born June 25, 1935) apartment and agree to form the Gay Men’s Health Crisis in response to the escalating epidemic of fatal illnesses in their community.

 

2000

The United Kingdom lifts its ban on lesbians and gay men serving in the armed forces.

 

JANUARY 13

 

1834

Horatio Alger (January 13, 1832 – July 18, 1899) is born in Revere, Massachusetts. He was a prolific 19th-century American writer, best known for his many young adult novels about impoverished boys and their rise from humble backgrounds to lives of middle-class security and comfort through hard work, determination, courage, and honesty. His “rags-to-riches” narrative had a formative effect on America during the Age. As a Unitarian minister in Brewster, Mass, he often traveled to New York where he sought to improve the condition of street boys. His experiences became the fodder for over 100 books. But, back home in Brewster, a parish committee charged him with “gross immorality and a most heinous crime, a crime of no less magnitude than the abomination and revolting crime of unnatural familiarity with boys.” Alger denied nothing, admitted he had been imprudent, considered his association with the church dissolved, and left town. Alger sent Unitarian officials in Boston a letter of remorse, and his father assured them his son would never seek another post in the church. The officials were satisfied and decided no further action would be taken. Alger was known to have mentioned his homosexuality only once, in 1870.

 

1898, Germany

The Reichstag debates a petition urging the revocation of the anti-gay Paragraph 175. Promoted by Magnus Hirschfeld (14 May 1868 – 14 May 1935) and signed by dozens of prominent German opinion leaders, the motion is supported by only one political party in the Reichstag, the Social Democratic Party led by August Bebel. The Reichstag votes against reform. Hirschfeld was a German Jewish physician and sexologist educated primarily in Germany; he based his practice 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.

 

1958

In the landmark case One, Inc. v. Olesen, the United States Supreme Court unanimously reverses three lower court rulings and rules in favor of the First Amendment rights of One: The Homosexual Magazine. The Court unanimously reverses the lower court rulings thereby protecting the right to publish material about homosexuality. This was the first Supreme Court ruling on a gay issue. The Court’s affirmation of free speech for gay and lesbian writing opens the way for more widely distributed publications.

 

1983

A lesbian couple, Dr. Zandra Rolon and Deborah Johnson, are re-fused service when they try to sit in the romantic dining section of the posh Los Angeles restaurant Papa Choux. They are told that a city ordinance prohibits such seating, which is not true. They sue and win, but the restaurant removes the section rather than seat gay or lesbian couples, proclaiming “True romantic dining died on this date.”

 

1992

Out Magazine begins publishing with a test issue. The first issue on the newsstands is dated Summer 1992.

 

2014, Nigeria

President Goodluck Johnathan signed the controversial Jail the Gays law that includes punishment for being LGBT of up to 14 years in jail. The law also bans and makes punishable by jail time a membership in any LGBT rights group.

 

 

JANUARY 14

 

1523, Italy

The famous artist Benvenuto Cellini (3 November 1500 – 13 February 1571) is sentenced – for the fourth time – of committing sodomy on both men and women. He was an Italian goldsmith, sculptor, draftsman, soldier, musician, and artist who also wrote a famous autobiography as well as poetry. He was one of the most important artists of Mannerism. He is remembered for his skill in making pieces such as the Cellini Salt Cellar and Perseus with the Head of Medusa.

 

1540, Italy

Pier Luigi Farnese (19 November 1503 – 10 September 1547) is the Duke of Parma and the son of Pope Paul II. He mounts a manhunt in search of a boy who had refused his sexual advances. In 1537, Farnese was accused of raping Cosimo Gheri, the young bishop of Fano who died shortly afterward.

 

1904, UK

Cecil Beaton (14 January 1904 – 18 January 1980)is born in London. He was an English fashion, portrait and war photographer, diarist, painter, interior designer and an Academy Award–winning stage and costume designer for films and the theatre. He was knighted in the 1972 New Year Honors. Beaton had relationships with various men: his last lover was former Olympic fencer and teacher Kinmont Hoitsma (April 10, 1934 – September 30, 2013).

 

1925

Japanese poet-dramatist-novelist Yukio Mishima (January 14, 1925 – November 25, 1970) is born in Tokyo. An avid body builder, he tried to live the life of a samurai. In 1970, he committed ritual suicide outside the Japanese parliament with a young disciple and lover during a neo fascist demonstration.

 

1952

Jim Kepner (1923 – 15 November 1997) and members of Mattachine in Los Angeles discuss the idea of publishing a magazine for the LGBT community. They named their organization ONE Inc. and put out the first issue in January, 1953. In 1956, ONE opened the Institute for Homophile Studies. Today, ONE Archives at the University of Southern California Libraries is the oldest remaining LGBT organization in the U.S. and the largest repository of LGBT materials in the world.

 

1975

The first federal gay rights bill is introduced to address discrimination based on sexual orientation. The bill later goes to the Judiciary Committee but is never brought for consideration.

 

1978

A rally and march is organized to protest the visit of Anita Bryant to Toronto. Her trip was sponsored by the fundamentalist group Renaissance Canada.

 

2001, Canada

Two couples, one gay, the other lesbian, were married in a double ceremony at Toronto’s Metropolitan Community Church after Rev. Brent Hawkes (born June 2, 1950), the pastor, discovered that the ancient Christian tradition of reading banns was still legal in Ontario and did not specify sexuality. The Ontario government refused to register the marriages citing federal law defining marriage as being between a man and a woman. Rev. Hawkes lives in Toronto with John Sproule, his partner of more than thirty years. They married on March 7, 2006.

  

 

JANUARY 15

  

1622, France

French writer Moliere (15 January 1622 – 17 February 1673) was born in Paris as Jean Baptiste Poquelin. He was a playwright and actor who is considered to be one of the greatest masters of comedy in Western literature. While it may be easy to dismiss some of the commentary about him as the ramblings of jealous rivals, it is known that Moliere fell in love with 15-year old Michel Baron (8 October 1653 – 22 December 1729) after taking him into his home and saving him from a troop of young actors of which he was the star. The romance ruined his marriage but Michel was with him until his death. Michel became a French actor and playwright.

 

1777

The Vermont Republic is created out of the Province of New Hampshire and the Province of New York, thus legalizing same-sex intercourse.

 

1815, France

In the aftermath of the death of lesbian actress Françoise Marie Antoinette Saucerotte (3 March 1756 – 15 January 1815), known as Mlle Raucourt, her mourners rioted because clergy refuse to admit her body to St. Roch. She received considerable criticism for her relationships with women, the most famous of whom was Parisian opera singer Sophie Arnould (13 February 1740 – 18 October 1802).

 

1893, UK

British musical comedy performer Ivor Novello (15 January 1893 – 6 March 1951) was born in Cardiff Wales. He was a Welsh composer and actor who became one of the most popular British entertainers of the first half of the 20th century. It seemed everyone – except the millions of women of swooned over the star – knew he was gay. Novello wrote the famous World War I song “Keep the Home Fires Burning,” but it is not clear for which soldier he was keeping them burning. Even Winston Churchill admitted to having a one-night stand with Novello.

 

1958

The opera Vanessa, by American composer Samuel Barber (March 9, 1910 – January 23, 1981), is performed in New York for which Barber wins the Pulitzer. He was an American composer of orchestral, opera, choral, and piano music and is one of the most celebrated composers of the 20th century. Barber’s life partner was Gian Carlo Menotti (July 7, 1911 – February 1, 2007), an Italian-American composer and librettist. Although he often referred to himself as an American composer, he kept his Italian citizenship. He wrote the classic Christmas opera Amahl and the Night Visitors, along with over two dozen other operas intended to appeal to popular taste.

 

1973

At the Nurturing Place ranch outside of Tucson, straight women and lesbians come together to discuss and develop their feminist values. It becomes a haven for lesbian feminists.

 

1973

The New York DMV bans “offensive” license plate combinations, including “DYK” and “FAG.”

 

1973

Lance Loud comes out on the PBS series An American Family. He’s the first person to come out on national television.

 

1974

After Dark magazine announces it will no longer allow the word “gay” to be included in any advertisements. Although popular with gay men for its art photographs of nude males at a time before there was gay porn, the magazine never admitted it was targeting a gay market. It used the subtle phrase, “The Magazine You Can Leave on Your Coffee Table When Your Mother Visits” to get the point across.

 

1975, Italy

The Vatican releases its “Declaration on Certain Questions Concerning Sexual Ethics” which includes a definition of homosexuality as “a serious depravity.”

 

1978

Anita Bryant speaks at the People’s Church in North York. Gays, lesbians and others protest outside.

 

1982

On the syndicated “Helen Gurley Brown Show,” the host (and Cosmopolitan editor) asks National Gay Task Force director Lucia Valeska, “Is it true that gay people are sexier than non-gay people?”

 

2008, Australia

Transgender rights advocate Zoe Belle dies. The Zoe Belle Gender Collective in Victoria is named in her memory.

  

JANUARY 16

 

1847, Canada

Eliza McCormick of Ontario is arrested after posing as a man and proposing marriage to a woman. A Hartford, CT newspaper dubs her “a female Lothario” for living as a man. McCormick had taken on a male persona for two to three years and during this time had at least six courtships, three to whom she proposed and was accepted. One of these women, a dressmaker, even made her own wedding dress. According to The Transgender Foundation of America’s (TFA) Archive in Houston, Texas, social shame was used to force McCormick to conform to typical gender norms after McCormick was jailed.

 

1887

George Kelly (16 January 1887 – 18 June 1974) was born in Philadelphia. He was an American playwright, screenwriter, director, and actor. He began his career in vaudeville as an actor and sketch writer. He became best known for his satiric comedies, including The Torch-Bearers (1922) and The Show-Off (1924). Kelly maintained a 55-year relationship with his lover William Ellsworth Weagley, Jr., (January 12, 1891 – November 25, 1975) until his death. Weagley was often referred to as Kelly’s valet. That Kelly was gay was a closely guarded secret and went unacknowledged by his family to the point of not inviting Weagley to his funeral but Weagley slipped in and sat quietly on a back seat.

 

1901

New York City politician Murray Hall (1841 – January 16, 1901) dies of cancer. He was a New York City bail bondsman and Tammany Hall politician. A poker-playing, whiskey-drinking man-about-town, after his death, the fact that he was biologically female is revealed by the coroner, astonishing and confounding his daughter and his associates. Born in Govan, Scotland as Mary Anderson, Hall lived as a man for nearly 25 years, able to work as a politician and vote in a time when women were denied such rights. At the time of his death, he resided with his second wife and their adopted daughter.

 

1929, UK

The first edition of the BBC’s “The Listener” is published and stays in print until 1991. Joe Randolph “J. R.” Ackerley (4 November 1896 – 4 June 1967), who was openly gay despite homosexuality being illegal at the time, was its literary editor from 1935 until 1959. Ackerley was a British writer and editor. Starting with the BBC the year after its founding in 1927, he was promoted to literary editor of The Listener, its weekly magazine, where he served for more than two decades. He published many emerging poets and writers who became influential in Great Britain. He was openly homosexual, a rarity in his time when homosexuality was forbidden by law and socially ostracized.

 

1933

Susan Sontag (January 16, 1933 – December 28, 2004) was an American writer, filmmaker, teacher, and political activist. She mostly wrote essays but also published novels; she published her first major work, the essay “Notes on ‘Camp’”, in 1964. Her best-known works include On Photography, Against Interpretation, Styles of Radical Will, The Way We Live Now, Illness as Metaphor, Regarding the Pain of Others,  In America. Sontag was active in writing and speaking about, or travelling to, areas of conflict, including during the Vietnam War and the Siege of Sarajevo. She wrote extensively about photography, culture and media, AIDS and illness, human rights, and communism and leftist ideology. Although her essays and speeches sometimes drew controversy, she has been described as “one of the most influential critics of her generation.”  Sontag lived with ‘H’, the writer and model Harriet Sohmers Zwerling whom she first met at U. C. Berkeley, from 1958 to 1959. Afterwards, Sontag was the partner of María Irene Fornés (born May 14, 1930), a Cuban-American avant garde playwright and director. Upon splitting with Fornes, she was involved with an Italian aristocrat, Carlotta Del Pezzo, and the German academic Eva Kollisch. Sontag was also romantically involved with the American artists Jasper Johns, Paul Thek, and writer Joseph Brodsky. During the early 1970s, Sontag lived with Nicole Stéphane, a Rothschild banking heiress turned movie actress, and, later, the choreographer Lucinda Childs. With Annie Leibovitz (born October 2, 1949), Sontag maintained a relationship stretching from the later 1980s until her final years.

1952

Julie Anne Peters (born January 16, 1952) is an American author of young adult fiction. Peters has published over 20 works, mostly novels, geared toward children and adolescents, many of which feature LGBT characters. In addition to the United States, Peters’s books have been published in numerous countries, including South Korea, China, Croatia, Germany, France, Italy, Indonesia, Turkey and Brazil. Her 2004 book Luna was the first young-adult novel with a transgender character to be released by a mainstream publisher.

 

1967

The Louisiana Supreme Court rules that the state’s statutory ban on “unnatural carnal copulation” applies to women engaged in oral sex with other women, making lesbian sexual contact is illegal.

 

1981

The first conference in the eastern U.S. for Black Lesbians opens in Brooklyn, New York. It was called “Becoming Visible: Survival for Black Lesbians. The first “Becoming Visible” conference in the country, though, was in San Francisco in October, 1980. The First Black Lesbian Conference was an outgrowth from the First National Third World Lesbian and Gay Conference by the National Coalition of Black Lesbians and Gays which was held in 1979, in Washington, D.C. Although there had been previous conferences supporting both lesbians and gays, the First Black Lesbian Conference was the first in the United States with the mission to hold a conference with the sole focus of supporting African-American lesbians. In the decades leading to the conference, it was not uncommon for other various organizations to push African-American lesbian women out, as a result of the lack of knowledge surrounding diversity of sexual orientation and race. Prominent activists in the African-American Lesbian Liberation Movement were keynote speakers for the First Black Lesbian Conference. These speakers included Andrea Ruth Canaan, Pat Norman, and Davis. The First Black Lesbian Conference was coordinated by eight individuals: Rani Eversley, Kenya Johnson, Rose Mitchell, Marie Renfro, Janna Rickerson, Elizabeth Summers, and Patricia Tilley.

 

JANUARY 17

 

 

1558, France – Cardinal Charles de Lorraine requests that the French Ambassador to Rome report scandals involving Cardinal Carlo Carafa (29 March 1517 – 6 March 1561) and Giovanni Carafa (died 5 March 1561), Duke of Paliano to Pope Paul VI. They had engaged in “that sin so loathsome in which there is no longer a distinction between the male and female sex.” They are first exiled then sentenced to death.

 

1886, UK

British novelist Ronald Firbank (17 January 1886 – 21 May 1926) is born in London. He was an innovative English novelist whose eight short novels, partly inspired by the London aesthetes of the 1890s, especially Oscar Wilde, consist largely of dialogue, with references to religion, social-climbing, and sexuality. His best novels are Caprice (1917) and Concerning the Eccentricities of Cardinal Pirelli (1926). Firbank was not without his own eccentricities. He wore two dressing gowns at once, painted his nails, lived in an apartment painted black, and owned only books bound in blue leather. Openly gay and chronically shy, he was an enthusiastic consumer of alcohol and cannabis. He died of lung disease in Rome at age 40. Susan Sontag named his novels as part of “the canon of camp” in her 1964 essay Notes on Camp.

 

1947

Dale McCormick (born January 17, 1947) is an American politician from the state of Maine who currently served on the city council of Augusta. McCormick was the first openly gay member of the Maine State Legislature, having been elected in 1990 to the first of three terms in the Maine Senate.

 

1971

Novelist Merle Miller (May 17, 1919 – June 10, 1986) comes out in a New York Times Magazine essay entitled “On Being Different: What it Means to Be a Homosexual.” He was an American writer, novelist, and author who is perhaps best remembered for his best-selling biography of Harry S. Truman, and as a pioneer in the movement. He later says, “I don’t see any great rush of people lining up to declare themselves as homosexual. Who is to say they should do so? I think, however, it is rather important. For one thing, you cannot demand your rights, civil or otherwise, if you are unwilling to say what you are.” The response of over 2,000 letters to the article (more than ever received by that newspaper) led to a book publication later that year.

 

1982

Austin, TX voters reject a ballot proposal by almost two-to-one that would have allowed housing discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation.

 

1999

Transgender Robert Eads (December 18, 1945 – January 17, 1999) dies of ovarian cancer. More than two dozen doctors in Georgia refused to treat Eads on the grounds that doing so would harm their practice. Eads’ story is documented in the award-winning documentary Southern Comfort. Eads transitioned from female to male later in life. He was diagnosed with ovarian in 1996, but as an example of the social stigma faced by gender variant individuals, more than a dozen doctors refused to medically treat him. When he was finally accepted for treatment by the Medical College of Georgia hospital in 1997, the cancer had already metastasized to other parts of the body, rendering any further treatments futile.

  

 

JANUARY 18

 

 

1726, Germany

The man who might have been the first gay king of America was born in Berlin. Prince Heinrich of Prussia was the brother of Frederick the Great who tried have him made King of America. The fledgling U.S. even considered it during the period ruing the Article of Confederation, but, by the time the fickle prince agreed, the equally fickle American public had opted for the Constitution and a republic.

 

1928

Betty Berzon (January 18, 1928 – January 24, 2006) is born. She was an American author and psychotherapist known for her work with the gay and lesbian communities. She was among the first psychotherapists to assist gay clients. After coming out as lesbian in 1968, she began providing therapy to gays and lesbians. In 1971, during a UCLA conference called “The Homosexual in America,” Berzon became the first psychotherapist in the country to come out as gay to the public. Also in 1971, she organized the Los Angeles Gay and Lesbian Community Services Center as well as an organization of gays and lesbians within the American Psychiatric Association (the Gay Psychological Association, now known as the Society for the Psychological Study of Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender Issues); the APA declassified homosexuality as a mental illness two years later. She is survived by Teresa DeCrescenzo, the president of Gay and Lesbian Adolescent Social Services, whom Berzon met in 1973 and married during a mass wedding ceremony at the 1993 March on Washington. In 2007, Ventura Place in Studio City was renamed Dr. Betty Berzon Place in her honor, making it the first street ever officially dedicated to a known lesbian in California. Also in 2007, the LGBT magazine The Advocate named Berzon one of 40 “heroes.” The Betty Berzon Papers (1928-2006) are at the ONE National Gay and Lesbian Archives.

 

1936

Rev. James Lewis Stoll (January 18, 1936 – December 8, 1994) is born. In 1969, he becomes the first ordained minister of an established denomination to come out as gay. He led the effort that convinced the Unitarian Universalist Association to pass their first gay rights resolution.

 

1958

Marci Lee Bowers (born January 18, 1958) is a U.S. gynecologist and surgeon who specializes in gender confirmation surgeries. Dr. Bowers’ practice is at the San Mateo Surgery Center in Burlingame, California. From 2003 to 2010, she practiced in Trinidad, Colorado, where she had studied under Stanley Biber before his retirement. Bowers married eleven years prior to her surgery and remains married to her female spouse.

 

1973

Viewers of An American Family, a 12-part television documentary shown on PBS about the lives of an “average” American family, the Louds, discover that son Lance (June 26, 1951 – December 22, 2001) is living as an openly gay man in New York City. Lance was an American television personality, magazine columnist and new wave rock-n-roll performer. He died of liver failure as a result of hepatitis C and a co-infection with HIV. He was 50 years old.

 

1975, Canada

The founding conference of the Coalition for Gay Rights in Ontario (CGRO) opens at Don Vale Community Center in Toronto.

 

1977

In Miami, Florida: Anita Bryant, a former beauty queen, launches a nationwide crusade against gay and lesbian rights in response to Dade County’s new municipal rights ordinance forbidding housing and employment discrimination against lesbians and gay men. Accusing lesbians and gay men of corrupting the nation’s youth, Bryant dubs her crusade the “Save Our Children” campaign. Miami-Dade County commissioners passed the ordinance with a vote of 5-3. Anita Bryant vowed to defeat the ordinance at the ballot box. On June 7, 1977, Bryant’s promise is fulfilled. Nearly 70 percent of voters opted to repeal the ordinance.

 

1996

The wedding of Ross’s ex-wife Carol and her girlfriend Susan airs on Friends. Candace Gingrich (born June 2, 1966) guest stars as the minister. Candace is an American LGBT rights activist at the Human Rights Campaign. She is the half-sister of former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich who is more than 20 years her senior.

 

1999, Zimbabwe

The first president of Zimbabwe, Canaan Sodindo Banana (5 March 1936 – 10 November 2003), already retired from the post, is convicted on 11 counts of sodomy. At the time, president Mugabe was scapegoating homosexuals as the reason for Zimbabwe’s ills. Banana serves six months of a 10-year sentence and moves to the UK for political asylum.

 

2004

The L Word premieres on Showtime. The L Word is an American/Canadian drama series portraying the lives of a group of lesbians and their friends, connections, family, and lovers in the trendy Greater Los Angeles, California city of West Hollywood. The series originally ran on Showtime from January 18, 2004 to March 8, 2009, and subsequently in syndication on Logo and through on-demand services. On July 11, 2017, it was announced a sequel season was in the works with Showtime. The show was created by executive producer Ilene Chaiken (born June 30, 1957). Chaiken has been married to LouAnne Brickhouse, a former executive at Disney, since 2013.

JANUARY 19

  

1901

The New York Times reports the story of FTM politician Murray Hall (1841 – January 16, 1901). Murray lives as a male for decades, married women twice, and was found to be female-bodied only after he died of breast cancer. Murray Hall was a New York City bail bondsman and Tammany Hall politician. The headline reads: “Murray Hall Fooled Many Shrewd Men – How for Years She Masqueraded in Male Attire – Had Married Two Women.”

 

1921

Patricia Highsmith (January 19, 1921 – February 4, 1995) was an American novelist and short story writer best known for her psychological thrillers, including her series of five novels based on the character of Tom Ripley. She wrote 22 novels and numerous short stories throughout her career, and her work has led to more than two dozen film adaptations. Her writing derived influence from existentialist literature, and questioned notions of identity and popular morality. She was dubbed “the poet of apprehension” by novelist Graham Greene. Her first novel, Strangers on a Train, has been adapted for stage and screen numerous times, notably by Alfred Hitchcock in 1951. Her 1955 novel The Talented Mr. Ripley has been adapted numerous times for film, theatre, and radio. Writing under the pseudonym “Claire Morgan,” Highsmith published the first lesbian novel with a happy ending, The Price of Salt, republished 38 years later as Carol under her own name and later adapted into a 2015 film. She was considered by some as “a lesbian with a misogynist streak.” As an adult, Patricia Highsmith’s sexual relationships were predominantly with women. In 1943, Highsmith had an affair with artist Allela Cornell who, despondent over unrequited love from another woman, committed suicide in 1946 by drinking nitric acid. Ann Smith, a painter and designer with a previous métier as a Vogue fashion model and Highsmith became involved. In early September, 1951, Highsmith began an affair with sociologist Ellen Blumenthal Hill, traveling back and forth to Europe to meet with her. Between 1959 and 1961, Highsmith was in love with author Marijane Meaker. Meaker wrote lesbian stories under the pseudonym “Ann Aldrich” and mystery/suspense fiction as “Vin Packer,” and later wrote young adult fiction as “M.E. Kerr.” An intensely private person, Highsmith was remarkably open and outspoken about her sexuality. She told Meaker: “the only difference between us and heterosexuals is what we do in bed.” Patricia Highsmith, aged 74, died on February 4, 1995.

  

1943

Janis Joplin (January 19, 1943 – October 4, 1970) is born in Port Arthur, Texas. She was an American rock singer and songwriter and one of the biggest female rock stars of her era. Bisexual, she did her best to sleep with as many people as she could in the 1960s. The official cause of death was a heroin overdose, possibly compounded by alcohol. On August 8, 2014, the United States Postal Service revealed a commemorative stamp honoring Janis Joplin as part of its Music Icons Forever Stamp series during a first-day-of-issue ceremony at the Outside Lands Music Festival a Golden Gate Park.

 

1974, Canada

A Lesbian Conference is organized by Gay Women’s Collective and held at the Montreal Women’s Center. The small group of women who take part agree to hold a major conference for lesbians in North America the following year.

 

1976

Campaigning for the Democratic presidential nomination, former Vice President Hubert Humphrey becomes one of the first nationally known politicians to endorse gay and lesbian rights.

 

 

JANUARY 20

  

1900, France

Actor Colin Clive (20 January 1900 – 25 June 1937) is born in Saint-Malo. Clive studied acting, and replaced Laurence Olivier in the stage play Journey’s End in 1927. James Whale (22 July 1889 – 29 May 1957)  was the director. The two struck up an intimate relationship, and Clive played the lead in Journey’s End when it moved to the Savoy Theater in London in 1928. Clive was embraced by Whale’s theatrical friends including actress Elsa Lanchester. He followed Whale to New York City and Whale facilitated the casting of Clive in the movie version of the play. Journey’s End (1930) was Clive’s first of 18 feature films. Clive appeared on Broadway in Overture (1930-31). When the play closed, he went to London and starred with Elsa Lanchester in The Stronger Sex. Clive is perhaps best known for playing the role of Dr. Henry Frankenstein in the James Whale directed Frankenstein (1931) and in the Bride of Frankenstein (1935) with his friend Elsa Lanchester. Though Clive was gay, he married actress Jeanne de Casalis in 1929, but the marriage was one of convenience, and they separated a short time later. Clive was a member of the Brit ex-patriot actors in Hollywood that included Lanchester, Boris Karloff and Charles Laughton, and remained close with Whale. The actor struggled with his identity and suffered from alcoholism and depression from an early age. His drinking became more and more problematic professionally. He often came to work drunk and passed out on the set. He was even fired from a starring role in a film when he suffered a breakdown. Clive’s final film was in 1937, The Woman I Love. Colin Clive died on June 25, 1937, of tuberculosis complicated by chronic alcoholism. He was 37 years old. Actress Mae Clarke, one of his leading ladies, said, “Colin was the handsomest man I ever saw and also the saddest.”

 

1944

Pat Parker (January 20, 1944 – June 19, 1989) was an African-American lesbian feminist poet and activist. Parker worked from 1978 to 1988 as the executive director of the Oakland Feminist Women’s Health Center. She was also involved in the Black Panther Movement. In 1979 she toured with the “Varied Voices of Black Women,” a group of poets and musicians that included Linda Tillery, Mary Watkins and  Gwen Avery. She founded the Black Women’s Revolutionary Council in 1980, and she contributed to the formation of the Women’s Press Collective, as well as being involved in wide-ranging activism in gay and lesbian organizing. Parker died on June 19, 1989, of breast cancer at the age of 45 in Oakland, California. The national lesbian-feminist community mourned her loss, and several things have been named after her, such as Pat Parker Place, a community center in Chicago. She was survived by her long-time partner, Marty Dunham, and her daughters Cassidy Brown and Anastasia Jean.

 

1960

U.S. Court of Federal Claims overturns the Other Than Honorable discharge is  sued by the Air Force to Fannie Mae Clackum (June 10, 1929 – August 16, 2014) for her alleged homosexuality. This is the first known instance of a homosexuality-related discharge being successfully fought, although the case turned on due process issues and did not affect the military’s policy of excluding homosexuals from service. Fannie Mae Clackum and Grace Garner served as U.S. Air Force Reservists in the late 1940s and early 1950s. When the Air Force suspected them of having a homosexual relationship, it arranged for a four-person overnight trip and motel stay. The U.S. Air Force Office of Special Investigations used those events as the basis of a series of interrogations in April, 1951. Clackum and Garner refused to accept the dishonorable discharges the Air Force offered them and demanded a court-martial. They were demoted from corporal to private, discharged in early 1952 and  spent eight years fighting their discharges claiming denial of due process when denied courts-martial and discharged administratively. They prevailed in 1960 when the court invalid-dated the discharges and awarded them their back military pay for the remainder of their enlistment periods.

 

1975

Terrance McNally ’s (born November 3, 1938-– March 24, 2020) comedy The Ritz opens in New York. Cast member Rita Moreno wins a Tony Award for her performance as singer Googie Gomez. McNally is an American playwright, librettist, and screenwriter. He was partnered with Thomas Kirdahy (born 1963), a Broadway producer and a former civil rights attorney for not-for-profit AIDS organizations, following a civil union ceremony in Vermont on December 20, 2003. They subsequently married in Washington, D.C. on April 6, 2010. In celebration of the Supreme Court’s decision to legalize same-sex marriage in all 50 states, they renewed their vows at New York City Hall with Mayor Bill de Blasio officiating on June 26, 2015.

 

1977

The Washington State Supreme Court upholds the firing of Wilson High School [Tacoma, WA] teacher James Gaylord for being gay after he joined The Dorian Society, a Seattle support group for gay men. The court agreed with a lower court that “A teacher’s efficiency is determined by his relationship with students, their parents, fellow teachers and school administrators. In all of these areas the continued employment of appellant after he became known as a homosexual would result, had he not been discharged, in confusion, suspicion, fear, expressed parental concern and pressure upon the administration from students, parents and fellow teachers, all of which would impair appellant’s efficiency as a teacher and injure the school.” Gaylord testified, “I quite frankly find it rather galling to have sat through the school board hearing and once again through this trial and hear administrators say that I’m a good teacher, I’ve been a very good teacher, and yet to be without a job, particularly when I see other people who still hold their jobs who haven’t read a book or turned out a new lesson plan or come up with anything creative in years.” In his dissent, Judge Dolliver said, “Historically, the private lives of teachers have been controlled by the school districts in many ways. There was a time when a teacher could be fired for a marriage, a divorce, or for the use of liquor or tobacco … Although the practice of firing teachers for these reasons has ceased, there are undoubtedly those who could speculate that any of these practices would have a detrimental effect on a teacher’s classroom efficiency as well as cause adverse community reaction. I find such speculation to be an unacceptable method for justifying the dismissal of a teacher who has a flawless record of excellence in his classroom performance.”

 

1979

Gloria Gaynor’s song “I Will Survive,” a gay anthem for the ages, begins its 17-week climb up Billboard’s Top 40.

 

1993

Melissa Etheredge (born May 29, 1961) comes out as lesbian at the Triangle Ball, an LGBT-focused celebration of President Bill Clinton’s inauguration. She is an American singer-songwriter, guitarist, and activist. In October 2004, Etheridge was diagnosed with breast cancer, and under-went surgery and chemotherapy. At the 2005 Grammy Awards, 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 had a long-term partnership with filmmaker Julie Cypher (born August 24, 1964). Their relationship received coverage in The Advocate when an interview with editor Judy Wieder was done in Amsterdam. “The Great Dyke Hope,” was released in July 1994. In 2002, Etheridge began dating actress Tammy Lynn Michaels (November 26, 1974). The two had a commitment ceremony on September 20, 2003. Etheridge married actress Linda Wallem (born May 29, 1961) on May 31, 2014 at San Ysidro Ranch in Montecito, California, two days after they both turned 53.

 

1995, Albania

Albania decriminalizes same-sex acts.

 

2009

The Lesbian and Gay Band Association is the first LGBT-represented contingent marching in a U.S. presidential inaugural parade. The parade on January 20th was in celebration of Barack Obama‘s incoming administration.

 

   

JANUARY 21

  

1885, Scotland

Artist Duncan Grant (21 January 1885 – 8 May 1978) was born in Rothiemurchus, Scotland. One of the last members of the Blooms-bury Group, he designed pottery, textiles, and theatre decor. Handsome and sexual, he was the toast of the gay artists group. Grant’s early affairs were exclusively homosexual. His lovers included his cousin, the writer Lytton Strachey (1 March 1880 – 21 January 1932), and the economist John Maynard Keynes (5 June 1883 – 21 April 1946), who at one time considered Grant the love of his life because of his good looks and the originality of his mind. In Grant’s later years, his lover, the poet Paul Roche (26 September 1916 – 30 October 2007) whom he had known since 1946, took care of him. Grant and Roche’s relationship was strong and lasted even during Roche’s marriage and five children he had by the late 1950s. Roche was made co-heir of Grant’s estate. Grant eventually died in Roche’s home in 1978.

 

1903

Police conduct the first recorded raid on a gay bathhouse, the Ariston Hotel Baths in New York City. Twenty-six men are arrested and 12 are brought to trial on sodomy charges. Seven men received sentences ranging from 4 to 20 years in prison

 

1966

Time Magazine publishes an unsigned two-page article, “The Homosexual in America” which includes statements such as “Homosexuality is a pathetic little second-rate substitute for reality, a pitiable flight from life… it deserves no encouragement . . . no pretense that it is anything but a pernicious sickness.” In tghat article was a reference about book The Gay Cookbook (1965) by Lou Rand Hogan (Louis Randall, 1910-1976). He also wrote The Gay Detective (1960).

 

1989

Jazz artist Billy Tipton (December 29, 1914 – January 21, 1989) dies at age 74 of an ulcer. He was an American jazz musician and bandleader. Born female, Tipton lived as male from age 19. He married five times and adopted three sons. Early in his career, Tipton presented as a male only professionally, continuing to present as a woman otherwise. He spent those early years living with a woman named Nan Earl Harrell, in a relationship that other musicians thought of as lesbian. The relationship ended in 1942.

  

2013

President Obama made the first mention of gay rights in a U.S. inaugural address. The text of President Obama’s Inauguration speech reads: “It is now our generation’s task to carry on what those pioneers began. [. . .] Our journey is not complete until our gay brothers and sisters are treated like anyone else under the law –- (applause) — for if we are truly created equal, then surely the love we commit to one another must be equal as well.”

 

2018

Helen Grace James (born 1928) grew up in Pennsylvania  and enlisted in the U. S. Air Force in 1952. She had a fine service record and was promoted to Airman 2nd Class. But when she was stationed at Roslyn Air Force Base on Long Island, Airman James came under investigation by the Office of Special Investigation. One night in the winter of 1955, during the, she sat with a friend in her car to eat sandwiches when an officer shined a blinding light into her eyes and took her into custody. She was later interrogated for hours. Investigators told Helen Grace James that if she didn’t sign a statement they put in front of her, they would tell her family she was gay. Helen Grace James signed. She was discharged as “undesirable.” Sixty years later Helen Grace James received her honorable discharge this week after decades of fighting the government for recognition. “I’m still trying to process it,” she told NBC. “It was both joy and shock. It was really true. It was really going to be an ‘honorable discharge. The Air Force recognizes me as a full person in the military,” she said, having done “my job helping to take care of the country I love.”

 

2019

Singer Kaye Ballard (November 20, 1925 – January 21, 2019) dies at the age of 93 in Rancho Mirage, CA. Ballard was born Catherine Gloria Balotta in Cleveland, Ohio. She is best known as a singer, actress and comedienne and starred as one of the meddling title characters on the 1960s NBC sitcom The Mothers-in-Law. Though little is known about her sexual orientation, Ballard never married and lived with one particular woman for 40 years.

 

JANUARY 22

  

1561, UK

Sir Francis Bacon (1561 – 1626) was born in London. He is best known for his philosophical works concerning the acquisition of knowledge: Novum Organum and The Advancement of Learning. His mother wrote a letter to him, which still survives, complaining about the long list of male “servants and envoys” who find their way to his bed. She refers to a gay Spanish envoy as “that bloody Perez and bed companion of my son.” We don’t know what she wrote to her other son, Roger, who was also gay.

 

1788, UK

George Gordon, Lord Byron (22 January 1788 – 19 April 1824), was born. He was an English nobleman, poet, peer, politician, and leading figure in the Romantic movement. He is regarded as one of the greatest British poets and remains widely read and influential. His memoir My Life and Adventures was burned being considered too scandalous for publication. A champion of freedom and an enemy of hypocrisy, he had a ravenous sexual appetite. His most enduring relationship was with John FitzGibbon, 2nd Earl of Clare. Scholars acknowledge a more or less important bisexual component in Byron’s very complex sentimental and sexual life.

 

1952

Jim Kepner (1923 – 15 November 1997) and members of Mattachine discussed the idea of publishing a magazine for the LGBT community. They named their magazine ONE Inc. and put out the first issue in January 1953. In 1956, ONE opened the Institute for Homophile Studies. Today, ONE is the National Gay and Lesbian Archives at the University of Southern California  and the largest repository of LGBT materials in the world. Kepner was a journalist, author, historian, archivist and leader in the gay rights movement.

 

1957, Germany

Cabaret singer and open lesbian Claire Waldoff (21 October 1884 – 22 January 1957) dies. She was a famous cabaret singer and entertainer in Berlin during the 1910s and 1920s, chiefly known for performing ironic songs in the Berlinish dialect and with lesbian undertones and themes. After WWII, she lost her savings in the West German monetary reform of 1948 and from 1951 relied on monetary support by the Senate of Berlin. In 1953, she wrote her autobiography. Waldoff died aged 72 after a stroke. She and her partner of 40 years, Olga von Roeder (June 12, 1886-July 11, 1963), share a final resting place in Stuttgart. They lived in Germany their entire lives. Claire Waldoff has a star in Walk of Fame of Cabaret, in Mainz.

 

1966

The first lesbian to appear on the cover of the lesbian magazine The Ladder with her face visible was Lilli Vincenz (born September 26, 1937). Lilli is a lesbian activist and the first lesbian member of the gay political activist effort, the Mattachine Society of Washington (MSW). She served as the editor of the organization’s newsletter and in 1969 along with Nancy Tucker created the independent newspaper, the Gay Blade, which later became the Washington Blade. She was the only self-identified lesbian to participate in the second White House picket with Frank Kameny (May 21, 1925 – October 11, 2011). In 2013 her papers, films and other memorabilia were donated to the Library of Congress.

 

1973

Abortion became legal in the U.S. as the Supreme Court announced its decision in the case of Roe vs. Wade, striking down local state laws restricting abortions in the first six months of pregnancy. In more recent rulings (1989 and 1992),the Court upheld the power of individual states to impose some restrictions.  In 1994, Norma Leah McCorvey (aka “Jane Roe”) (September 22, 1947 – February 18, 2017) wrote of her sexual orientation in her memoir I Am Roe: My Life, Roe V. Wade, and Freedom of Choice. For many years, she had lived quietly in Dallas with her long-time partner, Connie Gonzales. A few years later she claimed that she converted to Christianity and was no longer a lesbian.

 

1978

New York City Mayor Ed Koch issues Executive Order 50 which forbids discrimination against gay men and lesbians in municipal government.

 

1986

Carl Wittman (February 23, 1943 – January 22, 1986) dies. Carl was a member of the national council of Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) and later an activist for LGBT rights. He co-authored “An Interracial Movement of the Poor?” (1963) with Tom Hayden and wrote “A Gay Manifesto” (1970). Wittman was denied hospital treatment for AIDS and committed suicide by drug overdose at home in North Carolina.

 

  

JANUARY 23

  

1893

Franklin Pangborn (January 23, 1889 – July 20, 1958) is born in Newark, New Jersey. He was an American comedic character actor, famous for small but memorable roles with a comic flair. He appeared in many Preston Sturges movies as well as the W.C. Fields films International House, The Bank Dick, and Never Give a Sucker an Even Break. For his contributions to motion pictures, Pangborn received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame at 1500 Vine Street on February 8, 1960. Pang-born lived in Laguna Beach, California in a house with his mother and his “occasional boyfriend” according to William Mann in Behind the Screen. He died on July 20, 1958.

 

1974, Canada

The first lobbying effort on part of an alliance of Quebec gay groups to include sexual orientation in a proposed provincial human rights charter culminates in appearance before Justice Committee of Quebec’s National Assembly. It becomes the first appearance of the Canadian gay movement before a legislative body.

 

1976, Canada

Police raid the Club Baths of Montreal on the eve of the Montreal Olympics. Thirteen people are arrested and charged as found-ins in a common bawdyhouse, a charge usually reserved for prostitution in Canada.

 

2008, Azerbaijan, Iran

Hamzeh Chavi, 18, and Loghman Hamzehpour, 19, are arrested for homosexuality. They confessed that they were in love which prompted the court to charge them with “waging a war against God” and sodomy. An online petition garnered over 20,000 signatures calling for their release. It is likely they were executed. Lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender people in Iran face legal challenges not experienced by non-LGBT residents. While people can legally change their assigned gender, sexual activity between members of the same sex is illegal.

 

2009, France

Roger Karoutchi (born 26 August 1951), French Secretary of State, comes out and is the first openly gay member of the French government.

 

2018

Gay meteorologist Joel Taylor (1980-Jan. 23, 2018) who starred on the Discovery series “Storm Chasers” died on this day while on an Atlantis cruise, from a drug overdose. Atlantis Events is the world’s largest producer of all-gay cruises and resort vacations.

 

JANUARY 24

  

41, Rome

Roman Emperor Caligula (31 August AD 12 – 24 January AD 41) is assassinated at the Palatine Games by his own officers after a reign of only four years. He was noted for his madness and cruelty including arbitrary murder and arbitrary sex encounters with men, women, and animals, including forcing his officers into regular sex bouts.

 

76, Spain

Roman Emperor Hadrian (24 January 76 – 10 July 138) is born near Seville Spain. Hadrian built the famous wall on the Northern fringe of the empire, in Britain, and put down the last serious uprising by the Jews. When his lover Antonius (27 November, c. 111 – 30 October 130) mysteriously drowned in the Nile, Hadrian went into a deep despair then put all of his wealth into building memorials to his lover, even building a city in his name. It said that the beautiful Antonius committed suicide before old age destroyed his looks. He was 21.

 

1712, Germany

Frederick the Great (24 January 1712 – 17 August 1786) is born in Berlin. He was King of Prussia from 1740 until 1786, the longest reign of any Hohenzollern king. Before he became king, Frederick fled with his lover Hans von Katte (28 February 1704 – 6 November 1730) but the pair was captured and Frederick was forced to watch von Katte’s execution. On his father’s death, when Frederick became emperor, he went to the palace of Sans-Souci at Potsdam and came into his own. He excluded women and surrounded himself with young men.

 

1965, UK

Winston Churchill (1874-1965) dies. He had been Britain’s wartime prime minister whose courageous leadership and defiant rhetoric had fortified the English during their long struggle against Hitler’s Germany. “I have nothing to offer but blood, toil, tears, and sweat,” he stated upon becoming prime minister at the beginning of the war. He called Hitler’s Reich a “monstrous tyranny, never surpassed in the dark, lamentable catalogue of human crime.” Following the war, he coined the term “Iron Curtain” to describe the barrier between areas in Eastern Europe under Soviet control and the free West. In his biography of (25 January 1874 – 16 December 1965), Ted Morgan writes that Maugham once asked Churchill if it were true as Churchill’s mother had claimed, that the statesman had affairs with men in his youth. “Not true!” Churchill replied. “But, I once went to bed with a man to see what it was like.” That man was British musical-comedy star Ivor Novello (15 January 1893 – 6 March 1951)” And, what was it like?” Maugham asked. “Musical,” Churchill replied.

 

1975

The first international Lesbian Conference is held in Montreal. It was attended by more than 200 delegates from Canada and the US.

 

1975

Norman Lear’s TV adaptation of Lanford Wilson’s Hot l Baltimore premieres on ABC. Though it features a diverse cast of characters, including two gay men and a latent lesbian, it lasts only five months;

 

1983

Noted gay director George Cukor (July 7, 1899 – January 24, 1983) dies at age 83 in Los Angeles. He was an American film director. He mainly concentrated on comedies and literary adaptations. His career flourished at RKO when David O. Selznick, the studio’s Head of Production, assigned Cukor to direct several of RKO’s major films, including What Price Hollywood? (1932), A Bill of Divorcement (1932), Our Betters (1933), and Little Women (1933). When Selznick moved to MGM in 1933, Cukor followed and directed Dinner at Eight (1933) and David Copperfield (1935) for Selznick and Romeo and Juliet (1936) and Camille (1936) for Irving Thalberg. By the mid-1930s, Cukor was not only established as a prominent director but, socially, as an unofficial head of Hollywood’s gay subculture. In the late 1950s, Cukor became involved with a considerably younger man named George Towers.

 

1996, Singapore

Singapore grants gender recognition to post-operative transsexuals.

 

2012

Secretary of Education Arne Duncan released a video on YouTube commemorating GSA Day and endorsing GSA clubs in schools. Gay–Straight Alliances (GSA) are school/student-led or community based organizations, found primarily in North American high schools, colleges and universities, that are intended to provide a safe, supportive environment for lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer/questioning (LGBTQ) youth (or those who are perceived as such) and their straight allies.

  

JANUARY 25

  

1800

The Commonwealth of Virginia reduces the penalty for free peoples for committing buggery to one to ten years in prison, but did not reduce the death penalty for slaves.

 

1874, France

Somerset Maugham (25 January 1874 – 16 December 1965) is born in Paris. He was a British playwright, novelist and short story writer. He was among the most popular writers of his era and reputedly the highest-paid author during the 1930s. He was 21 when Oscar Wilde was put on trial. It was enough to make him “publicly straight.” He later said that his biggest mistake was “I tried to persuade myself that I was three-quarters normal and that only quarter of me was queer — whereas it was the other way around.” Maugham has been described as both bisexual and homosexual. In addition to his 13-year marriage to Sylvie Wellcome, he had affairs with other women in his youth. In later life Maugham was exclusively homosexual. Despite his wealth, his fame, and his secretary-companion Gerald Haxton (1892 – November 7, 1944), Maugham died a bitter man.

 

1882, UK

Writer Virginia Woolfe (25 January 1882 – 28 March 1941) is born in London. She is considered one of the foremost modernists of the 20th-century and a pioneer in the use of stream of consciousness as a narrative device. The most celebrated of the Bloomsbury set, her writing is cerebral, and subtle. Woolfe’s greatest love was probably Vita-Sackville-West (9 March 1892 – 2 June 1962), an English poet, novelist, and garden designer. The fruit of the affair is the novel Orlando, considered to be the most beautiful love poem in the English language.

 

 

1962

Aaron Fricke (born Jan. 25, 1962) is born in Providence, Rhode Island. He is a gay rights activist best known for the pivotal case in which he successfully sued Cumberland High School in Cumberland, Rhode Island, for not allowing him to bring his boyfriend to the senior prom. 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.

 

1996

Jonathan Larson (February 4, 1960 – January 25, 1996) dies. He was an American composer and playwright noted for exploring the social issues of multiculturalism, addiction, and homophobia in his work. Typical examples of his use of these themes are found in his works, Rent and tick, tick…BOOM! He received three posthumous Tony Awards and a posthumous Pulitzer Prize for Drama for the rock musical Rent. Larson died unexpectedly the morning of Rent‘s first preview performance Off Broad-way.

 

2005

Alameda County, California’s Board of Supervisors votes 4–0 to prohibit discrimination in public-sector employment, services and facilities based on gender identity

 

2011

The National Intimate Partner and Sexual Violence Survey 2010 Summary Report is released. It’s the first LGBTQ-specific report of its kind. Sexual minority respondents report intimate partner violence at rates at least equal to those of heterosexuals.

 

2012

Air Force Col. Ginger Wallace (born 1969), commander of the Air Force 517th Training Group and assistant commandant of the Defense Language Institute Foreign Language Center, becomes the first openly lesbian or gay member of the U.S. military to have a same-sex partner participate in the pinning ceremony tradition that had been reserved for spouses and family members. Her partner of over 10 years, Kathy Knopf, pinned her colonel wings. Knopf  participated in the ceremony after the lifting of the military’s gay ban known as “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell,” which came to an end on Sept. 20, 2011. The two sat in the First Lady’s gallery seats when President Obama delivered his State of the Union address in 2012.

  

JANUARY 26

  

1886

Serbian Nikola Tesla (10 July 1856 – 7 January 1943) is issued nearly 300 patents in the U.S. for his ground-breaking career focusing on electricity. He was an inventor, electrical engineer, mechanical engineer, physicist, and futurist who is best known for his contributions to the design of the modern alternating current (AC) electricity supply system. Likely asexual, Tesla never married, explaining that his chastity was very helpful to his scientific abilities. Tesla chose to never pursue or engage in any known relationships, instead finding all the stimulation he needed in his work.

 

1958

Comedian Ellen DeGeneres (born January 26, 1958) is born. DeGeneres is the first star of a television sitcom ever to come out (1977) to the public, an act many see as having dramatically improved the climate for LGBT actors, though she almost instantly lost her show. Her current success in daytime talk television was unforeseeable at the time and she had no reason to think she would not have to go back to stand-up comedy clubs forever at the time she risked her television career.  In 2008, she married her longtime girlfriend Portia de Rossi (born 31 January 1973), an Australian-American actress, model, and philanthropist.

 

1971

Look Magazine includes a gay couple from Minnesota, Jack Baker and Mike McConnell, as part of that week’s cover article on “The American Family.” Baker and McConnell are also noteworthy as they are the first same-sex couple in the U.S. to be granted a marriage license.

 

1996

Rent opens off Broadway in the New York Theater Workshop for a six-week run. The creator, Jonathan Larson (February 4, 1960 – January 25, 1996), died of AIDS just before the premiere. Rent is a rock musical with music, lyrics, and book by Larson, loosely based on Giacomo Puccini‘s opera La Boehme. It tells the story of a group of impoverished young artists struggling to survive and create a life in New York City‘s East Village in the thriving days of Bohemian Alphabet City, under the shadow of HIV/AIDS.

 

2011, Uganda

David Kato Kisule (c. 1964 – 26 January 2011), founding member of Sexual Minorities Uganda, is murdered. He was the founder and leader of the LGBT rights movement in Uganda where homosexuality is illegal and punishable by death. He was a Ugandan teacher, considered 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 lawsuit against a magazine which had published his name and photograph identifying him as gay and calling for him to be executed.

 

JANUARY 27

International Holocaust Remembrance Day

 

1832, UK

Lewis Carroll (27 January 1832 – 14 January 1898) is born in Baresbury, England, named Charles Lutwidge Dodgson. He was an English writer, mathematician, logician, Anglican deacon, and photographer. His most famous writings are Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, its sequel Through the Looking-Glass, which includes the poem “Jabberwocky“, and the poem The Hunting of the Snark – all examples of the genre of literary nonsense. He is noted for his facility at word play, logic and fantasy. Carroll never married and his sexual identity is the subject of exploration by many historians and biographers.

 

1911

Sarah Aldridge (January 27, 1911 in Rio de Janeiro – January 11, 2006), whose actual name was Anyda Marchant, is born. She was a writer of primarily lesbian popular fiction and a founding partner of Naiad Press in 1973 and A&M Books in 1995. Her first published work was a short story issued by The Ladder, the periodical released by the Daughters of Bilitis. The fourteen lesbian novels she wrote include All True Lovers, Tottie, A Flight of Angels, The Latecomer, and The Nesting Place. One of the first women to pass the bar in Washington D.C., she served at the World Bank as an attorney in the Legal Department for 18 years until retiring in 1972. She met legal secretary Muriel Inez Crawford (April 21, 1914 – June 7, 2006) in 1947 with whom she lived until Aldridge’s death. Aldridge died at her home in Rehoboth Beach, Delaware on January 11, 2006. She was 94. She was awarded the Golden Crown Literary Society Trailblazer Award posthumously in June 2007. Her first novel The Latecomer was reissued in 2009 in a 35th anniversary edition by A&M Books

 

1960

American Olympic diver Greg Louganis (born January 29, 1960) is born. He won gold medals at the 1984 and 1988 Summer Olympics, on both the springboard and platform. He is the only male and the second diver in Olympic history to sweep the diving events in consecutive Olympic Games. He has been called both “the greatest American diver” and “probably the greatest diver in history.” Louganis’ ancestry is Samoan and European-American. He overcame a stutter as a child and struggled with dyslexia, asthma and depression.  Six months before the 1988 Olympics, Louganis was diagnosed with HIV. Louganis publicly came out as gay in a pre-taped announcement shown at the opening ceremony of the 1994 Gay Games. He announced his engagement to his partner, paralegal Johnny Chaillot, in People magazine, in June 2013. The two were married on October 12, 2013.

 

1972

The New York City Council vetoes a proposed gay rights ordinance that would have prohibited discrimination against gay men and lesbians in employment, housing and public accommodations. The bill remained a hotly contested part of City Council politics for the next 14 years.

 

1994

Deborah Batts (April 13, 1947 – February 3, 2020) becomes the first African-American and openly lesbian or gay U.S. federal judge. On January 27, 1994, President Bill Clinton nominated Batts to a seat on the Southern District in New York. Batts was confirmed by the United States Senate on May 6, 1994, and received her commission on May 9, 1994. She took senior status on April 13, 2012.

 

1995

At a press conference in Washington, D.C., the House majority whip, Dick Armey (R-Tex.), refers to Representative Barney Frank (born March 31, 1940) (D-Mass.) as “Barney Fag.” He later apologizes, insisting it was a slip of the tongue.

 

2006

International Holocaust Remembrance Day is created by resolution of the United Nations General Assembly. On this annual day of commemoration, the UN urges every member state to honor the six million Jewish victims of the Holocaust and millions of other victims of Nazism

 

JANUARY 28

  

1833, UK

Charles George Gordon  (28 January 1833 – 26 January 1885) was born in Woolwich, England. A British military hero, he became a martyr at Khartoumn. The American historian Byron Farwell in his 1985 book Eminent Victorian Soldiers strongly implied that Gordon was gay, writing of Gordon’s “unwholesome” interest in the boys he took in to live with him at the Fort House and his fondness for the company of “handsome” young men. Always surrounded by boys and young men, he once told a friend he lacked the courage to act on his impulses because of his religious beliefs. He said he hoped to die in battle to prove his manhood. He got his wish. Gordon never married and is not known to have had a relationship with anyone of the opposite sex or of the same sex.

 

1873, France

The great French writer Gabrielle Sidonie Colette (28 January 1873 – 3 August 1954) is born in Saint-Sauveur-en-Puisaye. She was a French novelist nominated for the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1948. Her best known work, the novella Gigi (1944), was the basis for the film and Lerner and Loewe stage production of the same name. She was also a mime, an actress and a journalist. Her affairs with women are well documented as are her liaisons with men.

 

1890

Momma Rose was born Rose Thompson (August 31, 1890 – January 28, 1954). She was the mother of two famous performing daughters: burlesque artist Gypsy Rose Lee and actress and dancer June Havoc. She was the inspiration for Rose, the lead character of the musical Gypsy. Rose was running a boarding house in New York, referred to by sources of the time as a “seedy boarding house for lesbians” where she also lived. During this time, Gypsy paid a visit to the house and for some reason a young woman who has been described as Momma Rose’s lover at the time didn’t know Gypsy was her daughter. The woman mistakenly thought Gypsy was making a pass at Rose. Rose and the woman reportedly had a vicious fight and Momma Rose shot her.

 

1935, Iceland

Iceland becomes the first country to legalize abortion.

 

1976

The formation of Gay American Indians (GAI) is reported in the Advocate. Founding members are Barbara May Cameron (May 22, 1954 – Feb. 12, 2002) and Randy Burns. GAI is the first Native gay and lesbian organization in the U.S. and contributed to the rise of the Two Spirit movement. By the end of the twentieth century, GAI had grown to over 600 members and spawned other gay American Indian groups in San Diego, Toronto and New York City under the name “Two-Spirit People.” GAI has documented berdache roles in over 130 Native American tribes. Burns’ own Northern Paiute tradition has traditional berdache roles: tuva’sa (male) moroni noho (female).

 

1977, Canada

Charges are dismissed against 16 of 22 men arrested as found-ins in Club Ottawa.

 

1982

U.S. Defense Department declares gays and lesbians may not serve in the military, and all recruits will be asked about their sexual orientation.

 

1986

On January 28, 1986, the NASA shuttle orbiter mission STS-51-L and the tenth flight of space shuttle Challenger (OV-99) broke apart 73 seconds into its flight, killing all seven crew members, which consisted of five NASA astronauts including Judith Resnick and two payload specialists including teacher Christa McAuliffe.

 

JANUARY 29

  

1749, Denmark

Christian VII (29 January 1749 – 13 March 1808) is born in Copenhagen. He was rejected by his father as being effeminate. When he became king at 16, the nobles plied him with sex mates to curry favor. He married to produce an heir, but his queen became the mistress of the court doctor who then took control of the government and assigned Christian a lover. The lover locked him in a room. Christian was freed by the nobles, the queen was divorced, and the doctor and the lover were drawn and quartered.

 

1858

Edward Irenaeus Prime-Stevenson (January 29, 1858 – July 23, 1942) is born. He was an American author who used the pseudonym of Xavier Mayne. In 1908, he published the first American defense of homo-sexuality entitled The Intersexes: A History of Similisexualism as a Problem in Social Life.

 

1991

Minnesota governor Arne Carlson issues an executive order banning sexual orientation discrimination in the public sector.

 

2007, Israel

Israel registers its first same-sex couple. Binyamin and Avi Rose got married in Canada in 2006 then returned to Israel. The Israeli High Court ruled unanimously that couples married outside of Israel should be recognized by the state.

 

 

JANUARY 30

  

1946

A House Committee on Military Affairs panel reports on “Blue Discharges.” Blue discharges were commonly used against homosexuals and African-Americans in the military who hadn’t transgressed but commanders wanted them out of their ranks. Blue discharges were neither honorable nor dishonorable but the soldiers were denied G.I. Bill benefits by the Veterans Administration. Service members holding a blue discharge were subjected to discrimination in civilian life, and had difficulty finding work because employers were aware of the negative connotations of a blue discharge. Following intense criticism in the press, especially the Black press because of the high percentage of African Americans who received blue discharges, Congress discontinued blue discharges in 1947, and replaced it with two new classifications: general and undesirable.

 

 

1948, India

Indian activist and leader Mahatma Gandhi (2 October 1869 – 30 January 1948) was assassinated in New Delhi, India, by a religious fanatic. Gandhi had ended British rule in India through nonviolent resistance. “Non-violence is not a garment to be put on and off at will. Its seat is in the heart, and it must be an inseparable part of our very being,” he stated in 1926. His teachings were used during many of the gay demonstrations of the 1960s and 1970s. Today, the LGBT non-denominational group Soul-force uses Gandhi’s non-violence practices in its demonstrations against churches which discriminate against LGBT people.

 

JANUARY 31

 

1902

American actress Tallulah Bankhead (January 31, 1902 – December 12, 1968) was born in Huntsville, Alabama. She was an American actress of the stage and screen, known for her husky voice, outrageous personality, and devastating wit. Originating some of the 20th century theater’s preeminent roles in comedy and melodrama, she gained acclaim as an actress on both sides of the Atlantic. Bankhead became an icon of the tempestuous, flamboyant actress, and her unique voice and mannerisms are often subject to imitation and parody. In her personal life, Bankhead struggled with alcoholism and drug addiction, and was infamous for her uninhibited sex life. Rumors about Bankhead’s sex life have lingered for years, linked romantically with many notable female personalities of the day including Greta Garbo, Marlene Dietrich, Katherine Cornell, Eva Le Gallienne, Hope Williams, Beatrice Lillie, and Alla Nazimova, as well as writer Mercedes de Acosta and singer Billie Holiday. Actress Patsy Kelly confirmed she had a sexual relationship with Bankhead when she worked for her as a personal assistant. Bankhead never publicly described herself as being bisexual. She did, however, describe herself as “ambisextrous”.

 

1975

The American Association for the Advancement of Science approves a resolution denouncing discrimination against lesbians and gay men.

 

1989

In San Francisco, AIDS activists stage a protest on the Golden Gate Bridge, bringing morning rush-hour traffic to a standstill. Twenty-nine demonstrators are arrested.

 

2006

Washington State Governor Chris Gregoire signs into law a bill prohibiting discrimination based on sexual orientation. In a slightly convo-luted way, state law defines “sexual orientation” as including “gender identity.” Thus, according to the Washington State Human Rights Commission, RCW 49.60 “makes discrimination unlawful on the basis of race, color, national origin, creed, sex, sexual orientation, disability, familial status, marital status, and age. Discrimination based on sexual orientation, including gender identity, will be illegal in employment, housing, public accommodations [including schools], credit and lending, and insurance. All employers with eight or more employees, except tribes and religious non-profit institutions, are covered by the law.” It is still legal in 36 states to discriminate in employment or at school against someone perceived to be transgender. In 28 of those states it is still legal to discriminate against someone who is or perceived to be gay, lesbian, bisexual, or transgen-der.

 

2011

Zach Wahls (born July 15, 1991), the son of lesbian moms, addresses the Iowa House Judiciary Committee. His testimony brings national attention to the proposed constitutional ban on same sex marriage in Iowa and launches his role as a national activist. Zach was a candidate in the 2018 Iowa General Assembly election. He won the election and was sworn in on January 14, 2019.

 

2017, UK

Thousands of gay and bisexual men who were convicted of now-abolished sexual offenses in Britain have been posthumously pardoned under a new policing law, the Justice Ministry announced. The law, which received Royal Assent on this day, is named after British WWII codebreaker Alan Turing (23 June 1912 – 7 June 1954) who committed suicide following his conviction for gross indecency. He was posthumously pardoned by Queen Elizabeth in 2013. It also made it possible for living convicted gay men to seek pardons for offenses no longer on the statute book.

Published September 27, 2023

Thia Day in LGBTQ History – December

DECEMBER 1

World AIDS Day

December 1 is World AIDS Day, designated on December 1st every year since 1988. It is dedicated to raising awareness of the AIDS pandemic caused by the spread of HIV infection and mourning those who have died of the disease.

1642

The General Court of Connecticut adopted a list of 12 capital crimes, including “man lying with man.” The law was based on the Massachusetts Bay Colony’s Liberties of 1641 law which was based on the Old Testament proscription in Leviticus.

1715, UK

An Oxford University student notes in his diary that sodomy is very common there. “It is dangerous sending a young man who is beautiful to Oxford.”

1881

Washington makes sodomy a crime in the U.S.

1897, Germany

Magnus Hirschfeld (14 May 1868 – 14 May 1935) petitions the Reichstag to abolish Paragraph 175, the first salvo in a lifelong campaign for repeal. He was a German Jewish physician and sexologist educated primarily in Germany. He based his practice 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”.

1901, Mexico

El Universal, a Mexican newspaper, reports that police raided a party attended by single women. The article implied that the women were lesbians.

1927

A California appellate court upholds the sodomy conviction of a man after a private investigator hid under his bed to catch him in consensual sexual relations with his partner.

1952

New York Daily News front page: “Ex-GI becomes Blonde Beauty,” an article about Christine Jorgensen (May 30, 1926 – May 3, 1989), the first American recipient of sex-reassignment surgery.

1974

Gay activists Bernie Toal, Tom Morganti and Daniel Thaxton in Boston chose the purple rhinoceros as a symbol of the gay movement after conducting a media campaign. They selected this animal because, although it is sometimes misunderstood, it is docile and intelligent, but when a rhinoceros is angered, it fights ferociously. Lavender was used because it was a widely recognized gay pride color; the heart was added to represent love and the “common humanity of all people. The entire campaign was intended to bring gay issues further into public view. The rhino started being displayed in subways in Boston, but since the creators didn’t qualify for a public service advertising rate, the campaign soon became too expensive for the activists to handle. The ads disappeared, and the rhino never caught on anywhere else.

1974

The Greek letter lambda was officially declared the international symbol for gay and lesbian rights by the International Gay Rights Congress in Edinburgh, Scotland. The lambda was selected as a symbol by the Gay Activists Alliance of New York in 1970.

1975

Feminist writer Jill Johnston (May 17, 1929 – September 18, 2010) wrote an essay “Are Lesbians Gay?” in which she explained why she believed it was absurd for lesbians to align themselves with the gay movement. Johnston was an American feminist author and cultural critic who wrote Lesbian Nation in 1973 and was a longtime writer for the Village Voice. She was also a leader of the lesbian separatist movement of the 1970s. In 1993, in Denmark, she married Ingrid Nyeboe. The couple married again, in Connecticut, in 2009

1976

In Florida, Willard Allen was released from a mental hospital 26 years after he was ordered by a judge to be held there for having sex with another man. His doctors had been recommending his release for almost 20 years.

1980

Anita Bryant is interviewed by Ladies Home Journal and notes that she no longer feels as “militant” as she once did about gay rights.

1982

The U.S. House of Representatives votes to provide $2.6 million in funding to the Centers for Disease Control to fight AIDS.

1985

Cosmopolitan writes about AIDS noting, “If ever there was a homosexual plague, this disease is it.”

1985

Janelle Monáe Robinson (born December 1, 1985) is an American singer/songwriter, rapper, actress, and record producer. Monáe is signed to Atlantic Records as well as to her own imprint, the Wondaland Arts Society. Monáe has received eight Grammy Award nominations. Monáe won an MTV Video Music Award and the ASCAP Vanguard Award in 2010. Monáe was also honored with the Billboard Women in Music Rising Star Award in 2015 and the Trailblazer of the Year Award in 2018. In 2012, Monáe became a CoverGirl spokesperson. Boston City Council named October 16, 2013 “Janelle Monáe Day” in the city of Boston, Massachusetts, in recognition of her artistry and social leadership. Monáe has said she identifies with both bisexuality and pansexuality. On January 10, 2020, she tweeted the hashtag #IAmNonbinary.

1987, France

Author James Baldwin (August 2, 1924 – December 1, 1987) dies. He was an American writer and social critic. His essays, as collected in Notes of a Native Son (1955) explore palpable yet unspoken intricacies of racial, sexual, and class distinctions in Western societies, most notably in mid-20th-century America. An unfinished manuscript, Remember This House was expanded and adapted for cinema as the Academy Award-nominated documentary film I Am Not Your Negro. Baldwin’s novels and plays fictionalize fundamental personal questions and dilemmas amid complex social and psychological pressures thwarting the equitable integration not only of African Americans, but also of gay and bisexual men, while depicting some internalized obstacles to such individuals’ quests for acceptance. Such dynamics are prominent in Baldwin’s second novel Giovanni’s Room, written in 1956, well before the gay liberation movement. In 1949 Baldwin met and fell in love with Lucien Happersberger (September 20, 1932 – August 21, 2010), aged 17, though Happersberger’s marriage three years later left Baldwin distraught. Happersberger died on August 21, 2010, in Switzerland.

1988

World AIDS Day, sponsored by the World Health Organization, on December 1st every year is dedicated to raising awareness of the AIDS pandemic caused by the spread of HIV infection, and remembering those who have died of the disease. The United States was the epicenter of the AIDS epidemic of the 1980s, first noticed by doctors in young gay men in Los Angeles, New York City, and San Francisco in 1981. Since then, 1.2 million people live with HIV, more than half of which are unaware of their infection. HIV is a silent disease when first acquired, and this period of latency varies. The progression from HIV infection to AIDS varies from 5 to 12 years. In the past, most individuals succumbed to the disease in 1 to 2 years after diagnosis. However, since the introduction of potent anti-retroviral drug therapy and better prophylaxis against opportunistic infections, death rates have significantly declined. Government and health officials, non-governmental organizations and individuals around the world observe World AIDS Day with education on AIDS prevention and control.

1989

African American dancer and choreographer Alvin Ailey (January 5, 1931 – December 1, 1989) dies of complications from AIDS. He was a choreographer and activist who founded the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater in New York City. He is credited with popularizing modern dance and revolutionizing African American participation in 20th-century concert dance. In 2014, President Barack Obama selected Ailey to be a posthumous recipient of the Presidential Medal of Freedom.

1997

Keith Boykin (born August 28, 1965) of the National Black Lesbian Gay Leadership Forum participated in a meeting with President Bill Clinton to encourage greater inclusion of African American gays and lesbians in the President’s Initiative on Race.

1999

Lavender Country was an American country music band formed in 1972, whose self-titled 1973 album is the first known gay-themed album in country music history. Based in Seattle, the band consisted of lead singer and guitarist Patrick Haggerty, keyboardist Michael Carr, singer and fiddler Eve Morris and guitarist Robert Hammerstrom (the only heterosexual member).

2009, Europe

The Treaty of Lisbon and Charter of Fundamental Rights of the European Union are amended to include sexual orientation protection

 

DECEMBER 2

1899

American Samoa is obtained by the United States. It had no law against sodomy, making it the only “free” jurisdiction in the United States.

1909

The Montana Supreme Court upholds the right of the state to prosecute attempts to commit sodomy under the general Attempts statute.

1946

Fashion designer Gianni Versace (2 December 1946 – 15 July 1997) is born. He was an Italian fashion designer and founder of Versace, an international fashion house that produces accessories, fragrances, make-up, home furnishings, and clothes. He also designed costumes for theatre and films. As a friend of Eric Clapton, Diana, Princess of Wales, Naomi Campbell, Duran Duran, Kate Moss, Madonna, Elton John, Cher, Sting, Tupac, The Notorious B.I.G., and many other celebrities, he was one of the first designers to link fashion to the music world. He and his partner Antonio D’Amico were regulars on the international party scene. On July 15, 1997, Versace was shot and killed outside his Miami Beach mansion Casa Casuarina at the age of 50.

1954

Daniel Butler (born December 2, 1954) is an American actor and playwright known for his role as Bob “Bulldog” Briscoe on the TV series Frasier (1993-2004), Art in Roseanne (1991-1992), and for the voice of Mr. Simmons on the Nickelodeon tv show Hey Arnold (1997-2002), and later reprised the role in Hey Arnold!: The Jungle Movie (2017), and films roles in Enemy of the State (1998), and Sniper 2 (2001). Butler lives in Vermont and is married to producer Richard Waterhouse. He came out to his family when he was in his early 20s. He wrote a one-man show, The Only Thing Worse You Could Have Told Me which opened in Los Angeles in 1994 and also played in San Francisco and off-Broadway in New York. It was Butler’s public coming out. The play had ten characters “just processing what gay means.” He was nominated for the 1995 Drama Desk Award for Outstanding One-Person Show.

1963

Earl Kade, a prisoner at the Ohio Penitentiary is killed by another prisoner because he had solicited him. The grand jury refuses to indict the killer for murder, stating that the willful killing of a non-violent person from behind bars was justifiable if the person had solicited.

1964

In New York, four gay men and lesbians picketed a lecture by a psychoanalyst espousing the model of homosexuality as a mental illness. The demonstrators were given ten minutes to make a rebuttal.

1994

Transgender Terrie Ladwig, born in the Philippines, is killed. Her murder remains unsolved. She was married to Steven Ladwig.

1997

Republican David Cantania became the first openly gay person to be elected to the Washington D.C. city council.

1998

In India, over 200 right-wing activists, called Shiv Sainiks, stormed two theaters and forced managers to suspend the screening of Toronto director Deepa Mehta’s internationally acclaimed film Fire, the first Indian film to focus on a lesbian relationship.

2013

The first official day that LGBTQ couples in Hawaii (both residents as well as tourists) may marry in the Aloha State.

 

DECEMBER 3

1892

The Michigan Supreme Court rules that “emission” is required to complete an act of sodomy.

1946

Allan Berubi (December 3, 1946 – December 11, 2007) was an American historian, activist, independent scholar, self-described “community-based” researcher and college drop-out and award-winning author best known for his research and writing about homosexual members of the American Armed Forces during World War II. He also wrote essays about the intersection of class and race in gay culture, and about growing up in a poor, working-class family, his French-Canadian roots, and about his experience of anti-AIDS activism. Among Berubi’s published works was the 1990 book Coming Out Under Fire which examined the stories of gay men and women in the U.S. military between 1941 and 1945. The book used interviews with gay veterans, government documents, and other sources to discuss the social and political issues that faced over 9,000 servicemen and women during World War II. The book earned Berubi the Lambda Literary Award for outstanding Gay Men’s Nonfiction book of 1990 and was later adapted as a film in 1994 narrated by Salome Jens and Max Cole with a screenplay by Berubi and the film’s director Arthur Dong. The film received a Peabody Award for excellence in documentary media in 1995. Berubi received a MacArthur Fellowship (often called the “genius grant”) from the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation in 1996. He received a Rockefeller grant from the Center for Lesbian and Gay Studies in 1994 to research a book on the Marine Cooks and Stewards Union. He was working on this book at the time of his death.

1953, UK

Alarmed by the rise in prosecutions for male-male sex (including several much publicized cases involving prominent Britons), two MPs first raise the issue of sex law reform in the House of Com-mons.

1968

Rev. Troy Perry (born July 27, 1940), founder of the Universal Fellowship of Metropolitan Community Churches, officiated at his first same-sex holy union, in Los Angeles. He is the founder of the Metropolitan Community Church, a Christian denomination with a special affirming ministry with the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender communities, in Los Angeles on October 6, 1968. 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 over-turned by the State Supreme Court after five years in their favor.

1973

An Illinois appellate court upholds a public indecency conviction of a man for sex with another man in bushes where they could not be seen by others.

1973

As a result of the case Society for Individual Rights v. Hampton, proceedings were held to determine under what circumstances sexual orientation may be considered in determining whether a person is suitable for employment in the U.S. Government.

1977

The episode of Maude entitled “The Gay Bar” airs on this day. Uptight neighbor Arthur has launched a crusade to close a nearby gay bar, so Maude convinces him he should visit it.

1990, UK

OutRage, a London direct-action group, staged a march from Coleherne pub to Earl’s Court Police Station to protest police harassment of gays in Earl’s Court.

1991, UK

OutRage held a zap of the Church of England in response to a press release condemning homosexuality.

1996

Hawaii’s Judge Chang rules that the state does not have a legal right to deprive same-sex couples of the right to marry, making Hawaii the first state to recognize that gay and lesbian couples are entitled to the same privileges as heterosexual married couples.

2012

Thai airlines recruits transgender flight attendants, called ladyboys, aiming at a unique identity to set itself apart fromcompetitors as it sets out for the skies.

 

DECEMBER 4

1947

Yolanda Retter (December 4, 1947 – August 18, 2007) was an American lesbian librarian, archivist, scholar, and activist in Los Angeles. Retter attended Pitzer College in Claremont, California and graduated in 1970 with a degree in sociology. In the 1980s she completed masters degrees in library science (1983) and social work (1987) from UCLA and in 1996 she received her Ph.D. in American Studies from the University of New Mexico, Albuquerque. Before becoming a librarian and archivist, Retter held a variety of jobs, some as a volunteer. She worked in prison and parole programs, as a director of a rape hot-line, and original publisher of the Los Angeles Women’s Yellow Pages. She then became the founding archivist of the Lesbian Legacy Collection at the ONE Archives and volunteered at the June Ma-zer Lesbian Archives. From 2003 to the time of her death, Retter served as the head librarian and archivist of the Chicano Studies Research Center at UCLA. She died after a short battle with cancer, surrounded by women she chose including her partner of thirteen years Leslie Golden Stampler.

1976, Canada

In Vancouver, Canadian University Press approves a national boycott of CBC for refusing to air public service announcement for a Halifax gay group.

1981

James Webber is the first known victim of serial killer David Bullock. Most of Bullock’s victims were men he brought home for sex.

1998

A vigil is held for Rita Hester (30 November 1963 – 28 November 1998), an African American transgender woman who was slain in Allston, Massachusetts on November 28th. The vigil from her death goes on to become the Transgender Day of Remembrance. In response to her murder, an outpouring of grief and anger led to a candlelight vigil held the following Friday (December 4) in which about 250 people participated. The community struggle to see Rita’s life and identity covered respectfully by local papers, including the Boston Herald and Bay Windows as chronicled by Nancy Nangeroni. Her death also inspired the “Remembering Our Dead” web project and the Transgender Day of Remembrance which Gwendolyn Ann Smith founded in 1999.

2013, Luxembourg

Openly gay Xavier Bettel (born 3 March 1973) is sworn in as Luxembourg’s Prime Minister. He is a Luxembourgish politician and lawyer, serving as the 24th Prime Minister of Luxembourg since 4 December 2013 after succeeding Jean-Claude Juncker. He has previously served as Mayor of Luxembourg City, member of the Chamber of Deputies and member of the Luxembourg City communal council. Bettel is a member of the Democratic Party. Bettel is Luxembourg’s first openly gay Prime Minister and, worldwide, the third openly gay head of government following Iceland’s Prime Minister Jóhanna Sigurðardóttir (born 4 October 1942) (2009–2013) and Belgium’s Prime Minister Elio Di Rupo (born 18 July 1951) (2011–2014). As of 2017, he is one of three openly gay world leaders in office, the others being Leo Varadkar (born 18 January 1979), the Taoiseach of Ireland; and Ana Brnabić (born 28 September 1975), the Prime Minister of Serbia. Bettel has been in a partnership with Gauthier Destenay since March 2010. They married on 15 May 2015; same-sex marriage law reforms had come into effect on 1 January 2015, after passing in June 2014.

2020

Martin Jenkins was sworn in as the first openly gay Justice of the California Supreme Court on this day. Martin Joseph Jenkins (born November 12, 1953) is an American attorney and jurist serving as an Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of California. He was previously a Justice of the California Court of Appeal for the First District, located in San Francisco, and a former United States District Judge of the United States District Court for the Northern District of California.

 

DECEMBER 5

1640, Ireland

John Atherton (1598-5 December 1640) is hanged for sodomy. He is the second man to be hanged for the “vice of buggery” in Ireland. He was the Anglican Bishop of Waterford and Lismore in the Church of Ireland. He and John Childe (his steward and tithe proctor) were both tried and executed for buggery in 1640.

1642

A Massachusetts Bay servant is sentenced to be whipped for “unseemly practices” with another woman in the first documented example of legal prosecution in North America for same-sex relations between women.

1932

African American rock artist Little Richard (December 5, 1932-May 9, 2020) is born. Richard Wayne Penniman, known as Little Richard, is an American musician, singer, actor, comedian and songwriter. An influential figure in popular music and culture for seven decades, Little Richard’s most celebrated work dates from the mid-1950s, when his dynamic music and charismatic showmanship laid the foundation for rock and roll. In 1995, Little Richard told Penthouse that he always knew he was gay, saying “I’ve been gay all my life.” He said in 1984 that he played just with girls as a child and was subjected to homophobic jokes and ridicule because of his manner of walk and talk. His father brutally punished him whenever he caught his son wearing his mother’s makeup and clothing. The singer claimed to have been sexually involved with both sexes as a teenager. Because of his effeminate mannerisms, his father kicked him out of their family home at 15. In 1985, on The South Bank Show, Penniman explained, “my daddy put me out of the house. He said he wanted seven boys, and I had spoiled it because I was gay.” In October 2017, he denounced homosexuality in an interview with Three Angels Broadcasting Network, calling homosexual and transgender identity “unnatural affection” that goes against “the way God wants you to live.” He died in 2020 from bone cancer.

1979

A TV critic reviewed the play Bent, saying that the play about two homosexuals who died in a concentration camp had “nothing at all to do with the real tragedy of the holocaust,” and called the play’s message insignificant. Bent is a 1979 play by Martin Sherman. It revolves around the persecution of gays in Nazi Germany, and takes place during and after the Night of the Long Knives. The title of the play refers to the slang word “bent” used in some European countries to refer to homosexuals. The play starred Ian McKellen in its original 1979 West End production, and Richard Gere in its original 1980 Broadway production. In 1989, Sean Mathias directed a revival of the play, performed as a one-night benefit for Stonewall, featuring Ian McKellen, Richard E Grant, Ian Charleson, and Ralph Fiennes.

1984

Berkeley, California becomes the first city in the United States to extend spousal benefits to “domestic partners” of city employees.

1998

The bisexual pride flag, created by Michael Page, is unveiled.  He wanted to give the bisexual community its own symbol comparable to the gay pride flag of the larger LGBT community. His aim was to increase the visibility of bisexuals both among society as a whole and within the LGBT comminity. The first bisexual pride flag was unveiled at the BiCafe’s first anniversary party on December 5, 1998 after Page was inspired by his work with BiNet USA.

2005

A New Jersey court rules that school districts have the same responsibility to stop harassment of students that employers have to prevent harassment of employees, ending, at least in NJ, a tougher standard of proof for student complainants than for adults in the workplace.

 

DECEMBER 6

1993

The Massachusetts State Senate approves a bill to protect lesbian and gay public school students from discrimination.

1994

Delegates of the American Medical Association declare their opposition to medical treatments administered to “cure” lesbians or gay men, urging “nonjudgmental recognition of sexual orientation.”

1995

President Bill Clinton hosts the first White House Conference on AIDS, 14 years after the epidemic began. President Clinton’s active support for HIV and AIDS programs reversed the neglect by Presidents Ronald Reagan and George H. W. Bush. By the end of 1995, more than 500,000 people in the U.S. had been diagnosed with AIDS. Partly as a result of a vigorous federal research effort that began after Reagan and Bush left office, the number of new AIDS/HIV infections and deaths every year declined dramatically.

1998

The Sacramento Bee reports that for the past four years California Social Services director Eloise Anderson had refused an order from Gov. Pete Wilson to withdraw a directive she issued which allowed gay and lesbian couples to adopt children by saying that a stable home with good financial and emotional support is important for an adoptive child, regardless of the marital status of the parents. During her time in California, the Los Angeles Times referred to Anderson as “The Queen of Responsibility” and “an outspoken champion of welfare reform.”

1998

The Los Angeles Times published an editorial by Robert Scheer on conservative Michael Huffington’s (born September 3, 1947) recent decision to come out of the closet, saying it should come as no surprise that Republicans, even conservative members of the party, are gay. Huffington is an American politician, LGBT activist, and film producer. He was a member of the Republican Party and a congressman for one term, 1993–1995, from California. Huffington was married to Arianna Huffington, the Greek-born co-founder of The Huffington Post, from 1986 to 1997.

2001, Israel

The film Trembling Before G-d, an American made documentary about lesbian and gay Orthodox Jews trying to reconcile their sexuality with their faith, is released in Israel. The film premiered at Sundance earlier in the year. It was directed by Sandi Simcha DuBowski (Sept. 16, 1970), an American who wanted to compare Orthodox Jewish attitudes to homosexuality with his own upbringing as a gay Conservative Jew. Dubowski is also the producer of Parvez Sharma’s documentary A Jihad for Love (2007) which documents the lives of gay and lesbian Muslims. The U.S.-based OUT Magazine named Sharma, one of the OUT 100 twice for 2008 and 2015, “one of the 100 gay men and women who have helped shape our culture during the year.” In 2016 a year after Larry Kramer, Sharma won the Monette Horowitz award given to individuals and organizations for their significant contributions toward eradicating homophobia.

2011, Belgium

King Albert II names Elio Di Rupo (born 18 July 1951) Prime Minister of Belgium and, subsequently, the second openly gay male head of government. He served from December 6, 2011 to October 11, 2014. From France, he was Belgium’s first Prime Minister of non-Belgian descent.

 

DECEMBER 7

1682

The Province of Pennsylvania, under a strong Quaker influence, repeals the capital sodomy law of 1676. The new law makes a first offence punishable by whipping, loss of 1/3 of one’s property, and six months hard labor. A second offence is punishable by life imprisonment. The revision makes the province one of only two where a man could not be put to death for sodomy at the time. In West New Jersey, also a Quaker colony, no sodomy law is in effect.

1873

Author Willa Cather (December 7, 1873 – April 24, 1947) is born. She was an American writer who achieved recognition for her novels of frontier life on the Great Plains, including O Pioneers! (1913), The Song of the Lark (1915), and My Ántonia(1918). In 1923 she was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for One of Ours (1922), a novel set during World War I. Cather wrote a number of short stories, including Tommy, the Unsentimental, about a Nebraskan girl with a boy’s name, who looks like a boy and saves her father’s bank business. Janis P. Stout calls this story one of several Cather works that “demonstrate the speciousness of rigid gender roles and give favorable treatment to characters who undermine conventions. As a student at the University of Nebraska in the early 1890s, Cather sometimes used the masculine nickname “William” and wore masculine clothing. Throughout Cather’s adult life, her most significant friendships were with women. These included her college friend Louise Pound; the Pittsburgh socialite Isabelle McClung, with whom Cather traveled to Europe and at whose Toronto home she stayed for prolonged visits; the opera singer Olive Fremstad; the pianist Yaltah Menuhin; and most notably, the editor Edith Lewis, with whom Cather lived the last 39 years of her life.

1775

Franciscan Chaplain Father Pedro Font describes two-spirit people among the Yuma in his diary entry: “Among the women I saw some men dressed like women with whom they go about regularly. The commander called them amaricados because the Yuma call effeminate men Americas.”

1946, Amsterdam

Said to be the oldest surviving organization for LGBT rights, Netherlands’ Center for Culture and Leisure (COC) was established in Amsterdam in 1946. The goals of the COC were twofold: to con-tribute to social emancipation, and to offer culture and recreation for gay men and lesbians. The social emancipation focused on getting article 248-bis in the Wetboek van Strafrecht, the main code for Dutch criminal law, revoked. Originally named the Shakespeare club, the founders were gay men who were active with Levensrecht (Right to Live), a magazine founded a few months before the German invasion in 1940, and re-appeared after the war. The Shakespeare club was renamed in 1949 to Cultuuren Ontspanningscentrum (C.O.C.). From its beginning in 1946 until 1962, the chair was Bob Angelo, a pseudonym of Niek Engelschman (November 12, 1913 – October 27, 1988).

1989, Turkey

Journalist Ibrehim Eren (born 1964) is imprisoned for protesting police harassment of gays. He was held for four months. In Sep-tember, 2017, he was appointed the 17th director general of public broadcaster Turkish Radio and Television (TRT).

1993

In Texas, Williamson County commissioners reversed a decision to deny Apple Computer tax breaks for a new facility in the county because of its policy of extending benefits to employees’ same-sex domestic partners. Several of the commissioners, however, continued to express condemnation of “the gay lifestyle.”

1997

Speaking before a Georgetown University audience of about 300, three Jesuits presented their different perspectives on how the church should regard and spiritually counsel gay men and lesbians. Cardinal James A Hickey objected to the debate because he felt that the conservative view on the wrongness of homosexuality would not get a fair hearing.

1999

The school board in Orange, California votes 7-0 to reject an application from students at El Modena High School to form a gay/straight alliance.

2015, Venezuela

Transgender woman Tamara Adrian (born 20 February 1954) is elected to the National Assembly. Prior to her election to the Venezuelan legislature, Adrián worked as a lawyer and LGBT activist, including serving on the board of the International Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Trans and Intersex Association and the organizing committee of the International Day Against Homophobia, Transphobia and Biphobia. She was forced to register her candidacy under her male birth name, as Venezuelan law does not currently permit a transgender person to legally change their name.

 

DECEMBER 8

1626, Sweden

Christina, Queen of Sweden (8 December] 1626 – 19 April 1689) is born in Stockholm. Because she is so hairy and has a deep voice, she is mistaken for a boy from birth. As it turns out, from a young age, Christina wanted to be a boy. She was the only surviving legitimate child of King Gustav II Adolph and his wife Maria Eleonora of Brandenburg. At the age of six, Christina succeeded her father on the throne upon his death at the Battle of Lützen but began ruling when she reached the age of 18. Her closest female friend was Ebba Sparre with whom she shared “a longtime intimate companion-ship.” When Christina left Sweden, she continued to write passionate letters to Sparre, in which she told her that she would always love her.

1937

Charley Shively (Dec. 8, 1937 – Oct. 6, 2017) was a pioneering gay liberation activist on the scale, if not with the name recognition, of Harvey Milk. He was a journalist, a poet, and a founding editor of one of the most important gay newspapers in the 1970s. As the founder of Fag Rag, a magazine that unapologetically reversed the stigma of homosexuality, Shively wrote about how gay men imposed heterosexual standards onto their relationships and sex lives. Fag Rag was a Boston based gay newspaper, published from 1971 until the early 1980s. Boston’s gay writers including Larry Martin, Charley Shively and John Mitzel formed the Fag Rag Collective and started the publication. In its early years the subscription list was between 400 and 500 with an additional 4,500 copies sold on newsstands and bookstores or given away. During its run, Fag Rag published interviews with and writing by William S. Burroughs, Allen Ginsberg, Christopher Isherwood, John Wieners, Allen Young, Gerard Malanga, John Rechy, Ned Rorem, and Gore Vidal.

1981

The New York City Gay Men’s Chorus becomes the first openly gay musical group to play at Carnegie Hall with their Christmas concert.

1982

The University of South Carolina Gay Student Association sues USC for official recognition by filing a complaint for civil rights violation in the US District Court. A federal judge rules in favor of the GSA and they are granted official recognition.

1987, UK

Conservative Member of Parliament David Wilshire introduced Clause 28 as an amendment to the Local Government Bill which made it illegal for local authorities to “promote homosexuality or promote the teaching in any maintained school of the acceptability of homosexuality.”

1996, UK

In England, South Yorkshire Police placed a full-page ad in Gay Times as part of a recruitment campaign.

2004, New Zealand

The New Zealand Parliament approves civil unions with a vote of 65-55. Full marriage equality passed in 2013.

 

DECEMBER 9

1975

A six-inch headline on page one of the Minneapolis Star reads “State Sen. Allen Spear Declares He’s Homosexual.” Spear (June 24, 1937-October 11, 2008) said he was inspired to come out by the election of Elaine Nobel (born January 22, 1944), a lesbian, to the Massachusetts legislature. Spear was an American politician and educator from Minnesota who served almost thirty years in the Minnesota Senate including nearly a decade as President of the Senate.

1975

Reporter Lynn Rosellini of the Washington Star begins a series of articles about homosexuality in sports which said “some of the biggest names in football are homosexual or bisexual.” Washington Redskins linebacker Dave Kopay (born June 28, 1942) agrees to come out in the series.

1978

Metro Toronto police raid the Barracks steam bath and charge twenty-three men as found-ins, five as keepers of a common bawdy house. It becomes the first raid in Toronto to generate substantial resistance.

1985

The New York City Department of Health closes the New St. Marks Baths. The New St. Marks Baths was a gay bathhouse at 6 St. Marks Place in the East Village of Manhattan from 1979 to 1985. It claimed to be the largest gay bath house in the world. The Saint Marks Baths opened in the location in 1913. Through the 1950s it operated as a Turkish bath catering to immigrants on New York’s Lower East Side. In the 1950s it began to have a homosexual clientele at night. In the 1960s it became exclusively gay. On December 9, 1985 the city began the process of closing the baths.

1997

A federal appeals court in San Francisco refused to reinstate Air Force officer Lt. Col. Kenneth L. Jackson who was discharged for homosexuality in 1989. He was 11 months short of his 20-year pension. He argued that the evidence against him should not have been turned over to the military by police who were searching his home because his roommate was under suspicion in a case. The case was Kenneth L. Jackson, Jr., Plaintiff-appellant, v. United States Department of the Air Force, Sheila E.widnall, Secretary of the Air Force, Williamperry, Secretary of Defense, Defendants-appellees, 132 F.3d 39 (9th Cir. 1997)

1998

Republican Mecklenburg Country Superior Court Judge Ray Warren (born 1957) acknowledges that he’s gay in a press conference. He becomes the first Republican elected official in North Carolina who is openly gay. He is now a Democrat.

2005

Brokeback Mountain is released to limited audiences in New York, Los Angeles and San Francisco. The film, a neo-American western romantic drama directed by Ang Lee, focuses on a love story be-tween two men that stretches over decades, and survives in a time and place in which the two men’s feelings for each other were utterly taboo. The film stars Jake Gyllenhaal and Heath Ledger, and goes on to win several Golden Globe Awards and Academy Awards.

2013, Brazil

Luma Nogueira de Andrade, the first transgender individual to receive a doctorate degree in Brazil, is inducted as a professor at the University for International Integration of the Afro-Brazilian Lusophony, becoming the first transgender university professor in Brazil.

2014, Gambia

The government sponsors an anti-gay march that went from the National Assembly to the State House. Gambia president Alhaji Yahya Jammeh attended.

 

DECEMBER 10

1725, UK

Margaret Clap was indicted for keeping a disorderly house—a Molly House—in which she procured and encouraged persons to commit sodomy. Her house in the City of London had been under surveillance since 10 December 1725. Clap may be characterized as the first “fag hag” to be documented in British history. She seems to have run her molly house more for pleasure than for profit. It was one of the most popular molly houses in London. Her house was probably a private residence rather than a public inn or tavern. Margaret Clap was found guilty as charged and was sentenced to stand in the pillory in Smithfield market, to pay a fine of 20 marks, and to two years’ imprisonment. During her punishment, she fell off the pillory once and fainted several times. It is not known what became of her, if indeed she survived prison.

1792

The Commonwealth of Virginia criminalizes buggery, including female same -sex intercourse, with the death penalty.

1909

Hermes Pan (December 10, 1909-September 19, 1990) was an American dancer and choreographer, principally remembered as Fred Astaire‘s choreographic collaborator on the famous 1930s movie musicals starring Astaire and Ginger Rogers. It was well known in the movie industry that Pan was gay. This information did not become public and the identity of most of his partners is not known.

1924

The Society for Human Rights was founded by Henry Gerber  (June 29, 1892 – December 31, 1972) in Chicago. It was among the earliest organizations for gays in the United States and would end less than a year later after police harassment resulted in Gerber being fired, financially crippling the organization. Henry Gerber, a German-born immigrant, receives a charter from the state of Illinois for a nonprofit corporation named the Society for Human Rights. Though the organization was intended to be an American equivalent of contemporary German LGBTQ emancipation groups, Gerber is arrested for creating an “immoral” organization and the society falls apart. Gerber was an early homosexual rights activist in the United States. Inspired by the work of Germany’s Magnus Hirschfeld  (14 May 1868 – 14 May 1935) and his Scientific-Humanitarian Committee, Gerber founded the Society for Human Rights (SHR) in 1924, the nation’s first known homosexual organization, and Friendship and Freedom, the first known American homosexual publication. SHR was short-lived, as police arrested several of its members shortly after it incorporated. Although embittered by his experiences, Gerber maintained contacts within the fledgling homophile movement of the 1950s and continued to agitate for the rights of homosexuals. Gerber has been repeatedly recognized for his contributions to the LGBT movement and was posthumously inducted into the Chicago Gay and Lesbian Hall of Fame in 1992

1931, Sweden

Jane Addams (September 6, 1860 – May 21, 1935), leader in the women’s suffrage and world peace movements, is presented with the Nobel Peace Prize. She is known as the “mother” of social work, and was a pioneer American settlement activist/reformer, social worker, public philosopher, sociologist, author, and leader in women’s suffrage and world peace. 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. Her partner was Mary Rozet Smith (1868-1934), a Chicago-born US philanthropist who was one of the trustees and benefactors of Hull House.

1948

The United Nations adopts the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Among its key architects was former first lady and human rights activist Eleanor Roosevelt (October 11, 1884 – November 7, 1962). Roosevelt had lifelong emotional support for her human rights work from her husband, Franklin, as well as from her beloved companion, Lorena A. Hickok (March 7, 1893 – May 1, 1968). Besides Roosevelt of the United States, the other major players in drafting this amazing declaration were René Cassin (France), Charles Malik (Lebanon), Peng Chun Chang (China), Hernan Santa Cruz (Chile), Alexandre Bogomolov/Alexei Pavlov, (Soviet Union), Lord Dukeston/Geoffrey Wilson (United Kingdom) William Hodgson (Australia), and John Humphrey (Canada).

1973

The Nobel Prize for Literature was awarded to gay Australian novelist Patrick White (28 May 1912 – 30 September 1990). He is the first openly gay writer to win the Nobel Prize for Literature. He is widely regarded as one of the most important English-language novelists of the 20th century.

1981

R.N. Bobbi Campbell (January 28, 1952 – August 15, 1984) becomes the first person with AIDS to go public in a San Francisco newspaper. He was the 16th person in San Francisco to be diag-nosed with Kaposi Sarcoma and would become known as the K.S. Poster Boy.

1989

In New York City, 5,000 protest the Roman Catholic Church’s opposition to Safe Sex education and the promotion of condom use.

1990, Ireland

The Irish Prime Minister announces plans to legalize same-sex acts between consenting adults.

1996

Valentina Sampaio (born December 10, 1996) was hired by Victoria’s Secret as their first openly transgender model in August 2019. Valentina Sampaio is a Brazilian model and actress. She also became the Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Issue’s first openly transgender model in 2020.

1997

Florida’s Constitution Review Committee votes 6-2 to reject a proposal that sexual orientation be added to the classes of those granted protection under the state’s constitution.

1998, South Africa

The Treatment Action Campaign, or TAC, is founded by Zackie Achmat (born 21 March 1962) for the purpose of getting anti-retroviral access to HIV+ South Africans. Zackie is a South African activist and film director. He is a co-founder the Treatment Action Campaign and known worldwide for his activism on behalf of people living with HIV and AIDS in South Africa. He currently serves as Board member and Co-director of Ndifuna Ukwazi (Dare to Know), an organization which aims to build and support social justice organizations and leaders, and is the chairperson of Equal Education.

2008

Christina Kahrl (born 1963), an open trans woman, is the first LGBT person to be admitted into the Baseball Writers Association of America. The Association determines who is indicted into the Baseball Hall of Fame. Kahrl is an activist on civil rights issues for the transgender community in her hometown of Chicago and a member of the Equality Illinois board of directors. The story of her coming out as a transgender sportswriter in 2003 was part of a GLAAD award-nominated segment entitled Transitions on HBO’s Real Sports that aired in 2010.

 

DECEMBER 11

1909, Sweden

Selma Lagerlof (20 November 1858 – 16 March 1940) is the first woman to win the Nobel Prize in Literature. In 1992 her love letters to Sophie Elkan (3 January 1853–5 April 1921) are published which reveal a romantic relationship between the two women from 1894 until Elkan’s death in 1921. A Swedish writer of Jewish origin, Elkan became her friend and companion and their letters suggest Lagerlöf fell deeply in love with her. Over many years, Elkan and Lagerlöf critiqued each other’s work. Lagerlöf wrote of Elkan’s strong influence on her work, often disagreeing sharply with the direction Lagerlöf wanted to take in her books. Selma’s letters to Sophie were published in 1993, titled Du lär mig att bli fri.

1945

John Preston (December 11, 1945 – April 28, 1994) is born. He was an author of gay erotica and an editor of gay nonfiction anthologies. In addition, Preston wrote men’s adventure novels under the pseudonyms of Mike McCray, Preston MacAdam, and Jack Hilt (pen names that he shared with other authors). Taking what he had learned from authoring those books, he wrote the Alex Kane adventure novels about gay characters. These books, which included Sweet Dreams, Golden Years, and Deadly Lies, combined action-story plots with an exploration of issues such as the problems facing gay youth. Preston was among the first writers to popularize the genre of safe sex stories, editing a safe sex anthology entitled Hot Living in 1985. He helped to found the AIDS Project of Southern Maine. In the late 1980s, he discovered that he himself was HIV positive. He died of AIDS complications on April 28, 1994 at age 48, at his home in Portland. His papers are held in the Preston Archive at Brown University.

1980, Canada

In Ottawa, representatives of the Canadian Association of Lesbians and Gay Men (CALGM) appear before the Joint Senate/House Committee on the Constitution to argue for inclusion of “sexual orientation” in the entrenched Charter of Human Rights and Freedoms.

1982

San Francisco Mayor Diane Feinstein vetoes a domestic partnership bill.

1986

Austin, Texas passes an ordinance prohibiting discrimination against people with AIDS.

1990

In Newark, New Jersey an inmate with AIDS files suit against the Department of Corrections, saying they moved him out of a private cell and assigned him to labor which could endanger his health. He claimed the action was taken because he spoke to a reporter about AIDS in New Jersey prisons.

1998

At a meeting of the American Psychiatric Association in Denver, a resolution was passed rejecting reparative therapy. It stated that attempts to change a person’s sexual orientation can cause depression, anxiety, and self-destructive behavior. A similar resolution was passed by the American Psychological Association in August, 1997. Dr. Nada Stotland, head of the association’s public affairs committee, told the Denver Post that the very existence of reparative therapy spreads the idea that homosexuality is a disease or is evil and has a dehumanizing effect resulting in an increase in discrimination, harassment, and violence against gays, lesbians, and bisexuals.

1998

The mother of Tyra Hunter (1970 – August 7, 1995) is awarded $2.9 million in a wrongful death lawsuit against the city of Washington D.C. Hunter, a pre-operative transsexual, died of injuries sustained in a car accident in 1995. Emergency medical technicians at the scene were abusive and withheld treatment, and a doctor at D.C. General Hospital failed to follow nationally accepted standards of care.

1998

A Suffolk Superior Court judge struck down Boston’s health plan for same-sex partners of city workers.

2020

Bisexual Christy Hostege is sworn in as mayor of Palm Springs, CA

 

DECEMBER 12

1969

Police enter the Continental Baths and arrest three patrons and three employees, charging the patrons with lewd and lascivious acts and the employees with criminal mischief. The raid is the first of several on the Continental for the following weeks. The Continental Baths was a gay bathhouse in the basement of The Ansonia Hotel in New York City which was opened in 1968 by Steve Ostrow. It was advertised as reminiscent of “the glory of ancient Rome”. The documentary film Continental by Malcolm Ingram covers the height of the club’s popularity through the early 1970s.

1970

A struggling young pianist and songwriter takes a day job performing at New York’s Continental Baths. His name is Barry Manilow (born June 17, 1943). He is an American singer-songwriter, arranger, musician and producer with a career that has spanned more than 50 years. His hit recordings include Mandy, Can’t Smile Without You and Copacabana (At the Copa).

1989

Over 5,000 attend the “Stop the Church” protest at St. Patrick’s Cathedral in New York City. The 100 activists who laid down in the aisles were arrested. They were protesting Cardinal John O’Connor’s influence on government policies relating to HIV and sexuality.

1990

The Indiana state civil rights commission rules that the civil rights of Kenneth Westhoven (1954-1990) had been violated when his employer, after discovering he was HIV positive, reduced his health benefits cap from $1 million/lifetime to $50,000/lifetime.

1993

The brutal murder of trans man Brandon Teena (December 12, 1972 – December 31, 1993) becomes a cause celebre and the subject of an influential 1999 feature film, Boys Don’t Cry, where the role of Teena is played by Hilary Swank. Brandon was an American transgender man who was raped and murdered in Humboldt, Nebraska.  Teena’s murder, along with that of Matthew Shepard (December 1, 1976 – October 12, 1998), led to increased lobbying for hate crime laws in the United States.

1995

A Roseanne episode portrays a same-sex wedding when character Leon marries his boyfriend Scott. ABC moves the episode from its 8:00 time slot to 9:30 because of the adult humor.

1997

The Kentucky state Court of Appeals rules that gay men and lesbians are entitled to protection under the state’s domestic violence laws.

2002, Argentina

Buenos Aires approves civil unions.

2016

Harold Jerome Herman died on this day at the Washington Hospital Center, Washington D.C. after a brief illness. Harold received his Ph.D. from the University of Pennsylvania in 1957 and taught there until joining the faculty at the University of Maryland teaching the Arthurian Legend, a course that he designed. Much of his published scholarship was in this field. Harold established the Chi Tau Chapter of Signa Tau Delta English Honor Society and introduced an internship program which provided supervised work experience for English majors in organizations such as law firms, state and federal government departments, and newspapers. In addition to academic work, he and his partner African American Harold F. Mays, Jr. operated Two Harolds Antiques in Old Town Alexandria, Virginia for 12 years. After retiring as Professor Emeritus from the University of Maryland in 1994, he compiled the Fritchey Family in America, 1856-2010, a two-volume genealogy, now in the Huntingdon County Historical Society. Harold was survived by his partner of 50 years, Harold, who died at the age of 81.

 

DECEMBER 13

1934

Richard A. Isay (December 13, 1934 – June 28, 2012) was an American psychiatrist, psychoanalyst, author and gay activist. He was a professor of psychiatry at Weill Cornell Medical College and a faculty member of the Columbia University Center for Psychoanalytic Training and Research. Isay is considered a pioneer who changed the way that psychoanalysts view homosexuality. On August 13, 2011, Isay married Gordon Harrell, his partner of 32 years. He died ten months later.

1973

Washington, D.C.’s Title 34 makes discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation illegal.

1993

Ryan Otto Cassata (born December 13, 1993) is an American musician, public speaker, writer, filmmaker, and actor. Cassata speaks at high schools and universities on gender dysphoria, being transgender, bullying and his personal transition from female to male, including a double mastectomy surgery in January 2012, when he was 18 years old. He has made appearances on the Larry King Live Show and the Tyra Banks Show to talk about being transgender. He has performed at LGBT music festivals and has gone on tours across the United States of America. Cassata has performed at popular music venues such as Whisky a Go Go, The Saint, The Bitter End, SideWalk Cafe, Turf Club (venue) and Bowery Poetry Club. Cassata won a date on Warped Tour 2013 through the Ernie Ball Battle of the Bands online competition and performed on the Acoustic Basement Stage on June 21, 2013. Cassata also won a date on Warped Tour 2015 through the Ernie Ball Battle of the Bands and performed on the Ernie Ball Stage on June 20, 2015.

1999

Vice President Al Gore announces that he was opposed to the Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell policy and, if elected, would propose legislation to end discrimination against gays and lesbians in the military.

1999

U.S. Defense Secretary William Cohen orders a full review of the Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell policy. The policy had recently been criticized for creating a hostile environment.

2002, Belgium

The Belgium Senate approves same-sex marriage, making Belgium the second country to do so.

 

DECEMBER 14

1576, Italy

Poet Torquato Tasso (11 March 1544 – 25 April 1595) admits his love for Orazio Ariosto. Tasso was an Italian poet of the 16th century, best known for his poem Gerusalemme Liberate (Jerusalem Delivered, 1581) in which he depicts a highly imaginative version of the combats between Christians and Muslims at the end of the First Crusade during the Siege of Jerusalem. He suffered from mental illness and died a few days before he was due to be crowned as the king of poets by Pope Clement VIII. Until the beginning of the 20th century, Tasso remained one of the most widely read poets in Europe.

1918

After two years of wearing men’s clothing, Mary Bertha Schmidt, known as Mister Schmidt, is taken to court in St. Louis, Missouri on cross-dressing charges. The judge thought Mister Schmidt, who was dapperly dressed, looked “very nice” and declines to fine Schmidt. Mister Schmidt then marries cousin Mary Ana Assade. A Los Angeles Herald article from 1918 quoted Schmidt as saying, “I always hated men, as did Mary also, so we both decided to get married. The ceremony was performed by a justice of the peace and we bought a nice little home in South St. Louis. We were living together very happily until the police interfered.”

1946

Bruce Wayne Campbell (aka Jobriath) (December 14, 1946  – August 4, 1983) is born. He was the first openly gay rock musician to be signed to a major record label, and one of the first internationally famous musicians to die of AIDS.

1971

A demonstration sponsored by the Gay Activists Alliance took place at Suffolk County Police headquarters in New York. Two men and one woman were arrested. It was held to protest the arrest of two members of GAA on charges of sodomy.

1980

La Cage aux Folles ends its nineteen-month run at New York City’s 68th Street Playhouse. La Cage is a musical with a book by Harvey Fierstein and lyrics and music by Jerry Herman. Based on the 1973 French play of the same name by Jean Poiret, it focuses on a gay couple: Georges, the manager of a Saint-Tropez nightclub featuring drag entertainment, and Albin, his romantic partner and star attraction, and the farcical adventures that ensue when Georges’s son Jean-Michel brings home his fiancée‘s ultra-conservative parents to meet them. La cage aux folles literally means “the cage of mad women”. However, folles is also a slang term for effeminate homosexuals (queens). The original 1983 Broadway production received nine nominations for Tony Awards and won six, including Best Musical, Best Score and Best Book. Albin’s Act I finale number, I Am What I Am, was recorded by Gloria Gaynor and proved to be one of her biggest hits. It was also recorded by other artists, including Shirley Bassey, Tony Bennett, Pia Zadora, and John Barrowman. It also became a rallying cry of the Gay Pride movement.

1988

The film adaptation of Harvey Fierstein’s (born June 6, 1954) Torch Song Trilogy opens in the United States. Torch Song Trilogy is a collection of three plays by Harvey Fierstein rendered in three acts: International Stud, Fugue in a Nursery, and Widows and Children First! The story centers on Arnold Beckoff, a Jewish homosexual, drag queen, and torch singer who lives in New York City in the late 1970s and early 1980s. The four-hour play begins with a soliloquy in which he explains his cynical disillusionment with love. Fierstein adapted his play for a feature film, released in 1988. It was directed by Paul Bogart and starred Fierstein (Arnold), Anne Bancroft (Ma Beckoff), Matthew Broderick (Alan), Brian Kerwin (Ed), and Eddie Castrodad (David).

1990

The ACLU filed a lawsuit alleging that Hawaii corrections officers violated an inmate’s civil rights by testing him for HIV without consent.

1990

At the University of Massachusetts in Amherst, the board of governors voted unanimously to remove the Lesbian Bisexual Gay Alliance’s two ex- officio positions. Officials said it had nothing to do with discrimination, that the board wanted to remove all ex-officio positions and replace them with elected officials. However, no other ex-officio positions were eliminated.

1990

In New York, Alfred University faculty approved a resolution urging officials to ban ROTC because of the military’s anti-gay policies.

1993

In Denver, Colorado, Judge Jeffrey Bayless ruled Amendment 2 unconstitutional. The amendment to the Colorado state constitution sought to eliminate all gay rights laws in the state and prevent any more from being passed. It would have prevented any city, town, or county in the state from taking any legislative, executive, or judicial action to recognize homosexuals as a protected class.

2006

Actress Kate Fleming (October 6, 1965 – December 14, 2006) is trapped in a flooded basement room in her Seattle home. Her partner of ten years, Charlene Strong (born May 6, 1963), follows the ambulance to the hospital and is prevented by hospital staff from being at Kate’s side for a number of torturous minutes until Kate’s biological family can be reached on the east coast. Charlene is with Kate, finally, when she dies. Afterward, a funeral director refuses to shake Charlene’s hand or allow her to make arrangements even with the full support of Kate’s mother. Charlene will testify and help pass a Washington State domestic partner law. Had it been in force that December, Charlene would have allowed to be by Kate’s side and would have protected Kate’s right to let Charlene speak for her at the funeral home. For My Wife is a feature documentary chronicling Charlene’s journey into activism following Kate’s death. Strong works closely with Equal Rights Washington, and has endowed a fellowship at the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force in Washington, D.C.

2006

The New Jersey Legislature enacts a bill to establish civil unions in that state. The measure passes 56–19 in the Assembly, and 23–12 in the Senate.

 

DECEMBER 15

1922

James and Louise Hathaway were approached by Boston police regarding a possible attempted car theft. What followed was the unmasking of James’s true identity: James was actually Ethel Kimball of Allston, Mass.

1928

Having been published in Paris the previous July, Radclyffe Hall’s (12 August 1880 – 7 October 1943) The Well of Loneliness, the first major novel in English with an explicitly lesbian theme, is published in the U.S. Americans buy more than 20,000 copies of the book within the next month, making it a bestseller. Marguerite Radclyffe Hall was an English poet and author. She is best known for the novel The Well of Loneliness, a groundbreaking work in lesbian literature. Hall’s partner was Una Vincenzo, Lady Troubridge (8 March 1887-24 September 1963) who was a British sculptor and translator.

1950

A U.S. Senate committee makes public its report on The Employ-ment of Homosexuals and Other Sex Perverts. Asserting that homosexuals are a security risk not simply because they are liable to blackmail but also because homosexuality inevitably perverts “moral fibre,” the report recommends stringent measures be taken to root all lesbians and gay men out of government. The federal government had covertly investigated employees’ sexual orientation at the beginning of the Cold War. The report states since homosexuality is a mental illness, homosexuals “constitute security risks” to the nation because “those who engage in overt acts of perversion lack the emotional stability of normal persons.”

1959

Mattachine officer Don Lucas (1926 – Sept. 24, 2003) writes Boston Mattachine founder Prescott Townsend (June 24, 1894 – May 23, 1973) asking him to not begin a campaign for Massachusetts sodomy law reform. Reflecting the cautious conservatism of the current homophile movement, Lucas believes the risk of a backlash is too great.

1967

Laura M. Ricketts (born December 15, 1967) is co-owner of the Chicago Cubs. Ricketts is also a board member of Lambda Legal and the Housing Opportunities for Women organization. Ricketts’ ownership stake in the Cubs is uniquely noteworthy because it makes her the first openly gay owner of a major-league sports franchise.

1973

The governing board of the American Psychiatric Association unanimously votes to change the classification of homosexuality and removes it from the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders. This followed three years of pressure from gay liberation movement. The board bases this decision on its finding that most lesbians and gay men are clearly satisfied with their sexual orientation and show no signs of mental illness. The APA declares that “by itself, homosexuality does not meet the criteria for being a psychiatric disorder.”

1973

Christopher R. Barron (born December 15, 1973) is an American political activist best known as the cofounder of GOProud, a political organization representing gay conservatives. He is the president of CapSouth Consulting, a political consulting firm, and previously the organizer of LGBT for Trump and the national political director for Log Cabin Republicans where he directed the organization’s federal lobbying efforts and media relations. Barron lives in Washington, D.C. with his husband Shawn R. Gardner to whom he has been legally married since 2010. He has stated that he served in the Air Force Reserve. Barron has written numerous opinion pieces for The Washington Post, The Huffington Post, The Boston Globe, Roll Call, The Hill, Politico, TheBlaze, The Daily Caller, and United Liberty. He has appeared on numerous national and local television channels, including MSNBC, NBC, CBS, CNN, CNN Headline News, ABC News Now, and Fox News, including being a frequent guest on Red Eye with Greg Gutfeld.

1977, Canada

The National Assembly, in quiet late-night session, amends the Quebec Charter of Human Rights to include sexual orientation. It becomes first province and largest political jurisdiction in North America to provide legal protection for homosexuals.

1980

Kortney Ryan Ziegler (born December 15, 1980) is an American filmmaker, visual artist, blogger, writer, and scholar based in Oakland, California. His artistic and academic work focuses on queer/transgender issues, body image, racialized sexualities, gender, performance and Black queer theory. Ziegler is also the first person to receive the Ph.D. of African American studies from Northwestern University in 2011.

1988, Netherlands

The Free University of Amsterdam convenes the International Scientific Conference on Gay and Lesbian Studies. The highlight of the session is a heated debate inspired by the Constructionism vs. Essentialism controversy, entitled Homosexuality, Which Homosexuality?

 

DECEMBER 16

342, Italy

The Theodosian Code, a compilation of Roman Law authorized by Eastern Roman Emperor Theodosius II, passes. It reads: When a man marries and is about to offer himself to men in womanly fashion, what does he wish, when sex has lost all of its significance; when the crime is one which it is not profitable to know; when Venus is changed to another form; when love is sought and not found?…Those infamous persons who are now or hereafter may be guilty may be subjected to exquisite punishment.

1830, Brazil

On this day, the new Penal Code of the Brazilian Empire did not repeat the title XIII of the fifth book of the Ordenações Philipinas which made sodomy a crime. In 1833, an anonymous English-language writer wrote a poetic defense of Captain Nicholas Nicholls, who had been sentenced to death in London for sodomy: Whence spring these inclinations, rank and strong? And harming no one, wherefore call them wrong? Three years later in Switzerland, Heinrich Hoessli (6 August 1784–24 December 1864) published the first volume of Eros: Die Männerliebe der Griechen (Eros: The Male Love of the Greeks), another defense of same-sex love.

1899

Noel Coward (16 December 1899 – 26 March 1973), writer and composer, is born. He was an English playwright, composer, director, actor and singer, known for his wit, flamboyance, and what Time magazine called “a sense of personal style, a combination of cheek and chic, pose and poise.” Coward was homosexual but, following the convention of his times, this was never publicly mentioned. Coward’s most important relationship, which began in the mid-1940s and lasted until his death, was with the South African stage and film actor Graham Payn (25 April 1918 – 4 November 2005).

1901

Margaret Mead  (December 16, 1901 – November 15, 1978), anthropologist, is born. Mead was a respected and often controversial academic who popularized the insights of anthropology in modern American and Western culture. Her reports detailing the attitudes towards sex in South Pacific and Southeast Asian traditional cultures influenced the 1960s sexual revolution. She was a proponent of broadening sexual mores within a context of traditional Western religious life. Mead never openly identified herself as lesbian or bisexual. In her writings she proposed that it is to be expected that an individual’s sexual orientation may evolve throughout life. Mead also had an exceptionally close relationship with Ruth Benedict, one of her instructors. In her memoir about her parents, With a Daughter’s Eye, Mary Catherine Bateson implies that the relationship between Benedict and Mead was partly sexual. Mead spent her last years in a close personal and professional collaboration with anthropologist Rhoda Metraux with whom she lived from 1955 until her death in 1978. Letters between the two published in 2006 with the permission of Mead’s daughter clearly express a romantic rela-tionship. On January 19, 1979, President Jimmy Carter announced that he was awarding the Presidential Medal of Freedom posthumously to Mead.

1978

A protest march is held in Toronto over the raid of a bathhouse. It is the first major demonstration over a bathhouse rain in Toronto and attracts about 400 people.

1997, New Zealand

The New Zealand court of appeals rules unanimously against giving same-sex couples the right to marry under the Marriage Act of 1955.

1983

Mel Brooks’ To Be or Not To Be, a remake of the Ernst Lubitsch classic, becomes the first mainstream Hollywood film to not just acknowledge Nazi persecution of homosexuals but makes it a key plot element.

 

DECEMBER 17

1760

Deborah Sampson Gannett (December 17, 1760 – April 29, 1827), who fought in the American Revolution disguised as the soldier Robert Shurtlieff, is born. She was a Massachusetts woman who disguised herself as a man in order to serve in the Continental Army during the American Revolutionary War. She is 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” (also spelled Shirtliffe or Shurtleff), was wounded in 1782, and was honorably discharged at West Point, New York in 1783. During World War II the Liberty Ship S.S. Deborah Gannett (2620) was named in her honor. As of 2001, the town flag of Plympton incorporates Sampson as the Official Heroine of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. In her speech at the Democratic National Convention on July 26, 2016, Meryl Streep named Sampson in a list of women who had made history.

1943

Eva Kotchever, known also as Eve Adams or Eve Addams, born as Chawa Zloczower (June 16, 1891-17 December 1943, Auschwitz) was a Polish-Jewish émigré librarian and writer, most known for running from 1925 to 1926 a popular, openly lesbian after-theater club in Greenwich Village called Eve’s Hangout. It closed when Eva was convicted of obscenity and disorderly conduct, which resulted in her deportation. Chawa Zloczower was born in 1891 in Poland. Having emigrated to the United States during the 1920s, she ran with her partner, Swedish painter Ruth Norlander, a business named The Gray Cottage in Chicago, at 10 E Chestnut St. She was a friend of anarchist writer Emma Goldman. In 1925, she opened Eve’s Hangout, also known as Eve Addams’ Tearoom in Greenwich Village. On the outside, she hung a sign that read: “Men are admitted, but not welcome.” She was convicted by New York City’s Vice Squad of obscenity for her collection of short stories Lesbian Love(written under the name Evelyn Adams) and for dis-orderly conduct after undercover police detective Margaret Leonard entered Eve’s Hangout and was shown the book. Leonard said Kotchever made overt sexual advances to her. After a year in jail, where she probably met Mae West, at Jefferson Market Prison, she was deported to Europe. In 1943, she was arrested in Nice with her girlfriend Hella Olstein. The two women were imprisoned in the Drancy internment camp near Paris. Deported to Auschwitz, the two women were murdered by the Nazis on December 17, 1943.

1963

The New York Times runs a frontpage story titled “Growth of Overt Homosexuality in City Provokes Wide Concern.” It told of a series of police raids on gay bars and arrests.

1970

Nine leaders of the women’s liberation movement, including Gloria Steinem and Susan Brownmiller, hold a press conference in New York City to express their “solidarity with the struggle of homosexuals to attain their liberation in a sexist society.”

1974

Sarah Paulson (born December 17, 1974) is an American actress. She is the recipient of several accolades, including a Prime-time Emmy Award and a Golden Globe Award. Born in Tampa, Florida, Paulson was raised there and later in New York City following her parents’ divorce. She began her acting career after high school in New York stage productions before starring in the short-lived television series American Gothic (1995–1996) and Jack & Jill (1999–2001). She later appeared in comedy films such as What Women Want (2000) and Down with Love (2003), and drama films such as Path to War (2002) and The Notorious Bettie Page (2005). From 2006 to 2007, she starred as Harriet Hayes in the NBC comedy-drama series Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip for which she received her first Golden Globe Award nomination. In 2008, Paulson starred as Ellen Dolan in the superhero noir film The Spirit. Paulson has appeared on Broadway in the plays The Glass Menagerie in 2005 and Collected Stories in 2010. She also starred in a number of independent films and had a leading role on the ABC comedy series Cupid in 2009. She later starred in the independent drama film Martha Marcy May Marlene (2011) and received Primetime Emmy Award and Golden Globe Award nominations for her portrayal of Nicolle Wallace in the HBO film Game Change (2012). She was featured as Mary Epps in the 2013 historical drama film 12 Years a Slave, as Abby Gerhard in the 2015 romantic drama film Carol, and as Toni Bradlee in the 2017 political drama film The Post, all of which were nominated for multiple Academy Awards. Paulson’s other films include Serenity (2005), New Year’s Eve (2011), Mud (2012), Blue Jay (2016), Ocean’s 8 (2018), Bird Box (2018), and Glass (2019). Paulson was in a relationship with actress Cherry Jones from 2004 to 2009. Addressing her sexuality in a 2013 interview with Broadway.com, Paulson said “it’s a fluid situation for me.” Before her relationship with Jones, she had dated only men, including then-fiancé playwright Tracy Letts. She would later comment: “If my life choices had to be predicated based on what was expected of me from a community on either side, that’s going to make me feel really straitjacketed, and I don’t want to feel that.” Since early 2015, Paulson has been in a relationship with actress Holland Taylor (born January 14, 1943). Paulson lives in Los Angeles. She was ranked one of the best dressed women in 2018 by fashion website Net-a-Porter.

1979

U.S. District Court for the Central District of California Judge Irving Hill rules that the marriage of Australian Anthony Sullivan and U.S. citizen Richard Adams, under a license issued by Boulder County, Colorado in 1975, is not valid for purposes of Sullivan’s immigration.

1982

The film Tootsie premieres. It is an American comedy in which a talented but volatile actor whose reputation for being difficult forces him to adopt a new identity as a woman in order to land a job.

1987

Morton Downey Jr. is arraigned on charges of attacking a gay guest on his television show.

1990, UK

The OutRage Christmas Celebration for London’s extended Queer family is held in Covent Garden.

1990

Connecticut State Rep. Joseph Grabarz (D) (born 1957) comes out. He becomes Connecticut’s first openly gay state legislator. At the time he was the lover of actor, playwright and voice actor Harvey Fierstein (born June 6, 1954).

1990

Three same-sex couple request marriage licenses in Honolulu. The clerk initially agrees but a supervisor does not allow the request.

1991

Karen Thompson is named Sharon Kowalski’s (born 1956) legal guardian after an eight-year fight. 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 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. The Minnesota Court of Appeals rule in Thompson’s favor on December 17, 1991. Thompson attorney commented: “This seems to be the first guardianship case in the nation in which an appeals court recognized a homosexual partner’s rights as tantamount to those of a spouse.” The two women continue to live together, along with another woman, Patty Bresser, in what Thompson calls her “family of affinity,” and they all continue to speak out about LGBT and disability rights. Their story has been documented in the film Lifetime Commitment: A Portrait of Karen Thompson.

1992

Patricia Ireland (born October 19, 1945), president of the National Organization for Women, comes out as bisexual. She served as president of the National Organization for Women from 1991 to 2001 and published an autobiography, What Women Want, in 1996. Immediately following Ireland’s appointment to president of NOW, questions arose about her sexual orientation. On December 17, 1991 she gave an interview with The Advocate in which she stated that she was bisexual and had a female companion while remaining married to her second husband.

1997, UK

British Secretary of State Chris Smith writes a letter of apology to the Gay and Lesbian Humanist Association for having wreaths removed immediately following a ceremony of remembrance.

1997

Under an agreement with New Jersey state child welfare officials, same-sex couples in the state are granted the right to jointly adopt children.

2007, Hungary

The Parliament gives the same rights to registered partners as to spouses with some exceptions: adoption, IVF access, surrogacy, and taking a surname.

 

DECEMBER 18

1654, Sweden –

Queen Christina (18 December 1626 – 19 April 1689) is born. She was hairy and had a deep vice, ‘walked like a man, sat and rode like a man, and could eat and swear like the roughest soldiers.’ She sometimes identified herself as Count Dohna after her abdication, and has been claimed variously as lesbian, transgender, and intersex by historians in search of an angle.

1879

Stagecoach driver Charlotte “Charley” Parkhurst (1812 – Dec. 18, 1879) dies. The medical examiner discovers Charley is female. Parkhurst, who registered to vote in 1868, may have been the first female-assigned transgender citizen to vote in California. Known as “One-eyed Charley,” he wore a black patch over his left eye, lost when attempting to shoe a horse. His lips were stained from constant tobacco chewing and as the years wore on, he talked less and less, earning him another nickname, Silent Charley. When Parkhurst did speak, he didn’t hesitate to sling around swear words in a gruff voice. The only part of his appearance that was out of place was his clean-shaven face, an odd choice for a man in those days. His grave is at the Pioneer Cemetery at 44 Main Street in Watsonville, California.

1900

Marion Barbara ‘Joe’ Carstairs (1900 – 18 December 1993) was a wealthy British power boat racer known for her speed and her eccentric lifestyle. Carstairs lived a colorful life. She usually dressed as a man, had tattooed arms, and loved machines, adventure and speed. Openly lesbian, she had numerous affairs with women, including Oscar Wilde’s niece Dolly Wilde (July 11, 1895 – April 10, 1941) and a fellow ambulance driver from Dublin with whom she had lived in Paris as well as a string of actresses, most notably Greta Garbo (18 September 1905 – 15 April 1990), Tallulah Bankhead (January 31, 1902 – December 12, 1968) and Marlene Dietrich (27 December 1901 – 6 May 1992). During World War I, Carstairs served in France with the American Red Cross, driving ambulances. After the war, she served with the Royal Army Service Corps in France, re-burying the war-dead, and in Dublin with the Women’s Legion Mechanical Transport Section which acted as transport for British officers during the Irish War of Independence. In 1920, with three former colleagues from the Women’s Legion Mechanical Transport Section, she started the ‘X Garage,’ a car-hire and chauffeuring service that featured a women-only staff of drivers and mechanics. Carstairs (and her friends and lovers) lived in a flat above the garage which was situated near Cromwell Gardens in London’s fashionable South Kensington district. Carstairs invested $40,000 purchasing the island of Whale Cay in the Bahamas and constructed a Great House for herself and her guests as well as a lighthouse, school, church, and cannery. She later bought the additional islands of Bird Cay, Cat Cay, Devil’s Cay, half of Hoffman’s Cay and a tract of land on Andros. Carstairs died in Naples, Florida, in 1993 at the age of 93.

1902

Dr. William S. Barker of St Louis presents a paper to the Medical Society of City Hospital Alumni about two men he identified as “W” and “B,” saying W showed an unnatural fondness for B and the two were inseparable.

1953

Dr. Harry Benjamin conducts a symposium on transsexuals for the New York Academy of Medicine. Benjamin was a German-American endocrinologist and sexologist, widely known for his clinical work with transsexualism. Benjamin was married to Gretchen for 60 years. In 1979 the Harry Benjamin International Gender Dysphoria Association was formed, using Benjamin’s name by permission. The group consists of therapists and psychologists who devised a set of Standards of Care (SOC) for the treatment of gender identity disorder, largely based on Benjamin’s cases, and studies.  It later changed its name to The World Professional Association for Transgender Health (WPATH), but still reveres its links to Harry Benjamin.

1961, Canada

Brian Orser (born 18 December 1961) is born. He is a Canadian former competitive and professional figure skater. He was the 1984 and 1988 Olympic silver medalist, 1987 World champion and eight-time (1981–88) Canadian national champion. At the 1988 Winter Olympics, the rivalry between Orser and American figure skater Brian Boitano (born October 22, 1963), who were the two favorites to win the gold medal, captured media attention and was described as the “Battle of the Brians.” Orser is openly gay. He was forced to reveal his sexuality in November 1998, when he lost a legal battle to prevent public disclosure when an ex-partner sued him for palimony. Orser initially feared the revelation of being gay would ruin his career, but he has since embraced support from other skaters and the public. Since 2008, he has been in a relationship with Rajesh Tiwari, a director of The Brian Orser foundation.

1974

The first International Gay Rights Conference began. It would lead to the formation of the International Lesbian and Gay Association (ILGA) in 1978. 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 Ecosoc consultative status.

1978, Canada

A Toronto police sergeant calls three school boards in the area and informs them six teachers in their employ were arrested in the Barracks steam bath raid. The officer is given only internal department reprimand.

1979

ABC News Close-Up features a documentary on homosexuals. Fifteen affiliates refused to air it and the network was not able to find a single commercial sponsor. It covered topics such as promiscuity and implied that gays could not form stable relationships.

1980

With the state of New York and especially New York City being such a mecca of progressive ideals, it’s hard to believe that it was not until December 18, 1980 that New York became the twenty-fourth state in the nation to legalize homosexuality. The Court of Appeals, the state’s highest court, struck down the New York’s consensual sodomy law in a 5-2 decision. The court ruled that the law violated Constitutional rights to privacy and equal protection, noting that the law banned anal and oral sex only when those acts were performed by unmarried couples. Married couples were exempt under the law.

1982, Canada

The Quebec parliament overwhelmingly approves a measure, and becomes the first North American legislative body to authorize Domestic Partnership benefits for same-sex couples. It gives domestic partners of gays and lesbians legal protection and access to economic benefits previously restricted to straights, authorizing “Domestic Partnership” benefits for gay and lesbian couples

1984

The Times of Harvey Milk wins the New York Critics’ Award for Best Documentary of the Year. The film premiered at the Telluride Film Festival, the New York Film Festival, and then on November 1, 1984 at the Castro Theatre in San Francisco. The film was directed by Rob Epstein (born April 6, 1955), produced by Richard Schmiechen (July 10, 1947 – April 7, 1993), and narrated by Harvey Fierstein (born June 6, 1954), with an original score by Mark Isham. In 2012, this film was deemed “culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant” by the United States Library of Congress and selected for preservation in the National Film Registry.

1990

Dr. Stanley Biber (May 4, 1923 – January 16, 2006) of Trinidad, Colorado is elected to the city council. Dr. Biber performs approximately 60% of the world’s sex change operations. He was an American physician who was a pioneer in sex reassignment surgery, performing thousands of procedures during his long career. Dr. Marci Bowers (born January 18, 1958), a gynecologist and transsexual woman herself, took over his SRS practice. Bowers also offers restorative procedures for victims of female genital mutilation (FGM), whom she does not charge for surgery. Bowers married eleven years prior to her surgery and remains married to her female spouse.

1997

Navy Secretary John Dalton denies that the U.S. Navy violates the Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell policy by participating in witch hunts.

1998

The Maryland Supreme Court rules a parent’s access to his or her children cannot be restricted solely based on sexual orientation.

2006, Qatar

Asian Games strips runner Santhi Soundarajan (born April 1981) of her silver medal because she is intersex. The Indian Olympic Association then banned her from sports. She is an Indian track and field athlete and winner of 12 international medals for India and nearly 50 medals for her home state of Tamil Nadu. Santhi is the first Tamil woman to win a medal at the Asian Games. She competes in middle distance track events. She was stripped of a silver medal won at the 2006 Asian Games after failing a sex verification test which disputed her eligibility to participate in the women’s competition.

2009, Austria

The Bundesrat approve same-sex marriages which takes effect on Jan. 1, 2010.

2020

The Real Housewives of Orange County star Braunwyn Windham-Burke (born November 25, 1977) came out as a lesbian in a GLAAD interview and revealed she is currently dating a woman.

 

DECEMBER 19

1922

Sholem Asch’s drama The God of Vengeance opens at the Provincetown Playhouse. The drama, translated from Yiddish and per-formed in English for the first time, includes the first lesbian scenes—and Broadway’s first lesbian kiss—on the American stage. It opened on Broadway in 1924. The theatre owner and 12 cast members found guilty of obscenity (later overturned). The play premiered in Yiddish theatre in 1907.

1980, Canada

In Ottawa, Justice Minister Jean Chrétien announces proposals to revise the Criminal Code to reduce age of consent to 18 years and make other changes in legislation related to sexual offences.

1999

Mikaela Mullaney Straus (born December 19, 1999), known by her stage name King Princess, is an American singer, songwriter, instrumentalist and producer from Brooklyn, New York. She is signed to Mark Ronson’s label Zelig Records, an imprint of Columbia Records. In February 2018, King Princess released her debut single 1950. The song was a commercial success, charting in multiple territories. The song was later certified platinum by the RIAA. 1950 was followed by King Princess’s second single Talia which was certified gold in Australia by the ARIA. King Princess released her debut studio album, Cheap Queen on October 25, 2019. Straus is gay and genderqueer. From early 2018 to late 2018, Straus dated actress Amandla Stenberg. Since early 2019, Straus has been dating Quinn Whitney Wilson, the creative director of musician Lizzo. Regarding her gender identity, KingPrincess has said in an interview with W Magazine, “I like being a woman sometimes. I would say 49 per-cent of the time I love my titties. But I’m not fully a woman. I’m somebody who falls center on the gender spectrum, and it changes day to day. It’s just not in me to decide.” As of late 2020, King Princess uses she/her pronouns.

2008

Diego Sanchez (born 1957), transgender activist and prominent AIDS leader, is the first appointed Washington Congressional staff member, becoming a legislative assistant to Rep. Barney Frank. Frank is the first out gay member of the U.S. Congress.

 

DECEMBER 20

1955

Frank Kameny (May 21, 1925 – October 11, 2011) is fired from his job as an astronomer in the U.S. Army’s Map Service in Washington, D.C. because of his homosexuality. A few days later he is blacklisted from seeking federal employment. These events spur Kameny into being a gay rights activist. He has been referred to as “one of the most significant figures” in the American gay rights movement. In 1961 Kameny and Jack Nichols (March 16, 1938 – May 2, 2005), fellow co-founder of the Washington, D.C., branch of the Mattachine Society, launched some of the earliest public pro-tests by gays and lesbians with a picket line at the White House on April 17, 1965. In 1963, Kameny and Mattachine launched a campaign to overturn D.C. sodomy laws; he personally drafted a bill that finally passed in 1993. He also worked to remove the classification of homosexuality as a mental disorder from the American Psychiatric Association‘s Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders. In 1971, Kameny became the first openly gay candidate for the United States Congress when he ran in the District of Columbia’s first election for a non-voting Congressional delegate. Frank Kameny was found dead in his Washington home on October 11, 2011 (National Coming Out Day). His death was due to arteriosclerotic cardiovascular disease. In front of his headstone lays a marker inscribed with the slogan “Gay is Good.” Kameny coined that slogan, and in a 2009 AP interview said, “If I am remembered for anything I hope it will be that.”

1973

For the second time in two years, the New York City Council rejects a proposed gay rights ordinance for the city.

1990, UK

OutRage! establishes the Coalition for Lesbian and Gay Rights to address legal attacks against the GLBT community. OutRage! was a British LGBT rights group lasting for 21 years, 1990 until 2011. It described itself as “a broad based group of queers committed to radical, non-violent direct action and civil disobedience” and was formed to advocate that lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) people have the same rights as heterosexual people, to end homophobia and anti-LGBT violence and to affirm the right of queer people to their “sexual freedom, choice and self-determination”.

1999

In Baker v. Vermont, the Vermont Supreme Court orders the state legislature to devise a law to give same-sex couples identical rights to married couples. Baker v. Vermont, 744 A.2d 864 (Vt. 1999, was the lawsuit 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.

2013

U.S. District Judge Robert Shelby strikes down Utah’s gay marriage ban; more than 1,000 same-sex couples marry over the next two weeks. With Utah appealing, the Supreme Court on Jan. 6 stops further marriages from taking place.

2017, Germany

Wolfgang Leopold Lauinger (1918 – December 20, 2017) dies at the age of 99. He was a German gay activist. Other German gay acivists paid their respects to Lauinger who was imprisoned both by the Nazis and by the postwar West German government. “We bow before a wonderful person, who fought to the end for the rehabilitation of persecuted gay people and the compensation for all consequences of imprisonment and conviction as a result of Paragraph §175,” the Magnus Hirschfeld Foundation tweeted. Lauinger is best known for his campaign against Paragraph 175, the German law that outlawed male homosexuality. Passed in 1871, the Nazis in 1935 tightened up enforcement of Paragraph 175 by conducting more arrests and increasing the maximum jail sentence for male homosexuality to five years. Around 50,000 people were convicted between 1933 and 1945 under the law, and it sent between 5000 and 10,000 gay men to the concentration camps.

 

DECEMBER 21

1888

California Gov. Robert Waterman commutes the sentence of Lucilius Miller who had been convicted of sodomy in 1884. He had been sentenced to 12 years in prison.

1917, Russia

The Bolsheviks repeal the entire criminal code in favor of “revolu-tionary justice.” Among the laws nullified are those relating to sex acts between men. Seventeen years later Article 121 would re-criminalize it, carrying a sentence up to five years “deprivation of freedom.”

1969

Jim W. Owles (1947-1993) and Marty Robinson (1943-1992) leave Gay Liberation Front in New York City to form a group exclusively dedicated to the pursuit of gay rights. The new organization is called Gay Activists Alliance. They believed GLF was too focused on causes unrelated to gay liberation. Both men died of AIDS related illnesses.

1973

A United States federal judge issues a bulletin stating that the federal civil service may not terminate an employee based on sexual orientation alone.

1981

Time and Newsweek run their first major stories about AIDS.

1988

The Chicago City Council votes 28-17 to approve a bill banning discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation.

1990

An MTV poll reports that 92% of America’s teenagers say it would make no difference to them if their favorite rock star came out as gay or lesbian.

1993

President Bill Clinton issues Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell which is a directive prohibiting the U.S. Military from barring applicants from service based on their sexual orientation. “Applicants… shall not be asked or required to reveal whether they are homosexual,” However, the policy forbids applicants from engaging in homosexual acts or making a statement that he or she is homosexual.

2004, Canada

Newfoundland and Labrador become the eighth Canadian provinces to legalize same-sex marriage after a Supreme Court judge approves marriage licenses for two lesbian couples.

2005, UK

Singer Elton John (born 25 March 1947) and David Furnish (born 25 October 1962) enter into a civil partnership at Windsor Guildhall. They were legally married on December 21, 2014.

2006

New Jersey governor Jon Corzine signs the bill establishing civil unions in the state. The first civil union licenses become available on February 20, 2007.

2007, Nepal

Nepal Supreme Court orders the end of anti-LGBTQ laws and creates new laws that safeguard LGBTQ people.

2008

Diego Sanchez (born 1957) is the first openly transgender Washington Congressional staff member, appointed as legislative assistant to Rep. Barney Frank (born March 31, 1940), the first openly gay member of the U.S. Congress. Sanchez had been the first transgender person named to a Democratic National Committee earlier in 2008. Transgender Susan Kimberly (born 1941) had worked for Minnesota Rep. Norm Coleman at his home office (not in Washington) previously.

2009, Mexico

The Legislative Assembly legalizes same-sex marriage and adoptions.

 

DECEMBER 22

1934

Wallace Henry Thurman (1902–Dec. 22, 1934), a Black editor, critic, novelist, and playwright associated with the Harlem Renaissance, dies, in New York City. Thurman wrote a play, Harlem, which debuted on Broadway in 1929 to mixed reviews. The same year his first novel The Blacker the Berry: A Novel of Negro Life (1929) was published. The novel is now recognized as a groundbreaking work of fiction because of its focus on intra-racial prejudice and colorism within the Black community where lighter skin has historically been favored. Thurman married Louise Thompson on August 22, 1928. The marriage lasted only six months. Thompson said that Wallace was a homosexual and refused to admit it. Thurman died at the age of 32 from tuberculosis which was likely exacerbated by his long fight with alcoholism.

1939

Bisexual blues singer Ma Rainey (September 1882 or April 26, 1886 – December 22, 1939) dies of heart disease at age 53. Billed as the “Mother of the Blues,” she was one of the earliest African American professional blues singers and one of the first generation of blues singers to record. Some of Rainey’s lyrics contain references to lesbianism or bisexuality, such as the 1928 song Prove It on Me.

1964

Dr. Harry Benjamin testifies at a meeting of the New York Health Department to urge that transsexuals should be allowed to have new birth certificates issued reflecting their gender preference. His recommendations were rejected.

1970

The San Francisco Free Press prints Carl Wittman’s (February 23, 1943 – January 22, 1986) Refugees from Amerika: A Gay Manifesto (1970). Reprinted and distributed all across the country in the next year, it quickly becomes the bible of Gay Liberation. Wittman was a member of the national council of Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) and later an activist for LGBT rights. He co-authored An Interracial Movement of the Poor? (1963) with Tom Hayden. Wittman declined hospital treatment for AIDS and died by suicide at home in North Carolina.

1986

The Gay/Lesbian Forum airs on public access television in Charlotte, N.C. Closet Busters produced the program.

1999

The Dayton, Ohio city commission rejected a proposal to protect gays and lesbians in housing and employment.

2010

President Obama signs the repeal of Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell.

 

DECEMBER 23

1868

Mary Rozet Smith (Dec. 23, 1868-1934) is born. She was a Chicago-born U.S. philanthropist who was one of the trustees and benefactors of Hull House. She was the companion of activist Jane Addams (September 6, 1860 – May 21, 1935) for over thirty years. Smith provided the financing for the Hull House Music School and donated the school’s organ as a memorial to her mother. She was active in several social betterment societies in Chicago at the turn of the 20th century.

1888

Christa Winsloe (23 December 1888 – 10 June 1944) is born. Winsloe was a 20th-century German-Hungarian novelist, playwright and sculptor. Her book Das Mädchen Manuela (The Child Manuela) was reviewed in the New York Times. It was a translation from a German book about a lesbian relationship in a school for girls. The reviewer referred to it as “a social document that is moving and eloquent.” Das Mädchen Manuela is a short novel based on Winsloe’s experiences at Kaiserin-Augusta. The 1931 film version remains an international cult classic. Winsloe was involved in a relationship with newspaper reporter Dorothy Thompson (9 July 1893 – 30 January 1961), probably before World War II when Thompson was reporting from Berlin. Winsloe moved to France in the late 1930s, fleeing the Nazis. During World War II, she joined the French Resistance. Contrary to what is often stated, she was not executed by the Nazis. Instead, on June 10, 1944, Winsloe and her French partner, Simone Gentet (died 1944), were shot and killed by four Frenchmen in a forest near the country town of Cluny. The men said that they had thought the women were Nazi spies. They were later acquitted of murder.

1959

The California Supreme Court upholds the right of LGBT people to congregate in Vallerga v. Department of Alcoholic Beverage Control. The Court rules that a 1955 statute allowing the Dept. of ABC to revoke the liquor license of any establishment that was a “resort…for sexual perverts.”

1970

The film Little Big Man is released. It features a character named Little Horse, played by Robert Little Star, who is biologically male but wears female clothing and identifies as a woman. Little Horse is a “hee-man-eh” which, in the Cheyenne tribe, is the tribe is the word for what anthropologists call a “berdache.”

1993

Philadelphia starring Tom Hanks premieres. The film is an American drama and one of the first mainstream Hollywood films to acknowledge HIV/AIDS, homosexuality, and homophobia. It was written by Ron Nyswaner, directed by Jonathan Demme and stars Tom Hanks and Denzel Washington. Hanks won the Academy Award for Best Actor for his role as Andrew Beckett in the film, while the song Streets of Philadelphia by Bruce Springsteen won the Academy Award for Best Original Song. Nyswaner was also nominated for the Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay but lost to Jane Campion for The Piano.

1994

In a much publicized adoption case in Seattle, Ross and Luis Lopton win permanent custody of their four year-old foster son Gailen. The child’s birth mother had challenged the men’s right to adopt him.

1998

The Centers for Disease Control releases a report on why some people at risk for HIV infection don’t get tested. Reasons included privacy and fear of positive test results.

1999

Pentagon spokesman Kenneth Bacon announced that a memoran-dum had been issued calling for immediate action against cases of anti-gay harassment in the military.

 

DECEMBER 24

1305, France

Grand Master Jacques de Molay (1243 – 18 March 1314) and over 500 Knights Templar recant their confessions of homosexual ac-tivities to which they had admitted under torture. King Phillip IV burned 54 of them soon after the false confessions. Philip had Mo-lay burned upon a scaffold on an island in the River Seine in front of Notre Dame de Paris in March 1314. The sudden end of both the centuries-old order of Templars and the dramatic execution of its last leader turned de Molay into a legendary figure.

1573, France

French diplomat and law professor Hubert Languet (1518 – 30 September 1581) wrote to poet Sir Philip Sidney (30 November 1554 – 17 October 1586), “My affection for you has entered my heart far more deeply than I have ever felt for anyone else, and it has so wholly taken possession there that it tries to rule alone.”

1920

Stormé DeLarverie (December 24, 1920 – May 24, 2014) is born. She was a butch lesbian whose purported scuffle with police was one of the defining moments of the Stonewall riots, spurring the crowd to action. She was born in New Orleans to an African American mother and a white father. She is remembered as a gay civil rights icon and entertainer who graced the stages of the Apollo Theater and Radio City Music Hall. She worked for much of her life as an MC, singer, bouncer, bodyguard and volunteer street patrol worker, the “guardian of lesbians in the Village.” Her partner, a dancer named Diana, lived with her for about 25 years until Diana died in the 1970s. According to friend Lisa Cannistraci, DeLarverie carried a photograph of Diana with her at all times. DeLarverie continued working as a bouncer until age 85.

1924

The state of Illinois issues a charter to a non-profit organization called Society for Human Rights, the first U.S.-based gay human rights group. The Society is quickly shut down, however, after a member’s wife complains to the police and its founder, Henry Gerber (June 29, 1892 – December 31, 1972) is arrested for “obscenity.” Gerber was an early homosexual rights activist in the United States. Inspired by the work of Germany’s Magnus Hirschfeld and his Scientific-Humanitarian Committee, Gerber founded the Society for Human Rights (SHR) in 1924, the nation’s first known homosexual organization, and Friendship and Freedom, the first known American homosexual publication. SHR was short-lived, as police arrested several of its members shortly after it incorporated. Although embittered by his experiences, Gerber maintained contacts within the fledgling homophile movement of the 1950s and continued to agitate for the rights of homosexuals. Gerber has been repeatedly recognized for his contributions to the LGBT movement.

1946

Brenda Howard (December 24, 1946 – June 28, 2005) was an American bisexual rights activist, sex-positive feminist, polyamorist and BDSM practitioner. Howard was an important figure in the modern LGBT rights movement. A militant activist who helped plan and participated in LGBT rights actions for over three decades, Howard was an active member of the Gay Liberation Front and for several years chair of the Gay Activists Alliance’s Speakers Bureau in the post-Stonewall era. She is known as the “Mother of Pride” for her work in coordinating a rally and then the Christopher Street Liberation Day March to commemorate the first anniversary of the Stonewall riots. Howard also originated the idea of a week-long series of events around Pride Day which became the genesis of the annual LGBT Pride celebrations that are now held around the world every June. Additionally, Howard along with fellow LGBT activists Robert A. Martin (aka Donny the Punk) (July 27, 1946 – July 18, 1996) and L. Craig Schoonmaker (born 1944) are credited with popularizing the word “Pride” to describe these festivities. A fixture in New York City’s LGBT Community, Howard was active in the Coalition for Lesbian and Gay Rights which helped guide New York City’s Gay rights law through the City Council in 1986 as well as ACT UP and Queer Nation. In 1987 Howard helped found the New York Area Bisexual Network to help coordinate services to the region’s growing Bisexual community. She was also an active member of the early bisexual political activist group BiPAC, a Regional Organizer for BiNet USA, a co-facilitator of the Bisexual S/M Discussion Group and a founder of the nation’s first Alcoholics Anonymous chapter for bisexuals. On a national level, Howard’s activism included work on both the 1987 March on Washington for Lesbian and Gay Rights and the 1993 March on Washington for Lesbian, Gay and Bi Equal Rights and Liberation where she was female co-chair of the leather contingent and Stonewall 25 in 1994. Howard died of colon cancer on June 28, 2005. Bisexual activist Tom Limoncelli (born December 2, 1968) later stated, “The next time someone asks you why LGBT Pride marches exist or why [LGBT] Pride Month is June tell them ‘A bisexual woman named Brenda Howard thought it should be.'”

1990

Lesbian actress Pat Childers Bond (February 27, 1925 – December 24, 1990) dies of lung cancer at age 65. She was an American actress who starred on stage and on television as well as in motion pictures. She was openly lesbian and was often the first gay woman people saw on stage. Her career spanned some for-ty years. She joined the Women’s Army Corps in 1945. Having accepted her homosexuality by this point, she was interested in meeting other lesbians. She acted as a nurse for soldiers returning from the South Pacific and also served in occupied Japan. In 1947, in Tokyo, 500 women were dishonorably discharged from the army on the charge of homosexuality. During this period, many lesbians testified against each other in trial but Bond married a gay GI soldier to avoid prosecution. Her marriage to Paul Bond in San Francisco afforded Bond an honorable discharge from the army on July 3, 1947. She later said she regretted leaving her lover in the Corps but did so to protect her. In 1990, Pat was honored by the San Francisco Board of Supervisors in recognition of her army tenure at the end of World War II. Her personal papers and photo albums were donated to the Gay and Lesbian Historical Society. In 1992, The Pat Bond Memorial Old Dyke Award was founded in her honor. The award recognizes Bay Area lesbians over 60 who have made outstanding contributions to the world.

2000, Canada

Rev Brent Hawkes reads the Bannes of Marriage for a gay and a lesbian couple at MCC Toronto. Bannes are an ancient Christian tradition which do not require a marriage license. Weddings in January 2001 are not registered by the Province of Ontario and the case goes to court.

2012, Serbia

The Serbian Parliament approves changes to the Penal Code to in-clude sexual orientation and gender identity as protected classes when it comes to hate crimes.

2013, UK

Alan Turing (23 June 1912 – 7 June 1954), considered the father of computer science, was a code-breaker who helped shorten WWII. Since he was gay, on this day, the British government offered him the choice of prison or chemical castration after he was convicted of gross indecency. He selected hormonal castration via estrogen. He died in 1954 of cyanide poisoning. In 2009, Prime Minister Gordon Brown made an official apology, and the Queen issued Turing a royal pardon on this day in 2013.

 

DECEMBER 25

1886

Sarah Bigelow, 18, and Lizzie Hart, 19, die by suicide in Massachusetts. Lizzie was apparently so bereft due to her mother’s death that she wanted to die. On her deathbed, Sarah said she loved Lizzie so much that she “would not let her die without me.”

1908, UK

Quentin Crisp (25 December 1908 – 21 November 1999)  is born. Named Denis Charles Pratt, Crisp becomes a gay icon in the 1970s after publication of his memoir, The Naked Civil Servant, detailing his life in homophobic British Society. When the book was adapted for television, Crisp began a new career as a performer and lecturer. From a conventional suburban background, Crisp enjoyed wearing make-up and painting his nails, and worked as a rent-boy in his teens. He then spent thirty years as a professional model for life-classes in art colleges. The interviews he gave about his unusual life attracted increasing public curiosity and he was soon sought after for his highly individual views on social manners and the cultivating of style. His one-man stage show was a long-running hit both in Britain and America and he also appeared in films and on TV. In 1995 he was among the many people interviewed for The Celluloid Closet, an historical documentary addressing how Hollywood films have depicted homosexuality. In his third volume of memoirs Resident Alien published in the same year, Crisp stated that he was close to the end of his life, though he continued to make public appearances and in June of that year he was one of the guest entertainers at the second Pride Scotland festival in Glasgow.

1950

Time magazine runs its first article on homosexuality, saying that homosexuals should not work in government jobs because they are a security risk.

1989, Germany

Leonard Bernstein (August 25, 1918 – October 14, 1990) conducts Beethoven’s Symphony No. 9 in East Berlin’s Schauspielhaus as part of the country’s celebration of the fall of the Berlin Wall. He had conducted the same piece in West Berlin the previous day. Bernstein was an American composer, conductor, author, music lecturer, and pianist who was bisexual. 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.

 

DECEMBER 26

1931

The film Mata Hari is released. It’s the first film Greta Garbo (18 September 1905 – 15 April 1990) does after becoming Mercedes de Acosta’s (March 1, 1893 – May 9, 1968) lover. De Costa designs one of the outfits that Garbo wears in the film.

1933

Greta Garbo (18 September 1905 – 15 April 1990) stars as the Queen of Sweden who defies gender-norm expectations. Garbo’s partner, Mercedes de Acosta (March 1, 1893 – May 9, 1968) proposed the film’s concept. Garbo’s Cuban Lover, a 2001 stage play by actress-writer Odalys Nanin, celebrates Latin lesbians including Greta Garbo’s dashing lover de Acosta.

1973

Charles William “Billy” Haines (January 2, 1900 – December 26, 1973) was an American actor and interior designer. Haines was discovered by a talent scout and signed with Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer (MGM) in 1922. His career gained momentum when he was lent to Columbia Pictures where he received favorable reviews for his role in The Midnight Express. Haines returned to MGM and was cast in the 1926 film Brown of Harvard. The role solidified his screen persona as a wisecracking, arrogant leading man. By the end of the 1920s, Haines had appeared in a string of successful films and was a popular box-office draw. Haines’ acting career was cut short by the studios in the 1930s due to his refusal to deny his homosexuality. He quit acting in 1935 and started a successful interior design business with his life partner Jimmie Shields. His work was widely patronized by friends in Hollywood. Haines died of lung cancer in December 1973 at the age of 73. William Haines’ house was the scene of many gatherings for the industry’s homosexuals. The close-knit group reputedly included Haines and his partner Jimmie Shields (January 2, 1900 – December 26, 1973), writer Somerset Maugham (25 January 1874 – 16 December 1965), director James Vincent (July 19, 1882 – July 12, 1957), screenwriter Rowland Leigh (1902 – 1963), costume designers Orry-Kelly (31 December 1897 – 27 February 1964) and Robert Le Maire, and actors John Darrow (17 July 1907 – 24 February 1980), Anderson Lawler (May 5, 1902 – April 6, 1959), Grady Sutton (April 5, 1906 – September 17, 1995), Robert Seiter and Tom Douglas.

1975

Mary Jo Risher announces that she planned to appeal a Dallas jury’s decision to remove her son from her custody because she is a lesbian. Her appeal would fail.

1977

Anti-gay crusader Anita Bryant was named one of the Twenty-Five Most Intriguing People of 1977 in People magazine.

1997

Lesbian Regan Wolf of Lancaster, South Carolina was knocked unconscious by three men who brutally beat her, strung her up from her front porch, and painted “Jesus weren’t born for you, faggot.” Despite giving police the identity of the three men, the sheriff’s office took no action. She was attacked more severely six months later.

 

DECEMBER 27

1708, UK

In England, Rev. Bray, the leader of the Societies for Reformation of Manners, preached a sermon in which he referred to sodomy as “an evil force invading our land.”

1882

Harry Allen or Harry Livingston (December 27, 1882- December 27, 1922) was an American transgender man from the Pacific Northwest who was the subject of ongoing sensationalist local and national newspaper coverage from 1900 until his death in 1922. As Nell Pickerell, he was a young man in his early 20s who lived by his wits. He could fight, and looked great in a suit, tie and derby. He smoked, drank and ran with a rough crowd. He was reputedly close to the city’s gang leaders and very familiar with the insides of a jail cell, having spent time there for theft, vagrancy, selling liquor to the Indians, resisting arrest and other offenses. He was jugged once in Portland for violating the Mann Act by allegedly transporting a woman over a state line for immoral purposes. The woman was his partner, a Seattle prostitute who “posed” as his wife. Harry was a person recognized by most of society as a woman, but who identified completely as a man.

1888

Wilhelm Murnau (Friedrich Wilhelm Plumpe; December 28, 1888 – March 11, 1931) was a German film director. He was greatly influenced by the Schopenhauer, Nietzsche, Shakespeare and Ibsen plays he had seen at the age of 12, and became a friend of director Max Reinhardt. During World War I he served in the Imperial German Army, initially as an infantry company commander on the Eastern Front. Murnau later transferred to the German Army’s Flying Corps as an observer/gunner,  and survived several crashes without any severe injuries. One of Murnau’s acclaimed works is the film Nosferatu (1922), an adaptation of Bram Stoker’s Dracula. Although not a commercial success, owing to copyright issues with Stoker’s estate, the film is considered a masterpiece of German Expressionist cinema. He later directed the film The Last Laugh (1924) as well as a 1926 interpretation of Goethe’s Faust. He emigrated to Hollywood in 1926 where he joined the Fox Studio and made three films: Sunrise (1927), 4 Devils (1928) and City Girl (1930). Sunrise has been regarded by critics and film directors as among the best films ever made. Murnau travelled to Bora Bora to make the film Tabu (1931) with documentary film pioneer Robert J. Flaherty. Flaherty left after artistic disputes with Murnau who had to finish the movie on his own. A week before the opening of Tabu, Murnau died in a Santa Barbara hospital from injuries he sustained in an automobile accident that occurred along the Pacific Coast Highway near Rincon Beach, southeast of Santa Barbara. Of the 21 films Murnau directed, eight are considered to be completely lost. One reel of his feature Marizza, genannt die Schmuggler-Madonna survives. This leaves only 12 films surviving in their entirety. Murnau was gay though sources conflict on whether he was closeted or open about his sexuality.

1901

Actress Marlene Dietrich (27 December 1901 – 6 May 1992) is born. She was a German actress and singer who held both German and American citizenship. Throughout her unusually long career, which spanned from the 1910s to the 1980s, she maintained popularity by continually reinventing herself. She was bisexual and quietly enjoyed the thriving gay scene of the time and drag balls of 1920s Berlin. She had an affair with Mercedes de Acosta (March 1, 1893 – May 9, 1968) who became Greta Garbo’s lover. Greta Garbo has been commonly regarded as Dietrich’s greatest film rival but there is also a rumor of an affair between them.

1919

Hart Crane (July 21, 1899 – April 27, 1932), was an American poet. Finding both inspiration and provocation in the poetry of T. S. Eliot, Crane wrote modernist poetry that was difficult, highly stylized, and ambitious in its scope. In the years following his suicide at the age of 32, Crane has been hailed by playwrights, poets, and literary critics alike (including Robert Lowell, Derek Walcott, Tennessee Williams, and Harold Bloom), as being one of the most influential poets of his generation. On this day, Crane comes out as homosexual in a letter to the critic Gorham Munson. His lover was Emil Opffer, a Danish merchant mariner. As a boy, he had a sexual relationship with a man.  He associated his sexuality with his vocation as a poet. The prominent queer theorist Tim Dean (born 1966) argues, for instance, that the obscurity of Crane’s style owes itself partially to the necessities of being a semi-public homosexual—not quite closeted, but also, as legally and culturally necessary, not open.

1933

The New York Times reviewed Queen Christina, a film starring Greta Garbo about Christina of Sweden (8 December, 1626 – 19 April 1689) who cross-dressed and is believed to have been bisexual.

1943

 Martha Shelley  (born December 27, 1943) is an American lesbian activist, feminist, writer, and poet. She was in Greenwich Village the night of the Stonewall riots with women who were starting a Daughters of Bilitis chapter in Boston. Recognizing the significance of the event and being politically aware, she proposed a protest march. As a result DOB and Mattachine sponsored a demonstration. According to an article in the program for the first San Francisco pride march, she was one of the first four members of the Gay Liberation Front, the others being Michael Brown, Jerry Hoose and Jim Owles. Certainly she was one of the twenty or so women and men who formed the Gay Liberation Front immediately after Stonewall and was outspoken in many of their confrontations. She wrote for their magazine Come Out!. In 1970 she was instrumental in the Lavender Menace zap of the Second Congress to Unite Women. She produced the radio show Lesbian Nation on New York’s WBAI radio station and contributed pieces from Notes of a Radical Lesbian and Terror to the 1970 anthology Sisterhood is Powerful: An Anthology of Writings from The Women’s Liberation Movement, edited by Robin Morgan. After moving to Oakland, California in October 1974, she was involved with the Women’s Press Collective where she worked with Judy Grahn to produce Crossing the DMZ, In Other Words, Lesbians Speak Out and other books. Her poetry has appeared in Ms.magazine, Sunbury, The Bright Medusa, We Become New and other periodicals. Shelley appeared in the 2010 documentary Stonewall Uprising, an episode of the American Experience series. One of the first members of the Gay Liberation Front, Shelley is one of the best-known lesbian activists in America. The name “Shelley” was an alias taken to avoid being identified in FBI surveillance of the Daughters of Bilitis.

1958

Lisa Sue Kove (born Dec. 27, 1958) is an American civil servant and disabled retired combat veteran, a San Diego, California corporate executive, and a civil rights activist. She’s the Executive Director of the Department of Defense Federal Glove, and chairwoman of EXUSMED, Inc., a healthcare corporation based in San Diego. In 1998 Kove filed one of the first child support suits in the nation for children born to same-sex couples. The Superior Court of Pennsylvania affirmed that Kove’s former lesbian partner must pay support for the five children Kove bore during their relationship.

1973

Singer/actor Wilson Cruz (December 27, 1973) is born. Cruz grew up in a Puerto Rican family in New York. He is an American actor known for playing Rickie Vasquez on My So-Called Life, Angel in the Broadway production of Rent and the recurring character Junito on Noah’s Arc. As an openly gay man of Puerto Rican ancestry, he has served as an advocate for gay youth, especially gay youth of color. Wilson is featured on The CBS All Access’ new Star Trek: Discovery series as a gay character in the first openly gay relationship.

1980, The Netherlands

The first international lesbian conference, called the International Lesbian Information Secretariat, is held in Amsterdam with women from 17 countries in attendance. It takes place over six days at a youth hostel. The ILIS’s purpose was to foster international lesbian organizing. It was started in 1980 within ILGA which is an international organization bringing together more than 750 LGBTI groups from around the world. The following year, at a separate lesbian conference arranged prior to the ILGA Turin conference, lesbian organizations decided that ILIS should be a separate organization. ILIS arranged several international conferences. The activities seem to have gradually stopped in the late 1990s.

1988

Joe Beam (December 30, 1954– December 27, 1988) dies. He was the editor of In the Life: A Black Gay Anthology. He was an African American gay rights activist and author who worked to foster greater acceptance of gay life in the Black community by relating the gay experience with the struggle for civil rights in the United States. Beam was working on a sequel to In the Life at the time of his death of HIV-related disease in 1988. This work was completed by Dorothy Beam and the gay poet Essex Hemphill (April 16, 1957 – November 4, 1995), and published under the title Brother to Brother in 1991. Both books were featured in a television documentary Tongues Untied in 1991.

1990

San Antonio’s AIDS Foundation files a complaint with the state consumer affairs board against four funeral homes in the area which charged $75 extra to prepare the bodies of people who died of AIDS complications.

1995

Michael Callen (April 11, 1955 – December 27, 1993), who was a significant architect of the response to the AIDS crisis in the United States, dies. Singer, songwriter, AIDS activist and author, Michael is recognized as a co-inventor of safe(r) sex and a co-founder of the People with AIDS self-empowerment movement. He was a founding member of the gay male a cappella singing group The Flirtations. Callen died of AIDS-related complications in Los Angeles at the age of 38.

 

DECEMBER 28

1931

Lili Ilse Elvenes (28 December 1882 – 13 September 1931) is born. She was a Danish painter, better known today by the pseudonym ‘Lili Elbe,’ who becomes the second transgender woman to benefit from Gohrbandt’s vaginoplasty technique in 1931. Her castration and penectomy had been performed by Dr. Ludwig Levy-Lenz (1889-1966) the previous year. These preliminaries have sometimes caused confusion over the date of Lili’s ‘sex change’ which—like all other gender transitions—is not so much a single event as a process extended in time. After successfully transitioning in 1930, she changed her legal name to Lili Ilse Elvenes and stopped painting altogether. The name “Lili” was suggested by a friend, actress Anna Larssen. Later in her life, Lili chose the surname Elbe, inspired by the Elbe River in Dresden. She died from complications involving a uterus transplant. Her autobiography Man into Woman was published posthumously in 1933. In 2000, David Ebershoff wrote The Danish Girl, a fictionalized account of Elbe’s life. In 2015, it was made into a film also called The Danish Girl, produced by Gail Mutrux and Neil LaBute and starring Eddie Redmayne as Elbe.

1969

The Los Angeles chapter of the Gay Liberation Front’s Don Jackson outlines a plan for a “gay colony,” to be called Stonewall Nation, in California’s Alpine County whose current population was 450. They would recall the county government and elect an all-gay slate. Although his proposal attracts widespread media attention and support from activists including Jim Kepner (1923 – 15 November 1997) and Don Kilhefner (born March 3, 1938), few gay men and lesbians are willing to make the move. After a brief flurry of national attention, GLF announces that the plan is off.

1986

Terry Dolan (1950 – December 28, 1986), an anti-gay family values advocate, was discovered to have been gay after his death from complications of AIDS at age 36. While he was persistently critical of gay rights, he was revealed to have been a closeted homosexual who frequented gay bars in Washington, D.C.

1988

A district court judge ruled that Karen Thompson must be allowed to visit her lover, Sharon Kowalski, a quadriplegic. He also ruled that Kowalski’s father would remain her guardian. Kowalski had been seriously injured in an accident, and her father refused to al-low Thompson to visit her. Karen fought and won the right to be Sharon’s legal guardian. In re Guardianship of Kowalski, 478 N.W.2d 790 (Minn. Ct. App. 1991) is the Minnesota Court of Appeals case that established a lesbian’s partner as her legal guardian after Sharon Kowalski 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.

1990

The Greensboro, North Carolina council repeals a municipal ordinance forbidding discrimination based on sexual orientation. The council had passed the ordinance only three months earlier.

1994, India

About 70 men from Bangladesh, India, Nepal, Pakistan, and Sri Lanka attend the first regional conference for gay rights in South Asia, a five-day event organized in New Delhi by activist Ashok Row Kawi (born 1 June 1947). Ashok Row Kavi is an Indian journalist and one of India’s most prominent LGBT rights activists. In 1990, he founded Bombay Dost, India’s first gay magazine. He was a representative at the International AIDS Conference in Amsterdam and served as chairman of the Second International Congress on AIDS. At the present, he is founder-chairperson of the Humsafar Trust, an LGBT rights and health services NGO which also agitates for the legal emancipation of homosexuality in India. Row Kavi has been listed among India’s Seven Most Influential Gay & Lesbian individuals by Pink Pages magazine. In September 2017 India Times listed Kavi as one of the eleven Human Rights Activists Whose Life Mission is to Provide Others with a Dignified Life.

1998, The Vatican

Pope John Paul II speaks out against the acceptance of non-traditional families, saying it disfigures the traditional family struc-ture.

2005, Nigeria

The Church of Nigeria issues a press release warning people about Davis Mac-lyalla (born 1972) “who claims to be a member of the Anglican Church.” (Actually, he was not only a member but he worked for the Church for years.) Earlier in the year, Mac-lyalla had been arrested and tortured by the police. In 2008, he was given refuge asylum in the UK and received the Bishop Desmond Tutu Award for Human Rights and Social Justice. He established the Nigerian wing of the British Changing Attitude organization, which presses for internal reform of the Anglican Communion for further inclusion of Anglican sexual minorities.

 

DECEMBER 29

1898, UK

Elfie Gidlow (29 December 1898 – 8 June 1986) was a British-born Canadian-American poet, freelance journalist, and philosopher. In 1918 she published Les Mouches Fantastiques with journalist Roswell George Mills. It was the first known LGB periodical in Canadian and North American history. Five issues of the magazine were published; it was discontinued in 1920. She is best known for writing On a Grey Thread (1923), possibly the first volume of openly lesbian love poetry published in North America. In the 1950s, Gidlow helped found Druid Heights, a bohemian community in Marin County, California. She was the author of thirteen books and appeared as herself in the documentary film Word Is Out: Stories of Some of Our Lives(1977). Completed just before her death, her autobiography, Elsa, I Come with My Songs (1986), recounts her life story. Towards the last years of her life, Gidlow experienced several strokes. She chose not to seek medical care in a hospital and died at home in Druid Heights at the age of 87. Gidlow’s estate donated her extensive personal papers to the GLBT Historical Society in San Francisco in 1991. One is in the archives of the University of South Florida. The University of Iowa library has an original of all five issues, and the Quebec Gay Archives has a reprint of the final issue.

1971

Wakefield Poole’s (born 1936) trend-setting Boys in the Sand premieres, prompting Variety to remark, “There are no more closets.” Shot on Fire Island, Poole’s slickly produced film marks a dramatic departure from the low-budget pornography previously available. Boys in the Sand had its theatrical debut on December 29, 1971 at the 55th Street Playhouse in New York City. It was the first gay porn film to include credits, to achieve crossover success, to be reviewed by Variety, and one of the earliest porn films, after 1969’s Blue Movie by Andy Warhol (August 6, 1928 – February 22, 1987) to gain mainstream credibility, preceding 1972’s Deep Throat by nearly a year. It was promoted with an advertising campaign un-precedented for a pornographic feature and was an immediate critical and commercial success. The film’s title is a parodic reference to the Mart Crowley (August 21, 1935-March 7, 2020) play and film The Boys in the Band.

1972

As a result of the dismissal of a gay man from his job with the Seattle Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, an action was filed seeking to change the Civil Service Rules which allowed the dismissal of homosexuals from Federal employment on the basis of sexual orientation alone. A year later a federal judge nullified the policy.

1990

Richard Dunne (1944 – December 29, 1990), director of the Gay Men’s Health Crisis from 1985-1989, dies of complications from AIDS at age 46. During his time as director the annual budget in-creased from $800,000 to $11 million and the staff increased from 17 to 120.

1995

John Gilbert, general manager of KOAA-TV in Colorado Springs, pulls tv shows Jenny Jones and Carnie because their shows included homosexuals.

1999

Senator John McCain meets with Arizona state legislator Steve May (born c. 1972), a gay Republican who was in the process of being discharged from the Army reserves. McCain said he stands by the Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell policy but would look into his case to be sure he was being treated fairly.

2012

Same-sex marriage takes effect in Maine with a voter approval of 53%-47%. Maryland and Washington State are the other states to win marriage equality by popular vote.

 

DECEMBER 30

1944

The New York Times reviews the play Trio from the novel by Dorot Baker, about a relationship between a female college teacher and a young woman. Trio was originally scheduled to open on November 8, 1944 at the Cort Theater; however theater owner Lee Shubert refused to rent it based on the play’s themes of an older woman’s feelings for a girl. Elmer Rice, lease-holder of the Belasco Theatre, allowed the production to open there, where it was still a subject of controversy. It was finally ordered to close by New York License Commissioner Paul Moss who refused to renew the Belasco’s license if Trio remained open; it closed on February 24, 1945.

1965

The New York Post runs an article about illegal tactics used by police to harass gays.

1977, Canada

Toronto police take action against The Body Politic, the country’s leading gay and lesbian newspaper, seizing materials and charging the publication with “using the mails to distribute immoral, indecent, and scurrilous material.” It would be six years before they were acquitted.

1998

New Ways Ministries, a Catholic group, took out a full-page ad in the New York Times calling for an end to anti-gay violence.

2008

The ACLU sues the state of Arkansas, arguing that the state’s ban on same-sex adoptions is unconstitutional.

 

DECEMBER 31

1901

Beauford Delaney (December 30, 1901 – March 26, 1979) is born. He was a gay African American modernist painter. He is remembered for his work with the Harlem Renaissance in the 1930s and 1940s as well as his later works in abstract expressionism following his move to Paris in the 1950s. Beauford’s younger brother, Joseph, was also a noted painter. In Greenwich Village, Delaney became part of a gay bohemian circle of mainly white friends but he was furtive and rarely comfortable with his sexuality. The pressures of being “Black and gay in a racist and homophobic society” was difficult enough, but Delaney’s own Christian upbringing and “disapproval” of homosexuality, the presence of a family member (his artist brother Joseph) in the New York art scene and the “macho abstract expressionists emerging in lower Manhattan’s art scene” added to this pressure. So he “remained rather isolated as an artist even as he worked in a center of major artistic ferment… A deeply introverted and private person, Delaney formed no lasting romantic relationships.

1964

The Council on Religion and the Homosexual holds a costume party in San Francisco to raise money for the new organization. When the ministers informed the San Francisco Police Department of the event, the SFPD attempted to force the rented hall’s owners to cancel it. At the event itself, some of the ministers and ticket takers were arrested, creating a brief riot. Police attempt to intimidate some 600 guests by photographing each guest as they arrive. Three lawyers and Nancy May, a straight volunteer, are arrested. Though charges were dropped, the Council published a brief detailing how police oppressed and abused homosexuals.

1966, Canada

In Vancouver, the Association for Social Knowledge, Canada’s earliest homophile organization, opens the first community center to serve the homosexual community in Canada.

1967

During a raid on The Black Cat bar in San Francisco, a gay man was beaten so severely by police that his spleen was ruptured. The police department filed assault charges against the victim but he was acquitted.

1969

Drag queen acting troupe The Cockettes premiers their act in San Francisco. They are one of the first gender-bending performing groups. The group was founded by Hibiscus – George Edgerly Harris II (September 6, 1949 – May 6, 1982) – in the fall of 1969. The troupe was formed out of a group of hippie artists, men and women, who were living in Kaliflower, one of the many communes in Haight-Ashbury, a neighborhood of San Francisco. Hibiscus came to live with them because of their preference for dressing outrageously and proposed the idea of putting their lifestyle on the stage. Hibiscus died of Kaposi’s sarcoma due to complications from AIDS on May 6, 1982 at St. Vincent’s Hospital in New York City. He was a very early AIDS casualty: at the time of his death the new illness was still referred to as GRID.

1971

Life magazine publishes an 11-page spread called Homosexuals in Revolt which discusses the post-Stonewall movement in a generally positive light for the first time.

1988, Guinea

Article 325 is added to Guinea’s penal code to make same-sex sexual activity illegal.

1990

Ian McKellen (born 25 May 1939) is knighted by the Queen of England. He is the first openly gay man to be knighted. 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. While McKellen had made his sexual orientation known to fellow actors early on in his stage career, it was not until 1988 that he came out to the general public, in a program on BBC Radio. McKellen is a co-founder of Stonewall, an LGBT rights lobby group in the United Kingdom and also patron of LGBT History Month, Pride London, Oxford Pride, GAY-GLOS, The Lesbian & Gay Foundation, and FFLAG where he appears in their video Par-ents Talking.

1993

Transman Brandon Teena (December 12, 1972 – December 31, 1993) is murdered by the same young men who raped him a week earlier after discovering he’d been born female. His story is captured in the film Boys Don’t Cry. The headstone on his grave is in-scribed with his birth name and uses female descriptors. Teena’s murder, along with that of Matthew Shepard (December 1, 1976 – October 12, 1998), led to increased lobbying for hate crime laws in the United States.

2014

Musab Mohammed Masmari sets fire to the Seattle gay nightclub Neighbours in a stairwell. The fire was extinguished quickly. Masmari reportedly said homosexual people “should be exterminated” after expressing a “distaste” for members of the LGBT community to a friend.

2014, Russia

The Russian large gay club called Central Station was forced to close after countless attacks of sprays of bullets and being gassed. It later reopened with the use of bulletproof glass and a longer walk from the metro station.

Published September 27, 2023

This Day iin LGBTQ History – November

NOVEMBER 1

1932

The New York Times reviews the play Incubator which dealt with the consequences of homosexuality in an all-male school. The play was produced by Arthur Edison and George Burton and ran for only 7 performances.

1948

WMCA, a radio station in New York, broadcast a show in response to a letter from a man who was arrested after a police officer made advances. A judge who was a guest stated that the author of the letter had no right to complain about the entrapment and that police should use such tactics to weed out homosexuals.

1960

Timothy Donald Cook (born November 1, 1960) is an American business executive, currently serving as the chief executive officer of Apple Inc. Cook previously served as the company’s chief operating officer under its co-founder Steve Jobs. In 2014, Cook be-came the first chief executive of a Fortune 500 company to publicly come out as gay. Cook also serves on the boards of directors of Nike, Inc. and the National Football Foundation, and is a trustee of Duke University.

1969

Connecticut decriminalizes private consensual adult homosexual acts.

1971, Canada

Canada’s first gay rights magazine The Body Politic goes on sale.

1972

Hal Holbrook co-starred with Martin Sheen in the controversial and acclaimed television film That Certain Summer. The film was directed by Lamont Johnson. The teleplay, by Richard Levinson and William Link, was the first to deal sympathetically with homosexuality. Produced by Universal Television, it was broadcast as an ABC Movie of the Week on November 1. A novelization of the film written by Burton Wohl was published by Bantam Books. The film won a Golden Globe for Best Movie Made for TV. It sensitively explore homosexuality through the story of an American housewife (Hope Lange) losing her husband (Hal Holbrook) to a young artist (Martin Sheen).

1973

New Hampshire decriminalizes private consensual adult homosexual acts.

1980

The book Overcoming Homosexuality by Robert Kronemeyer suggests that a strict vegetarian diet may “cure” gays and lesbians.

1984

Independent Hollywood producer Jerry Wheeler announces that production of The Front Runner by Patricia Nell Warren (born June 15, 1936), will begin in late September of 1985, but it didn’t happen. The book was Warren’s first novel and the first contemporary gay fiction to make the New York Times Best Seller list.

1988

A University of Minnesota study reveals that there is a one-in-three chance that a gay teen boy will attempt suicide.

1999

Nancy Katz becomes the first openly lesbian judge in Illinois when she was sworn in as a Cook County associate judge.

1999

TV’s Ally McBeal (Calista Flockhart) enjoys a prolonged kiss with her office nemesis, Ling (Lucy Liu). Seventeen million viewers tuned in, the show’s largest audience.

2003, Taiwan

Taiwan Pride, the first gay pride parade in the Chinese-speaking world, was held in Taipei, with over 1,000 people attending. It has taken place annually since then, but still, many participants wear masks to hide their identity because homosexuality remains a social taboo in Taiwan. However, the 2010 parade attracted 30,000 attendees and increasing media and political attention, highlighting the growing rate of acceptance in Taiwan. Since 2010, there has also been a pride parade in Kaohsiung, which attracted over 2,000 people.

2009, Sweden

The Church of Sweden begins allowing same-sex marriages and the use of the term “marriage” for same-sex couples.

2009

Angie Zapata (5 August 1989–17 July 2008, a transgender woman, was murdered in Greeley, Colorado. Allen Andrade was convicted of first-degree murder and committing a bias-motivated crime, because he killed her after he learned that she was transgender. This case was the first in the nation to get a conviction for a hate crime involving a transgender victim. Angie Zapata’s story and murder were featured on Univision’s Aqui y Ahora television show on November 1, 2009.

2013, Canada

Audrey Gauthier was elected president of CUPE 4041 representing Air Transat flight attendants based in Montreal. She thus becomes the first openly transgender person elected president of a union local in Canada.

 

NOVEMBER 2

1948

Mandy Carter is born (born 1948). She is an African American lesbian activist. She is a former Executive Director and one of the six co-founders of the North Carolina-based Southerners on New Ground (SONG). Carter was a four-year (1996-2000) North Carolina Member-At-Large of the Democratic National Committee (DNC), and a member of both the DNC Gay and Lesbian Caucus and the DNC Black Caucus. She was a delegate at the 2000 Democratic National Convention, as well as one of the four co-chairs for the daily meeting of the DNC Gay and Lesbian Caucus.

1955

Three men are accused of having sex with teenagers in Boise, Ida-ho, setting off a politically motivated 15-month investigation of local gay male networks. Some 1,400 people are questioned in the McCarthy Era witch-hunt that results. Dozens are arrested, nine men are imprisoned for as long as 15 years, and an untold number of gay men flee the city.

1961, Canada

Singer k. d. (Kathryn Dawn ) lang (November 2, 1961) is born in Consort, Alberta. She is a multiple Grammy-winning pop singer/songwriter and an androgynous, unapologetic gay woman (her choice of words), one of the first performers of her caliber ever to come out. Lang is also known for being an animal rights, gay rights, and Tibetan human rights activist. She performed Leonard Cohen‘s Hallelujah live at the opening ceremony of the 2010 Winter Olympics in Vancouver and brought the world to tears.

1969

Just four months after the Stonewall riots Craig Rodwell, his partner Fred Sargeant, Ellen Broidy, and Linda Rhodes of the newly formed Gay Liberation Front proposed the first “gay pride parade” which was then called the Christopher Street Liberation Day March to be held in New York City by way of a public resolution at the Eastern Regional Conference of Homophile Organizations (ERCHO) meeting in Philadelphia. Meetings to organize the march began in early January at Rodwell’s apartment in 350 Bleeker Street not far from the site of the Stonewall bar. At first there was major difficulty getting some of New York organizations like Gay Activists Alliance (GAA) to send representatives. In the end Rodwell, Sargeant and Broidy, along with Michael Brown, Marty Nixon, Brenda Howard of the Gay Liberation Front and Foster Gunnison of the Mattachine Society made up the core group. The West Coast held a march in Los Angeles on June 28, 1970 and a march and ‘Gay-in’ in San Francisco. In Los Angeles, Morris Kight (Gay Liberation Front LA founder), Reverend Troy Perry (Universal Fellowship of Metropolitan Community Churches founder) and Reverend Bob Humphries (United States Mission founder) gathered to plan a commemoration. They settled on a parade down Hollywood Boulevard. But securing a permit from the city was no easy task. They had more difficulty with Los Angeles than New York City. Rev. Perry recalled the Los Angeles Police Chief Edward M. Davis telling him, “As far as I’m concerned, granting a permit to a group of homosexuals to parade down Hollywood Boulevard would be the same as giving a permit to a group of thieves and robbers.” Grudgingly, the Police Commission granted the permit though there were fees exceeding $1.5 million. After the American Civil Liberties Union stepped in, the commission dropped all its requirements but a $1,500 fee for police service. That, too, was dismissed when the California Superior Court ordered the police to provide protection as they would for any other group. The eleventh-hour California Supreme Court decision ordered the police commissioner to issue a parade permit cit-ing the “constitutional guarantee of freedom of expression.” From the beginning, L.A. parade organizers and participants knew there were risks of violence. Kight received death threats right up to the morning of the parade. Unlike what we see today, the first gay parade was very quiet. The Advocate reported “Over 1,000 homosexuals and their friends staged not just a protest march but a full-blown parade down world-famous Hollywood Boulevard.”

1969

A nationwide poll of U.S. doctors revealed 67% were in favor of the repeal of sodomy laws.

1969

The Eastern Regional Conference of Homophile Organizations votes at its convention to abandon the Annual Reminder demon-stration in Philadelphia in favor of an event to commemorate the Stonewall Riots. This proposed event would eventually blossom into the first Christopher Street Liberation Day, held on June 28, 1970.

1977

SAGE-Senior Action in a Gay Environment is founded in New York City with the goal of improving the lives of lesbian and gay seniors.

1999

A United Methodist Church committee found that operators of a church campground in Des Plaines, Illinois discriminated when they refused to rent a cabin to a gay couple.

1982

Brookside is a British soap opera with gay characters set in Liverpool, England that ran for 21 years until November 4, 2003. Originally intended to be called Meadowcroft, the series was produced by Mersey Television and was conceived by Phil Redmond who also devised Grange Hill (1978-2008) and Hollyoaks (1995-present).

2004

Voters in eleven U.S. states back constitutional amendment bans on same-sex marriage. The states are Arkansas, Georgia, Kentucky, Michigan, Mississippi, Montana, North Dakota, Ohio, Oklahoma, Oregon, and Utah.

2010

Voters in El Paso, Texas pass an initiative that strips health insurance benefits from the unmarried partners of city employees. Supporters say that their intention was to target gay city employees and their partners.

2011

The U. S. Internal Revenue Service announces that it intends to issue a formal agreement known as a “notice of acquiescence” with the 2010 United States Tax Court decision in O’Donnabhain v. Commissioner, allowing people to deduct the costs for treating gender identity disorder from their federal income taxes. The issue for the court was whether a taxpayer who has been diagnosed with gender identity disorder can deduct sex reassignment surgery costs as necessary medical expenses under 26 U.S.C. § 213. The IRS argued that such surgery is cosmetic and not medically necessary. The case was brought by Rhiannon O’Donnabhain, a transgender woman who underwent sex reassignment surgery in 2001.

 

NOVEMBER 3

1746, UK

The Bath newspaper reports that Mary Hamilton (d. March 14, 1719), alias Charles, George, and William Hamilton, will be publically whipped then sent to prison for six months for fraud for im-personating a man. Hamilton marries as many as 14 women who think she’s male. She is repeatedly caught and escapes to another town.

1895, Hungary

László Ede Almásy de Zsadány et Törökszentmiklós (3 November 1895 – 22 March 1951) was a gay Hungarian aristocrat, motorist, 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).

1895

Jamison Green (born November 8, 1948) is a transgender rights activist. Green has served on the boards of the Transgender Law and Policy Institute and the Equality Project, was an advisory board member of the National Center for Transgender Equality, and chaired the board of Gender Education and Advocacy. He served as president of the World Professional Association for Transgender Health from 2014 to 2016. He was the leader of FTM International from March 1991 to August 1999. Green helped establish the Human Rights Campaign’s Corporate Equality Index in 2002 and was a member of the organization’s Business Council until late 2007 when he resigned over the organization’s stance on transgender inclusion in the Employment Non-Discrimination Act. Green began presenting on the fair treatment of transgender workers in 1989. He has published several essays and articles, wrote a column for PlanetOut.com and has appeared in eight documentary films. Green authored Becoming a Visible Man in 2004. The book combines two strands: autobiographical writing about Green’s transition from living as a lesbian to living as a bisexual trans man, as well as broader commentary about the status of transsexual men in society. The book received the 2004 Sylvia Rivera Award for best book in Transgender Studies from the Center for Lesbian and Gay Studies and was also a finalist for a 2004 Lambda Literary Award.

1943

Tee Corinne (November 3, 1943 – August 27, 2006) was a photographer, author, and editor notable for the portrayal of sexuality in her artwork. According to Completely Queer: The Gay and Lesbian Encyclopedia, “Corinne is one of the most visible and accessible lesbian artists in the world.” Tee came out in 1975 at which time she was in a relationship with filmmaker Honey Lee Cottrell (January 16, 1946 – September 21, 2015). Over the years, Corrine embarked upon relationships with Caroline Overman (early 1980s), Lee Lynch (mid 1980’s) and Beverly Anne Brown (1989–2005). In 2003, Brown was diagnosed with cancer which led to Corinne’s series Cancer in our Lives (2003-5). Corinne died on the 27th of August 2006 in Southern Oregon after a struggle with liver cancer. She was 62 years old. Her manuscript collection was donated to the University of Oregon Libraries and is now housed in the library’s Special Collections unit. The collection includes correspondence, literary manuscripts, artwork, photographs, artifacts, and other documents that reflect Corinne’s life and work.

1970

Bella Abzug (July 24, 1920 – March 31, 1998) was elected to the U.S. House of Representatives. A lesbian and gay ally, she would become the first to introduce a gay rights law in Congress. Nick-named “Battling Bella,” she was an American lawyer, a U.S. Representative, social activist and a leader of the Women’s Movement. In 1971, Abzug joined other leading feminists including Gloria Steinem, Shirley Chisholm, and Betty Friedan to found the National Women’s Political Caucus. Abzug declared, “This woman’s place is in the House—the House of Representatives” in her successful 1970 campaign. She was later appointed to chair the National Commission on the Observance of International Women’s Year, to plan the 1977 National Women’s Conference by President Gerald Ford, and led President Jimmy Carter’s commission on women.

1975

A front-page article about the success of the gay news magazine The Advocate appears in the Wall Street Journal.

1977

Harvey Milk (May 22, 1930-November 27, 1978) is elected to the San Francisco Board of Supervisors. He is the first openly gay person to serve on the Board and one of the nation’s highest profile gay political figures. Milk served almost eleven months in office and was responsible for passing a stringent gay rights ordinance for the city. On November 27, 1978, Milk and Mayor George Moscone were assassinated. Milk was posthumously awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2009.

1979, Canada

Gus Harris, mayor of the Toronto borough of Scarborough, calls for gay rights at a Human Rights rally. The Gay Human Rights Day rally was organized by Ontario gay rights group CGRO. Messages of support were read from Stuart Smith and Michael Cassidy, leaders, respectively, of Ontario’s two opposition parties, the Liberals and the NDP.

1981, Canada

A committee of Toronto city council considers the Bruner Report on relations between the police and gay community. It asks the police chief to issue a statement recognizing legitimacy of the gay community and setting up gay awareness program for police recruits, but nothing is done.

1983

U.S. Senator John Glenn tells the National Gay Task Force that he does not support gay rights legislation and will not do anything which might be considered advocacy or promotion of homosexuality. He would later add that LGB (T was not considered yet) people should not be allowed to teach or join the military.

1992

In Colorado, 53 percent of voters approve Amendment 2, an initiative banning state and municipal rights ordinances for lesbians and gay men. “Family values” organizations in more than 35 states begin campaigning for similar propositions. In Oregon, voters reject Measure 9, an initiative similar to Amendment 2.

1998

Tammy Baldwin (born February 11, 1962) (D-WI) is elected to the United States House of Representatives. She is the first open lesbian and the first non-incumbent gay candidate to be elected to federal office. Today, she is a U.S. Senator from Wisconsin and a member of the Democratic Party. She previously served as the Representative from Wisconsin’s 2nd congressional district from 1999 to 2013 as well as serving three terms in the Wisconsin Assembly representing the 78th district. She is the first woman elected to represent Wisconsin in the Senate and the first openly gay U.S. senator in history. Baldwin defeated her Republican opponent, former Wisconsin Governor Tommy Thompson, in the 2012 U.S. Senate election.

1998

Hawaii voters approve a constitutional amendment banning same-sex marriage.

1999

A jury found Aaron McKinney guilty of felony murder and second degree murder in the death of 21-year-old gay college student Matthew Shepard.

2010

Kye Allums (born October 23, 1989) is a former college basketball player for the George Washington Colonials women’s basketball team of George Washington University (GWU) and a transgender pioneer. He is now a transgender advocate, public speaker, artist, and mentor to LGBT youth. In 2010, Allums, a trans man, became the first openly transgender NCAA Division I college athlete. Kye produced a project called I Am Enough which encourages other LGBTQ individuals to come out and talk about their experiences. The project allows individuals to submit their stories to showing people who share the same issues that they are not alone. In 2015, he was inducted into the National Gay and Lesbian Sports Hall of Fame.

2020

The general election results in three legislative firsts: Sarah McBride (August 9, 1990) wins the Senate race for Delaware District 1 and becomes the nation’s first person who publicly identifies as transgender to serve as a state senator; Ritchie Torres  (born March 12, 1988) wins the House race for New York District 15, and becomes the first Black member of Congress who identifies as gay; and Mauree Turner (born 1992 or 1993) wins the race for Oklahoma State House for District 88, and becomes the first non-binary state legislator in U.S. history and first Muslim lawmaker in Oklahoma.

 

NOVEMBER 4

1929, India

Shakuntala Devi (4 November 1929 – 21 April 2013) is born. She was an Indian writer and mental calculator, popularly known as the “human computer.” A child prodigy, her talent earned her a place in the 1982 edition of The Guinness Book of World Records. As a writer, Devi wrote a number of books, including novels as well as texts about mathematics, puzzles, and astrology. She wrote the first study of homosexuality in India, The World of Homosexuals. It treated homosexuality in an understanding light and Devi is considered a pioneer in the field. In the documentary For Straights Only, she said that her interest in the topic came out of her marriage to a homosexual man and her desire to look at homosexuality more closely to understand it.

1933

Barbara Grier (November 4, 1933 – November 10, 2011) was an American writer and publisher. She is credited for having built the lesbian book industry. After editing The Ladder magazine, published by the lesbian civil rights group Daughters of Bilitis, she co-founded a lesbian book-publishing company Naiad Press, which achieved publicity and became the world’s largest publisher of lesbian books. She built a major collection of lesbian literature, catalogued with detailed indexing of topics. Grier realized she was a lesbian at age twelve after researching the topic at the library. When Grier was fifteen, her mother gifted her a copy of The Well of Loneliness by Radclyffe Hall and Of Lena Geyer (1936) by Marcia Davenport. This would be the start of Grier’s collection of lesbian literature. She describes her collection of lesbian-themed books as Lesbiana, a collection that was fueled by a “love affair with lesbian publishing.” In 1957, Grier subscribed to The Ladder, a magazine edited by members of the Daughters of Bilitis. Grier began writing book reviews for The Ladder, using multiple pen names in her writings including Gene Damon, Marilyn Barrow, Gladys Casey, Terry Cook, Dorthy Lyle, Vern Niven, Lennox Strong, and Lee Stuart. In 1973, Grier co-founded Naiad Press along with Donna McBride, Anyda Marchant, and Muriel Crawford (Marchant’s partner) with $2,000 pooled among them. Their first publication was a novel titled The Latecomer (1974), by Anyda Marchant, written under her pseudonym Sarah Aldridge. The cover art came from lesbian artist Tee Corinne. Their initial audience came from the mailing list for The Ladder. Grier and McBride ran Naiad from Kansas City until 1980 when it relocated to Tallahassee, Florida. Both Grier and McBride continued to work other full-time jobs until 1982 when they dedicated all their time to the publishing company. Naiad Press went on to become the world’s largest publisher of lesbian books. Naiad Press’ most controversial publication was Lesbian Nuns: Breaking Silence, a work of non-fiction that was banned in Boston and criticized by the Catholic Church. Penthouse Forum ran a series from the book which made Naiad an internationally known publishing name. Grier paid ex-nuns Rosemary Curb and Nancy Manahan a half million dollars for the book which landed Grier on numerous talk shows.

1934

Lesbian Patricia Elaine Gilmore (November 4, 1934-May, 10, 2021) was born in Toledo, Ohio. She entered the Dominican Convent in Adrian, Michigan at age 19. She received her B.S. and M.S. (Chemistry) from Sienna Heights College in Adrian, and an M.A. (English) from Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois. While in the convent Pat served as a teaching nun and taught primarily math and science in communities from Chicago to Charleston to the Dominican Republic. She left the convent in 1968 and taught English at the middle school level in the East Detroit School District until her retirement in 1995. Pat moved to Windsor, Canada and pursued her writing career in earnest. She wrote short stories, plays, poems and a novel. She was published in many literary journals including Green’s Magazine, Canadian Writer’s Journal, The Storyteller Anthology, Pudding House Magazine, Sinister Wisdom, Women’s Voices and Maize. Pat moved to Bodega Bay in 2005 and lived there for 15 years until failing health forced her to move to Sonoma. In addition to writing, she enjoyed birding and was an avid photographer. Her home in Bodega Bay overlooked the Pacific and the beautiful Sonoma Coast which served as an inspiration for much of her poetry.

1946

Photographer Robert Mapplethorpe (November 4, 1946 – March 9, 1989) is born. He was known for his sensitive yet blunt treatment of controversial subject matter in the large-scale, highly stylized black and white medium of photography. His most controversial work is that of the underground BDSM scene in the late 1960s and early 1970s of New York City. The homoeroticism of this work fueled a national debate over the public funding of controversial artwork.

1955

Essex Hemphill (April 16, 1957-November 4, 1995) was an openly gay African American poet and activist. He is known for his contributions to the Washington, D.C. art scene in the 1980s, and for openly discussing topics pertinent to the African American gay community. In the 1990s, Hemphill would rarely give information about his health, although he would occasionally talk about “being a person with AIDS.” It was not until 1994 that he wrote about his experiences with the disease in his poem Vital Signs. He died on November 4, 1995, of AIDS-related complications. After his death, on December 10, 1995, three organizations (Gay Men of African Descent – GMAD), Other Countries, and Black Nations/Queer Nations) announced a National Day of Remembrance for Essex Hemphill at New York City’s Lesbian and Gay Community Services Center.

1960

FDNY firefighter, president emeritus of FireFLAG/EMT and LGBT Rights activist Tom Ryan (Nov. 4, 1960) is born. Ryan retired from FDNY in 2003 after a distinguished FDNY career and is a hero of 9/11. He has worked tirelessly for the issues effecting LGBT Fire-fighters and Emergency Workers, continues to speak out on issues of homophobia in the fire services, the rights of domestic partners, and discrimination toward the gay community.

1976

Syndicated columnist Nicholas von Hoffman’s piece entitled Out of TV’s Sitcom Closet appears. It stated that Americans were experiencing the “Year of the Fag” and claimed the National Gay Task Force was controlling at least one sitcom.

1980

Barney Frank (born March 31, 1940) (D, Mass.) is elected to his first term in the U.S. House of Representatives. He served as a member of the U.S. House of Representatives from Massachusetts from 1981 to 2013. As a member of the Democratic Party, he served as chair of the House Financial Services Committee (2007–2011) and was a leading co-sponsor of the 2010 Dodd–Frank Act, a sweeping reform of the U.S. financial industry. Frank was considered the most prominent gay politician in the United States.

1986

In California paranoid perennial presidential candidate and nutjob Lyndon LaRouche was at the height of the hysterical anti-gay backlash that had sprung up against the growing AIDS epidemic. He founded his Prevent AIDS Now Initiative Committee (PANIC) which gathered enough signatures to place Proposition 64 onto the ballot. Prop 64, also known as the LaRouche Initiative, would have placed AIDS on California’s list of communicable diseases under the state’s public health law which would have effectively forced anyone who was HIV-positive out of their jobs and schools and into a quarantine. Luckily, despite support by Congressman William E. Dannemeyer, Prop 64 lost in a landslide, 71% to 29%. LaRouche brought it back again in 1988 as Prop 69 and lost by an even wider margin. He also made that AIDS quarantine the centerpiece of his 1988 presidential campaign, which again he lost.

2008

California voters approve Proposition 8 making same-sex marriage in California illegal, becoming the first U.S. state to do so after marriages had been legalized for same-sex couples. The amendment to California’s constitution passed by a margin of 52% to 47% and overturned the state supreme court’s ruling in May in favor of same-sex marriage.

2008

Arizona and Florida voters pass constitutional amendments banning same-sex marriage.

2008

Arkansas voters pass Act 1 which effectively bans adoption by same-sex couples, by a margin of 54% to 41%. Florida had done so in 1978.

 

NOVEMBER 5

1513, Panama

Spanish conquistador Vasco Nunez de Balboa discovers a community of cross-dressing males in present-day Panama and, according to reports, feeds at least 40 of them to his dogs.

1698, England

William Minton, a 19 year old servant, is used as bait to entrap Capt. Edward Rigby, the first homosexual victim of entrapment by the Society for the Reformation of Manners. He was tried for sodomy. These Societies were formed in hamlets, London, in 1690, with their primary object being the suppression of bawdy houses and profanity. A network of moral guardians was set up, with four stewards in each ward of the City of London, two for each parish, and a committee, whose business it was to gather the names and addresses of offenders against morality, and to keep minutes of their misdeeds. By 1699 there were nine such societies, and by 1701 there were nearly 20 in London, plus others in the provinces, all corresponding with one another and gathering information and arranging for prosecutions.

1961

New York Times critic Howard Taubman launches an attack on “the increasing incidence of homosexuality on the New York stage” in an article headlined “Not What It Seems: Homosexual Motif Gets Heterosexual Guise.”

1969

The Homosexual Information Center protests at the offices of the Los Angeles Times because of the newspaper’s refusal to print the word “homosexual” in ads. The Times would not print an ad an-nouncing a group discussion on homosexuality.

1970

The New York Times reports that the Gay Activists Alliance’s petition to incorporate as a non-profit organization was rejected because of the use of the word “gay” in the organization’s name. The Gay Activists Alliance (GAA) was founded in New York City on December 21, 1969, almost six months after the Stonewall riots, by dissident members of the Gay Liberation Front (GLF). Some early members included Jim Owles, Marty Robinson, Tom Doerr (1947-August 2, 1987) (who introduced the lambda symbol into the gay movement. Originally the lambda sign referred to the political work of the Gay Activists Alliance and “it was only later that it became a sign for gay liberation in general), photojournalist Kay Lahusen  (born January 5, 1930), journalist Arthur Bell (November 6, 1939 – June 2, 1984), author Arthur Evans (October 12, 1942 – September 11, 2011), Bill Bahlman, author Vito Russo (July 11, 1946 – No-vember 7, 1990), transgender rights activist Sylvia Rivera (July 2, 1951 – February 19, 2002), drag queen Marsha P. Johnson (August 24, 1945 – July 6, 1992), Jim Coles, bisexual rights activist Brenda Howard (December 24, 1946 – June 28, 2005), David Thorstad (born June 6, 1941), Michael Giammetta and Morty Manford (son of PFLAG founder Jeanne Manford). GAA’s first president was Jim Owles.

1973

The Supreme Court of the United States in Wainwright v. Stone finds that the sodomy law of Florida is not unconstitutionally vague, reversing a Fifth Circuit ruling.

1974

Elaine Noble (born January 22, 1944) becomes the first openly gay or lesbian individual to be elected to a state legislature in the United States when she is elected to the Massachusetts House of Representatives. Inspired by Noble, Minnesota state legislator Allan Spear (June 24, 1937 – October 11, 2008) comes out in a newspaper interview. In 1986 Noble and Ellen Ratner formed an LGBT alcohol and drug treatment center in Minneapolis called the Pride Institute. More recently she has worked as a healthcare administrator and a realtor. Noble had a relationship with writer Rita Mae Brown (born November 28, 1944) in the 1970s and has since retained privacy regarding her personal life. She lives in Florida.

1985

The San Francisco Board of Supervisors passes legislation to protect people with AIDS from discrimination.

1992

A New York State Bar Association committee issues a recommen-dation that low-income same-sex couples be granted access to state-subsidized housing.

1992

A clause prohibiting anti-gay verbal abuse in public schools was repealed by the Fairfax (VA) county board of education because of complaints that it encouraged homosexuality.

1998

The U.S. Congress kills an amendment by Rep. Frank Riggs (R-CA) which would have barred San Francisco from spending federal housing money to implement its domestic partner ordinance.

2004, Canada

A judge in Saskatchewan rules that same-sex couples have the right to marry in that province.

2008

Strauss v. Horton, a legal challenge to Proposition 8, is filed. Proposition 8, known informally as Prop 8, was a California ballot proposition and a state constitutional amendment passed in the November 2008 California state elections. The proposition was created by opponents of same-sex marriage in advance of the California Supreme Court’s May 2008 appeal ruling, In re Marriage Cases, which followed the short-lived controversy, found the previous ban on same-sex marriage (Proposition 22, 2000) unconstitutional. Proposition 8 was ultimately ruled unconstitutional by a federal court (on different grounds) in 2010, although the court decision did not go into effect until June 26, 2013, following the conclusion of proponents’ appeals.

2009, Viet Nam

Pham le Quynh Tram, born intersex and assigned male at birth, successfully petitions the government for legal recognition as a woman. In 2013, the People’s Committee of the southern province of Binh Phuoc ordered the local Department of Justice to revert to recognizing Tram as a male and to refer to her as Pham Van Hiep, her birth name. In addition to the Department of Justice rescinding Tram’s initial recognition, the officials who first approved it are reportedly ordered to be penalized.

 

NOVEMBER 6

1624

In the Virginia Colony, Richard Cornish was hanged for sodomy. His execution was the first of its kind to be recorded in the Ameri-can colonies.

1658, Mexico

One hundred men are indicted for sodomy in the Mexican Inquisi-tion under the Duke of Albuquerque. Fourteen are burned to death. Another, because he was young, was lashed 200 times and sold to a bricklayer.

1730, Prussia

Hans Hermann von Katte  (28 February 1704 – 6 November 1730) is executed in Prussia. Frederick the Great (Fredrick II of Prussia) was thought to be lovers with Katte. They planned to escape Prussia together, but were discovered. The court sentenced Katte to life in prison but refused to judge the prince. Fredrick’s father thought this too lenient and ordered Katte executed and Fredrick imprisoned. Frederick was awakened at 5:00 AM and told to look out his prison window at the execution of Katte. He called out to him “My dear Katte, a thousand pardons.” Katte called back, “My prince, there is nothing to apologize for” just before he was beheaded.

1939

Arthur Bell (November 6, 1939 – June 2, 1984) is born. He was a journalist and activist, one of the founding members of the Gay Activists Alliance. Bell wrote his first piece for the Village Voice in 1969, an account of the Stonewall riots, a confrontation between police and the patrons of a gay bar called the Stonewall Inn that be-came a flashpoint of the Gay Liberation movement. Bell died at the age of 44 from complications related to diabetes.

1971

An anti-Viet Nam march in New York includes a gay contingent. The Student Mobilization Committee’s Gay Task Force joined the protest to draw attention to parallels between America’s oppression of gays and the racism of Viet Nam.

1975, Canada

A Special Joint Committee on Canada’s Immigration Policy recommends that homosexuals no longer be prohibited from entering Canada under the revised Immigration Act.

1976

Patrick Dennis (May 18, 1921-November 6, 1976) dies at the age of 55 in New York City. His novel Auntie Mame: An Irreverent Escapade (1955) was one of the best-selling American books of the 20th century. 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.

1979

Bent is a 1979 play written by Martin Sherman. that revolves around the persecution of gays in Nazi Germany, and takes place during and after the Night of the Long Knives a purge that took place from June 30 to July 2, 1934. Chancellor Adolf Hitler, urged on by Hermann Göring and Heinrich Himmler, ordered a series of political extrajudicial executions intended to consolidate his power and alleviate the concerns of the German military about the role of Ernst Röhm who Hitler allowed himself to be convinced was the homosexual and intended to stage a coup.

1984

Voters decide to turn a previously unincorporated portion of Los Angeles into the nation’s first “Gay City,” West Hollywood. They elect a gay majority for their new city council.

1990

San Francisco voters approve a domestic partners referendum and elect two lesbians to the Board of Supervisors.

1990

Deborah Glick (born December 24, 1950) becomes the first openly gay or lesbian individual elected to the legislature of New York. Her political activity began in college and her involvement in grass roots organizing continues today. She has focused on areas relating to civil rights, reproductive freedom, lesbian and gay rights (LGBT rights), environmental improvement and preservation, and the arts.

1990

By a margin of two to one, voters in Tacoma, Washington reject a ballot initiative which would have reinstated a gay civil rights law repealed by voters in November 1989.

1990

Voters in Seattle reject Initiative 35 which would have repealed an ordinance granting domestic partnership rights for medical leave and bereavement leave.

2012

Voters in Maine approve a constitutional amendment overturning a voter-approved 2009 ballot measure that banned same-sex marriage in the state.

2012

Maryland voters also approve Question 6 in response to the enactment of the Civil Marriage Protection Act on March 1, 2012, thus allowing same-sex couples to obtain a civil marriage license after January 1, 2013 and also protecting clergy from having to perform any particular marriage ceremony in violation of their religious beliefs.

2012

Minnesota voters reject Amendment 1 that would have constitutionally defined marriage as one man and one woman

2012

Washington State voters approve Referendum 74 legalizing same-sex marriage.

2012

Spain’s highest court upholds same-sex marriage laws

2012

Tammy Baldwin (born February 11, 1962) becomes the first openly gay or lesbian politician and the first Wisconsin woman elected to the U.S. Senate. She previously served as the Representative from Wisconsin’s 2nd congressional district from 1999 to 2013, as well as serving three terms in the Wisconsin Assembly representing the 78th district.

2017

America’s first all-LGBT city council was elected in Palm Springs, consisting of three gay men, a transgender woman and a bisexual woman.

2018

Democratic U.S. Representative Jared Polis (born May 12, 1975) wins the Colorado governor’s race, becoming the nation’s first openly gay man to be elected governor as well as the first Jewish governor of Colorado. A member of the Democratic Party, he served one term on the Colorado State Board of Education from 2001 to 2007 and five terms as the United States Representative from Colorado’s 2nd congressional district from 2009 to 2019. During his time in Congress, he was the only Democratic member of the libertarian conservative Liberty Caucus. He was elected governor of Colorado in 2018, defeating Republican nominee Walker Stapleton.

2018

Kyrsten Sinema makes history as the first open bisexual member of the U.S. Senate.

2018

Sharice Davids (born May 22, 1980), a Democrat from Kansas, made history Tuesday by becoming the first openly LGBTQ Kansan elected to Congress. She joins Debra Haaland of New Mexico, another winning Democrat on Tuesday, as the first two Native American women elected to Congress.

NOVEMBER 7

1921

Vice Versa, the first North American lesbian publication, is written and self-published by Edythe D. Eyde (November 7, 1921-December 22, 2015), better known by her pen name Lisa Ben. She was an American editor, author, and songwriter. Ben produced the magazine for a year and distributed it locally in Los Angeles in the late 1940s. She was also active in lesbian bars as a musician in the years following her involvement with Vice Versa. Eyde has been recognized as a pioneer in the LGBT movement.

1956

Roy Franklin Simmons (November 8, 1956-February 20, 2014) is born. He was the second former NFL player to come out as gay and the first to disclose that he was HIV-positive.

1961

San Francisco drag queen Jose Sarria (December 13, 1922 – August 19, 2013), also known as The Grand Mere, Absolute Empress I de San Francisco, is the first openly gay candidate to run for a political office. He shocks political observers by garnering nearly 6,000 votes in his bid for a seat on the San Francisco Board of Supervisors. This feat marked the beginning of the notion that gays could represent a powerful voting bloc. Sarria helped found the Society for Individual Rights (SIR) in 1963.

1978

California votes to defeat the Briggs initiative (Prop 6) which would have barred lesbians and gay men from teaching in public schools.

1978

Battling a Prop 6 type of initiative, Seattle voters soundly reject Initiative 13, an anti-Anita Bryant move, and vote to keep their city’s gay rights ordinance.

1978

Janet Flanner (March 13, 1892 – November 7, 1978) was an American writer and journalist who served as the Paris correspondent of The New Yorker magazine from 1925 until she retired in 1975. She wrote under the pen name “Genêt”. She also published a single novel, The Cubical City, set in New York City. In 1918, the same year she married her husband, she met Solita Solano (1888 – 22 November 1975) in Greenwich Village and the two became lifelong lovers although both became involved with other lovers throughout their relationship. Solano was drama editor for the New York Tribune and also wrote for National Geographic. The two women are portrayed as “Nip” and “Tuck” in the 1928 novel Ladies Almanack by Djuna Barnes, a friend of Flanner’s. In 1975, Flanner returned to New York City permanently to be cared for by Natalia Danesi Murray. She died on November 7, 1978, of undetermined causes. Flanner was cremated and her ashes were scattered along with Murray’s over Cherry Grove in Fire Island where the two had met in 1940, according to Murray’s son in his book Janet, My Mother, and Me.

1989

Voters in Concord, California repeal a city ordinance banning discrimination against people with AIDS.

1989

ABC lost $1.5 million in pulled ads when the television show Thirty Something showed two men in bed together.

1990

Vito Russo (July 11, 1946 – November 7, 1990) dies of complications from AIDS at the age of forty-four. He was an American LGBT activist, film historian and author who is best remembered as the author of the book The Celluloid Closet (1981, revised edition 1987). In 1983, Russo wrote, produced, and co-hosted a series focusing on the gay community called Our Time for WNYC-TV public television. He 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. 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. Russo’s papers are held by the New York Public Library.

1995

Maine voters reject the Act to Limit Protected Classes which would have outlawed anti-discrimination ordinances for lesbians and gay men and nullified Portland’s 1992 gay and lesbian rights ordinance.

1995, Australia

The Australian Christian Coalition announces that it will fight gay and environmental activists in the next election.

1996, Singapore

People Like Us LGBTQ group applies for registration as a society.

1998, UK

British Member of Parliament Nick Brown (born 13 June 1950) comes out after he learned that a previous lover had offered to sell his story. He is a British Labour Party politician who has been the Member of Parliament (MP) for Newcastle upon Tyne East since 1983. He has served as Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food, Minister of State for Work and Pensions and Deputy Chief Whip. He has also served three separate terms as the Labour Party’s Chief Whip, from 1997 to 1998, 2008 to 2010, and from 2016 to the present. His terms as chief whip spanned periods in both government and opposition.

2000

The people of Oregon reject Measure 9, a proposal that would have outlawed any affirming discussion of gay or lesbian people in schools. Rejecting homophobia, they become one of the first states in which the voters themselves support the provision of accurate, unbiased education about sexual orientation.

2006

Arizona becomes the first state to reject a ballot measure banning same-sex marriage.

2014, Malaysia

The court rules unanimously that a local law against cross-dressing is in violation of the state constitution.

2016

Janet Reno (July 21, 1938 – November 7, 2016) dies from Parkin-son’s disease. Janet served as the Attorney General of the United States from 1993 until 2001, the first woman to serve as Attorney General and the second-longest serving Attorney General in U.S. history after William Wirt. In her home state of Florida, she was elected to the office of State Attorney five times.

2017

Lisa Middleton (born 1953) is the first open transgender person to be elected to any city council position in California. Her win in Palm Springs was decisive.

2017

Virginia voters elect the state’s first openly transgender candidate to the Virginia House of Delegates. Danica Roem unseats incumbent delegate Bob Marshall who had been elected thirteen times over 26 years. Roem becomes the first openly transgender candidate elected to a state legislature in American history.

2017

Andrea Jenkins (born 1961) is an American politician, writer, performance artist, poet, and transgender activist. She is known for being the first Black openly transgender woman elected to public office in the United States, serving since January 2018 on the Minneapolis City Council. She is the city council’s vice president.

 

NOVEMBER 8

Intersex Solidarity Day

Intersex Solidarity Day, November 8, is also known as Intersex Day of Remembrance and marks the birthday of Herculine Barbin (November 8, 1838 – February 1868), a now-famous French intersex person.

1948

Jamison Green (born November 8, 1948) is a transgender rights activist. Green has served on the boards of the Transgender Law and Policy Institute and the Equality Project, was an advisory board member of the National Center for Transgender Equality, and chaired the board of Gender Education and Advocacy. He served as president of the World Professional Association for Transgender Health from 2014 to 2016. He was the leader of FTM International from March 1991 to August 1999. Green helped establish the Human Rights Campaign’s Corporate Equality Index in 2002 and was a member of the organization’s Business Council until late 2007 when he resigned over the organization’s stance on transgender inclusion in the Employment Non-Discrimination Act. Green began presenting on the fair treatment of transgender workers in 1989. He has published several essays and articles, wrote a column for Plan-etOut.com and has appeared in eight documentary films. Green authored Becoming a Visible Man in 2004. The book combines two strands: autobiographical writing about Green’s transition from living as a lesbian to living as a bisexual trans man, as well as broader commentary about the status of transsexual men in society. The book received the 2004 Sylvia Rivera Award for best book in Transgender Studies from the Center for Lesbian and Gay Studies and was also a finalist for a 2004 Lambda Literary Award.

1977

Harvey Milk (May 22, 1930 – November 27, 1978) is elected to the San Francisco Board of Supervisors, making him the first openly gay man to be elected in a major U.S. city. Although he was 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.

1982

Samuel Falson (born 8 November 1982), better known by his stage name Sam Sparro, is an Australian singer, songwriter and music producer. Sparro is openly gay.

1988

Oregon voters repeal an executive order which prohibited discrimination based on sexual orientation among state government employees.

1990, Ireland

Mary Robinson Therese Winifred (born 21 May 1944), whose platform includes gay rights, is elected as the predominantly Catholic country’s President. She is an Irish independent politician who served as the 7th, and first female, President of Ireland from December 1990 to September 1997. She resigned as president to become the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights from 1997 to 2002. In 2004 she received Amnesty International’s Ambassador of Conscience Award for her work in promoting hu-man rights. Robinson is the twenty fourth, and first female, Chan-cellor of University of Dublin (i.e. Trinity College). She represented the University in the Senate for over twenty years and held the Reid Chair in Law. In July 2009, she was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the highest civilian honor awarded by the United States. The International Gay and Lesbian Human Rights Commission congratulated Robinson, saying she “helped advance recognition of the human rights of LGBT people in her capacity as President of Ireland and as United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights. She has been unwavering in her passionate call to end torture, persecution, and discrimination against LGBT people globally.”

1992

The East Nashville Cooperative Ministry denies membership to Dayspring Christian Fellowship, a mostly gay and lesbian congregation.

1994

The Republican right sweeps elections across the U.S., but there are some gay and lesbian gains including new state legislature representatives and senators in Arizona, California, and Rhode Island, and one reelected in Texas. An anti-gay and lesbian rights initiative, Proposition 1, is defeated in Idaho.

1995

PFLAG (Parents and Friends of Lesbians and Gays) ads regarding preventing suicide and bullying are refused by television stations around the country. All stations refused to air the suicide ad and only two cable stations and one network affiliate station would air the gay-bashing ad. PFLAG is told the ads offended community standards.

1995, Zimbabwe

Tribal Chief Norbert Makoni addresses Parliament, saying gays and lesbians should be sentenced to whipping.

1996

Transgender activists protest outside the offices of the American Psychiatric Association in Washington D.C.

 

NOVEMBER 9

1928, UK

Obscenity trial for the classic novel The Well of Loneliness by Radclyffe Hall (12 August 1880 – 7 October 1943) begins. The book portrays lesbianism as natural. The star witness for the defense, Norman Haire, testifies that one could not become homosexual by reading books any more than one “could become syphillic by reading about syphilis.”

1938

Ti-Grace Atkinson (born November 9, 1938) is an American radical feminist author and philosopher. As an undergraduate, Atkinson read Simone de Beauvoir’s The Second Sex, and struck up a correspondence with de Beauvoir who suggested that she contact Betty Friedan. Atkinson thus became an early member of the National Organization for Women (NOW), which Friedan had co-founded, serving on the national board, and becoming the New York chapter president in 1967. Atkinson’s time with the organization was tumultuous, including a row with the national leadership over her attempts to defend and promote Valerie Solanas and her SCUM Manifesto in the wake of the Andy Warhol shooting. In 1968 she left the organization because it would not confront issues like abortion and marriage inequalities. She founded the October 17th Movement, which later became The Feminists, a radical feminist group active until 1973. By 1971 she had written several pamphlets on feminism, was a member of the Daughters of Bilitis and was advocating specifically political lesbianism. Her book Amazon Odyssey was published in 1974. “Sisterhood,” Atkinson famously said, “is powerful. It kills. Mostly sisters.”

1947

Kate Clinton (born November 9, 1947) is an American comedian specializing in political commentary from a gay/lesbian point of view. She began her stand-up career in 1981 using her lesbianism, Catholicism and current politics for her jokes. Clinton is a self-described “fumerist,” or feminist humorist. She has lived in New York City and Provincetown, Massachusetts, with her partner Urvashi Vaid (born 8 October 1958) since 1988.

1952

John Megna (November 9, 1952 – September 4, 1995) was an American actor. His best known role is that of “Dill” in the film To Kill A Mockingbird. Megna died from AIDS-related complications in Los Angeles, at the age of 42.

1955

Actor Rock Hudson (November 17, 1925 – October 2, 1985) marries his agent’s secretary Phyllis Gates to squelch rumors about his sexual orientation, rumors which were unknown to Gates. Suspicious, Gates hired private eye Fred Otash. Hudson was an American actor, generally known for his turns as a leading man during the 1950s and 1960s. Viewed as a prominent “heartthrob” of the Hollywood Golden Age, he achieved stardom with roles in films such as Magnificent Obsession (1954), All That Heaven Allows (1955) and Giant (1956) for which he received a nomination for the Academy Award for Best Actor, and found continued success with a string of romantic comedies co-starring Doris Day in Pillow Talk (1959), Lover Come Back(1961) and Send Me No Flowers (1964). After appearing in films including Seconds (1966), Tobruk (1967) and Ice Station Zebra (1968) during the late 1960s, Hudson began a second career in television through the 1970s and 1980s, starring in the popular mystery series McMillan & Wife and the primetime ABC soap opera Dynasty. In 1955, Confidential magazine threatened to publish an exposé about Hudson’s secret homosexuality. Agent Willson stalled this by disclosing information about two of his other clients. Willson provided information about Rory Calhoun’s (August 8, 1922 – April 28, 1999)  years in prison and the arrest of Tab Hunter (July 11, 1931 – July 8, 2018) at a party in 1950. According to some colleagues, Hudson’s homosexual activity was well known in Hollywood throughout his career, and former co-stars Elizabeth Taylor and Susan Saint James claimed that they knew of his homosexuality as did Carol Burnett. Shortly before his death from AIDS-related complications, Hudson made the first direct contribution, $250,000, to amFAR, the American Foundation for AIDS Research, helping launch the non-profit organization dedicated to AIDS/HIV research and prevention; it was formed by a merger of a Los Angeles organization founded by Dr. Michael S. Gottlieb, Hudson’s physician, and Elizabeth Taylor, his friend and onetime co-star, and a New York based group.

1975, Canada

The Saskatchewan Human Rights Commission rules that “sex” in the Human Rights Act includes sexual orientation and begins formal proceeding against University of Saskatchewan for discriminating against teacher Doug Wilson who had been fired after coming out.

1985

Openly gay Terry Sweeney (born March 23, 1950) joins the cast of Saturday Night Live. Terry Sweeney’s partner is Lanier Laney (born March 18, 1956), a comedy writer who also wrote for SNL in the 1985–1986 season. According to a 2000 magazine article, they first met as members of a sketch comedy troupe called the “Bess Truman Players” before joining SNL. Laney and Sweeney were also writing partners for Saturday Night Live during the 1985–1986 season, the film Shag, and the Syfy Channel cartoon Tripping the Rift. As of 2012, the couple reside in Beaufort, South Carolina.

1988

Actor Nikki Blonsky (born November 9, 1988) is born. The Hair Spray actor came out as a “proud gay woman.” “For me, it was a long time coming,” she told the Hollywood Reporter. “I was wanting to date women and it just was a moment in my life where I was finally just really ready to be myself.”

2016

Kate Brown (born June 21, 1960) is sworn in as governor of Oregon, the day after she was officially elected to the office. She is bisexual and is the country’s first openly bisexual statewide office-holder and first openly bisexual governor. Brown took over the governorship in February 2016, without an election after Democrat John Kitzhaber resigned amidst a criminal investigation. She is the 38th and current Governor of Oregon. Brown, a Democrat and an attorney, previously served as Oregon Secretary of State and as majority leader of the Oregon State Senate, where she represented portions of Milwaukie and of Northeast and Southeast Portland. Brown lives in Portland, with her husband Dan Little. She has two step-children. Brown was re-elected to a full term as governor on Nov. 6, 2018.

 

NOVEMBER 10

1855

Walt Whitman (May 31, 1819 – March 26, 1892) is accused of homosexuality and Leave of Grass was called “a mass of stupid filth” by critic Rufus Griswold. Whitman was an American poet, essayist, and journalist. 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.

1928

The New York Times reported that forty distinguished witnesses including T. S. Eliot, Arnold Bennett, Vera Brittain, Ethel Smyth and Virginia Woolf appeared in a London in support of Radclyffe Hall to testify in favor of the lesbian novel The Well of Loneliness which was in the midst of an obscenity trail. The judge refused to hear any of them. The judge applied the Hicklin test of obscenity: a work was obscene if it tended to “deprave and corrupt those whose minds are open to such immoral influences.” He held that the book’s literary merit was irrelevant because a well-written obscene book was even more harmful than a poorly written one. The topic in itself was not necessarily unacceptable; a book that depicted the “moral and physical degradation which indulgence in those vices must necessary involve” might be allowed, but no reasonable person could say that a plea for the recognition and toleration of inverts was not obscene. He ordered the book destroyed and the defendants to pay court costs.

1948, Scotland

Diane Marian Torr (10 November 1948 – 31 May 2017) is born. She was an artist, writer and educator, particularly known as a male impersonator as her drag king “Man for a Day” and gender-as-performance workshops. For the last years of her life, Torr lived and worked in Glasgow, where she was Visiting Lecturer at the Glasgow School of Art. Since 1990, Torr taught “drag king” workshops in which women learn not only to dress as a man but also codes of behavior, gesture, body language and movement that constitute the performance of masculinity. The workshops which Torr taught widely in Europe, the USA, India and Turkey, have been hugely influential, inspiring other works and a documentary film. Diane Torr was one of the original members of the all-girl art band, DISBAND (along with members Martha Wilson, Ingrid Sischy, Ilona Granet and Donna Henes). DISBAND formed in 1978 and most recently performed at the Incheon International Women Artists’ Biennial (2009) in S. Korea.

1970

The Stanford Gay Students Union was formed. It was the second Stanford organization for gay students; a previous organization, the Student Homophile League, was short lived.

1976

Lynn Ransom of Oakland, California, wins custody of her children in court. She is the first open lesbian mother to do so.

1980, Canada

Toronto’s civic election sees defeat of George Hislop (June 3, 1927 – October 8, 2005), the first openly gay candidate to run for municipal office in Canada. He was a key figure in the early development of Toronto’s gay community. Hislop studied speech and drama at the Banff School of Fine Arts, graduating in 1949. He subsequently worked as an actor, and ran an interior design company with his partner, Ron Shearer. In 1971, Hislop co-founded the Community Homophile Association of Toronto, one of Canada’s first organizations for gays and lesbians. On August 28, 1971, he was also an organizer of We Demand, the first Canadian gay rights demonstration on Parliament Hill. In honor of his role as a significant builder of LGBT culture and history in Canada, a portrait of Hislop by artist Norman Hatton is held by the Canadian Lesbian and Gay Archives’ National Portrait Collection.

1980

A former policeman fires a submachine gun into two Greenwich Village gay bars in New York City, killing two men and wounding six others.

1984, UK

Labour Member of Parliament (MP) Chris Smith (born 24 July 1951) becomes the first member of the House of Commons to voluntarily come out. Christopher Robert Smith, Baron Smith of Finsbury is a British politician, a former Member of Parliament 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.

1989

Republican lobbyist Craig Spence dies by suicide after it was discovered he gave secret tours of The White House to call boys and ran a male prostitution ring. Spence’s name came to national prominence in the aftermath of a June 28, 1989 article in the Washington Times identifying Spence as a customer of a homosexual escort service being investigated by the Secret Service, the District of Columbia Police and the United States Attorney’s Office for suspected credit card fraud. The newspaper said he spent as much as $20,000 a month on the service. He had also been linked to a White House guard who has said he accepted an expensive watch from Mr. Spence and allowed him and friends to take late-night White House tours. Spence entered a downward spiral in the wake of the Washington Times exposé, increasingly involving himself with call boys and crack, culminating in his July 31, 1989 arrest at the Barbizon Hotel on East 63rd St in Manhattan for criminal possession of a firearm and criminal possession of cocaine. Months after the scandal had died down, and a few weeks before Spence was found in a room at the Boston Ritz-Carlton Hotel, he was asked who had given him the “key” to the White House. Michael Hedges and Jerry Seper of the Washington Times reported that “Mr. Spence hinted the tours were arranged by ‘top level’ persons,” including Donald Gregg, national security adviser to Vice President George H. W. Bush, at the time the tours were given. A few months before his death, Spence alluded to more intricate involvements. “All this stuff you’ve uncovered (involving call boys, bribery and the White House tours), to be honest with you, is insignificant compared to other things I’ve done. But I’m not going to tell you those things, and somehow the world will carry on.”

1992

On the television program Roseanne, Sandra Bernhard plays the first recurring lesbian character on a sitcom.

1992

The Louisiana Baptist Convention voted 581-199 to exclude congregations which condone homosexuality. A similar resolution was approved the same day by the North Carolina State Baptist convention.

1992

The Portland, Maine school committee approved a ban on anti-gay discrimination in public school employment.

1997

Keith Boykin (born August 28, 1965) of the National Black Lesbian and Gay Leadership Forum and California state assemblywoman Sheila Kuehl (born February 9, 1941) participate in a White House conference on Hate Crimes.

2014, Bangladesh

Over 1,000 Hijra (transgender women of South Asia with a long history) hold a Pride parade to celebrate the one-year anniversary since the government recognized them as a third gender.

 

NOVEMBER 11

1634, Ireland

An Act for the Punishment for the Vice of Buggery is passed by the Irish House of Commons, making anal intercourse punishable by hanging. The primary advocate of the act is Anglican Bishop John Atherton.

1872

Maude Ewing Adams Kiskadden (November 11, 1872 – July 17, 1953), known professionally as Maude Adams, was an American actress who achieved her greatest success as the character Peter Pan, first playing the role in the 1905 Broadway production of Peter Pan or The Boy Who Wouldn’t Grow Up. Adams’s personality appealed to a large audience and helped her become the most successful and highest-paid performer of her day, with a yearly income of more than one million dollars during her peak. She had two long-term relationships that ended only upon her partners’ deaths: Lillie Florence, from the early 1890s until 1901, and newspaper publisher Mary Louise Boynton (1868 – March 3, 1951) from 1905 until 1951.

1907

Frances V. Rummell (Nov. 11, 1907 – May 11, 1969) is born. She was an educator and a teacher of French at Stephens College. Using the nom de plume Diana Fredericks, she wrote the book Diana: A Strange Autobiography in 1939 which was the first explicitly lesbian autobiography in which two women end up happily together. The book 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.” The author’s niece verified that the Frances was a lesbian and that the book followed her life rather accurately.

1917

Ella Wesner (1841 – November 11, 1917) dies. She was the most celebrated male impersonator of the Gilded Age Vaudeville circuit. Wesner began her career at the age of nine as part of a family of vaudeville and musical-stage dancers. By her mid-twenties, she was playing both male and female roles, at some point meeting and working as a “dresser” for the most notorious, and perhaps the earliest Vaudeville male impersonator of the time, Annie Hindle. Wesner’s career was briefly derailed in 1873 when she abruptly left the stage to elope to Paris with the notorious Helen Josephine “Josie” Mansfield (December 15, 1847 – October 27, 1931) who had been the mistress of Gilded Age Robber Baron “Diamond Jubilee” Jim Fisk as well as the mistress of his murderer, Edward S. Stokes.

1950

In Los Angeles, Harry Hay, Rudi Gernreich, Dale Jennings, Bob Hull and Chuck Rowland, hold the first meeting of the Society of Fools. The weekly gatherings leading to the formation of a homophile organization the men will call the Mattachine Society.

1975, Canada

Two members of Gays of Ottawa lay wreath at National War Me-morial. It is the first time gays are allowed to participate in ceremony.

1985

NBC airs An Early Frost starring Aidan Quinn. It’s the first major made-for-TV movie about AIDS and is broadcast in the U.S. on prime time. A Chicago lawyer goes home to tell his parents that he is gay and HIV positive. The film won numerous awardsincluding the Peabody Award which honors the most powerful, enlightening and invigorating stories in television, radio and digital media.

1989

Adam Rippon (born November 11, 1989) is an American figure skater. He is the 2010 Four Continents champion and 2016 U.S. national champion. Earlier in his career, he won the 2008 and 2009 World Junior Championships, the 2007–08 Junior Grand Prix Final, and the 2008 U.S junior national title. Rippon was selected to represent USA at the 2018 Winter Olympics in Pyeongchang, South Korea. This makes him the first openly gay American athlete to qualify for any Winter Olympics.

1992, Australia

Australia removes its restrictions on gays and lesbians serving in the military.

2009, Phillipines

The Philipine Commission on Elections does not let Ang Ladlad, the Filiponi LGBT political party, run in the May 20101 elections on the grounds of immorality. The decision is overturned in Ariul, 2010.  Ladlad was founded on September 21, 2003 by Danton Remoto (born March 25, 1963). The party’s official motto is Bukas puso, bukas isip (Open heart, open mind.)

2014, Australia

New South Wales legislative council passes a motion marking Inter-sex Awareness Day. Intersex Awareness Day is an internationally observed awareness day designed to highlight human rights issues faced by intersex people.

 

NOVEMBER 12

1679, Sweden

Lisabetha Olsdotter is convicted of abandoning her husband and children, becoming a soldier, and marrying a woman. She is accused of “mutilating” her gender and mocking God. She is executed by decapitation.

1958

Eric Marcus (born November 12, 1958) is born. He is an American non-fiction writer. His works are primarily of LGBT interest, including Breaking the Surface, the autobiography of gay Olympic diving champion Greg Louganis, which became a #1 New York Times Bestseller and Making History: The Struggle for Gay and Lesbian Equal Rights, 1945–1990 which won the Stonewall Book Award. Other topics he’s addressed in his writing include suicide and pessimistic humor. Marcus received his B.A. from Vassar College in 1980 where he majored in Urban Studies. He earned his master’s degree from Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism in 1984 and a master’s degree in real estate development in 2003, also from Columbia University. He was an associate producer for Good Morning America and CBS Morning News. Marcus served on the Board and staff of the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention (ASFP), as National Board Member (2010 – 2014), Chair of the Loss & Bereavement Council (2011 – 2014) and Senior Director for Loss and Bereavement Programs from 2014 to 2015.

1964, Egypt

The first depiction of a same-sex relationship is found in an Egyptian tomb. Nyankh-khnum and Khnum-hotep are discovered buried together side by side. The wall art shows the two men kissing. They were ancient Egyptian royal servants. They 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.

1969

Fallout from Time magazine’s October 31st cover story “The Ho-mosexual: Newly Visible, Newly Understood” results in a protest at New York’s Time-Life Building.

1978, France

Céline Sciamma (born 12 November 1978) is a French screenwriter and film director. Sciamma’s work is strikingly minimalist, partly the legacy of her mentor, Xavier Beauvois, who advised her while she was a student at the major French film school La Fémis. While highly formalist and idiosyncratic (notably in her lack of dialogue and very stylized mise-en-scene), Sciamma’s filmmaking, beginning with Water Lilies relates closely to the characteristics of first-time filmmaking in France, notably in its emphasis on coming-of-age films focused on adolescents or pre-adolescents. Sciamma is very interested, moreover, in the fluidity of gender and sexual identity among girls during this formative period. In 2014, Sciamma was in a relationship with the actress Adele Haenel whom she met on the set of Water Lilies. Haenel publicly acknowledged their relationship in her acceptance speech for her César award in 2014. Their relationship continued as of 2017. Sciamma’s fourth feature film, Portrait of a Lady on Fire, began shooting in autumn 2018. It premiered In Competition at the 2019 Cannes Film Festival where it won the Queer Palm and Best Screenplay.

1981

Gay Community Services, Inc. receives its trade name from the State of Arizona.

2010, Columbia

Protests in Bogota take place after the Columbian court rules against same-sex marriage.

 

NOVEMBER 13

354, Africa

St. Augustine (13 November 354 – 28 August 430) is born in Tagaste, North Africa. He was an early North African 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 Church Fathers in Western Christianity for his writings in the Patristic Era. In his writing he discusses his love for his closest friend saying he contemplated joining him in death. “I felt that his soul and mine were one soul in two bodies.”

1933, Germany

Top level members of the Third Reich advise the Head of Police to transport homosexuals to the concentration camp Fuhlsbuttel near Hamburg. The Third Reich had recently established homosexuals as a category of prisoners.

1979

San Francisco swore in its first openly gay and lesbian police officers.

1985, U. K.

Manchester gay rights advocate and politician Margaret Roff (1943-1987) becomes the country’s first openly lesbian (or gay) mayor. A few months after retiring from the Council, in October 1987, Roff died in a hotel fire in Puerta Cabezas when she had been part of a women’s delegation to Nicaragua.

1989

A federal court rules that the Armstrong amendment which would have cut off Washington D.C.’s entire 1989 budget unless the city council exempted religious educational institutions from the gay rights provisions of the city’s human rights law, was unconstitu-tional. William Armstrong introduced the measure after the D.C. Court of Appeals ruled that Georgetown University was not exempt from the gay rights law and ordered the University to provide facilities to gay and lesbian student organizations that are equal to those provided to other student groups.

1991

Audre Lorde (February 18, 1934 – November 17, 1992), the influential African American lesbian poet, becomes the New York State Poet Laureate. She receives the Walt Whitman Citation of Merit from Gov. Mario Cuomo, Sr., making her the Poet Laurette of New York State from 1991-1993. Her impassioned and political acceptance speech receives a standing ovation.

1995, New Zealand

A group of lesbians protested an appearance by Zimbabwe president Robert Mugabe at a meeting of Commonwealth heads of government in Auckland. He had told a group of journalists that homosexuals are trying to destroy society.

 

NOVEMBER 14

1810, Scotland

Young Jane Cummings makes an accusation of “inordinate affec-tion” between two female teachers Marianne Woods, 27, and Jane Pirie, 26, in Edinburgh. This is the first of a series of events leading to a dramatic trial and which later became the basis for the Broad-way play and film The Children’s Hour in 1934 by Lillian Hellman.

1874

Adolf Brand (14 November 1874 – 2 February 1945) was a German writer, individualist anarchist, and pioneering campaigner for the acceptance of male bisexuality and homosexuality. On this day Brand published Der Eigene, the first gay journal in the world, published from 1896 to 1932 in Berlin. Other contributors included writers Benedict Friedlaender, Hanns Heinz Ewers, Erich Mühsam, Kurt Hiller, Ernst Burchard, John Henry Mackay, Theodor Lessing, Klaus Mann, and Thomas Mann, as well as artists Wilhelm von Gloeden, Fidus, and Sascha Schneider. The journal may have had an average of 1500 subscribers per issue during its run, but the exact numbers are uncertain. In 1933, when Adolf Hitler rose to power, Adolf Brand’s house was searched and all the materials needed to produce the magazine were seized and given to Ernst Röhm.

1908

Joseph McCarthy (November 14, 1908 – May 2, 1957), the U.S. Senator who presided over a Communist witch-hunt during the 1950s, was born in Appleton, Wisconsin. The red-baiting homophobe was actually a closeted gay man. In an article in the Las Vegas Sun on October 25, 1952, Hank Greenspun wrote that: “It is common talk among homosexuals in Milwaukee who rendezvous in the White Horse Inn that Senator Joe McCarthy has often engaged in homosexual activities.” The number of American lives destroyed in the 1950s by McCarthy’s “outing Communists” and witch hunts of homosexuals numbered in the tens of thousands in the U.S. McCarthy died of alcoholism at the age of 48. His right-hand man, lawyer (and also closeted gay man and friend of Donald Trump) Roy Cohn (February 20, 1927 – August 2, 1986) died of AIDS in 1986.

1932, UK

Lillias Irma Valerie Arkell-Smith (1895–1960), going by the name Sir Victor Barker, serves in the Royal Air Force. Arkell-Smith was physically and legally female. In 1926 while living in London, he accidentally received a letter inviting him to join the National Fascisti which had been addressed to a different Colonel Barker. Arkell-Smith replied to the misdirected letter with the missive “why not,” reasoning that membership of what was a macho group would help him pose as a man. Arkell-Smith died in poverty and obscurity under the name Geoffrey Norton, in 1960 and was buried in an unmarked grave in Kessingland churchyard, near Lowestoft, Suffolk. The story of the many lives of Arkell-Smith/Barker is told in Colonel Barker’s Monstrous Regiment by Rose Collis, Virago 2001.

1942, Germany

The Nazi SS (storm troops) informs concentration camp comman-dants that they are free to sterilize any of the prisoners under their control. The directive gives official approval to the practice, already instituted in some camps, of castrating males suspected of sexual attraction to other men.

1969

In New York City, the Gay Liberation Front launches the premiere issue of the first gay newspaper Come Out! It ran for three years.

1994, China

China determines that same-sex acts are no longer to be considered a “social order” offense.

2001, Egypt

Fifty-two men are arrested on May 11, 2001, on the Queen Boat, a floating gay nightclub on the Nile River. According to the International Gay and Lesbian Human Rights Commission (IGLHRC), the men were subjected to beatings and forensic examinations to “prove their homosexuality.” 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. On November 14, 2001, twenty-one of the men were convicted of the “habitual practice of debauchery,” one man of “contempt for religion,” and another, accused of being the “ringleader” was convicted of both charges and received the heaviest sentence, five years’ hard labor. A fifty-third man, a teenager, was tried in juvenile court and was sentenced to the maximum penalty of three years in prison, to be followed by three years of probation.

2008

Transgender woman Lateisha Green is shot and killed outside a house party in Syracuse, NY. Her murderer is sentenced to 25 years for first degree manslaughter. This is the first transgender hate crimes conviction in NY and only the second in the US.

 

NOVEMBER 15

1636

A set of laws was enacted for the Plymouth colony (present-day Massachusetts). Eight offences including sodomy were deemed punishable by death.

1887

Bisexual artist Georgia O’Keefe (November 15, 1887 – March 6, 1986) is born. She was best known for her paintings of enlarged flowers, New York skyscrapers, and New Mexico landscapes. O’Keeffe has been recognized as the “Mother of American modernism.”

1940, South Africa

Patricia Marion Fogarty (Nov. 15, 1940-Feb. 17, 1999), illustrator and photographer and lover of filmmaker Jayne Parker, is born. Her drawings and watercolors appeared regularly in newspapers, magazines, books, and in national advertising campaigns, in every size and context, from billboards to brochures to ginger-beer labels.

1941

Hitler orders the death penalty for homosexual SS officers. Hein-rich Himmler announced the decree that any member of the Nazi SS or police who had sex with another man would be put to death.

1952

In Los Angeles, W. Dorr Legg, Tony Reyes, Martin Block, Dale Jennings, Merton Bird, Don Slater, and Chuck Rowland, all with ties to the Mattachine Society, form a group to promote education and research activities beneficial to gay men and lesbians. ONE, Inc., results from the meeting. The name is from an aphorism of Victorian writer Thom Carlyle: “A mystic bond of brotherhood makes all men one.”

1961

The Washington, D.C. chapter of the Mattachine Society is formed by activists Jack Nichols (March 16, 1938 – May 2, 2005) and Frank Kameny (May 21, 1925 – October 11, 2011) who is elected president. Kameny was an American rights activist. He has been referred to as “one of the most significant figures” in the American gay rights movement.

1969

Representatives of the Gay Liberation Front join hundreds of thousands of other demonstrators protesting the Viet Nam War in Washington, D.C.

1970

Jet Magazine features a lesbian couple, Edna Knowles and Peaches Stevens, in their publication under the headline “Two Women ‘Married’ In Chicago — To Each Other.” However, Jet noted that the Illinois marriage license bureau had no record of the union. The image caption refers to Stevens as the “bridegroom.”

1973

Dr. Howard Brown announces the founding of the National Gay (“and lesbian” was added later) Task Force, considered the first gay/lesbian rights organization with a truly national scope. Dr. Bruce Voeller (May 12, 1934 – February 13, 1994) is named the first executive director.

1977

The school board of Santa Barbara, California, votes to ban discrimination against students based on sexual orientation.

1978

Margaret Mead (December 16, 1901 – November 15, 1978) dies at age 76. Mead, who was bisexual, was perhaps the most famous anthropologist in the world at the time of her death. She helped the world to understand that gender roles differed from culture to culture. She once said, “Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world. Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has.” Mead never openly identified herself as lesbian or bisexual. In her writings she proposed that it is to be expected that an individual’s sexual orientation may evolve throughout life.

1980, Canada

Michael Harcourt, an alderman consistently supportive of the gay community, is elected mayor of Vancouver. An organization called Gay People to Elect Mike Harcourt campaigned actively in the gay community. Harcourt would become NDP premier of British Columbia in 1991.

1983

A Washington, D.C. Superior Court judge dismisses a lawsuit brought by gay students against Georgetown University three years prior, ruling that the students cannot force the university to grant their organization recognition, because the federal government does not have an official national policy on homosexual rights.

1987

And the Band Played On, Randy Shilts’ (August 8, 1951 – February 17, 1994) remarkable book about AIDS and AIDS research, debuts at number twelve on the New York Times best seller list.

1988

Alexandria, Virginia bans discrimination in employment, housing and other practices based on sexual orientation.

1989

Massachusetts becomes the second U.S. state to pass a statewide gay rights law.

1992

Thirty-five members of The Cathedral Project, a gay Roman Catholic group, demonstrate in New York City at St. Patrick’s Cathedral to protest a Vatican directive urging bishops to oppose laws banning anti-gay bias.

1995

The Florida Baptist state convention approves a resolution to encourage members to boycott the Walt Disney Co. because of the company’s extension of domestic partner benefits to its gay and lesbian employees.

1997

Jim Kepner, Jr. (1923 – 15 November 1997) dies. He was a journalist, author, historian, archivist and leader in the gay rights movement. His work was intertwined with One, Inc. and One magazine. He contributed to the formation of the ONE National Gay & Lesbian Archives.

1999

The Washington Times claims George W. Bush ensured conserva-tive supporters that he would not knowingly appoint any homosexuals as ambassadors or department heads in his administration if elected president.

2008

Comedian Wanda Sykes (born March 7, 1964) comes out at a rally in Las Vegas for marriage equality. She said, “I’m proud to be a woman, proud to be Black, and proud to be gay…” Sykes is an American actress, comedian, and writer. She was first recognized for her work as a writer on The Chris Rock Show, for which she won a Prime-time Emmy Award in 1999. In 2004, Weekly named Sykes as one of the 25 funniest people in America. A month earlier, Sykes had married her partner Alex Niedbalski, a French woman, whom she had met in 2006. The couple became parents on April 27, 2009, when Alex gave birth to twins.

 

NOVEMBER 16

1502, Italy

Sandro Botticelli (c. 1445 – May 17, 1510) is accused of sodomy but the charges were dropped. Botticelli was an Italian painter of the Early Renaissance. He belonged to the Florentine School under the patronage of Lorenzo de’ Medici. Botticelli’s posthumous reputation suffered until the late 19th century; since then, his work has been seen to represent the linear grace of Early Renaissance painting.

1928, UK

The Well of Loneliness by Radclyffe Hall (12 August 1880 – 7 October 1943) is declared obscene. Hall is best known for this groundbreaking work in lesbian literature.

1964

Randy Wicker (born February 3, 1938) is a guest on The Les Crane Show, becoming the first openly gay person to appear on national television. Following the show, Wicker is barraged by hundreds of letters from isolated lesbians and gay men across the country. He is an American author, activist and blogger. After involvement in the early homophile and gay liberation movements, Wicker became active around the issue of human cloning.

1970, UK

The London Gay Liberation Front attends a demonstration in support of the National Union of Students.

1971

Bruce Voeller (May 12, 1934 – February 13, 1994), chair of the Gay Activist Alliance State and Federal Affairs Committee, questions Sen. Ted Kennedy. Kennedy said he would support efforts to end policies which deny homosexuals the right to work gainfully in their professions.

1979

Martin Sherman’s (born December 22, 1938) play Bent, about the Nazi persecution of homosexuals starring Richard Gere and David Dukes, begins previews on Broadway. Sherman is an American dramatist and screenwriter best known for his 20 stage plays which have been produced in over 55 countries. He rose to fame in 1979 with the production of his Pulitzer Prize winning Bent.

1984, Germany

The West German government announces it will attempt to pass legislation making it a crime for a person with AIDS to have sex.

1989, Germany

The Center for Homosexual Lifestyles was established in Berlin. It was the first time in Germany that a public office was established specifically to deal with the concerns of lesbians and gay men. Called the Referat fur Gleichgeschlectliche Lebensweisen (Center for Homosexual Lifestyles), the state-level office works to eliminate discrimination and promote understanding of gay men and lesbians.

1995, Canada

A directive was issued by the Canadian Government allowing workers in same-sex relationships to take time off in the event of a partner’s illness or death.

 

NOVEMBER 17

1862

Thomas Hannah, Jr., a private in Company G of the 95th Illinois Regiment, writes that one of the soldiers in his regiment was found to be a female. He was referring to Albert Cashier (December 25, 1843 – October 10, 1915), a female-bodied Civil War soldier who had lived as a man. Albert D. J. Cashier, born Jennie Irene Hodgers, was an Irish-born female 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. He became famous as one of a number of female-born 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 trans man.

1881

Mary Harriman Rumsey (November 17, 1881 – December 18, 1934) was the founder of the Junior League for the Promotion of Settlement Movements, later known as the Junior League of the City of New York of the Association of Junior Leagues International Inc. Mary was the daughter of railroad magnate E. H. Harriman and sister to W. Averell Harriman, former New York State Governor and United States Diplomat. In 2015 she was posthumously inducted into the National Women’s Hall of Fame. She was the partner of Roosevelt’s Secretary of Labor, Frances Perkins (April 10, 1880 – May 14, 1965).

1889, UK

The New York Times publishes a report on the “Cleveland Street Scandal,” a case involving a house of male prostitutes and members of British nobility. The Cleveland Street scandal occurred in 1889 when a homosexual male brothel in Cleveland Street, Fitzrovia, London, was discovered by police. The government was accused of covering up the scandal to protect the names of aristocratic and other prominent patrons. At the time, sexual acts between men were illegal in Britain, and the brothel’s clients faced possible prosecution and certain social ostracism if discovered. It was rumored that Prince Albert Victor, the eldest son of the Prince of Wales and second-in-line to the British throne had visited though this has never been substantiated. Unlike overseas newspapers, the English press never named the Prince but the allegation influenced the handling of the case by the authorities and has colored biographers’ perceptions of him since. After Henry James FitzRoy, Earl of Euston, was named in the press as a client, he successfully sued for libel. The scandal fueled the attitude that male homosexuality was an aristocratic vice that corrupted lower-class youths. Such perceptions were still prevalent in 1895 when the Marquess of Queensberry accused Oscar Wilde of being an active homosexual.

1925

Rock Hudson  (born Roy Harold Scherer Jr.; November 17, 1925 – October 2, 1985), is born. He was an American actor generally known for his turns as a leading man during the 1950s and 1960s. Viewed as a prominent ‘heartthrob’ of the Hollywood Golden Age, he achieved stardom with roles in films such as Magnificent Obsession (1954), All That Heaven Allows (1955) and Giant (1956), and found continued success with a string of romantic comedies co-starring Doris Day in Pillow Talk (1959), Lover Come Back (1961) and Send Me No Flowers (1964). After appearing in films including Seconds(1966), Tobruk (1967) and Ice Station Zebra (1968) during the late 1960s, Hudson began a second career in television through the 1970s and 1980s, starring in the popular mystery series McMillan & Wife and the opera Dynasty. While his career developed, Hudson and his agent Henry Willson kept the actor’s person-al life out of the headlines. In 1955, Confidential magazine threatened to publish an exposé about Hudson’s secret homosexual life. Willson stalled this by disclosing information about two of his other clients. Willson provided information about Rory Calhoun’s years in prison and the arrest of Tab Hunter (born July 11, 1931) at a party in 1950. According to some colleagues, Hudson’s homosexual activity was well known in Hollywood throughout his career, and former co-stars Elizabeth Taylor and James claimed that they knew of his homosexuality, as did Carol Burnett. Unknown to the public, Hudson was diagnosed with HIV on June 5, 1984, just three years after the existence of HIV and AIDS had been discovered by scientists. On July 25, 1985, Hudson’s French publicist Yanou Collart confirmed that Hudson did in fact have AIDS. He was among the first notable individuals to have been diagnosed with the disease. On October 2, 1985, Hudson died in his sleep from AIDS-related complications at his home in Beverly Hills at age 59.

1928

The New York Times reports that a London judge found the lesbian novel The Well of Loneliness obscene and ordered all seized copies of it destroyed.

1960

RuPaul (born November 17, 1960) is born. RuPaul Andre Charles is an American actor/host, drag queen, television personality, and singer/songwriter. Since 2009, he has produced and hosted the reality competition series RuPaul’s Drag Race for which he received two Awards in 2016 and 2017. He has described doing drag as a “very, very political” act because it “challenges the status quo” by rejecting fixed identities: “drag says ‘I’m a shapeshifter, I do whatever the hell I want at any given time.’ RuPaul has been with his Australian partner Georges LeBar since 1994, when they met at the Limelight nightclub in New York City. They married in January 2017. LeBar is a painter and runs a 50,000-acre ranch in Wyoming. In 2017, RuPaul was included in the annual Time 100 list of the most influential people in the world.

1971

A group of sex researchers looking for physical differences be-tween homosexual and heterosexual men announce erroneous findings that heterosexuals have 40% more testosterone in their blood than homosexuals do.

1974

The New Yorker publishes its first gay-themed short “Minor Hero-ism” by Allan Gurganus.

1979, Canada

Vancouver Sun reverses course and accepts an ad from Gay Tide after a five-year court battle. The Supreme Court of Canada ruled Sun had “reasonable cause” to refuse advertising. The first ad was submitted to the Sun on October 23, 1974.

1985

In New York City, more than 700 people concerned about negative publicity surrounding AIDS, bathhouses, and gay promiscuity attend a town meeting that leads to the founding of the Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation (GLAAD). Formed in New York City in 1985 to protest against what it saw as the New York Post’s defamatory and sensationalized AIDS coverage, GLAAD put pressure on media organizations to end what it saw as homophobic reporting. Initial meetings were held in the homes of several New York City activists as well as after-hours at the New York State Council on the Arts. The founding group included film scholar Vito Russo (July 11, 1946 – November 7, 1990), Gregory Kolovakos (July 30, 1951 – April 16, 1990), then on the staff of the New York State Arts Council and who later became the first executive director; Darryl Yates Rist (1948-1993), Allen Barnett (May 23, 1955 – August 14, 1991), and Jewelle Gomez (born September 11, 1948), the organization’s first treasurer. Some members of GLAAD went on to become the early members of ACT UP.

1988

The first National Gay and Lesbian Task Force Creating Change conference was held in Washington D.C.

1991, UK

OutRage, a London direct-action group, stages a zap against the Living Waters ex-gay movement at St Michael’s Church in Belgravia.

1992

Audre Lorde (February 18, 1934 – November 17, 1992) dies. She was a writer, feminist, womanist, librarian, and civil rights activist. As a poet, she is best known for technical mastery and emotional expression, as well as her poems that express anger and outrage at civil and social injustices she observed throughout her life. Her poems and prose largely deal with issues related to civil rights, feminism, and the exploration of black female identity. Audre Lorde was a lesbian and navigated spaces interlocking her womanhood, gayness and blackness in ways that trumped white feminism, predominately white gay spaces and toxic black male masculinity. Audre Lorde used those identities within her work and ultimately it guided her to create pieces that embodied lesbianism in a light that educated people of many social classes and identities on the issues black lesbian women face in society. From 1991 until her death, she was the New York State Poet Laureate. Lorde died of liver cancer on November 17, 1992, in St. Croix, where she had been living with Gloria I. Joseph. She was 58. In an African naming ceremony before her death, she took the name Gamba Adisa which means “Warrior: She Who Makes Her Meaning Known.”

1995

James Woods III (1963-1995), co-author of The Corporate Closet: The Professional Lives of Gay Men in America, dies of complications from AIDS at age 32. Woods graduated from Harvard College and the Annenberg School for Communications at the University of Pennsylvania. He was an assistant professor of communications at Staten Island and at the CUNY Graduate Center in Manhattan. He is survived by his partner, Paul D. Young.

1997

The National Black Lesbian and Gay Leadership Forum issues a press release applauding singer Janet Jackson for her use of sexual orientation themes in her album The Velvet Rope.

1997, Mexico

Patria Jimenez (born Elsa Patria Jiménez Flores, 1957) is the first openly gay person elected to a Latin American congress. She is a Mexican politician and head of Clóset de Sor Juana (Sister Juana’s Closet). Openly lesbian, she became the first gay member of Mexico’s legislature in the country’s history—the first in any legislature in Latin America. Jiménez is the longtime head of Sister Juana’s Closet, a lesbian rights group named after Juana Inés de la Cruz, a Carmelite nun and renowned Mexican poet. It is a United Nations accredited Non-Governmental Organization (NGO).

1999

Methodist minister Jimmy Creech was stripped of his clerical status for presiding over a same-sex holy union.

2003

The Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts rules that the state cannot bar same-sex couples from marrying and gives the legislature until June to rewrite the laws.

2010

Transgender Phyllis Frye (born 1946) is appointed an associate judge for the City of Houston. She is the first openly transgender judge appointed in the United States. Frye graduated from Texas A&M University with a B.S. in Civil Engineering and an M.S. in Mechanical Engineering. While at Texas A&M, Frye was a member of the University’s Corps of Cadets, belonged to the Texas A&M Singing Cadets and got married. She was honorably discharged from the United States Army in 1972. She transitioned in 1976. On April 28, 2013, Frye was presented with the Lifetime Achievement Award by the Transgender Foundation of America.

2013, UK

Nikki Sinclair (born 26 July 1968) comes out as the first transgender member of the European Parliament. She is a British politician and former leader of the We Demand a Referendum Party who served as a Member of the European Parliament for the West Midlands from 2009 to 2014.

2013, Chili

Claudio Arriagada (Oct. 22, 1955), the mayor of La Granja, Santiago Province, is elected to the Chilean chamber of Deputies after coming out as gay. He is the first openly gay person elected to Congress in Chilean history.

2015

The U.S. Congress launches the Transgender Equality Task Force to address issues affecting transgender and gender non-conforming people.

 

NOVEMBER 18

1901, Mexico

Police raid a gay dance club. Of the 41 attendees, 29 men are dressed in women’s clothing and all are members of the highest classes of society. Punishment was conscription into the army. As a result of the Dance of the Forty-One Raid, the number 41 is adopted into Mexican popular culture as reference to homosexuality. No segment of the army is allowed to be given the unit number 41.

1972, Canada

Gay McGill holds the first of what were to become the most suc-cessful community dances in Montreal. They ended in May 1975 because of the withdrawal of liquor license by Quebec liquor board.

1996

Psychologist Dr. Evelyn Hooker (September 2, 1907 – November 18, 1996) dies. Her research at UCLA provided some of the earliest evidence that homosexuality is not a psychological disease.

2003, UK

Section 28 or Clause 28 of the Local Government Act 1988 caused the addition of Section 2A to the Local Government Act 1986, which affected England, Wales and Scotland. The amendment was enacted on May 24, 1988 and stated that a local authority “shall not intentionally promote homosexuality or publish material with the intention of promoting homosexuality” or “promote the teaching in any maintained school of the acceptability of homosexuality as a pretended family relationship.” The law was repealed on this day in 2003.

2003

The Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court rules that the state’s constitution guarantees equal marriage rights for same-sex couples (Goodridge v. Department of Public Health). The November 18, 2003 decision was the first by a U.S. state’s highest court to find that same-sex couples had the right to marry and sparked a national wildfire of civil disobedience (the issuing of marriage licenses authorized by mayors and city councils in San Francisco, CA; Portland, OR; New Paltz, NY and Sandoval County, N.M.) and dozens of lawsuits in those and many other jurisdictions.

 

NOVEMBER 19

1933

Christa Winsloe’s (23 December 1888 – 10 June 1944) book The Child Manuela is reviewed in the New York Times. It was a translation from a German book about a lesbian relationship in a school for girls. The reviewer referred to it as “a social document that is moving and eloquent.” Winsloe was a 20th-century German-Hungarian novelist, playwright and sculptor. Winsloe wrote Das Mädchen Manuela (The Child Manuela), a short novel based on her experiences at Kaiserin-Augusta. Winsloe was involved in a relationship with newspaper reporter Dorothy Thompson, probably before World War II when Thompson was reporting from Berlin. She moved to France in the late 1930s, fleeing the Nazis. During World War II, she joined the French Resistance. Contrary to what is often stated, she was not executed by the Nazis. Instead, on June 10, 1944, Winsloe and her French partner, Simone Gentet, were shot and killed by four Frenchmen in a forest near the country town of Cluny. The men said that they had thought the women were Nazi spies and later acquitted of murder.

1922, Canada

Canadian immigration authorities allowed the Irish lover of a Canadian citizen to immigrate legally. This was the first time in North America that a same-sex relationship was used as the basis for immigration.

1934

Political activist Jim Foster (November 19, 1934– October 31, 1990) is born. He founded the Alice B. Toklas Democratic Club in 1972, the country’s first gay Democratic political club. Foster co-founded the Society for Individual Rights (SIR), an early homophile organization, in 1964. In 1971, Foster, along with Del Martin and Phyllis Lyon, transformed the SIR Political Action Committee into the Alice B. Toklas Memorial Democratic Club. The first U.S. gay community center opens, in San Francisco, led by The Society for Individual Rights.

1942

Bisexual Clothing designer Calvin Klein (November 19, 1942) is born.

1982

Marilyn Barnett files a palimony suit against Billie Jean King (November 22, 1943) but it’s thrown out of court. in 1971, King began an intimate relationship with her secretary, Marilyn Barnett (born January 28, 1948). King acknowledged the relationship when it be-came public in a May 1981 ‘palimony’ lawsuit filed by Barnett, making King the first prominent professional female athlete to come out as a lesbian. Feeling she could not admit to the extent of the relationship, King publicly called it a fling and a mistake. She was still married to her husband Larry. The lawsuit caused King to lose an estimated $2 million in endorsements and forced her to prolong her tennis career to pay attorneys. Billie Jean and Larry remained married through the palimony suit fallout. The marriage ended in 1987 after Billie Jean fell in love with her doubles partner, Ilana Kloss.

1993, Romania

Marius Aitai, Ovidiu Chetea and Cosmin Hutanu are sentenced to up to two and a half years in prison for same-sex acts in private. Amnesty International calls for their immediate release and protests the imprisonment of 54 other people on similar charges, as well as the reportedly widespread torture and sexual abuse of persons ar-rested on suspicion of homosexuality.

1997

In Spanish Fork, Utah, during a meeting of the Nebo County Board of Education, supporters of lesbian teacher Wendy Weaver and those demanding her resignation presented their cases. A month earlier Weaver was dismissed from her position as volleyball coach and ordered not to discuss her sexual orientation with anyone, in or out of school.

2009

The New York Court of Appeals rules that state officials have the authority to recognize out-of-state same-sex marriages although the court declines to rule on whether same-sex couples may legally marry in the New York.

2012

The Transgender Pride flag flies from the Castro, San Francisco flag pole for the first time. The flag was created by Monica Helms in 1999 and first shown at the Phoenix, AZ, pride parade in 2000. Helms is a transgender activist, author, and veteran of the United States Navy.

 

NOVEMBER 20

Transgender Day of Remembrance

1893, Canada

Grace Darmond (November 20, 1893 – October 8, 1963) was a Canadian-born American actress from the early 20th century. Although performing in a substantial number of films over roughly 13 years, she was known in Hollywood’s inner circle as the lesbian lover to actress Jean Acker, the first wife of actor Rudolph Valentino. She was also associated, as many struggling actresses of the day were, with the actress Alla Nazimova, who was the former lover to Acker, although it has never been verified that Nazimova and Darmond were ever linked romantically.

1910

Anna Pauline “Pauli” Murray (November 20, 1910 – July 1, 1985) is born. She was an American civil rights activist, women’s rights activist, lawyer, Episcopal priest, and author. Drawn to the ministry, in 1977 Murray became the first Black woman to be ordained as an Episcopal priest and was among the first group of women to become priests in that church. In 1940, Murray sat in the whites-only section of a Virginia bus with a friend, and they were arrested for violating state segregation laws. This incident, and her subsequent involvement with the socialist Workers’ Defense League, led her to pursue her career goal of working as a civil rights lawyer. As a lawyer, Murray argued for civil rights and women’s rights. National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) Chief Counsel Thurgood Marshall called Murray’s 1950 book States’ Laws on Race and Color the “bible” of the civil rights movement. In 1966 she was a co-founder of the National Organization for Women. Murray struggled in her adult life with issues related to her sexual and gender identity, describing herself as having an “inverted sex instinct.” She described herself as having an “inverted sex instinct” that caused her to behave as a man attracted to women would. She wanted a “monogamous married life”, but one in which she was the man. She had a brief, annulled marriage to a man and several deep relationships with women. In her younger years, she occasionally had passed as a teenage boy. In addition to her legal and advocacy work, Murray published two well-reviewed autobiographies and a volume of poetry. On July 1, 1985, the Rev. Dr. Pauli Murray died of pancreatic cancer in the house she owned with a lifelong friend, Maida Springer Kemp, in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. In 2012 the General Convention of the Episcopal Church voted to honor Murray as one of its Holy Women, Holy Men, to be commemorated on July 1, the anniversary of her death, along with fellow writer Harriet Beecher Stowe. In December, 2016, the Pauli Murray Family Home was named as a National Historic Landmark.

1925

Kaye Ballard (November 20, 1925 – January 21, 2019) was an American musical theatre and television actress, comedian and singer. She starred on the 1960s sitcom The Mothers-in-Law and was also a popular Broadway and nightclub performer. Ballard played a meddling mother-in-law alongside Eve Arden as they get too involved in their children’s marriage on the sitcom that ran on NBC from 1967 until 1969. Ballard was a singer who was the first to record Fly Me to the Moon, and she starred in many Broadway musicals including The Golden Apple. Ballard died at her home in Rancho Mirage, California on January 21, 2019, at the age of 93. She was married to actor and bisexual Brooks West.

1934

The Children’s Hour, a play by Lillian Hellman in which two school teachers are accused of having a lesbian relationship, opens on Broadway to rave reviews and sellout audiences. A largely sympathetic account of two schoolteachers accused of lesbianism by one of their students, the play is loosely based on an actual case in 19th-century Scotland.

1975

Members of the Austin Lesbian Organization and Gay Community Services picketed the Austin-American Statesman for refusing to run ads for gay organizations and running housing and employment ads which specified “no gays.” The paper agreed the next month not to print ads which stated “no gays,” and began printing ads from gay and lesbian organizations the following April when the Austin City Council passed a Public Accommodations Ordinance which outlawed discrimination based on sexual orientation.

1995

Steven Powsner (November 19, 1955 – November 20, 1995), who had been president of the New York City Lesbian and Gay Community Services Center from 1992-1994, dies of complications from AIDS at the age of 40. His first lover, Bruce Philip Cooper, died of AIDS in 1987.

1996

The Ashland Wisconsin school district agrees to pay former student Jamie Nabozny $900,000 in damages. While he was a student, administrators took no action to alleviate the physical and verbal abuse he suffered because he was gay. The nearly one-million-dollar settlement makes Jamie the first of a long string of students to successfully sue schools and school employees for failing to protect them from horrendous homophobic abuse. Nabozny v. Podlesny, 92 F.3d 446 (7th Cir. 1996)was a case heard in the Circuit regarding the protection of a school student in Ashland, Wisconsin, who had been harassed and bullied by classmates because of his sexual orientation. The plaintiff in the case, Jamie Nabozny, sought damages from school officials for their failure to protect him from the bullying. A jury found that this failure violated Nabozny’s constitutional rights and awarded him $962,000 in damages.

1998

John Geddes Lawrence and Tyrone Garner of Texas are ordered to pay fines of $125 each after being arrested for having sex in their home. The couple refuse to pay and announce they would challenge the Texas sodomy law. Lawrence v. Texas, 539 U.S. 558 (2003) is a landmark decision by the United States Supreme Court. The Court struck down the sodomy law in Texas in a 6–3 decision and, by extension, invalidated sodomy laws in 13 other states, making same-sex sexual activity legal in every U.S. state and territory. The Court, with a five-justice majority, overturned its previous ruling on the same issue in the 1986 case Bowers v. Hardwick, where it upheld a challenged Georgia statute and did not find a constitutional protection of sexual privacy.

1999

Transgender Day of Remembrance (TDOR) was started in 1999 by transgender advocate Gwendolyn Ann Smith as a vigil to honor the memory of Rita Hester, a transgender woman who was killed in 1998. The vigil commemorated all the transgender people lost to violence since Rita Hester’s death, and began an important tradition that has become the annual Transgender Day of Remembrance.

2003

The U.S. Congress passes a resolution condemning all violations of internationally recognized human rights norms based on the real or perceived sexual orientation or gender identity of an individual.

2010, Japan

Transgender Japanese singer Alaru Nakamura’s (born 28 June 1985) album Boy-Girl wins the Excellent Album music award at the 56th Japan Record Awards ceremony. Nakamura was assigned male at birth but transitioned after struggling with issues of gender identity.

2020, UK

Transgender pioneer Jan Morris (2 October 1926 – 20 November 2020) died at her home in Wales. She was 94. She was a Welsh historian, author and travel writer known particularly for the Pax Britannica trilogy (1968–1978). She published under her birth name, James, until 1972 when she had gender reassignment surgery after transitioning from male to female. Morris, then James Morris, married Elizabeth Tuckniss in 1949. They were lifelong partners and had five children. Morris began her transition in 1964. Already a famous journalist, she was one of the first high-profile people to do so. On May 14, 2008, Morris and Tuckniss formally entered into a same-sex civil partnership. Morris later detailed her transition in Conundrum (1974), her first book under her new name, and one of the first autobiographies to discuss gender reassignment. Later memoirs included Herstory and Pleasures of a Tangled Life. She also wrote many essays on travel and her life and published a collection of her diary entries as In My Mind’s Eye in 2019.

2019

Transgender community leader Lauren Pulido raised the transgender pride flag over the California state capitol for Trans Day of Remembrance, reportedly the first time the transgender flag was raised over a state capitol building in the United States.

 

NOVEMBER 21

1777

French diplomat Chevalier d’Eon (5 October 1728 – 21 May 1810) is formally presented to Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette as a woman. Charles-Geneviève-Louis-Auguste-André-Timothée d’Éon de Beaumont was a French diplomat, spy, freemason and soldier who fought in the Seven Years’ War. D’Éon had androgynous physical characteristics and natural abilities as a mimic, good features for a spy. D’Éon appeared publicly as a man and pursued masculine occupations for 49 years, although during that time d’Éon successfully infiltrated the court of Empress Elizabeth of Russia by presenting as a woman. For 33 years, from 1777, d’Éon dressed as a woman, identifying as female. Doctors who examined d’Éon’s body after death discovered “male organs in every respect perfectly formed” but also feminine characteristics.

1956

Cherry Jones (born November 21, 1956) is an American actress. A five-time Tony Award nominee for her work on Broadway, she has twice won the Tony Award for Best Actress in a Play for the 1995 revival of The Heiress and for the 2005 original production of Doubt. She has also won three Emmy Awards, winning the Outstanding Supporting Actress in a Drama Series in 2009 for her role as Allison Taylor on the FOX television series 24, and twice winning the Outstanding Guest Actress in a Drama Series for her performances in The Handmaid’s Tale and Succession. She has also won three Drama Desk Awards. Jones made her Broadway debut in the 1987 original Broadway production of Stepping Out. Other stage credits include Pride’s Crossing (1997–98) and The Glass Menagerie (2013–14). Her film appearances include The Horse Whisperer (1998), Erin Brockovich (2000), Signs (2002), The Village (2004), Amelia (2009), and The Beaver (2011). In 2012, she played Dr. Judith Evans on the NBC drama Awake. In 1995, when Jones accepted her first Tony Award, she thanked her then-partner, architect Mary O’Connor with whom she had an 18-year relationship. She started dating actress Sarah Paulson in 2004. When she accepted her Best Actress Tony in 2005 for her work in Doubt, she thanked Laura Wingfield, the Glass Menagerie character being played in the Broadway revival by Paulson. In 2007, Paulson and Jones declared their love for each other in an interview with Velvet-park at Women’s Event 10 for the LGBT Center of New York. Paulson and Jones ended their relationship amicably in 2009. In mid-2015, Jones married her girlfriend, filmmaker Sophie Huber.

1966

The term ‘gender identity’ is first used in a press release to publicize a new clinic for transsexuals at the Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore, Maryland. The concept is picked up by the media, and quickly becomes common currency around the world.

1972

Jim Gaylord is fired from his teaching job in Tacoma, WA, via a letter. It read, in part: “The specific probable cause for your discharge is that you have admitted occupying a public status that is incompatible with the conduct required of teachers in this district. Specifically, that you have admitted being a publicly known homo-sexual.” In 2016, 42 years after he lost his job, Gaylord received an apology from the Tacoma School District.

1977, Canada

In Toronto, The Body Politic containing an article entitled “Men loving boys loving men” goes on sale. The article by Gerald Hannon sparked a controversy that eventually led to the folding of the paper.

1981

Sergeant Charles H. Cochrane (August 5, 1943–May 5, 2008), a 14-year veteran of the NYPD, created shock waves by testifying before a New York City Council hearing in favor of a gay rights bill. Following on the testimony of a Patrolmen’s Benevolent Association Vice President who denounced the bill and declared he didn’t know of any homosexual police officers, Cochrane stunned those present by announcing, “I am very proud of being a New York City Police Officer, and I am equally proud of being gay.” Cochrane’s public testimony lent significantly toward the official formation of the Gay Officers Action League, Inc., (G.O.A.L.) which became the first official police fraternal society in the world to represent LGBT professionals within the criminal justice system. Since that time, simi-lar organizations for LGBT Law Enforcement Officers, Criminal Justice professionals as well as Firefighters and EMS personnel have been established around the world. Cochrane died of cancer on May 5, 2008 at the age of 64.

1987

Having raided and closed down The Detour bar the night before, Los Angeles police raid and shut down the One Way bar over al-leged violations to the city’s fire ordinance. The LAPD came to the conclusion that the manpower necessary to close the One Way would be ten police cars and several fire trucks and various other city vehicles.

1997

The University of California Board of Regents votes to extend do-mestic partner benefits to partners of lesbian and gay employees.

1999

British writer Quentin Crisp (25 December 1908 – 21 November 1999) dies at age 90. He was an English writer, raconteur and actor. From a conventional suburban background, Crisp enjoyed wearing make-up and painting his nails, and worked as a rent-boy in his teens. He then spent thirty years as a professional model for life-classes in art colleges. The interviews he gave about his unusual life attracted increasing public curiosity and he was soon sought after for his highly individual views on social manners and the cultivating of style. His one-man stage show was a long-running hit both in Britain and America and he also appeared in films and on TV. In 1995 he was among the many people interviewed for The Celluloid Closet, an historical documentary addressing how Hollywood films have depicted homosexuality.

2001

Maryland’s Anti-discrimination Act becomes law. It prohibits discrimination based on sexual orientation in public accommodations, housing and employment. Maryland becomes the 12th state to enact such protections for homosexuals.

2006, Israel

Israeli Supreme Count recognizes international same-sex marriages.

2007

Jennifer Granholm, governor of Michigan, issues an executive order prohibiting employment discrimination based on gender identity or expression in the public sector.

2014, Gambia

The Gambian president signs anti-homosexuality law which calls for the imprisonment for people caught in same-sex sexual activity.

 

NOVEMBER 22

1869, France

French gay author and the 1947 Nobel Prize winner for literature Andre Gide (22 November 1869 – 19 February 1951) is born. He was a French author and winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1947 “for his comprehensive and artistically significant writings, in which human problems and conditions have been presented with a fearless love of truth and keen psychological insight.” Gide’s career ranged from its beginnings in the symbolist movement, to the advent of anticolonialism between the two World Wars. In his journal, Gide distinguishes between adult-attracted “sodomites” and boy-loving “pederasts,” categorizing himself as the latter.

1913, UK

British gay composer, conductor and pianist Benjamin Britten (22 November 1913 – 4 December 1976) is born. He was an English composer, conductor and pianist and a central figure of 20th-century British classical music, with a range of works including opera, other vocal music, orchestral and chamber pieces. His best-known works include the opera Peter Grimes(1945), the War Requiem (1962) and the orchestral showpiece The Young Person’s Guide to the Orchestra (1945).

1935

Mary Alfreda Smith was born (November 22, 1935). Reverend El-der Freda Smith is an American political and LGBT activist, working in the areas of women’s and minority rights. She worked on the Robert F Kennedy election campaign in 1968 and helped overturn laws that criminalized homosexual activity in California. In 1972 she became the first ordained clergywoman of the Metropolitan Community Church.

1943

Former world number one professional tennis player Billie Jean King (November 22, 1943) is born. She won 39 Grand Slam titles: 12 in singles, 16 in women’s doubles, and 11 in mixed doubles. King won the singles title at the inaugural WTA Tour Championships. King often represented the United States in the Federation Cup and the Wightman Cup. She was a member of the victorious United States team in seven Federation Cups and nine Wightman Cups. For three years, King was the United States captain in the Federation Cup. King is an advocate for gender equality and has long been a pioneer for equality and social justice. In 1968, King realized that she was attracted to women, and in 1971, began an intimate relationship with her secretary, Marilyn Barnett (born Marilyn Kathryn McRae on January 28, 1948). King acknowledged the relationship when it became public in a May 1981 ‘palimony’ lawsuit filed by Barnett, making King the first prominent professional female athlete to come out as a lesbian.

1980

Mae West (August 17, 1893 – November 22, 1980) dies in Los Angeles at the age of 88. Rumors that she was really a man were finally proven false. She was an American actress, singer, playwright, screenwriter, comedian, and sex symbol whose entertainment career spanned seven decades.

2004, UK

Lord Peter Mandelson (born 21 October 1953) is the first openly gay Commissioner of the European Union. He is a British Labour politician, president of international think tank Policy Network and Chairman of strategic advisory firm Global Counsel. Reinaldo Avila da Silva (born September 1972, a Brazilian-British translator was his partner from 1998 to 2007 when “Mandy” met Marco Coretti, owner of a chic boutique near the Spanish Steps in Rome.

2011

An independent arbiter rules that Baltimore County, Maryland must extend spousal benefits to the same-sex spouses of two police officers who legally married in another state.

2000

Auli’i Cravalho, the 19-year-old star of Disney’s Moana comes out as bisexual in a video posted to her TikTok account.

 

NOVEMBER 23

1857

Katharine Coman (23 November 1857 –11 January 1915) was an American social activist and professor. She was based at the women-only Wellesley College, Massachusetts where she created new courses in political economy, in line with her personal belief in social change. As dean, she established a new department of eco-nomics and sociology. Among other widely admired works, Coman wrote The Industrial History of the United States and Economic Beginnings of the Far West: How We Won the Land Beyond the Mississippi. She was the first female statistics professor in the U.S., the only woman co-founder of the American Economics Association, and author of the first paper published in The American Economic Review. A passionate believer in trades unionism, social insurance and the settlement movement, Coman travelled widely to conduct her research, and took her students on field trips to factories and tenements. For 25 years, Coman lived in a “Boston marriage” with Wellesley professor and poet Katharine Lee Bates, the author of America the Beautiful. Such partnerships were so common among Wellesley faculty that they were called “Wellesley marriages.” Coman and Bates shared a house they named “the Scarab” with Bates’ mother, Cornelia, and her sister, Jeannie. The women reportedly enjoyed life together as family. Coman frequently traveled for her research on economic history; she visited Europe, the American West, Scandinavia, and Egypt. Bates accompanied her on many of these trips. Some scholars believe the two women were a lesbian couple.

1933

The New York tabloid Broadway Brevities, under the headline “FAGS TICKLE NUDES,” publishes an article warning that “pansy men of the nation” were invading steam baths and turning them into replicas of the orgy houses in Rome at the time of Nero.

1960

Robin René Roberts (born November 23, 1960) is an American television broadcaster and anchor of ABC’s Good Morning America. After growing up in Mississippi and attending Southeastern Louisiana University, Roberts was a sports anchor for local TV and radio stations. Roberts was a sportscaster on ESPN for 15 years (1990–2005). She became co-anchor on Good Morning America in 2005. Roberts was inducted into the Women’s Basketball Hall of Fame in 2012. Her treatment for myelodysplastic syndrome was chronicled on the program, which earned a 2012 Peabody Award for the coverage. Roberts began a romantic relationship with massage therapist Amber Laign in 2005. Though friends and co-workers had known about her same-sex relationships, Roberts publicly acknowledged her sexual orientation for the first time in late December 2013. In 2015, she was named by Equality Forum as one of their 31 Icons of the 2015 LGBT History Month.

1965

The word ‘transgenderism’ is first used in a medical text by Dr. John F. Oliven to mean transsexualism. It is given quite a different meaning and popularized by Virginia Prince (November 23, 1912-May 2, 2009) in the 1970s. Prince claims to have invented the word herself and uses it to define people who live full time in their chosen gender without necessarily having had or even wanting to have, gender-confirming surgery.

1967

The first gay and lesbian bookstore opens in New York, the Oscar Wilde Memorial Bookshop. It was founded by Craig Rodwell (October 31, 1940 – June 18, 1993) on November 24, 1967. Initially located at 291 Mercer Street, it moved in 1973 to Christopher Street and Gay Street in New York City’s Greenwich Village neighborhood. The bookstore closed on March 29, 2009, citing the Great Recession and challenges from online bookstores. Also in 1967, Rodwell began the group Homophile Youth Movement in Neighborhoods (HYMN) and began to publish its periodical, HYMNAL. In November 1969, Rodwell proposed the first gay pride parade to be held in New York City by way of a resolution at the Eastern Regional Conference of Homophile Organizations meeting in Philadelphia, along with his partner Fred Sargeant (HYMN vice chairman), Ellen Broidy and Linda Rhodes. The first march was organized from Rodwell’s apartment on Bleecker Street. In March 1993, Rodwell sold his bookshop to Bill Offenbaker. Rodwell died on June 18, 1993 of stomach cancer. Rodwell is considered by some to be quite possibly the leading rights activist in the early homophile movement of the 1960s.

1973

In New York City, 325 people attend the first conference of the Gay Academic Union. The pioneering Lesbian and Gay Studies group, which was founded the previous March, includes Martin Duberman (born August 6, 1930), John D’Emilio (born 1948), Jonathan Ned Katz (born 1938), and Joan Nestle (born May 12, 1940) among its members.

1973, Germany

Germany’s sexuality laws, Paragraph 175, stays on the books but is significantly amended. The only remaining crime is sex with a minor.

1981

The New York City Council votes for the tenth time not to pass a gay anti-discrimination ordinance.

1983

A Louisville, Kentucky bank, which fired a branch manager for refusing to end his association with Dignity, an organization for GLBT Catholics, was cleared of charges of discrimination and violating the employee’s freedom of religion.

1992, Australia

Prime Minister Paul Keating revokes the country’s restrictions on gay men and lesbians in the military.

1996

Sir Elton John (born 25 March 1947) is honored as the founder of the Elton John AIDS Foundation at a gala celebrating the 25th anniversary of the Los Angeles Gay and Lesbian Center. He is an English singer, pianist, and composer. He has worked with lyricist Bernie Taupin as his songwriting partner since 1967. They have collaborated on more than 30 albums to date. In his five-decade career Elton John has sold more than 300 million records, making him one of the best-selling music artists in the world. He established the Elton John AIDS Foundation in 1993 and a year later began hosting the annual Academy Award Party which has since become one of the highest-profile Oscar parties in the Hollywood film industry. Since its inception, the foundation has raised over US$200 million. John, who announced he was bisexual in 1976 and has been openly gay since 1988, entered into a civil partnership with David Furnish on 21 December 2005, and, after same-sex marriage became legal in England and Wales in 2014, wed Furnish on 21 December 2014. On 24 January 2018, it was announced that John would be retiring from touring and would soon embark on a three-year farewell tour, which began in September 2018.

1998

The Georgia Supreme Court votes 6-1 to overturn the state’s sodomy law. In the majority opinion, Chief Justice Robert Benham wrote, “We cannot think of any other activity that reasonable persons would rank as more private and more deserving of protection from governmental interference than consensual, private, adult sexual activity.” Since the decision was based on the Georgia constitution rather than the U.S. constitution, the decision could not be appealed.

2011, Belize

The Belize Council of Churches rallies to oppose the decriminalization of homosexual acts at the Belize Action/Family Forum. Lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) persons in Belize face legal challenges not experienced by non-LGBT citizens. Same-sex sexual activity was illegal in Belize until 2016, when the Supreme Court declared Belize’s anti-sodomy law unconstitutional. Belize also has a law prohibiting foreign homosexuals from entering the country, although the law has never been enforced. Regardless, Belize held its first Pride Week in August 2017.

2014, Brazil

The world’s first largest same-sex wedding with 160 couples takes place in Rio de Janeiro. It was the fifth time mass same-sex wed-dings were held in Brazil. (The following year 185 couples married.) Claudio Nascimento of Rio Sem Homophobia (Rio without Homophobia) says, “It is an affirmative action to call attention to all of the achievements and challenges in the area of civil and human rights of the LGBT community.” Brazil broke the Guinness World Record for the largest pride parade in 2009 with 4 million attendees. Same-sex marriage has been legal in Brazil since May 16, 2013, though it had already been legally recognized since 2004.

 

NOVEMBER 24

1933, Germany

A law was passed in Germany to allow surgical castrations as a crime prevention measure and a therapeutic treatment for homosexuality.

1955

In the wake of the murder of a Sioux City, Iowa, boy earlier in the year, 29 men suspected of homosexuality are committed to mental asylums as a preventive measure authorized by the state’s “sexual psychopath” laws.

1959, UK

The first broadcast of a gay drama called South starring gay actor Peter Wyngarde (August 23, 1933-15 January 2018) is aired. Wyngarde shared a flat in Earls Terrace, Kensington, with actor Alan Bates (17 February 1934 – 27 December 2003) for some years in the 1960s. Bates, (17 February 1934 – 27 December 2003) was a gay English actor known for his performance with Anthony Quinn in Zorba the Greek, as well as his roles in King of Hearts, Georgy Girl, Far from the Madding Crowd and The Fixer in which he received an Academy Award nomination for Best Actor. South, adapted by Gerald Savory from an original play by Julien Green is considered “a milestone” in gay cultural history. Wyngarde’s flamboyant dress sense and stylish performances led to popular success, and he was considered a style icon in Britain and elsewhere in the early 1970s; Mike Myers credited Wyngarde with inspiring the character Austin Powers.

1974

The National Gay and Lesbian Task Force protests an episode of NBC’s Police Woman “Flowers of Evil” (aired on November 8) that featured lesbian murderers in a home for aged women. The network agrees not to rerun the episode, but MCA-TV producer David Gerber keeps it in syndication release.

1984, UK

England’s first national conference on AIDS began, organized by the Terrence Higgins Trust. Terrence “Terry” Higgins (10 June 1945 – 4 July 1982) was among the first people known to die of an AIDS-related illness in the United Kingdom. In his memory, Martyn Butler and Higgins’ partner Rupert Whitaker (born 1963), initiated the formation of the Terry Higgins Trust, later renamed the Terrence Higgins Trust, in 1982 with a group of concerned community members and Terry’s friends including Tony Calvert. It was dedicated to preventing the spread of HIV, promoting awareness of AIDS, and providing supportive services to people with the disease.

1985

At an AIDS candlelight vigil in San Francisco, activist Cleve Jones (born October 11, 1954) conceives The Names Project. Cleve is an American AIDS and LGBT rights activist. The NAMES Project AIDS Memorial Quilt has become, at 54 tons, the world’s largest piece of community folk art. In 1983, at the onset of the AIDS pandemic, Jones co-founded the San Francisco AIDS Foundation which has grown into one of the largest and most influential People with AIDS advocacy organizations in the United States.

1991

Freddie Mercury (5 September 1946 – 24 November 1991), lead singer for Queen, dies of complications from AIDS. It was only the day before that he acknowledged that he had the disease. He left most of his estate to a former girlfriend, Mary Austen, who cared for him during his final months. The official cause of death is bronchial pneumonia resulting from AIDS. He was 45. In 1992, Mercury was posthumously awarded the Brit Award for Outstanding Contribution to British Music, and a tribute concert was held at Wembley Stadium, London. As a member of Queen, he was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2001, the Songwriters Hall of Fame in 2003, and the Fame in 2004. In 2002, he was placed number 58 in the BBC’s 2002 poll of the 100 Greatest Britons. He is consistently voted one of the greatest singers in the history of popular music. While some commentators claimed Mercury hid his sexual orientation from the public, others claimed he was openly gay.

1997

The Associated Press reports that Edgehill United Methodist Church in Nashville, Tennessee announced that no weddings would be performed until same-sex couples were given the right to be married there.

1998

Nearly 100 people demonstrate to protest the firing of lesbian Alicia Pedreira from Kentucky Baptist Homes for Children in Louisville. According to her termination notice, she was fired because her “admitted homosexual lifestyle is contrary to Kentucky Baptist Homes for Children core values.” Five other employees resigned in protest. The case name is Pedreira v. Kentucky Baptist Homes for Children. 

2008

A lower court in Florida declares that the state’s ban on adoption by gay couples is unconstitutional.

2014, Ecuador

The Ecuador LGBT Film Festival Jury names Letter to Anita as Best Documentary. The film, directed by Andrea Meyerson, tells the story of Anita Bryant’s anti-gay campaign and its effect not only on the life of lesbian Ronni Sanlo and her family but also on the budding LGBT civil rights movement.

2015, Viet Nam

The Vietnamese National Assembly passes a law that allows those who have undergone sex reassignment surgery to register under their preferred sex. However, sex reassignment surgery is illegal in Viet Nam. The law went into effect in 2017.

 

NOVEMBER 25

1837

Elizabeth M. Cushier (Nov.25, 1837-Nov. 25, 1931), one of eleven children, was born in New York City. She was the first woman to earn a medical degree and a professor of medicine, and one of New York’s most prominent obstetricians for 25 years. During WWI, Cushier worked in Belgium and France. From 1882, she lived with Dr. Emily Blackwell (October 8, 1826 – September 7, 1910) until Blackwell’s death. Emily Blackwell was the second woman to earn a medical degree at what is now Case Western Reserve University, and the third woman (after Cushier and Lydia Folger Fowler) to earn a medical degree in the United States. Cushier ‘s papers are archived among the Blackwell Family Papers at the Schlesinger Library, Radcliffe Institute for Advance Study at Harvard University.

1942, Germany

Rosa von Praunheim (born 25 November 1942) is a German film director, author, painter and one of the most famous gay rights activists in Germany, Austria and Switzerland. In over 50 years, von Praunheim has made more than 150 films (short and feature-length films). His works influenced the development of LGBTQ rights movements worldwide. He lives in Berlin with his companion and assistant Oliver Sechting.

1970

The Seattle Gay Liberation Front severed ties with the Young Socialist Alliance because their exclusion of homosexuals mirrored Stalin’s practices.

1997, South Africa

A demonstration was held at the Johannesburg High Court in sup-port of an application to decriminalize sex between men.

1997, Ecuador

Ecuador legalizes same-sex sexual activity, overturning the previous Article 516 of the Penal Code that criminalized such acts. South Africa was the first country to enact a constitutional ban outlawing sexual orientation discrimination.

 

NOVEMBER 26

1865

Mary Edwards Walker (November 26, 1832 – February 21, 1919) a Union army surgeon of the American Civil War, becomes the only woman to receive the United States’ highest military decoration, the Medal of Honor. She was captured by Confederate forces after crossing enemy lines to treat wounded civilians and arrested as a spy. She was sent as a prisoner of war to Richmond, Virginia until released in a prisoner exchange. There are surviving photographs of the hero wearing male clothing, and Walker is said to have been arrested for impersonating a man. She was an American abolitionist, prohibitionist, prisoner of war and surgeon. She was frequently arrested for wearing men’s clothing and insisted on her right to wear clothing that she thought appropriate. Walker was a member of the central woman’s suffrage Bureau in Washington and solicited funds to endow a chair for a woman professor at Howard University medical school. Walker was inducted into the National Women’s Hall of Fame in 2000.

1962, Morocco

Morocco adds same-sex penalties to its Penal Code.

1978

ABC airs A Question of Love, a TV movie about lesbian lovers in a custody battle over their children, complete with ‘parental discretion advised’ warnings. The lesbian couple was played by the Gena Rowlands and Jane Alexander. The next high profile movie about lesbians would be 16 years later when Glenn Close and Judy Davis starred in Serving in Silence.

1982

Lesbians Cris Williamson (born 1947) and Meg Christian (born 1946) play Carnegie Hall, the first openly lesbian or gay act to do so. Cris Williamson is an American feminist singer/songwriter who achieved fame as a recording artist, and who was a pioneer as a visible lesbian political activist, during a time when few who were not connected to the Lesbian community were aware of Gay and Lesbian issues. Williamson’s music and insight has served as a catalyst for change in the creation of women-owned record companies in the 1970s. Meg is an American folk singer associated with the Lesbian music movement.

1990

The Minneapolis Minnesota civil rights commission rules that Roman Catholic officials violated anti-discrimination laws by evicting the LGBT Catholic organization Dignity from holding services in a church owned facility.

2003

In the U.S. Senate, the anti-gay Federal Marriage Amendment is introduced by Wayne Allard of Colorado, Sam Brownback of Kansas, Jim Bunning of Kentucky, James Inhofe of Oklahoma, and Jeff Sessions of Alabama.

2015, Bolivia

The Justice Minister announces the passage of the Law of Gender Identity which allows transgender people to change their legal documents. The bill was initially proposed by Raysa Torriani, a transgender woman and trans activist, three years earlier. The Law of Gender Identity will legally recognize the identity of 1,500 self-identified transgender people living in Bolivia. “Now, the sisters and brothers who want to change their name and sex, by an administrative resolution, can change their information” in the records of various government institutions, said Virginia Velasco, the minister of justice of Bolivia.

 

NOVEMBER 27

111, Italy

Antinous (November 27, 111 – 30 October 130) is born in Bithynia. The Roman Emperor Hadrian (76-138 CE) was smitten with the 15 year old boy at first glance. From that time on Antinous never left the emperor’s side. On a trip to Egypt he drowned in the Nile. Some say it was because of a prophecy that had declared the Hadrian would die unless a sacrifice were made to the river.

1700

A new law concerning sodomy passes in the Pennsylvania assembly. If committed by a white man, sodomy was punishable by life in prison and, at the discretion of the judge, a whipping every three months for the first year. If married, the man was castrated and his wife was granted a divorce. If committed by a Black man, the punishment for sodomy was death.

1784, UK

The UK Morning Herald newspaper publishes the rumor that the famous novelist William Beckford (1 October 1760 – 2 May 1844) was sleeping with William “Kitty” Courtney (c. 1768 – 26 May 1835), the 9th Earl of Devon, calling the two men “the lowest class of brutes in the most preposterous rites,” and leading to Beckford’s ostracism. Beckford was an English novelist, a consummately knowledgeable art collector and patron of works of decorative art, a critic, travel writer and sometime politician, reputed at one stage in his life to be the richest commoner in England. Courtenay was in his time considered a notorious homosexual and attracted infamy for the affair with Beckford. As a youth, ‘Kitty’ Courtenay was sometimes named by contemporaries as the most beautiful boy in England.

1835, UK

John Smith (1795–1835) and James Pratt (1805–1835) are the last Englishmen to be executed for sodomy under the 1828 Offenses Against the Person Act which had replaced the 1533 Buggery Act. They are hanged at Newgate prison.

1970

Marty Robinson (1942-1992) and Arthur Evans (October 12, 1942 – September 11, 2011) of the Gay Activist Alliance appeared on the Dick Cavett Show. Evans was an early gay rights advocate and author, most well-known for his book Witchcraft. He was a co-founder of Gay Activists Alliance. Robinson was an organizer for gay rights causes for 27 years who was known for his provocative protests.

1970, UK

The London Gay Liberation Front mounts its first public demonstration, a torch-lit protest march on Highbury Fields.

1978, Canada

Parents of Gays form in Canada forms.

1978

Harvey Milk and Mayor Macone are assassinated. Conservative Dan White, after discovering that he would not be re-appointed to his seat on the San Francisco Board of Supervisors, took a gun and extra ammunition and goes to City Hall. He enters through a lower level window to avoid the metal detectors and goes to the office of Mayor George Moscone who was supportive of the gay community, and fires four shots, two to the head. Those who heard the gunshots did not realize what they were hearing, giving him time to re-load his gun and go to the office of Supervisor Harvey Milk, the first openly gay man to be elected in a major American city, and fires five shots. Both men are pronounced dead. Tens of thousands gather for a spontaneous vigil. White is convicted on the reduced charge of “voluntary manslaughter” and sentenced to six years in prison. He is released after serving 5 1⁄2 years and dies by suicide soon after returning to his family.

1980

Bosom Buddies, a sitcom about two young broke New York men who dress in drag to live in a low rent, all-girl hotel, premieres on ABC. It stars Tom Hanks and Peter Scolari.

1998, Zimbabwe

Former Zimbabwean President Canaan Banana (5 March 1936 – 10 November 2003) is convicted of eleven counts of sodomy and indecent assault. He served as the first President of Zimbabwe from 18 April 1980 until 31 December 1987. A Methodist minister, he held the largely ceremonial office of the presidency while his eventual successor, Robert Mugabe, served as Prime Minister of Zimbabwe. During his lifetime, Banana brought together two of the country’s political parties, the Zimbabwe African National Union (ZANU) and the Zimbabwe African People’s Union (ZAPU), became a diplomat for the Organization of African Unity, and headed the religious department of the University of Zimbabwe. His later life was complicated by charges of sodomy—a crime in Zimbabwe—which he denied and for which he was later imprisoned. Banana was found guilty of eleven charges of sodomy, attempted sodomy and indecent assault in 1998. He denied all charges, saying that homosexuality is “deviant, abominable and wrong,” and the allegations made against him were “pathological lies” intended to destroy his political career. His wife Janet Banana later discussed her husband’s alleged homosexuality and confirmed it even though she considered the charges against him to be politically motivated.

1999, New Zealand

Georgina Beyer (born November 1957) is the first transgender member of the New Zealand Parliament and also the first openly transgender mayor in the world. She is also among a very small number of former sex workers to hold political office.

 

NOVEMBER 28

1862, Germany

Karl Heinrich Ulrichs (28 August 1825 – 14 July 1895), a pioneer of the early LGBT civil rights movement, writes a letter to his family reconciling his spirituality and his sexuality. He wrote, “Good God has given me love oriented towards men. Asking Him to change that would be extremely anti-Christian.” Ulrichs was a German writer who is seen today as the pioneer of the modern gay rights movement.

1932

Margaret “Midge” Costanza (November 28, 1932 – March 23, 2010) was an American presidential advisor, social and political activist. A lifelong champion of gay and women’s rights, she was known for her wit, outspoken manner and commitment to her convictions.

1944

Rita Mae Brown (born November 28, 1944) is an American feminist writer best known for her coming-of-age autobiographical novel Rubyfruit Jungle. Brown was active in a number of civil rights campaigns but tended to feud with their leaders over the marginalizing of lesbians within the feminist groups. Brown received the Pioneer Award for lifetime achievement at the Lambda Literary Awards in 2015. In the spring of 1964, during her study at the University of Florida at Gainesville, shebecame active in the American Civil Rights Movement. Later in the 1960s, she participated in the anti-war movement, the feminist movement and the Gay Liberation movement. She was involved with the Student Homophile League at Columbia University in 1967 but left it because the men in the league were not interested in women’s rights. Brown took an administrative position with the fledgling National Organization for Women but resigned in January 1970 over comments by Betty Friedan seen by some as anti-gay and by NOW’s attempts to distance itself from lesbian organizations. Brown claimed that lesbian was “the one word that can cause the Executive Committee [of NOW] a collective heart attack.” Starting in 1973, Brown lived in the Hollywood Hills in Los Angeles. In 1978, she moved to Charlottesville, Virginia, where she lived briefly with American actress, author, and screenwriter Fannie Flagg (born September 21, 1944) whom she had met at a Los Angeles party hosted by Marlo Thomas. They later broke up due to, according to Brown, “generational differences,” although Flagg and Brown are the same age. In 1979, Brown met and fell in love with tennis champion Martina Navratilova. In 1980, they bought a horse farm in Charlottesville where they lived together until their breakup over Navratilova’s then concern that coming out would hurt her application for U.S. citizenship (according to the Washington Post). Brown still lives on the estate in Charlottesville.

1977

Aspen becomes the first city in Colorado to pass a gay rights ordinance.

1978

San Francisco Examiner headline is “THE CITY WEEPS,” following the assassination of George Moscone and Harvey Milk.

1980

The National Coalition of Black Gays holds its second national conference in Philadelphia.

1988

A Dallas judge sentences the killer of two gay men to 30 years in prison instead of a life sentence because, as he later tells the Dallas Times Herald, “I don’t much care for queers cruising the streets.” The Dallas Gay Alliance joins political leaders across the country in protesting the judge’s decision.

1989

A judge in Texas was censured for giving a light sentence to a teenager who murdered two gay men. He explained the sentence by saying that he couldn’t give a life sentence to a teenage boy “just because he killed a couple of homosexuals.”

1998

In Allston, Massachusetts, transgender woman of color Rita Hester (30 November 1963 – 28 November 1998) is murdered. The ensuing candlelight vigil a few days later was attended by 250 people and inspired the Transgender Day of Remembrance, observed each November 20th worldwide.

 

NOVEMBER 29

1628, UK

John Felton (c. 1595 – 29 November 1628) is hanged. He was a lieutenant in the English Army who killed George Villiers, First Duke of Buckingham (28 August 1592 – 23 August 1628), and most probably the lover of King James I, in the Greyhound Pub of Portsmouth on August 23, 1628. Villiers was the last in a succession of handsome young favorites on whom the King lavished affection and patronage, although the personal relationship between the two has been much debated.

1915

Jazz great Billy Strayhorn (November 29, 1915 – May 31, 1967) is born. Planet Out says, “Although Billy Strayhorn was considered by many to be Duke Ellington’s musical superior, his refusal to stay in the closet forced him to take a back seat. Central to the jazz movement, Strayhorn infused his compositions with complex har-monies and plenty of soul. His willful obscurity brought him much pain, but it also served to fuel his creativity and boundless talent.” He was an American jazz composer, pianist, lyricist, and arranger, best known for his successful collaboration with bandleader and composer Duke Ellington, lasting nearly three decades. His compositions include Take the ‘A’ Train, Chelsea Bridge, A Flower Is a Lovesome Thing, and Lush Life. Strayhorn was openly gay. His first partner was African American musician Aaron Bridgers (January 10, 1918 – November 3, 2003), a jazz pianist who moved to Paris in 1947. He and Strayhorn were lovers from 1939 until Bridgers’ move to France. In 1964, Strayhorn was diagnosed with esophageal cancer, the disease that took his life in 1967. Strayhorn finally succumbed in the early morning on May 31, 1967, in the company of his partner, Bill Grove.

1933, Germany

Close to bankruptcy after repeated Nazi raids and seizures of his publications and property, Adolf Brand (14 November 1874 – 2 February 1945) writes a letter to the Sexicology Society in London announcing the end of the Homophile movement he has led. He died in an Allied bombing raid in 1945. Adolf Brand, who began publishing one of the earliest gay publications in Berlin, said he was unable to continue. Nazi raids and seizures had left him financially ruined. Brand was a German writer, individualist anarchist, and pioneering campaigner for the acceptance of male bisexuality and homosexuality.

1979, Canada

A Quebec Superior Court judge rules that the Montreal Catholic School Commission did not have justifiable grounds to refuse to rent space to gay rights group ADGQ and therefore was not exempt from the Charter of Human Rights and Freedoms. The ruling overturns the province’s human rights commission’s second opinion in 1978 and becomes the first legal victory against discrimination since adoption of the gay rights clause in Canada’s Charter of Rights and Freedoms of the Constitution in December 1977.

1984

West Hollywood, the first city in the U.S. to have a city council with a majority of LGBTQ members, is incorporated in Los Angeles County. Less than a month after being established as a city, West Hollywood approves a gay rights ordinance.

1989

Randy Kraft, a serial killer who murdered at least 61 gay young men, is sentenced to death in California. He was arrested in 1983 and remains in a California prison on death row waiting for his sentence to be carried out.

1990

U.S. President George H. W. Bush signs an immigration bill ending the “Homosexuals and Other Sex Perverts” ban.

2004

Without comment, the U.S. Supreme Court refuses to hear argu-ments appealing the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court ruling that same-sex marriage must be allowed in that state, in essence letting the ruling stand.

2007, Viet Nam

First same-sex wedding in Hanoi between two men takes place though it is not legally recognized. The grooms, Dinh Cong Khanh and Nguyen Thai Nguyen, now live in Canada. The wedding raised much attention in the gay and lesbian community in Viet Nam.

2007, Uruguay

Uruguay becomes the first Latin American country to pass a national civil union law.

 

NOVEMBER 30

1624

In the Virginia Colony, Richard Cornish, an English ship captain, was hanged for sodomy for allegedly making advances on an indentured servant, William Couse. His conviction and execution, angrily contested by his brother and others, is the first to be recorded in the American colonies. In 1993 the William and Mary University Gay and Lesbian Alumni created the Richard Cornish Endowment Fund for Gay and Lesbian Resource.

1900, UK

Oscar Wilde (16 October 1854 – 30 November 1900) dies. He was an Irish poet and playwright. After writing in different forms throughout the 1880s, he became one of London’s most popular playwrights in the early 1890s. He is best remembered for his epigrams and plays, his novel The Picture of Dorian Gray, as well as the circumstances of his imprisonment and early death. Wilde was initially buried in the Cimetière de Bagneux outside Paris; in 1909 his remains were disinterred and transferred to Père Lachaise Cemetery. In 2017, with the coming into force of the Policing and Crime Act 2017, Wilde was among an estimated 50,000 men who were pardoned for his offence of homosexuality as it was no longer a crime in the UK.

1978

Clay Aiken (born Clayton Holmes Grissom; born November 30, 1978) is born. He is an American singer, songwriter, television personality, actor, author, politician and activist. Aiken was the 2014 Democratic nominee in the North Carolina 2nd congressional district election. After several years of public speculation, Aiken came out as gay in a September 2008 interview with People magazine. In April 2009, Aiken was honored by the Family Equality Council advocacy group at its annual benefit dinner in New York City.

1988

National League Baseball president Bart Giamatti fires umpire Dave Pallone (born October 5, 1951) for being gay. Pallone is a former Baseball umpire who worked in the National League from 1979 to 1988. During Pallone’s career, he wore uniform number 26. He was “outed” in a New York Post article later in the year. Pallone later wrote his autobiography, Behind the Mask: My Double Life in Baseball, which became New York Times best-seller, and has been republished as an e-book. Pallone now does diversity training for corporations, colleges, universities and athletes with the NCAA. Pallone was part of the first class of inductees to The National Gay and Lesbian Sports Hall of Fame  in 2013.

1989

Columbus Ohio mayor Dana Rinehart signs a hate-crimes bill which includes the term sexual orientation. Rinehart had asked the city council to remove the term, saying that it’s vague and does not be-long in the ordinance. The council refused.

1993

President Bill Clinton signs a military policy directive that prohibits openly gay and lesbian Americans from serving in the military, but also prohibits the harassment of “closeted” homosexuals. The policy is known as “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell.” It was repealed on September 20, 2011.

1995

The first U.S. government-sponsored advertising targeting gay men debuts on the eve of World AIDS Day when the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention releases a public service television announcement cautioning men to have “smart sex.”

2006

South Africa is the first African country to legalize same-sex marriage.

 

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Disclaimer: The team has thoroughly researched the items here yet it’s possible some of the information may be inaccurate or incomplete or simply in need of updating. If so, please let us know. Email Dr. Sanlo at ronni@ronnisanlo.com

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