June 1
LGBTQ Pride Month
1749
Thomas Cannon (1720-?) was an English author of the 18th century who wrote what may be the earliest published defense of homosexuality in English, Ancient and Modern Pederasty Investigated and Exemplify’d (June 1??- 1749). Although only fragments of his work have survived, it was a humorous anthology of homosexual advocacy, written with an obvious enthusiasm for its subject. It contains the argument: “Unnatural Desire is a Contradiction in Terms; downright Nonsense. Desire is an amatory Impulse of the inmost human Parts: Are not they, however constructed, and consequently impelling, Nature?” He may also have collaborated with John Cleland (24 September 1709 – 23 January 1789), author of Fanny Hill.
1880
The United States Census finds 63 men in 22 states incarcerated for “crimes against nature.”
1922, Russia
On this day, the USSR’s Criminal Code of 1922 decriminalized homosexuality. This was a remarkable step in the USSR at the time. Russia was backward economically and socially and where many conservative attitudes towards sexuality prevailed. This step was part of a larger project of freeing sexual relationships and expanding women’s rights including legalizing abortion, granting divorce on demand, equal rights for women, and attempts to socialize housework. During Stalin’s era, however, USSR reverted all these progressive measures, re-criminalizing homosexuality, imprisoning gay men and banning abortion.
1967
Los Angeles Police conduct brutal raids on several gay bars. Enraged by the sight of a few men exchanging customary New Year’s kisses at midnight at the Black Cat in Silver Lake, LAPD undercover agents attack patrons and employees, leaving several severely injured and arresting 16.
1970
The first lesbian/feminist bookstore in the U.S. was the Amazon Bookstore Cooperative, which opened in Minneapolis in 1970. It later became True Colors bookstore (with a labrys acting as the “T,”) but has since closed. In 1970, when Amazon was founded by Rosina Richter Christy and Julie Morse Quist, it was far from a full-fledged bookstore. The books were kept in the front room of the women’s collective they lived in and books were only available from 3 to 6 PM or by special arrangement. This lasted for about two years before the bookstore moved to Minneapolis’ Lesbian Resource Center and then migrated through a series of different storefront addresses. Working conditions were sometimes difficult and included an unsafe neighborhood and a building with no heat where pipes froze and people had to wear gloves inside the store. The bookstore began experiencing financial difficulties in late 2011 and closed in February 2012.
1971, UK
London’s underground newspaper, the International Times, loses its appeal of a recent conviction for indecency, for having run personal ads for gay men. The judge rules that while the acts may be legal, public encouragement of the acts is not.
1972, Sweden
On this day Sweden becomes the first country in the world to allow people who were transsexual by legislation to surgically change their sex and provide free hormone replacement therapy. Sweden also permitted the age of consent for same-sex partners to be at age 15, making it equal to heterosexual couples.
1975
The leather magazine Drummer debuts. Drummer magazine spotlights the rise of open s/m and leather sub-subcultures within the gay male subculture.
1976
Virginia decriminalizes private consensual adult homosexual acts.
1979
Jerry Falwell forms The Moral Majority which opposed the Equal Rights Amendment, Strategic Arms limitation talks, any recognition or acceptance of homosexual acts, and abortion even in cases involving incest, rape or in pregnancies where the life of the mother is at stake. It played a key role in the mobilization of conservative Christians as a political force and particularly in Republican presidential victories throughout the 1980s. The Moral Majority was incorporated into the Liberty Federation in 1985.
1991
The first “Gay Days” event is organized in Walk Disney World in Orlando. About 3,000 gays and lesbians gather, wearing red for visibility. It’s become one of the largest LGBT events in the world.
1994
A federal judge rules that Col. Margarethe Cammermeyer (born March 24, 1942) be reinstated in the Washington State National Guard. She had been discharged from the military for being a lesbian. Margarethe “Grethe” Cammermeyer served as a colonel in the Washington National Guard and became a gay rights activist. Born in Oslo, Norway, she became a United States citizen in 1960. In 1961 she joined the Army Nurse Corps as a student. A television movie about Cammermeyer’s story, Serving in Silence, was made in 1995, with Glenn Close starring as Cammermeyer. Its content was largely taken from Cammermeyer’s autobiography of the same name.
2003, Belgium
Belgium becomes the second country to allow same-sex marriages, after the Netherlands.
2013
The Evangelical Lutheran Church (ELCA) elects its first openly gay bishop, Rev. Dr. R. Guy Erwin (born 1958). He was elected in 2013 to a six-year term as bishop of the Southwest California Synod of the ELCA. Erwin is also the first Native American bishop elected to office in the ELCA, and is a member of the Osage Nation. He has lived in a committed same-sex relationship for 20 years. He and Rob Flynn were married in August 2013.
2014-2016
President Barack Obama declares June as LGBT Pride Month. “NOW, THEREFORE, I, BARACK OBAMA, President of the United States of America, by virtue of the authority vested in me by the Constitution and the laws of the United States, do hereby proclaim June 2014 as Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender Pride Month. I call upon the people of the United States to eliminate prejudice everywhere it exists, and to celebrate the great diversity of the American people.”
June 2
1899
A train is robbed by George “Butch” Cassidy. Earlier in his career, he worked as a butcher in Wyoming, earning him the nickname of “Butch.” This is one of the first times the term “butch” appears. The exact origin of the word is still unknown, but it takes on meaning in the lesbian community in the 1940s.
1952, Canada
Ferron, born Deborah Foisy (born June 2 , 1952) is a Canadian-born singer-songwriter and poet. In addition to gaining fame as one of Canada’s most respected songwriters, Ferron first became one of the most influential lyrical songwriters of the women’s music circuit and an important influence on later musicians such as Ani DiFranco, Mary Gauthier and the Indigo Girls. From the mid-eighties on, Ferron’s songwriting talents have been recognized and appreciated by music critics and broader audiences, with comparisons being made to the writing talents of Van Morrison, Bob Dylan, and Leonard Cohen.
1965
San Francisco Council on Religion and the Homosexual representatives, most of whom are heterosexual, hold a press conference to protest the police force’s “deliberate harassment” of the group’s New Year’s Ball.
1989
Lambda Book Report presents the first Lambda Literary Awards as part of the American Booksellers Association convention in Washington, D.C. Armistead Maupin (born May 13, 1944) is the emcee. “Lammy” winners include Dorothy Allison (April 11, 1949), Paul Monette (October 16, 1945 – February 10, 1995), Michael Nava (born September 16, 1954), Karen Thompson (born 1947), and Edmund White (born January 13, 1940).
1999
President Bill Clinton made history when he became the first president to announce June 1999 as national Gay and Lesbian Pride Month. The proclamation coincided with the 30th anniversary of the Stonewall riots in New York City, NY. The proclamation recognizes the lasting contributions and continuing struggles of lesbian and gay people. He also calls for Congress to pass hate crimes legislation.
2006, Denmark
Danish parliament allows lesbians access to artificial insemination. The vote repeals a 1997 prohibition of the procedure for lesbians.
2017
Leo Varadkar (born January 18, 1979), an openly gay son of an Indian immigrant, becomes the Prime Minister of Ireland.
June 3
1818, Greece
On this day the Lion of Chaeronea is discovered by a British architect named George Ledwell Taylor. The Lion was erected by the Sacred Band of Thebes which was a troop of select soldiers consisting of 150 pairs of male lovers which formed the elite force of the Theban army in the 4th century BC. Its predominance began with its crucial role in the Battle of Leuctra in 371 BC. It was annihilated by Philip II of Macedon in the Battle of Chaeronea in 338 BC. Built to honor their dead, the statue was surrounded by 254 buried skeletons. Plutarch’s Life of Pelopidas, which contains the most detailed account of the Sacred Band, is considered a highly reliable account of the events. Chaeronea is a village in Boeotia, Greece,
1926
Allen Ginsberg (June 3, 1926 – April 5, 1997) is born. Irwin Allen Ginsberg was a gay American poet of Jewish origin and one of the leading figures of both the Beat Generation of the 1950s and the counterculture that soon would follow. He vigorously opposed militarism, economic materialism and sexual repression and was known as embodying various aspects of this counterculture, such as his views on drugs, hostility to bureaucracy and openness to Eastern religions. Ginsberg is best known for his poem Howl in which he denounces what he saw as the destructive forces of capitalism and conformity in the United States. In 1956, Howl was seized by San Francisco police and U.S. Customs. In 1957, it attracted widespread publicity when it became the subject of an obscenity trial, as it described heterosexual and homosexual sex at a time when sodomy laws made homosexual acts a crime in every U.S. state.
1948
The Kinsey Report on male sexuality is published, shocking the nation with its revelation of the high incidence of same-sex acts among American men.
1967
Anderson Cooper (born June 3, 1967) is an American journalist, television personality, and author. He was a primary anchor of the CNN news show Anderson Cooper 360¬∞ until February 2021. The program was normally broadcast live from a New York City studio; however, Cooper often broadcasted live from CNN’s studios in Washington, D.C., or on location for breaking news stories. In addition, he is a major correspondent for 60 Minutes. Cooper was born in New York City, the younger son of the writer Wyatt Emory Cooper and the artist, fashion designer, writer, and heiress Gloria Vanderbilt. Cooper is openly gay; according to The New York Times, he is “the most prominent openly gay journalist on American television.” Cooper and his boyfriend, gay bar owner Benjamin Maisani (born Jan. 27, 1973) have been dating since 2009. Cooper considered coming out to the public when same-sex marriage became legal in New York in July 2011. In 2014, the couple purchased the Rye House, a historic estate in Connecticut. Apple CEO Tim Cook (born November 1, 1960) turned to Cooper for advice before he subsequently made the decision to publicly come out as gay.
1989
The United States postal service supposedly issues the first “Lesbian and Gay Pride” postage stamp. (If anyone can find a photo or graphic of it, please message it to me. Thanks! RS)
1991
Eva Le Gallienne (January 11, 1899 – June 3, 1991) dies. She was a British-born American stage actress, producer, director, translator, and author. A Broadway star by age 21, Le Gallienne consciously ended her work on Broadway to devote herself to founding and running the Civic Repertory Theater, in which she was both director, producer, and lead actress. Noted for her boldness and idealism, she became a pioneering figure in the American Repertory Movement, which enabled today’s Off-Broadway. A versatile and eloquent actress herself (playing everything from Peter Pan to Hamlet), Le Gallienne also became a respected stage coach, director, producer and manager. The Civic Repertory Theatre Company was backed by the financial support of one of her lovers, Alice DeLamar (April 23, 1895 – August 31, 1983), a wealthy Colorado gold mine heiress. Le Gallienne never hid her lesbianism inside the acting community but reportedly was never comfortable with her sexuality, struggling privately with it. In 1918, while in Hollywood, she began an affair with the actress Alla Nazimova (May 22, 1879 – July 13, 1945) who was at her height of fame, and who at that time wielded much power in the acting community. The affair ended reportedly due to Nazimova’s jealousy. Nonetheless, Nazimova liked Le Gallienne very much, and assisted in her being introduced to many influential people of the day. It was Nazimova who coined the phrase “sewing circles” to describe the intricate and secret lesbian relationships lived by many actresses of the day. Le Gallienne also was involved for some time with actresses Tallulah Bankhead (January 31, 1902 – December 12, 1968), Beatrice Lillie (29 May 1894 – 20 January 1989) and Laurette Taylor (April 1, 1883 – December 7, 1946).
2000, Italy
Italian Agricultural Minister Alfonso Pecoraro Scanio (born 13 March 1959) announces that he’s bisexual, becoming the first openly bi member of the Italian government.
2007, Japan
The first openly lesbian politician, Kanako Otsuji (born December 16, 1974), holds a public wedding ceremony with her partner of four years, Maki Kimura, despite lack of legal recognition. Kanako is a Japanese LGBT rights activist and member of the House of Representatives for the Constitutional Democratic Party of Japan. She is a former member of the House of Councilors and 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 Sakai-ku 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. She won a seat in the 2017 general election and became the first openly homosexual member of the House of Representatives.
2012, Argentina
A six-year-old girl named Luana, who was born male, becomes the first transgender child in Argentina to have her new name officially changed on her identity documents. She is believed to be the youngest to have her gender identity officially acknowledged anywhere.
2018, Guyana
Guyana held its first gay pride parade during which the country’s gay rights activists accused the three-year old government as well as the opposition of breaking their election campaign promises to outlaw discrimination against vulnerable groups. Guyana, which was the site of the infamous Jim Jones and the Jonestown mass suicide in 1978, is the only country in South America where homosexuality remains criminalized, with sentences that include life imprisonment although they are rarely enforced.
June 4
1971
Nearly two years after the Stonewall riot, a group of men and women from the Gay Activists Alliance (GAA) walk into the New York City Marriage License Bureau carrying coffee urns and boxes of cake. Their purpose: to hold an engagement party for two male couples and to protest the “slander” of City Clerk Herman Katz who had threatened legal action against same-sex “holy unions” being performed by the Church of the Beloved Disciple which had a largely gay congregation.
1975
American actress, filmmaker, and humanitarian, Angelina Jolie Voight (born June 4, 1975) is born in Los Angeles. Dropping her last name, Jolie is a huge Hollywood star and an openly bisexual role model. She had a relationship with model/actress Jenny Shimizu (born June 16, 1967) in 1996, before her marriage to Billy Bob Thornton. She told Barbara Walters, in a 20/20 interview in 2002, “I consider myself a very sexual person who loves who she loves, whatever sex they may be.” Jolie married Brad Pitt in 2014, divorced in 2019. Jolie has six children: three sons and three daughters. Of the children, three were adopted internationally, while three are biological.
1979, Canada
In Toronto the Gay Liberation Union establishes the first gay self-defense course in Canada. The program grew out of increasing anti-gay violence on streets.
2018
The U.S. Supreme Court rules in favor of a baker who refused to bake a wedding cake for a same sex couple because of a religious objection. The case was Masterpiece Cakeshop, LTD v. Colorado Civil Rights Commission.
June 5
1465, Spain
In a location around √Åvila, a group of Castilian noblemen depose King Henry IV (Enrique IV) of Castile (5 January 1425 – 11 December 1474) and proclaim his half-brother Prince Alfonso, better known as Alfonso the Innocent, as king. This ceremony became known by its detractors as the farce of √Åvila. The accusations against the king: he was sympathetic with Moslems; he was a homosexual; he was of peaceful character; and he was not the true father of his daughter, the infant Juana. As each charge is read, one of the symbols of rank is removed from his statue. Finally, with the cry “¬°A tierra, puto!” the statue was thrown from the platform while the mob laments the death of the king. Then Enrique’s half-brother, Alfonso, age 12, was brought forth, proclaimed and crowned the new king.
1887
Ruth Fulton Benedict (June 5, 1887 РSeptember 17, 1948) is born. She was an American anthropologist and folklorist who entered graduate studies at Columbia University in 1921, where she studied under Franz Boas. She received her PhD and joined the faculty in 1923. Margaret Mead (December 16, 1901 РNovember 15, 1978), with whom she later shared a romantic relationship, and Marvin Opler, were among her students and colleagues. A U.S. 46¢ Great Americans series postage stamp in her honor was issued on October 20, 1995. Benedict College in Stony Brook University has been named after her.
1967
A Los Angeles homophile group called Pride mobilizes a crowd of several hundred demonstrators on Sunset Boulevard to protest police raids on gay bars.
1974
Chad Allen (born June 5, 1974) is an American actor. Beginning his career at the age of seven, Allen is a three-time Young Artist Award winner and GLAAD Media Award honoree. He was a teen idol during the late 1980s as David Witherspoon on the NBC family drama Our House and as Zach Nichols on the NBC sitcom My Two Dads before transitioning to an adult career as Matthew Cooper on the CBS western drama Dr. Quinn: Medicine Woman. He announced his retirement from acting in April 2015. In November 2006, The Los Angeles Daily News wrote in passing that Allen’s partner, actor Jeremy Glazer (born November 1, 1978), was also in the film Save Me. In a September 2008 interview with Out.com, Allen stated that he was currently in a three-year relationship and had been sober for eight years. In May 2009, Allen was the recipient of a GLAAD Media Award: the Davidson/Valentini Award.
1981
HIV/AIDS (though these words are not used yet) is first mentioned in print. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) MMWR, June 5, 1981/Vol. 30 /No. 21 reports the case of an unusual pneumonia in Los Angeles. “In the period October 1980-May 1981, five young men, all active homosexuals, were treated for biopsy-confirmed Pneumocystis carinii pneumonia at three different hospitals in Los Angeles, California.”
1984
Rock Hudson (November 17, 1925 – October 2, 1985) becomes the first major celebrity to be diagnosed with HIV but he doesn’t announce it until 1985. He was a prominent actor and ‘heartthrob’ of the Hollywood Golden Age. Hudson was voted Star of the Year, Favorite Leading Man, and similar titles by numerous film magazines. He completed nearly 70 films and starred in several television productions during a career that spanned more than four decades. He was nominated for an Oscar in 1956 for Giant. Hudson died from AIDS-related complications in 1985, becoming the first major celebrity to die from an AIDS-related illness. 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. Hudson’s revelation had an immediate impact on the visibility of AIDS, and on the funding of medical research related to the disease. Among activists who were seeking to de-stigmatize AIDS and its victims, Hudson’s revelation of his own infection with the disease was viewed as an event that could transform the public’s perception of AIDS. Following Hudson’s death, Marc Christian (June 23, 1953-June 12, 2009), Hudson’s former lover, sued his estate on grounds of “intentional infliction of emotional distress”. Christian claimed that Hudson continued having sex with him until February 1985, more than eight months after Hudson knew that he had HIV. Although he repeatedly tested negative for HIV, Christian claimed that he suffered from “severe emotional distress” after learning from a newscast that Hudson had died of AIDS.
1986
The first issue of Q-Notes is published. Q-Notes is a newsletter of the Charlotte, N.C. organization called Queer City Quordinators. It transitions to a bi-weekly newspaper and is now online. It is the largest LGBT print news publication in the Southeast. Q-Notes was originally started in 1983 as a monthly newsletter, named Queen City Notes. On May 12, 2006, Q-Notes merged with the Raleigh, N.C., based The Front Page, a Raleigh, N.C. LGBT newspaper founded in 1979.
2010
Portugal becomes the eighth country to approve same-sex marriage.
2014
The documentary Letter to Anita has its world premiere at the Pride of the Ocean Film Festival. Letter to Anita is the heart-wrenching story of Anita Bryant’s anti-gay campaign, its shattering effect on one Florida family, and the redemptive power of forgiveness. The Andrea Meyerson film is narrated by Meredith Baxter and tells a story of LGBT history through the journey of activist and educator Ronni Sanlo. Sanlo’s wife Kelly Watson is executive producer.
2018
The European Court of Justice (ECJ), the judicial body that oversees the European Union’s 28 member nations, rules that all 28 nations must grant legal rights of residence to same-sex spouses legally wed elsewhere, even if their home countries do not allow legalized same-sex marriages. While this ruling mostly affects the six EU nations which don’t legally recognize same-sex relationships, this momentous Europe gay marriage decision could lay the groundwork for increased rights for same-sex couples in these six countries. The case began in 2013 when Romanian activist Adrian Coman and his American husband Claibourn Robert Hamilton were denied spousal residency rights by Romania. The two had married in Belgium in 2010, but Romanian law prohibits marriages between same-sex couples. The couple filed a lawsuit, and the ECJ took up the case in 2016 after Romania’s Constitutional Court requested the Court help interpret obligations under European Union law.
2020, Puerto Rico
Puerto Rico Gov. Wanda V√°zquez signed a new civil code that eliminates LGBT rights and protections. It overhauls a series of laws regulating various rights, including LGBT rights. The changes and the fact that no public hearings were held has angered the LGBT community and many of the island’s citizens.
June 6
1832, UK
Jeremy Bentham (February 4, 1748 – June 6, 1832) died. He was an English philosopher, jurist, and social reformer and founder of modern utilitarianism. Bentham wrote the first known argument for homosexual law reform in England in 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 Offences Against One’s Self argued for the liberalization of laws prohibiting homosexual sex. The essay remained unpublished during his lifetime for fear of offending public morality. It was published for the first time in 1931. Bentham did not believe homosexual acts to be unnatural, describing them merely as “irregularities of the venereal appetite”. The essay chastises the society of the time for making a disproportionate response to what Bentham appears to consider a largely private offence – public displays or forced acts being dealt with rightly by other laws. When the essay was published in the Journal of Homosexuality in 1978, its Abstract stated that Bentham’s essay was the “first known argument for homosexual law reform in England.” On his death in 1832, Bentham left instructions for his body to be first dissected then permanently preserved as an “auto-icon” (or self-image) which would be his memorial. This was done and the auto-icon is now on public display at University College London (UCL).
1885
A’Lelia Walker (June 6, 1885 – August 17, 1931) was an American businesswoman and patron of the arts. She was the only surviving child of Madam C.J. Walker, popularly credited as being the first self-made female millionaire in the United States and one of the first African American millionaires. “A’Lelia Walker probably had much to do with the manifest acceptance of bisexuality among the upper class in Harlem,” wrote Lillian Faderman in Odd Girls and Twilight Lovers, “Those who had moral reservations about bisexuality or considered it strange or decadent learned to pretend a sophistication and suppress their disapproval if they desired A’Lelia’s goodwill.” A’Lelia inherited her mother’s fortune but also ran the business herself, opening training centers for Walker agents and the Walker Hair Parlor. She married three times and has been linked to the legendarily hilarious Mayme White (daughter of the 19th century’s last black U.S. Congress member), stage actress Edna Thomas (November 1, 1885 – July 22, 1974) and Mae Fane, about whom little is known.
1944 – D-DAY
The invasion of Normandy beaches in WWII. While it’s not a specific LGBT-related event, there were undoubtedly many hundreds of young gay soldiers killed on those beaches: 160,000 men landed, 9,000 were killed or wounded. Today we remember them with gratitude.
1949
Holly Near (born June 6, 1949) is born. She is an American singer-songwriter, actress, teacher, and activist. In 1970, Near was a cast member of the Broadway musical Hair. Following the Kent State shootings in May of that year, the entire cast staged a silent vigil in protest. The song, “It Could Have Been Me,” released on A Live Album 1974, was her heartfelt response to the shootings. In 1971, she joined the FTA (Free The Army) Tour, an anti-Vietnam War road show of music, comedy, and plays, organized by antiwar activist Fred Gardner and actors Jane Fonda and Donald Sutherland. In 1972, Near founded an independent record label called Redwood Records (now defunct) to produce and promote music by “politically conscious artists from around the world”. Near became a feminist, linking international feminism and anti-war activism. In 1976, Near came out as a lesbian and began a three-year relationship with musician Meg Christian (born 1946). Near was probably the first out lesbian to be interviewed in People Magazine. “I don’t know why. Just isn’t a handle I relate to. I include human and civil rights in all that I do. I am monogamous. I relate to that term. I am a feminist. If I am with a woman I am a feminist. If I am alone I am a feminist. If I am with a man I am a feminist. And until the one I am with and I part ways, then I am just what I am in that relationship and I don’t much think about what I will do next. I focus more on what I bring to that relationship. It is a full-time job being honest one moment at a time, remembering to love, to honor, to respect. It is a practice, a discipline, worthy of every moment. I think my feminism and my ability to love has been highly informed by having had lesbian relationships. The quality of my life has, without question, been elevated.” For a brief moment in time I struggled with sexual identity, somewhere in the mid-’80s. Then I realized it was the wrong question for me. That is not to say it is the wrong question for others. It just wasn’t important to me. So I haven’t really thought much about it since. I am going to sing lesbian love songs and support gay rights no matter what. The rest is public relations.”
1950, Belgium
Chantal Anne Akerman (6 June 1950 – 5 October 2015) is born. She was a Belgian film director, artist and professor of film at the City College of New York. Her best-known film is Jeanne Dielman, 23 quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles (1975). According to film scholar Gwendolyn Audrey Foster, Akerman’s influence on feminist filmmaking and avant-garde cinema has been substantial. Although Akerman is often grouped within feminist and queer thinking, the filmmaker has articulated her distance from an essentialist feminism. Akerman resists labels relating to her identity like “female”, “Jewish” and “lesbian”, choosing instead to immerse herself in the identity of being a daughter. Akerman has stated that she sees film as a “generative field of freedom from the boundaries of identity.” Akerman died on October 5, 2015 in Paris. Le Monde reported that she died by suicide.
1954
Harvey Fierstein (born June 6, 1954) is born in Brooklyn, NY. Author of The Sissy Duckling, playwright, and beloved Emmy- and Tony-award winning actor, Fierstein is also a fiercely gay social activist. Fierstein has won the Tony Award for Best Actor in a Play for his own play Torch Song Trilogy about a gay drag-performer and his quest for true love and family, and the Tony Award for Best Actor in a Musical for playing Edna Turnblad in Hairspray. He also wrote the book for the musical La Cage aux Folles for which he won the Tony Award for Best Book of a Musical, and wrote the book for the Tony Award-winning Kinky Boots. He was inducted into the American Theater Hall of Fame in 2007. Fierstein occasionally writes columns about gay issues. He was openly gay at a time when very few celebrities were.
1956
June Chan (born June 6, 1956) is an Asian-American lesbian activist and biologist. The organizer and co-founder of the Asian Lesbians of the East Coast (ALOEC), Chan raised awareness for LGBT issues relating to the Asian-American community.
1961, UK
Carole Baskin (born June 6, 1961) is born. The “Tiger King” star revealed that she is bisexual. Describing herself as a “tomboy” growing up, the 59-year-old said she began to explore her sexuality in the 1980s when she was engaged to a psychologist who worked with members of the LGBTQ community impacted by the HIV/AIDS crisis.
1967
The 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.
1976
Richard Heakin, a 21 year old college student, is killed on this day in Tucson, AZ, by four teenagers while leaving the Stonewall Tavern. He was visiting in Tucson for Gay Pride. The 13 teenage killers received only probation for the murder. The entire community of Tucson was outraged. Within months anti-discrimination laws were introduced.
1979, Canada
Toronto Teacher Don Franco is charged with being a keeper of a common bawdyhouse in his own home after a police raid found him in an orgy with a number of other men. The raid was condemned by the gay community as an act of revenge by the police, and the case made history as it was the first home, where no prostitution or sex with minors was occurring, to be charged under bawdy house law. A year earlier Franco was arrested in a police raid at the Barracks baths and then released his name to the media. Franco was close to retirement and worried that a conviction might lead to losing his pension. He didn’t back down, and dozens of hearings later he was acquitted of the charge. He retired with full pension. His was an important early victory in the struggle for gay rights. In a time when the fight for rights was savage, Franco was involved with just about every protest, group or movement. He was connected to varying degrees with AIDS Action Now, the Ontario Coalition for Gay Rights, the Campaign for Equal Families and the NDP, just to name a few. He got little credit for the work that he did and didn’t profit from his good deeds, but he is one of a select group of people who were involved in almost the entire history of the fight for gay rights in Canada. He died on February 3, 2014, at the age of 90.
2012
A federal district judge in New York becomes the fifth to rule against the Defense of Marriage Act. The case, Windsor v. United States, eventually will reach the Supreme Court. United States v. Windsor, 570 U.S. 744 (2013) (Docket No. 12-307), is a landmark civil rights case in which the United States Supreme Court held that restricting U.S. federal interpretation of “marriage” and “spouse” to apply only to opposite-sex unions, by Section 3 of the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA), is unconstitutional under the Due Process Clause of the Fifth Amendment. In the majority opinion, Justice Anthony Kennedy wrote: “The federal statute is invalid, for no legitimate purpose overcomes the purpose and effect to disparage and to injure those whom the State, by its marriage laws, sought to protect in personhood and dignity.” Edith Windsor and Thea Spyer, a same-sex couple residing in New York, were lawfully married in Toronto, Ontario, Canada, in 2007. Later in 2008, New York recognized their marriage following a court decision. Spyer died at the age of 77 in 2009, leaving her entire estate to Windsor. Windsor sought to claim the federal estate tax exemption for surviving spouses. She was barred from doing so by Section 3 of DOMA (codified at 1 U.S.C. ¬ß 7), which provided that the term “spouse” only applied to marriages between a man and woman. The Internal Revenue Service found that the exemption did not apply to same-sex marriages, denied Windsor’s claim, and compelled her to pay $363,053 in estate taxes. On November 9, 2010, Windsor sued the federal government in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York, seeking a refund because DOMA singled out legally married same-sex couples for “differential treatment compared to other similarly situated couples without justification.”
June 7
1778, London
Beau Brummell (June 7, 1778-March 30, 1840) is born. He is credited with introducing and establishing as fashion the modern men’s suit, worn with a necktie. He claimed he took five hours a day to dress and recommended that boots be polished with champagne. The style of dress was referred to as dandyism. He was the caricature of the gay male that persisted for generations. He lived in the poshest apartments, wore the most stylish clothes, and had an acerbic sense of humor. Brummell’s life was dramatized in an 1890 stage play by Clyde Fitch with Richard Mansfield as the ‘Beau’. This was adapted for the 1924 film Beau Brummel, with John Barrymore and Mary Astor. Brummell died of syphilis in an insane asylum in France.
1954, UK
Mathematical and computer genius and parent of modern computer science Alan Turing (June 23, 1912 – June 7, 1954) dies by suicide using cyanide poisoning 18 months after being sentenced to two years either in prison or libido-reducing hormone treatment for a year as a punishment for homosexuality. Turing is widely considered to be the father of theoretical computer science and artificial intelligence. Turing played a pivotal role in cracking intercepted coded messages that enabled the Allies to defeat the Nazis in many crucial engagements, including the Battle of the Atlantic, and in so doing helped win WWII, shortened the war in Europe by more than two years and saved over fourteen million lives. Turing was prosecuted in 1952 for homosexual acts when the Labouchere Amendment for gross indecency” was still criminal in the UK. He accepted chemical castration treatment with DES as an alternative to prison. In 2009, following an Internet campaign, British Prime Minister Gordon Brown made an 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.
1957
The board of directors of the American Civil Liberties Union approves a national policy statement asserting that laws against sodomy and federal restrictions on employment of lesbians and gay men are constitutional.
1977
Forced by pressure from fundamentalist Christian singer Anita Bryant, her husband Bob Green and their “Save Our Children” organization, a non-discrimination ordinance in Dade, County Florida is repealed. The new county ordinance prohibited discrimination on basis of sexual orientation. It was the first major battle – and defeat – in the struggle for gay civil rights in United States. It was also the first successful use of “child molestation tactics” by anti- gay forces and set the pattern of attack for the remainder of the 1970s and into the 80s. The following year Florida Governor Reubin Askew signed a law prohibiting gay men and lesbians from adopting children. That law was also cited to prevent lesbians and gay men from having custody of their own children. Bryant faced severe backlash from gay rights supporters across the U.S. She lost her singing contract and endorsements and was removed as spokesperson for the Florida Orange Juice Commission. The Miami-Dade gay rights ordinance was reinstated on December 1, 1998, more than 20 years later.
2012, Denmark
The Danish parliament legalizes same-sex marriage. Same-sex sexual activity was legalized in 1933. Denmark was the first country in the world to grant legal recognition to same-sex unions, in the form of “registered partnerships.” On June 7, 2012, the law was replaced by a new same-sex marriage law, which came into effect on June 15, 2012, and Denmark recognizes same-sex marriages performed elsewhere. Discrimination on the grounds of sexual orientation was entirely prohibited in 2004. Same-sex couples are allowed to jointly adopt since 2010, while previously allowing stepchild adoptions and limited co-guardianship rights for non-biological parents. Gays and lesbians are also allowed to serve openly in the military. The Kingdom of Denmark also includes two autonomous overseas territories, Greenland and the Faroe Islands, which are generally more socially conservative. However, Greenland legalized same-sex marriage in 2016
June 8
1901, Spain
The first documented same-sex marriage in Spain in post-Roman times is performed. Marcela Gracia Ibeas and Elisa Sanchez Loriga, both teachers, are married by a parish priest in A Coru√±a (Galicia), with Elisa using the male identity “Mario S√°nchez”. The couple was exposed by Galician and Madrid newspapers and, as a consequence, both quickly lost their jobs, were excommunicated, and were issued an arrest warrant. So that the ex-communication could take place, the parish priest requested a doctor examine Mario to check if he were a man or a woman. Mario agreed. When the doctor issued his verdict, Mario attempted to pass for a hermaphrodite (intersex) whose condition had been diagnosed in London. Regardless, the marriage certificate was never officially voided. The marriage, according to the Diocesan Archive, is still valid. They moved to Portugal where they were tried, imprisoned, and later released. It is rumored that they fled to Argentina after the Spanish government demanded their extradition from Portugal. It is unknown what happened to them after that. Same-sex marriage was legalized in Spain in 2005.
1945
Donna Deitch (born June 8, 1945) is an American film, television director and writer best known for her 1985 film Desert Hearts. The movie was the first feature film to depict a lesbian love story in a generally mainstream vein, with positive and respectful themes. Her partner is writer Terri Jentz (born 1957).
1961
Mary L. Bonauto (born June 8, 1961) is an American lawyer and civil rights advocate who has worked to eradicate discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity, and has been referred to by U.S. Representative Barney Frank as “our Thurgood Marshall.” She began working with the Massachusetts-based Gay & Lesbian Advocates & Defenders, now named GLBTQ Legal Advocates & Defenders (GLAD) organization in 1990. A resident of Portland, Maine, Bonauto was one of the leaders who both worked with the Maine legislature to pass a same-sex marriage law and to defend it at the ballot in a narrow loss during the 2009 election campaign. These efforts were successful when, in the 2012 election, Maine voters approved the measure, making it the first state to allow same-sex marriage licenses via ballot vote. Bonauto is best known for being lead counsel in the case Goodridge v. Department of Public Health which made Massachusetts the first state in which same-sex couples could marry in 2004. She is also responsible for leading the first strategic challenges to section three of the (DOMA). On April 28, 2015 Bonauto was one of three attorneys who argued before the U.S. Supreme Court in Obergefell v. Hodges arguing state bans on same-sex marriage to be unconstitutional. This much-publicized case determined that state bans against same-sex marriage are unconstitutional and is considered one of the most important civil rights cases which came before the U.S. Supreme Court in modern history.
1975, Canada
Members of the gay rights group GATE appear before a Parliamentary Committee on Immigration in Toronto and call for dropping of all references to homosexuality in the Immigration Act. On November 6th, a “Special Joint Committee on Immigration Policy recommends that homosexuals no longer be prohibited from entering Canada. In 1977, the Canadian Immigration Act was amended, removing the ban on homosexual men as immigrants.
2015
Secretary of Defense Ash Carter announces that the Military Equal Opportunity policy has been adjusted to include gay and lesbian military members.
June 9
1892
Cole Porter (June 9, 1891 – October 15, 1964) is born in Peru, Indiana. He was an American composer and songwriter. Classically trained, he was drawn towards musical theatre. After a slow start, he began to achieve success in the 1920s, and by the 1930s he was one of the major songwriters for the Broadway musical stage. Unlike many successful Broadway composers, Porter wrote the lyrics as well as the music for his songs. Porter maintained a luxury apartment in Paris, where he entertained lavishly. His parties were extravagant and scandalous, with “much gay and bisexual activity, Italian nobility, cross-dressing, international musicians and a large surplus of recreational drugs”. In 1918, he met Linda Lee Thomas, a rich, Louisville, Kentucky-born divorc√©e eight years his senior. She was beautiful and well-connected socially; the couple shared mutual interests, including a love of travel, and she became Porter’s confidant and companion. The couple married the following year. She was in no doubt about Porter’s homosexuality, but it was mutually advantageous for them to marry. For Linda, it offered continued social status and a partner who was the antithesis of her abusive first husband. For Porter, it brought a respectable heterosexual front in an era when homosexuality was not publicly acknowledged. They were, moreover, genuinely devoted to each other and remained married from December 19, 1919, until her death in 1954. Cary Grant played Porter in the film Night and Day which ignored Porter’s closeted gay life. Porter died of kidney failure on October 15, 1964, in Santa Monica, California, at the age of 73.
1918
John Hospers (June 9, 1918 – June 12, 2011) is born. He was an American philosopher and political activist. In 1972 he was the first presidential candidate of the Libertarian Party. His libertarianism was inspired by Ayn Rand, the self-declared philosopher and cult hero of the free market with whom he was, for a limited time, close friends. He was emeritus professor in philosophy at the University of Southern California. Many contemporaries considered him to be the first openly gay candidate for President but since his death his family have strenuously denied that he was gay.
1927
Victoria Woodhull (September 23, 1838 – June 9, 1927), one of the primary leaders of the woman’s suffrage movement, dies. In 1872, Woodhull was the first female candidate for President of the United States from the Equal Rights Party, supporting women’s suffrage and equal rights. While likely not lesbian, Woodhull was an activist for women’s rights and labor reforms, and an advocate of free love, by which she meant the freedom to marry, divorce, and bear children without government interference. Woodhull, with sister Tennessee (Tennie) Claflin, became the first female stockbrokers and in 1870 they opened a brokerage firm on Wall Street. Woodhull, Claflin & Company opened in 1870, with the assistance of the wealthy Cornelius Vanderbilt, an admirer of Woodhull’s skills as a medium. On May 14, 1870, Woodhull and Claflin used the money they had made from their brokerage to found a newspaper, the Woodhull & Claflin’s Weekly, which at its height had national circulation of 20,000. Its primary purpose was to support Victoria Claflin Woodhull for President of the United States. The 1980 Broadway musical Onward Victoria was inspired by Woodhull’s life. The Woodhull Institute for Ethical Leadership was founded by Naomi Wolf and Margot Magowan in 1997. In 2001, Victoria Woodhull was inducted posthumously into the National Women’s Hall of Fame. The Woodhull Sexual Freedom Alliance is an American human rights and sexual freedom advocacy organization, founded in 2003, and named in honor of Victoria Woodhull. Victoria Bond composed the opera Mrs. President about Woodhull. It premiered in 2012 in Anchorage, Alaska. In March 2017, Amazon Studios announced production of a movie based on her life, starring Brie Larson as Victoria Woodhull.
1983, Italy
Franco Zeffirelli (February 12, 1923) comes out. He is an Italian director, designer, and producer of opera, theatre, motion pictures, and television, particularly noted for the authentic details and grand scale of his opera productions and for his film adaptations of Shakespeare. He is also a former senator (1994-2001) for the Italian center-right Forza Italia party. Some of his operatic designs and productions have become worldwide classics. Zeffirelli has preferred to be discreet about his personal life. He considers himself “homosexual” rather than gay; he feels the term “gay” is less elegant. Zeffirelli has adopted two adult sons, men he has worked with for years and who now live with him and manage his affairs.
2014
Laverne Cox (May 29, 1984) is on the cover of today’s issue of Time. She is interviewed for the article “The Transgender Tipping Point: America’s Next Civil Rights Frontier” by Katy Steinmetz, which ran in that issue and the title of which was also featured on the cover. Cox is the first openly transgender person on the cover of Time. Cox is an American actress, reality television star, television producer, and LGBT advocate. She became known for her portrayal of Sophia Burset on the Netflix television series Orange Is the New Black, for which she became the first openly transgender person to be nominated for a Prime-time Emmy Award in the acting category, and the first to be nominated for an Emmy Award since composer/musician Angela Morley (10 March 1924 – 14 January 2009) in 1990.
June 10
356 BC, Babylon near Al-Ḥillah, Iraq
Alexander III of Macedon (July 21, 356 BC-June 13, 323 BC), commonly known as Alexander the Great, 36, dies in the palace of Nebuchadnezzar II, in Babylon. He overthrew the Persian empire, carried Macedonian arms to India, and laid the foundations for the Hellenistic world of territorial kingdoms. Already in his lifetime the subject of fabulous stories, he later became the hero of a full-scale legend bearing only the sketchiest resemblance to his historical career. Alexander became legendary as a classical hero in the mold of Achilles, and he features prominently in the history and mythic traditions of both Greek and non-Greek cultures. He became the measure against which military leaders compared themselves, and military academies throughout the world still teach his tactics. He is often ranked among the most influential people in human history. Alexander earned the epithet “the Great” due to his unparalleled success as a military commander. He never lost a battle, despite typically being outnumbered. Alexander’s sexuality has been the subject of speculation and controversy. However, there is some evidence that Alexander may have been bisexual, which in his time was not controversial.
1566, Switzerland
Bartholome Tecia (1550-June 10, 1566), 15, is convicted of sodomy and drowned in the Rhone River. On 10 June 2013, at the initiative of Network, a Swiss non-governmental organization, a commemorative plaque was unveiled on the banks of the Rhone in Geneva at the site of Bartholome’s murder. It reads: “In 1566, as Bartholom√© was led to his death, no one stood, as we stand today, to decry the State-sanctioned killing of a child on suspicion of homosexuality,” said Marcia V.J. Kran of the UN Human Rights Office. “No one was prepared, as we are today, to challenge homophobic prejudice, to insist on the equal worth and equal rights of every person, irrespective of their sexual orientation and gender identity. It would be beautiful to think that out of this one sad, lonely death in the Rhone, more than four centuries ago, might come some good; that passers-by who see this plaque will pause and reflect on the folly of homophobia; and that we can all draw from Bartholom√©’s story the strength to continue our modern-day struggle to achieve equality for LGBT people everywhere.”
1899, Germany
Anita Berber (June 10t, 1899 – November 10, 1928) was born in Dresden. Through 1916/17, Anita’s star was rising and she not only toured throughout Germany and Austria with the Sacchetto Troupe but also per formed solo at the Berlin Wintergarten and was featured twice on the front cover of glossy women’s magazine Die Dame. By 1918 she had made her first of nine silent films, was becoming a sought-after model and was touring her own solo program. By 1921 her sham marriage had collapsed and she dated a string of beautiful women, including activist and bar owner Lotte Hahm (1890-1967) and the young Marlene Dietrich (December 27, 1901 – May 6, 1992). But it was stylish bar-owner Susi Wanowski who won her heart and very quickly became her lover, manager and secretary. On the night of July 13, 1928, Anita collapsed while performing at a Beirut nightclub, and was diagnosed with an advanced state of pulmonary tuberculosis. Four months later, on November 10, 1928, she died and was buried in a ‘ grave at St. Thomas Friedhof in Neuk√∂ln. She was 29. The graveyard is now disused and her grave is gone.
1922
Judy Garland (born Frances Ethel Gumm; June 10, 1922 – June 22, 1969) was an American actress, singer, dancer, and vaudevillian. During a career that spanned 45 years, she attained international stardom as an actress in both musical and dramatic roles, as a recording artist, and on the concert stage. Garland began performing in vaudeville as a child with her two older sisters, and was later signed to Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer as a teenager. Although she appeared in more than two dozen films with MGM and received acclaim for many different roles, she is often best remembered for her portrayal of Dorothy Gale in The Wizard of Oz (1939). Garland had a large fan base in the gay community and became a gay icon. Reasons given for her standing among gay men are the admiration of her ability as a performer, the way her personal struggles mirrored those of gay men in the United States during the height of her fame, and her value as a camp figure. Her lifelong addiction to drugs and alcohol ultimately led to her death in London from a barbiturate overdose at age 47.
1929
Fannie Mae Clackum (June 10, 1929 – August 16, 2014) was the first person to successfully challenge her discharge on the grounds of homosexuality from the U.S military. Fannie Mae Clackum served as a US Air Force Reservist in the late 1940s and early 1950s. When the Air Force suspected her and Grace Garner of being lesbians, 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 when the pair were accused of being lesbians. They 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 lived together in Marietta, Georgia. They spent eight years fighting their discharges in the US Court of Claims claiming denial of due process when denied courts-martial and discharged administratively. They prevailed in 1960 when the court invalidated the discharges and awarded them their back military pay for the remainder of their enlistment periods. The court, after recounting the Air Force’s account of its investigation, said: “One’s reaction to the foregoing narrative is ‘What’s going on here?'” The court found it “unthinkable” that the Air Force would burden them with undesirable discharges “without respect for even the most elementary notions of due process of law”. Theirs is the earliest known case of the successful appeal of a discharge from the U.S. Armed Forces on grounds of homosexuality, though the case turned on due process claims, not homosexuality as the basis for their exclusion from military service. Lillian Faderman states that Clackum’s victory “suggests that in somewhat saner times an objective court could understand how outrageous the military’s tactics were.”
1956
The Mattachine Society of New York holds its first public meeting. About 30 people attend the meeting, which takes place at the Diplomat Hotel.
1974
Dustin Lance Black (born June 10, 1974) 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. Black is a founding board member of the American Foundation for Equal Rights and writer of 8, a staged reenactment of the federal trial that led to a federal court’s overturn of California’s Proposition 8. Black has been in a relationship with British Olympic diver Tom Daley since 2013. They live together in London. In October 2015, it was announced that Black and Daley had become engaged, they married on May 6, 2017 at Bovey Castle in Devon. On February 14, 2018, Black and Daley announced they were expecting their first child. Robert Ray Black-Daley was born on June 27, 2018.
1976
West Virginia is the 16th state to repeal its sodomy laws.
1979, Spain
A policeman shoots and kills a gay man in a bar in Renteria near the Basque city of San Sebastian. Basque nationalist groups join forces with EHGAM, a Basque Gay Liberation organization, and stage a series of protest rallies and a general strike, culminating in a demonstration in which 2,000 lesbian and gay EHGAM supporters march through San Sebastian.
1979
DJ Qualls (born June 10, 1979) is born. The actor, known for roles in “Road Trip” and “The Core,” announced on Twitter in January 2020 that he is gay. “Been gay this whole time,” he wrote. “Tired of worrying about what people would think of me. Tired of worrying about what it would do to my career.”
1986
Edward Sagarin (September 18, 1913 – June 10, 1986) dies. Sagarin is known by his pen name Donald Webster Cory. He was an American professor of sociology and criminology at the City University of New York, and a writer. His book The Homosexual in America: A Subjective Approach, published in 1951, was considered “one of the most influential works in the history of the gay rights movement,” and inspired compassion in others by highlighting the difficulties faced by homosexuals.
2003, Canada
The Ontario Court of Appeals strikes down Canada’s ban on same-sex marriage, ruling that denying marriage licenses to same-sex couples violates Canada’s Charter of Rights and Freedoms, part of the Canadian Constitution. This makes Ontario the first place in North America to issue marriage licenses to same-sex couples. Two other Canadian provinces, British Columbia and Quebec, follow suit in July 2003 and March 2004. Similarly, Massachusetts will become the first U.S. State to marry lesbian and gay couples when its Supreme Judicial Court rules on November 18, 2003 that, beginning May 17, 2004 Massachusetts must begin treating same-sex couples equally.
2016
On this day in 2016, an Oregon circuit court ruled that a resident, Jamie Shupe, could legally change their gender to non-binary. The Transgender Law Center believes this to be “the first ruling of its kind in the U.S.” He has since become a vocal critic of the concept of gender identity. Lambda Legal fired Shupe as a client in 2017, citing his “inappropriate media statements that are harming the transgender community.” Shupe is a critic of transgender surgeries, cautioning against what he says are high complication rates. He has also expressed opposition to transgender people serving in the military. In January 2019, Shupe announced that he no longer identified as non-binary and was returning to identifying as male.
June 11
1852
Emily Dickinson (December 10, 1830 – May 15, 1886) was an American poet. With the possible exception of Walt Whitman, Dickinson is now recognized as the most important American poet of the 19th century. She wrote over 300 deeply affectionate letters, one dated on this day, to her sister-in-law Sue Gilbert. Emily sent much of her poetry to Susan for review, and indeed Susan may have been the inspiration for many of Emily’s poems. It’s clear from Emily’s letters that her love for Susan was deep and abiding. Some argue that it was a typical “romantic friendship” of the 19th century, full of flowery prose and innocence. But Emily’s letters are more than effusive expressions of affection; many letters are erotic in nature. And her feelings for Susan were hardly transient; the two women corresponded for many years without Emily’s passion fading.
1972, Canada
The first issue of The Other Woman is produced. It is a feminist periodical that was published six times a year through the mid-1970s, starting in 1972. Produced by a Toronto-based collective, the newspaper covered a wide range of struggles and organizations of the women’s movement in Canada and internationally. It is a combination of several feminist newspapers with the predominant input from lesbian feminists.
1976, Canada
In Kingston, Ontario, a convention of the New Democratic Party calls for the inclusion of sexual orientation in the human rights codes. It is the first time a major Canadian political party accepts gay movement demands.
1999
U.S. President Bill Clinton issues the first Presidential Proclamation of Gay and Lesbian Pride Month.
2010, Iceland
Iceland’s Parliament approves same-sex marriage 49-0 and becomes the ninth country to legalize same-sex marriages. The bill provided for a gender-neutral marriage definition.
2011
Transgender Evelyn Rios wins two Northern California EMMYs for being a producer for a daytime newscast: ABC7 News at 11 AM and Evening Newscast at 11 PM. The awards are in the category of Outstanding Achievement in News Programming. Her first nominations were in 2007.
June 12
1730, Netherlands
During a major anti-gay purge of the eighteenth century, five men are hanged and their bodies thrown into the sea at Scheveningen for the crime of sodomy. Hundreds of others were killed or banished. This was described as a pogrom or a reign of terror. The astonishing purges of 1730 were widely reported in the English newspapers during June and July. English news reports state that many Dutch sodomites fled to England where they were not accorded the same reception as refugees from religious persecution.
1799
Gilbert du Motier (September 6, 1757 – May 20, 1834), better known as the Marquis de Lafayette, wrote a very affectionate letter to George Washington (February 22, 1732 – December 14, 1799) dated on this day. While there is no evidence that the two men were lovers, this and other letters describe a very intimate friendship. Expression of same-sex platonic love was not considered queer during this time. Lafayette spent his lifetime as an abolitionist , proposing slaves be emancipated slowly, recognizing the crucial role slavery played in many economies. He hoped his ideas would be adopted by George Washington in order to free the slaves in the United States.
1929, Germany
Anne Frank (June 12, 1929 – February or March 1945) is born. One of the most discussed Jewish victims of the Holocaust, Anne Frank gained fame posthumously following the publication of The Diary of a Young Girl (originally Het Achterhuis; English: The Secret Annex) in which she documents her life in hiding from 1942 to 1944, during the German occupation of the Netherlands in World War II. It is one of the world’s most widely known books and has been the basis for several plays and films. Born in Frankfurt, she lived most of her life in or near Amsterdam. There is speculation that she may have been bisexual but her diary had been edited many times and her life as an adolescent was in a hideaway. She was killed at the age of 15 in Bergen-Belsen concentration camp.
1930
Jim Nabors (June 12, 1930 – November 30, 2017) was an American actor, singer, and comedian. Nabors was born and raised in Sylacauga, Alabama, but he moved to southern California because of his asthma. He was discovered by Andy Griffith while working at a Santa Monica nightclub and later joined The Andy Griffith Show as Gomer Pyle. The character proved popular, and Nabors was given his own spin-off show, Gomer Pyle, U.S.M.C. Nabors married his partner of 38 years, Stan Cadwallader, at Seattle, Washington’s Fairmont Olympic Hotel on January 15, 2013, a month after same-sex marriage became legal in Washington. Although he had been closeted before this, his sexual orientation was not completely secret; for instance, Nabors brought his then-boyfriend Cadwallader along to his Indy 500 performance in 1978.
1967
The Loving v. Virginia decision legalized interracial marriage in the United States. It had significant impact on the LGBT fight for marriage equality.
1981, Canada
A Provincial Court judge in Toronto finds two employees guilty and three owners not guilty of keeping common bawdyhouse. Charges relate to the Barracks Steambath, raided by police December 9, 1978. Toronto’s oldest steambath at 56 Widmer Street had been open since 1974. They had the privilege of watching Toronto come from the days of raids, arrests, fear and oppression to general acceptance. After over 30 years of service to the gay leather community, The Barracks closed in 2005.
1989
Corcoran Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C. director Christina Orr-Cahill announces the cancellation of “The Perfect Moment,” a show of 150 photos and objects by Robert Mapplethorpe (November 4, 1946 – March 9, 1989) that includes 13 S&M images. The museum was afraid of losing National Endowment for the Arts funding. “Robert Mapplethorpe: The Perfect Moment” was exhibition of more than 150 works, many of them explicit homoerotic and violent images. It was partly financed with a grant of $30,000 from the National Endowment for the Arts, an agency that was already under fire from Congress for its grant policies. The exhibition was to have opened on July 1.
2003, France
The European Court of Human Rights rules in favor German transgender woman Van Kuck (Van K√ºck v. Germany) whose insurance company denied her reimbursement for sexual reassignment surgery. The Court held that there had been a violation of Article 6 ¬ß 1 (right to a fair hearing) of the Convention. The German courts should have requested further clarification from a medical expert. With regard to the Court of Appeal’s reference to the causes of the applicant’s condition, it could not be said that there was anything arbitrary or capricious in a decision to undergo sex reassignment surgery and the applicant had in fact already undergone such surgery by the time the Court of Appeal gave its judgment. The Court also held that there had been a violation of Article 8 (right to respect for private and family life) of the Convention. Since gender identity was one of the most intimate aspects of a person’s private life, it appeared disproportionate to require the applicant to prove the medical necessity of the treatment. No fair balance had been struck between the interests of the insurance company on the one hand and the interests of the individual on the other.
2012
Kylar Broadus (born August 28, 1963), founder of the Trans People of Color Coalition, is the first openly transgender person to testify before the U.S. Senate, speaking in favor of the Employment Non-Discrimination Act (ENDA). Kylar W. Broadus is a professor, attorney, activist and public speaker from Missouri. He is an associate professor of business law at Lincoln University of Missouri, a historically black college where he previously served as the chair of the business department. He has maintained a general practice of law in Columbia, Missouri, since 1997. In February 2011, he was awarded the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force’s Sue J. Hyde Award for Longevity in the Movement. He was featured on BlackEnterprise.com discussing his personal experience with workplace discrimination. In 2010 he founded Trans People of Color Coalition (TPOCC), the only national civil-rights organization dedicated to the needs of trans people of color. He currently serves on the board of the National Black Justice Coalition and was the board chair from 2007 to 2010. ENDA has yet to pass.
2016
At the Pulse Night Club in Orlando, a terrorist who pledged allegiance to ISIS sprays bullets from an automatic weapon, killing 49 people and wounding 53 others at a popular gay club in Orlando. It is the deadliest shooting in U.S. history. Pulse was a gay bar nightclub in Orlando, Florida, founded in 2004 by Barbara Poma and Ron Legler. On June 12, 2016, the club gained international attention as it was the scene of the deadliest mass shooting by a single gunman in U.S. history, and the deadliest terrorist attack on U.S. soil since the events of September 11, 2001. Poma’s brother, John, had died in 1991 from AIDS; the club was “named for John’s pulse to live on.” The Washington Post described the Pulse’s first 12 years as “a community hub for HIV prevention, breast-cancer awareness and immigrant rights,” and reported it had partnered with educational and advocacy groups such as Come Out with Pride, Equality Florida, and the Zebra Coalition. In November 2016, the city of Orlando offered to buy the nightclub for $2.25 million. Mayor Buddy Dyer expressed plans to convert the nightclub into a memorial to honor the memory of the victims, but the owner refused to sell.
June 13
1845, UK
Richard Barnfield’s poem The Affectionate Shepherd is published. Barnfield (1574 – 1620) was an English poet. His obscure though close relationship with William Shakespeare has long made him interesting to scholars. It has been suggested that he was the “rival poet” mentioned in Shakespeare’s sonnets. Barnfield is the only Elizabethan male poet apart from Shakespeare, whom he admired, to address love poems to a man.
1898, Germany
The Reichstag debates a petition urging the revocation of 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. It made homosexual acts between males a crime.
1903
Marriage of painter Romaine Brooks (May 1, 1874 – December 7, 1970), born Beatrice Romaine Goddard to John Ellingham Brooks (1863-1929). Romaine was bisexual and John was gay. Goddard never revealed exactly why she married him. The marriage lasted only one year. She is best known for her images of women in androgynous or masculine dress, including her self-portrait of 1923, which is her most widely reproduced work. In 1911 Brooks became romantically involved with Ida Rubinstein (21 September 1883 – 20 September 1960), the white Russian Jewish actress and dancer who was the rock star of her day and created a sensation with Serge Diaghilev’s Ballets Russes. The longest and most important relationship of Brooks’ life was her three-way partnership with writer Natalie Clifford Barney (October 31, 1876 – February 2, 1972) and Lily de Gramont (23 April 1875 – 6 December 1954) with whom she formed a trio that lasted the rest of their lives. Natalie was notoriously non-monogamous, a fact that both Lily and Romaine had to accept and put up with. Romaine met Natalie in 1916 at a time when she had been involved with Lily for approximately nine years. After a brief dust-up that resulted in Natalie’s offering Lily a marriage contract while at the same time refusing to give up Romaine, the three women formed a stable lifelong triangle where no woman was a third wheel. Lily, one of the most glamorous taste-makers and aristocrats of the period, summed up their values when she stated, “Civilized beings are those who know how to take more from life than others.” Gender fluidity and sexual freedom were paramount for women of Brooks’ circle. Barney was an American-born writer who hosted a literary salon on Paris’s Left Bank. When Brooks and Barney met, Barney was already in a close long-term relationship with Duchess Elisabeth de Clermont-Tonnerre (23 April 1875 – 6 December 1954) which would last until the Duchess’ death in 1954. Brooks and Barney were together for 50 years.
1926
Comedian Paul Lynde (June 13, 1926 – January 11, 1982) is born in Mt. Vernon, Ohio. He was an American comedian, voice artist, actor and TV personality. A noted character actor with a distinctively campy and snarky persona that often poked fun at his barely in-the-closet homosexuality, Lynde was well known for his roles as Uncle Arthur on Bewitched and the befuddled father Harry MacAfee in Bye Bye Birdie. He was also the regular “center square” panelist on the game show Squares from 1968 to 1981, and he voiced two Hanna-Barbera productions; he was Templeton the gluttonous rat in Charlotte’s Web and The Hooded Claw in The Perils of Penelope Pitstop. ABC had reservations about Lynde, most notably his offscreen behavior, alcoholism, and the persistent rumors of his homosexuality. Lynde became sober and drug-free in early 1980. Lynde’s private life and sexual orientation were not acknowledged or discussed on television or in other media during his lifetime. Asked on the original Hollywood Squares, “Why do motorcyclists wear leather?” Lynde answered, “Because chiffon wrinkles too easily.”
1957
David Buckel (June 13, 1957 – April 14, 2018) is born. He was an American LGBT rights lawyer and an environmental activist. He died on April 14, 2018, by self-immolation as a protest against the use of fossil fuels. Buckel was a senior counsel and marriage project director at Lambda Legal, the American organization that focuses on lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) communities. In 1996, Buckel represented Jamie Nabozny in Nabozny v. Podlesny, a case heard in the United States Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit regarding the protection Nabozny did not receive while at school. Buckel represented Nabozny in his claims stemming from “consistent and significant anti-gay bullying and abuse.” In 2000, Buckel was the lead lawyer for of the estate of Brandon Teena, a transgender man who was raped and murdered in Nebraska, when Teena’s family recovered damages against negligent law enforcement officers. Buckel stated, “It’s a very important case, not only within Nebraska but nationally.” The story inspired the 1999 biographical film Boys Don’t Cry. Buckel and his husband, Terry Kaelber, were raising a daughter, Hannah Broholm-Vail. They co-parented Hannah with Rona Vail and Cindy Broholm. On April 14, 2018, Buckel’s body was found by a passerby in Brooklyn’s Prospect Park. It appeared that he had burned himself to death. Next to the body was a note in a manila envelope marked “To the police”. The text of the note, which also was emailed to The New York Times, stated: “Most humans on the planet now breathe air made unhealthy by fossil fuels, and many die early deaths as a result-my early death by fossil fuel reflects what we are doing to ourselves.”
1958
The U.S. Supreme Court unanimously reverses three lower court rulings that an issue of ONE magazine seized in Los Angeles was obscene. The Court’s affirmation of free speech for gay and lesbian writing opens the way for more widely distributed publications. In January 1953, ONE, Inc. began publishing a monthly magazine called ONE, the first U.S. pro-gay publication, which sold openly on the streets of Los Angeles for 25 cents. In October 1954, the U.S. Post Office declared the magazine “obscene” and refused to deliver it. ONE, Inc. brought a lawsuit in federal court, which it won in 1958, when the U.S. Supreme Court reversed the lower court ruling in One, Inc. v. Olesen based on its recent landmark First Amendment case, Roth v. United States. The magazine ceased publication in December 1969.
1991
In a letter to Tony Marco, founder of Colorado for Family Values, Brian McCormick of Pat Robertson’s National Legal Foundation suggested the use of the phrase “No Special Privileges” to campaign for anti-gay voter support for Amendment 2. He warned that it should not be used in the amendment since opponents could argue that gay rights laws are not special privileges but seek to make the rights of homosexuals equal to everyone else.
1993
Rand Schrader (May 11, 1945 – June 13, 1993) dies. Rand was an AIDS and gay rights activist who also served as a judge of the Los Angeles Municipal Court. In 1991, Schrader announced that he had been recently diagnosed with AIDS. Schrader went public with his diagnosis in an attempt to increase AIDS awareness and to combat discrimination and misinformation associated with AIDS. Schrader’s long-time partner was entrepreneur David Bohnett (born April 2, 1956), who, after Schrader’s death, used his own entire life savings and the $386,000 benefits from Schrader’s life insurance to create the pioneering website GeoCities. Schrader had previously advocated for the establishment of an AIDS clinic. Shortly before Schrader’s death, in May 1993, the HIV/AIDS clinic at Los Angeles County USC Medical Center was named in honor of him.
1994
Gay man Bill T. Jones (born February 15, 1952), an African American choreographer, and lesbian Adrienne Rich (May 16, 1929 – March 27, 2012), a Jewish poet and essayist, receive the MacArthur Genius Fellowships for their creative bodies of work. The MacArthur Fellows Program, MacArthur Fellowship, or “Genius Grant”, is a prize awarded annually by the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation typically to between 20 and 30 individuals, working in any field, who have shown “extraordinary originality and dedication in their creative pursuits and a marked capacity for self-direction” and are citizens or residents of the United States. Jones choreographed and performed worldwide as a soloist and duet company with his late partner, Arnie Zane (September 26, 1948 – March 30, 1988), before forming the Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane Dance Company in 1982 .
1995
Following Attorney General Janet Reno’s (July 21, 1938 – November 7, 2016) decision not to file a brief in the Colorado constitutional Amendment 2 case, and due to protests over a meeting with elected lesbian and gay officials for which security guards wore rubber gloves out of fear of HIV infection, the Clinton administration attempts to smooth relations with activists by naming the first-ever White House liaison to the gay and lesbian communities. Marsha Scott, 47, a deputy assistant to the President was appointed by President Clinton.
1998
Vice President Al Gore meets with gay and lesbian political leaders at the White House. Gore vowed that he and President Bill Clinton would oppose any federal legislation that would interfere with the ability of gays and lesbians to adopt children.
2006
A fire in a Chicago public library damaged more than 100 books, mostly in the gay and lesbian collection. The Chicago Police Department later determined the fire was not a hate crime. A 21-year-old homeless woman was charged with setting the fire that damaged about 90 books in the gay and lesbian collection and 10 books in the branch’s African American history collection. Erica Graham was charged with one count of attempted aggravated arson.
2019
The Discovery Family cartoon series My Little Pony had a same-sex couple on the show for the first time. This occurred in the episode “The Last Crusade,” with a lesbian couple, Aunt Holiday and Auntie Lofty.
June 14
427 BC
Philosopher Plato (428/427 or 424/423 – 348/347 BC) is born in Athens. Platonic love today means love without sex. For Plato it meant sex with young men.
1519, Spain
Friar Luis Castelloli preaches that the Plague came as God’s wrath for sodomy. As a result, mobs hunt down gay men and burn them at the stake.
1950
After months of controversy, the U.S. Senate authorizes a wide-ranging investigation of homosexuals “and other moral perverts” working in national government.
1961
George Alan O’Dowd (born 14 June 1961), known professionally as Boy George, is born. He 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. In 2006, in an episodic documentary directed by Simon George titled The Madness of Boy George, George declared on camera he was “militantly gay.” In a 2008 documentary Living with Boy George, he talks about his first realization he was gay, and when he first told his parents. He discloses that he understands why men fall in love with one another as well as with women.
1972, Canada
In Montreal gay rights group Front the libération homosexuel (FLH) opens a new gay center with a dance. Police raid it and charge forty people for being in an establishment selling liquor without a permit. The charges were later dropped, but attendance falls at the center. The organization folds within 15 months.
1977
First U.S. national opinion poll of homosexuality takes place. The Gallop team said, “While Americans are becoming increasing liberal regarding homosexual behavior and the legality of homosexuality, there still remains a substantial percentage of the public who consider homosexuality to be unacceptable and who feel it should be illegal.” The questions were: “Do you think homosexual relations between consenting adults should or should not be legal?” and “Do you feel that homosexuality should be considered an acceptable alternative lifestyle or not? The questions were asked by Gallop until 2005.
2004, Australia
In response to the Australian government’s failure to recognize same-sex marriage, a group of gay and lesbian activists declare independence on Australia’s external overseas Territory of the Coral Sea Islands which are uninhabited islets east of the Great Barrier Reef. The Gay and Lesbian Kingdom of the Coral Sea Islands was established as a symbolic political. The rainbow flag is the official flag, the pink triangle is their coat of arms, and “I am what I am” is their national anthem.
2013
Nitza Quinones Alejandro (born January 1951) is appointed to a U.S. federal court by President Obama and confirmed by the Senate. She is a district judge in the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania. Quiñones Alejandro is the first lesbian Latina to be appointed to serve as a federal judge. Her nomination was confirmed by voice vote on June 14, 2013. She received her commission on June 19, 2013.
June 15
1835
Adah Isaacs Menken (June 15, 1835 – August 10, 1868) is born in New Orleans. She was an American actress, painter and poet, and was the highest earning actress of her time. She was the author of Infelicia, a collection of Sapphic poems that clearly revealed her delight in women. Though she married men many times, Menken was also the lover of cross-dressing novelist George Sand (1 July 1804 – 8 June 1876), the pseudonym of Amandine Aurore Lucile Dupin, later Baroness Dudevant.
1884, Russia
Grand Duke Sergei Alexandrovich (May 11, 1857 – February 17, 1905) weds Princess Elizabeth of Hesse (UK). The couple has no children. According to some contemporary reports, Sergei was homosexual. His sexuality conflicted with his intense religious beliefs and the expectations of his position. Contrary to this belief, the marriage was happy. Forced to defend Sergei against rumors, Elizabeth was devoted to her husband and treasured his memory after his death.
1885
Malvina Hoffman (June 15, 1885 – July 10, 1966) is born on this day. She was an American sculptor and author, well known for her life-size bronze sculptures of people, particularly known for her sculptures of dancers such as the ballerina Anna Pavlova (January 31, 1881 – January 23, 1931). During WWI, Hoffman helped to organize, and was the American representative, for the French war charity Appui aux Artistes that assisted needy artists. She also organized the American-Yugoslav relief fund for children. She was married to Samuel Bonarius Grimson but divorced in 1936 because of an affair that she had with the ballerina Pavlova. On July 10, 1966, Malvina Cornell Hoffman died of a heart attack in her studio in Manhattan which had been purchased by the philanthropist Mary Williamson Averell and provided to Hoffman for a low-priced rent.
1926
The Greenwich Village Ball is held. Extravagant gay balls at Webster Hall at 119 East 11th Street were common during the 1920’s. This affair was billed as the 15th annual ball and the advertisement reads “Come [‚Ķ] with whom you like – wear what you like – Unconventional? Oh, to be sure – Only do be discreet!”
1949, UK
Simon Phillip Hugh Callow (born 15 June 1949) is born. He is an English actor, musician, writer, and theatre director. He was one of the first actors to publicly declare his homosexuality, doing so in his 1984 book Being an Actor. He was listed 28th in The Independent’s 2007 listing of the most influential gay men and women in the UK. He married Sebastian Fox in June 2016.
1973
Neil Patrick Harris (born June 15, 1973) is born. He is an American actor, comedian, magician, singer, and composer, known primarily for his comedy roles on television and his dramatic and musical stage roles. Harris was named one of Time magazine’s 100 Most Influential People in 2010. He is married to David Burtka. In 2010, they became the parents of twins through surrogacy.
1987
The New York Times decides to allow its writers to use the word “gay” as an adjectival synonym for “homosexual.”
1998, Finland
The parliament of Finland votes overwhelmingly to lower the age of consent for homosexual acts from 18 years to 16 to match the age for heterosexual acts.
1999
Stephen Gately (17 March 1976 – 10 October 2009), member of the heartthrob Irish boy band Boyzone, comes out in a blaze of publicity. He wed Andrew Cowles first in a commitment ceremony in Las Vegas in 2003 then more formally in a civil partnership ceremony in London in 2006. Upon Boyzone’s reformation, Gately featured as part of the first gay couple in the music video for “Better” in what was to be his last with the band. Gately died of a congenital heart defect on 10 October 2009, in a flat that he and Cowles owned in Mallorca, Spain.
2003
The world’s longest rainbow flag was unfurled in Florida as part of Key West Pride, stretching from the Atlantic to the Gulf of Mexico. The finished flag was a mile and a quarter long and two thousand people were needed to hold it. The Key West flag has had a life of its own, with sections of the historic banner displayed at global events and LGBT festivities around the world – including the 2010 Winter Olympics in Vancouver, Canada, and Australia’s Sydney Gay and Lesbian Mardi Gras Parade. They have been shown internationally in Canada, Sweden, Norway, Germany, England and Australia; and domestically in cities including Los Angeles, San Francisco, New York and Atlanta.
2003
General Wesley Clark, a former NATO commander shoots down the military’s “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy on NBC’s Meet the Press on this day. The retired four-star general told the late Tim Russert that “we’ve got a lot of gay people in the armed forces, we always have had, always will. And I think that ‚Ķ we should welcome people that want to serve.”
2012, Denmark
Denmark becomes the 11thcountry in the world to legalize same-sex marriage.
2014
Calvary Baptist Church in Washington, D.C. reaffirms the ordination of Allyson Robinson who had previously been ordained as a male person. Allyson Robinson is an American human rights activist, specializing in LGBT rights in the United States. She attended West Point before gender reassignment, graduated in 1994 majoring in her undergraduate degree in physics, and was then commissioned as an officer serving in the U.S. Army until 1999. She held the rank of Captain. Also prior to transition, she became an ordained Baptist minister, earning from the Baylor University’s George W. Truett Theological Seminary, a Master of Divinity (M.Div.) with an emphasis on social justice. Robinson has been married to Danyelle Robinson since 1994.
2016, UK
Prince William graces the cover of LGBT magazine Attitude in the UK. Prince William is offering a show of royal support to the LBGT community in one of its darkest moments. A day after signing a condolence book for victims of the Orlando Pulse Club shooting, he has become the first member of Britain’s royal family to appear on the cover of a gay magazine with the July issue of Attitude, akin to America’s Out. “No one should be bullied for their sexuality or any other reason and no one should have to put up with the kind of hate that these young people have endured in their lives,” he told the magazine, according to a Kensington Palace press release Wednesday.
2017
Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic nominates Ana Brnabic (born 28 September 1975) as Prime Minister, the first woman and first openly gay politician to occupy the role in the highly conservative Balkan country. A relative political neophyte, Brnabic had previously worked for U.S.-backed NGOs and in windfarm development. Brnabić is the second lesbian head of government after Jóhanna Sigurðardóttirof Iceland, elected 2008), and the fifth openly LGBT head of government in the world.
2020
The U.S. Supreme Court rules that federal law protects LGBTQ workers from discrimination. The landmark ruling extends protections to millions of workers nationwide and is a defeat for the Trump administration, which argued that Title VII of the Civil Rights Act that bars discrimination based on sex did not extend to claims of gender identity and sexual orientation.
June 16
1858, Sweden
King Gustav V of Sweden (June 16, 1858 – October 29, 1950) is born. He was King of Sweden from 1907 until his death in 1950. He represented Sweden under the alias of Mr. G. as a competitive tennis player, keeping up competitive tennis until his 80s when his eyesight deteriorated rapidly. Allegations of a love affair between Gustav and Kurt Haijby led to the court paying 170,000 kronor under threat of blackmail by Haijby. However, the fact that the Swedish Court was prepared to pay Haijby such large sums to suppress his accusations has by some been taken as evidence that they were true. Later, several servants at the Royal Court, among them a male servant and chauffeurs, claimed that they were given money to keep quiet concerning their own intimate contacts with the King.
1949, Columbia
Colombian American author, poet, and journalist Jaime Manrique (16 June 1949) is born. His first poetry volume won Colombia’s National Poetry Award. In 1977, Manrique met the American painter Bill Sullivan (September 10, 1942 – October 23, 2010). They remained partners until Sullivan’s death in 2010.
1961, Russia
On this date the ballet dancer Rudolf Nureyev (March 17, 1938 – January 6, 1993) defects from the Soviet Union at Le Bourget airport in Paris. He was director of the Paris Opera Ballet from 1983 to 1989 and its chief choreographer until October 1992. Named Lord of the Dance, Rudolf Nureyev is regarded as one of ballet’s most gifted male dancers. Nureyev met celebrated Danish dancer Erik Bruhn (3 October 1928 – 1 April 1986) after Nureyev defected. Bruhn and Nureyev became a couple and remained together off and on in a volatile relationship for 25 years until Bruhn’s death in 1986. In 1973 Nureyev met the 23-year-old American dancer Robert Tracy (1955 – June 7, 2007) and a two-and-a-half-year love affair began. Tracy later became Nureyev’s secretary and live-in companion.
1965
The United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit rules in Scott v. Macy that the United States Civil Service Commission “may not rely on a determination of ‘immoral conduct’ based only on such vague labels as ‘homosexual’ and ‘homosexual conduct’ as a ground” for disqualifying applicants for federal employment.
1967
Louisiana Supreme Court rules lesbian sex is illegal. The court rules that the state’s statutory ban on “unnatural carnal copulation” applies to women engaged in oral sex with other women.
1967
Jenny Lynn Shimizu (June 16, 1967) is born. She is an American model and actress from San Jose, California. In the mid-1990s, Shimizu was briefly in a relationship with Ione Skye (September 4, 1970). In January 2007, Shimizu described an intimate relationship she had with Madonna (born August 16, 1958). She also had a romantic relationship with Angelina Jolie (born June 4, 1975) which Jolie confirmed in a 1997 interview when she said, “I fell in love with her the first second I saw her. I would probably have married Jenny if I hadn’t married my [first] husband (Jonny Lee Miller).” In 2005, to protest against America’s laws on gay marriage, Shimizu went through the process of marriage to Dutch model Rebecca Loos (born 19 June 1977) on the Sky documentary Power Lesbian UK (broadcast as Power Lesbians on LOGO in the U.S.). The two had a relationship for a period thereafter. In 2012, Shimizu met Michelle Harper at a party. They married in August 2014.
1979, Canada
Montreal’s first major gay celebration, Gairilla Week, takes place.
1981, Canada
Toronto Police raid two bathhouses, arresting twenty-one men on bawdyhouse charges. Raided were the Back Door Gym and Sauna and the International Steam Baths
1983
The New York Times publishes its first front-page story on AIDS.
1988
Delegates at the annual convention of Southern Baptists pass a resolution blaming gays for AIDS and condemning homosexuals as perverts and abominations who have depraved natures.
1990
Queer Nation holds a Take Back the Night march in New York, protesting hate crimes against gays. Over 1,000 people attended.
1992, Canada
Singer k.d. lang (born November 2, 1961) comes out in an interview with The Advocate, setting off a year of US. media reports on “lesbian chic.” Kathryn Dawn “K.D.” Lang, known by her stage name k.d. lang, is a Canadian pop and country singer-songwriter and occasional actress. Lang won the American Grammy Award for Best Female Country Vocal Performance for her 1989 album, Absolute Torch and Twang. On November 11, 2009, she entered into a domestic partnership with Jamie Price whom she had met in 2003. After separating on September 6, 2011, Lang filed for a dissolution of the partnership in Los Angeles County Superior Court in Los Angeles, California, on December 30, 2011. In 2011, Lang was inducted to Q Hall of Fame Canada in recognition of the work she has done to further equality for all peoples around the world.
1999
The Southern Baptist Convention passed resolutions demanding the recall of openly gay James Hormel (born January 1, 1933) from his new post as Ambassador to Luxembourg and denouncing President Bill Clinton for issuing the nation’s first official proclamation of Gay and Lesbian Pride Month. Ironically, as the hate-mongers convention meeting got underway in Atlanta, Georgia, 600 rainbow flags hung on the light posts for the city’s Pride celebration.
2006
The state of Hawaii agrees to pay $625,000 to three LGBT youth who’d been incarcerated in juvenile jails to settle a federal civil rights lawsuit. “The ACLU won a ruling against the state in February, when a judge agreed that the facility was ‘in a state of chaos’ characterized by dangerous and pervasive harassment against LGBT youth. The judge found ‘a relentless campaign of harassment ‚Ķ that included threats of violence, physical and sexual assault, imposed social isolation, and near-constant use of homophobic slurs.'”
2008
Del Martin (May 5, 1921 – August 27, 2008) and Phyllis Lyon (November 10, 1924 – April 9, 2020) are the first same-sex couple to be legally married, in San Francisco, after a landmark ruling making California the second state to allow same-sex marriage went into effect. In San Francisco, Mayor Gavin Newsom, who helped launch the series of lawsuits that led the court to strike down California’s one-man-one-woman marriage laws, presided at the wedding. Newsom picked the couple for the only ceremony in City Hall that Monday evening in recognition of their long relationship and their status as pioneers of the gay rights movement.
2008
Robin Tyler and Diane Olson are the first same-sex couple to wed in Los Angeles. The couple, together for 18 years, were plaintiffs in a California Supreme Court lawsuit that ruled a ban on same-sex marriage was un-constitutional. On this day they became the first of 18,000 couples to marry in the six months before Proposition 8 passed, once again banning the nuptials. The women had applied for marriage every year since 2001 but were repeatedly rejected. In 2008, they joined gay couple Rev. Troy Perry and Phillip Ray de Blieck who had married in Canada, as the plaintiffs for the California Supreme Court suit.
June 17
1864,
Ruth White Fuller Field (June 17, 1864-February 22, 1935) wrote the first lesbian autobiography The Stone Wall under her pseudonym Mary Casal. The book was published in 1930 in Chicago. It wasn’t until 2003 that the author’s birth and married names were discovered by Tufts University doctoral candidate Sherry Ann Darling in what historian Jonathan Ned Katz calls “a major example of creative, historical detective work. The Stonewall Inn in Greenwich Village, New York City was originally opened the same year that Stone Wall was published, in probable tribute to the book in which the author falls in love and has a relationship with her female teacher as well as with her sister’s sister-in-law, likely Mary Willard Lincoln (1847-1900). In 1894, while staying at the Margaret Louisa Home, a Y.W.C.A. hotel on 14 East 16th Street, in July 1894, Ruth meets Emma Elizabeth Altman who works there as a clerk and who becomes her lover. They stay together for at least 15 years, married in a private ceremony. In 1935, Ruth falls and breaks her femur and dies from chronic myocarditis and arteriosclerosis on the 22nd, in Tujunga, California.
1883, Finland
Mauritz Stiller (July 17, 1883 – November 16, 1928) is born. He was a gay Finnish-Swedish film director, best known for discovering Greta Garbo (18 September 1905 – 15 April 1990) and bringing her to America. Stiller had been a pioneer of the Swedish film industry, writing and directing many short films from 1912. When MGM invited him to Hollywood as a director, he arrived with his new discovery Greta Gustafsson, whose screen name Greta Garbo is believed to have been his suggestion.
1943
Barry Manilow (born June 17, 1943) is born. He is an American singer-songwriter, arranger, musician, and producer with a career that has spanned over 50 years. He is best known for a long string of hit recordings such as “Mandy”, “Can’t Smile Without You”, and “Copacabana (At the Copa).” Before Manilow’s well-known association with Bette Midler began at the Continental Baths in New York City in 1971, he recorded four tracks as Featherbed, leading a group of session musicians produced by Tony Orlando. As Manilow accompanied artists on the piano for auditions and performances in the first two years of the 1970s, Midler caught his act in 1971 and chose the young arranger to assist her with the production of both her debut and sophomore releases The Divine Miss M (1972) and Bette Midler (1973), as well as act as her musical director on the eventual tour mounted for the former. Manilow worked with Midler from 1971 to 1975. In 1978, Manilow began a relationship with TV executive Garry Kief, who soon became his manager, and the two married in 2014, after same-sex marriage became legal in California. They kept the relationship and his sexual orientation secret until the marriage made headlines in 2015. Manilow officially came out as gay in April 2017, telling People that he had kept his sexual orientation quiet out of concern that it would disappoint his largely female fan base, but when his fans learned of the marriage, they were supportive.
1959
On this date a London court awarded pianist Liberace (May 16, 1919 – February 4, 1987) $22,400 in damages against the London Daily Mirror for implying that the flamboyant entertainer was homosexual. Throughout his life, Liberace publicly denied he was gay. In Britain at the time, where he was popular enough to enjoy sell-out tours and be mobbed wherever he went, homosexuality was illegal. He was gay and died due to complications from AIDS.
1968
The documentary The Queen is released. It’s about a behind-the-scenes drag queen competition in New York City, directed by Frank Simon.
1977
Vice President Walter Mondale angrily leaves a San Francisco Democratic fund-raising event when his speech on human rights in South America was interrupted by a man who demanded to know when he would speak in favor of gay rights. Members of the newly formed San Francisco Gay Democratic Club held up signs demanding a statement on human rights in the United States. The club was created by Harvey Milk (May 22, 1930 – November 27, 1978).
1981
Sen. Roger Jepson (R-IA) introduced the Family Protection Act in Congress. It specified that anyone who was homosexual or openly supportive of homosexuals could not receive student aid, social security, or veterans’ benefits; and regulated what public school textbooks could say about human sexuality. It never passed, and Jepson lost his bid for re-election when it was revealed he had a membership at a brothel.
2006, Brazil
An estimated 2.4 million people took to the streets of Sao Paulo to celebrate the Brazilian city’s 10th annual Gay Pride parade. The record attendance, the largest in the world, was 1.8 million.
2008
All-American University of Missouri diver Greg DeStephen comes out on Gay.com. In May of his sophomore year, DeStephen read a story on Gay.com about Maryland-Baltimore County swimmer Fred Deal announcing he was gay. DeStephen sent the website an email that he liked the Deal story and that he was a gay diver himself. The site responded asking if it could tell his story, the gay All-American diver in the heartland.
2011, South Africa
A resolution submitted by South Africa requesting a study on discrimination and sexual orientation (A/HRC/17/L.9/Rev.1) passed, 23 to 19 with 3 abstentions, in the United Nations Human Rights Council. This is the first time that any United Nations body approved a resolution affirming the rights of LGBT people.
June 18
1779
On this date Thomas Jefferson prepares a draft of Virginia’s criminal statute, envisioning that the punishment for sodomy should be castration.
1903
French author Raymond Radiguet (18 June 1903 – 12 December 1923) is born. French poet Jean Cocteau (5 July 1889 – 11 October 1963) was his lover and mentor. Hemingway wrote that Radiguet employed his sexuality to advance his career. He wrote his first French masterpiece The Devil in the Flesh at the age of fifteen, his second novel Count d’Orgel’s Ball at nineteen and died from typhoid at twenty.
1967
Big Brother & The Holding Company plays the Monterey Pop Festival introducing Janis Joplin (January 19, 1943 – October 4, 1970) to the world. Janis Lyn Joplin was an American rock singer and songwriter and one of the biggest female rock stars of her era. After releasing three albums, she died of an accidental heroin overdose at age 27. A fourth album, Pearl, was released in January 1971, a little more than three months after her death. It reached number one on the charts. Time magazine called Joplin “probably the most powerful singer to emerge from the white rock movement. Janis was bisexual, having an ongoing romantic relationship with Peggy Caserta, who, like Janis, was an intravenous addict. Joplin’s death in October 1970 at age 27 stunned her fans and shocked the music world, especially when coupled with the death just 16 days earlier of another rock icon, Jimi Hendrix, also at age 27.
1970
Jane Rule’s second novel This is Not for You is published (Doubleday Canada). Jane Rule (March 28, 1931 – November 27, 2007) was a Canadian writer of lesbian-themed novels and non-fiction. Rule died at the age of 76 on November 28, 2007 at her home on Galiano Island due to complications from liver cancer, refusing any treatment that would take her from the island, opting instead for the care and support that could be provided by her niece, her partner, her many Galiano friends and neighbors. The ashes of Jane Vance Rule were interred in the Galiano Island Cemetery next to those of her beloved Helen Hubbard Wolfe Sonthoff (1916-2000).
1977
An anti-discrimination law is passed by Miami-Dade County. The ordinance that would make it illegal to discriminate on the basis of sexual orientation passes by a vote of 5-3. Anti-gay singer and Florida Orange Juice Queen Anita Bryant leads the successful effort to repeal it later that year.
1981
The McDonald Amendment passes the U.S. House of Representatives. The amendment would bar the Legal Service Corporation from assisting in any case which seeks to “promote, defend or protect” homosexuality.
1982
Lesbian author Djuna Barnes (June 12, 1892 – June 18, 1982) dies at age 90 in New York. She was an American writer and artist best known for her novel Nightwood (1936), a cult classic of lesbian fiction and an important work of modernist literature. Barnes has been cited as an influence by writers as diverse as Truman Capote, William Goyen, Karen Blixen, John Hawkes, Bertha Harris, Dylan Thomas, David Foster Wallace, and Ana√Øs Nin. Writer Bertha Harris described her work as “practically the only available expression of lesbian culture we have in the modern western world” since Sappho.
1983
Astronaut Sally Ride becomes the first American woman in space on the space shuttle Challenger. When she died in 2012, she was outted as a lesbian in her obituary. Sally Kristen Ride (May 26, 1951 – July 23, 2012) was an American physicist and astronaut. Born in Los Angeles, she joined NASA in 1978 and became the first American woman in space in 1983. Ride was the third woman in space overall, after USSR cosmonauts Valentina Tereshkova (1963) and Svetlana Savitskaya (1982). Ride remains the youngest American astronaut to have traveled to space, having done so at the age of 32. After flying twice on the Orbiter Challenger, she left NASA in 1987. She worked for two years at Stanford University’s Center for International Security and Arms Control, then at the University of California, San Diego, as a professor of physics, primarily researching nonlinear optics and Thomson scattering. She served on the committees that investigated the Challenger and Columbia space shuttle disasters, the only person to participate in both. Ride died of pancreatic cancer on July 23, 2012. Her partner of 27 years was Tam O’Shaughnessy, a professor emerita at San Diego State University and childhood friend, who met her when both were aspiring tennis players.
1992
The soap opera One Life to Live airs the first openly gay teen character. Billy Douglas, a high school student, tells his best friend, Joey Buchanan, that he is gay. Newcomer actor Ryan Phillippe played the role from April 1992 until May 1993. The character is the first openly gay teenager featured in a television series, and Phillippe’s breakthrough role is considered groundbreaking in daytime television.
1994
The exhibition “Becoming Visible: The Legacy of Stonewall” opens at the New York Public Library. It is a history of New York’s lesbian and gay life. It is history told through unorthodox artifacts, beginning with a blue neon “Stonewall” sign and banks of public telephones at which visitors can hear oral recollections of the Stonewall Inn, a gay bar on Christopher Street, and of the nights in June 1969 when patrons battled the police rather than acquiesce to another raid.
2006
Mary Cheney (born March 14, 1969), lesbian daughter of former Vice President Dick Cheney, released her memoir My Turn in which she attempts to make sense of her inaction and silence during the Bush/Cheney administration and its anti-gay record. The book’s sales were miserable, prompting author Andrew Sullivan to write: “There are flops, almighty flops and then there are books by Mary Cheney.” Mary Cheney has been with her partner, Heather Poe, since 1992. Cheney is openly lesbian, has voiced support for same-sex marriage, and has been credited with encouraging her father’s approval of same-sex marriage which he has publicly supported since leaving the vice presidency.
June 19
1312, UK
Piers Gaveston (1284 – June 19, 1312) is killed. He was the 1st Earl of Cornwall and an English nobleman of Gascon origin, and the favorite of King Edward II of England. It was alleged by medieval chroniclers that Edward II and Piers Gaveston were lovers, a rumor that was reinforced by later portrayals in fiction such as Christopher Marlowe’s late 16th-century play Edward II. This assertion has received the support of some modern historians. According to Pierre Chaplais, the relationship between the two was that of an adoptive brotherhood, and Gaveston served as an unofficial deputy for a reluctant king. Other historians, like J. S. Hamilton, have pointed out that concern over the two men’s sexuality was not at the core of the nobility’s grievances which, rather, centered on Gaveston’s exclusive access to royal patronage. Two Welshmen ran him through with a sword and beheaded him.
1566, UK
King James I of England and Ireland and VI of Scotland (June 19, 1566-March 27, 1625) is born. Responsible for the version of the bible that bears his name, some of James’s biographers conclude that Esme Stewart (later Duke of Lennox), Robert Carr (later Earl of Somerset), and George Villiers (28 August 1592 – 23 August 1628) (later Duke of Buckingham) were his lovers. Restoration of Apethorpe Hall, undertaken in 2004, revealed a previously unknown passage linking the bedchambers of James and Villiers. James’ father was murdered in bed with his lover.
1790, France
Jean-Baptiste du Val-de-Gr√¢ce, baron de Cloots (June 24, 1755 – March 24, 1794) is better known as Anacharsis Cloots, a Prussian nobleman who was a significant figure in the French Revolution. He was nicknamed “orator of mankind” and “a personal enemy of God”. On this day, he led a delegation of 36 men to declare allegiance to the Declaration of the Rights of Man. He believed there should be no sexual offenses except rape, adultery, seduction, and abduction.
1900
Laura Zametkin Hobson (June 19, 1900 – February 28, 1986) is born today. She was an American writer, best known for her novels Gentleman’s Agreement (1947) and Consenting Adult (1975). Consenting Adult is about a mother dealing with her son’s homosexuality and was based on her experience with her son Christopher.
1971
The first gay pride week in Ann Arbor, Michigan begins. It had been decreed by the city council.
1975
The American Medical Association passes a resolution urging all states to repeal laws criminalizing homosexual acts between consenting adults.
1976, Canada
The largest gay demonstration in Canada to date is organized in Montreal by Comit√© homosexuel anti-r√©pression (Gay Coalition Against Repression) to protest pre-Olympic “clean-up” raids on gay bars and baths.
1983
Rapper and song writer Macklemore (June 19, 1983) is born. Benjamin Hammond Haggerty, known by his stage name Macklemore and formerly Professor Mack Lemore, is an American hip hop recording artist from Kent, Washington. His stage name, originating from his childhood, was the name of his made-up superhero. He has significantly collaborated with producer Ryan Lewis as Macklemore & Ryan Lewis. Macklemore voiced his support of LGBT rights and same-sex marriage in the song “Same Love” which condemns homophobia in mainstream hip-hop, society, and mass media.
1983
In Lynchburg, Virginia, hate-monger Jerry Falwell told his followers that AIDS is a punishment from God, and that no medication could halt the judgment of God. Episcopal Bishop Paul Moore of New York criticized Falwell for using an epidemic as a political weapon.
1995
On this date, the U.S. Supreme Court in the case of Hurley v. Irish-American Gay, Lesbian, and Bisexual Group of Boston unanimously votes to allow Boston’s St. Patrick’s Day Parade organizers to ban gay groups from marching in the city’s annual St. Patrick’s Day Parade. Hurly is considered a landmark decision regarding the right to assemble and for groups to determine what message is actually conveyed to the public. The Court rules that private organizations, even if they were planning on and had permits for a public demonstration, were permitted to exclude groups if those groups presented a message contrary to the one the organizing group wanted to convey.
2007
Mike Jacobs (born May 15, 1975) was a Republican member of the Georgia House of Representatives representing District 80, which includes portions of Brookhaven, Georgia in DeKalb County and Sandy Springs, Georgia in Fulton County. On June 19, 2007, he switched to the Republican Party. In 2018, Jacobs became the first sitting judge in the United States to come out as bisexual.
2009
Juneteenth is an international holiday (official in 29 U.S. states) that commemorates the day in 1865 when the last enslaved people in the U.S. were notified of their independence. Wikipedia explains it this way, “Though the Emancipation Proclamation had been issued on September 22, 1862, with an effective date of January 1, 1863, it had minimal immediate effect on most slaves’ day-to-day lives, particularly in Texas, which was almost entirely under Confederate control. Juneteenth commemorates June 19, 1865, the day Union General Gordon Granger and 2,000 federal troops arrived in Galveston, Texas, to take possession of the state and enforce the emancipation of its slaves.” While not a gay-related event, no doubt there were many enslaved LGBT people.
2014
The Presbyterian Church votes to allow pastors to marry same-sex couples.
June 20
1732
The Georgia Colony was established with English Law automatically set up, including the buggery statute. Officials of the colony would later re-affirm their acceptance of the statute.
1909, Australia
Errol Flynn (June 20,1909 – October 14, 1959) is born. He was an Australian-born American actor who achieved fame in Hollywood after 1935. He was known for his romantic swashbuckler roles in Hollywood films, as well as frequent partnerships with Olivia De Havilland. He became an American citizen in 1942. Known as one of the greatest of Hollywood womanizers, it was a surprise when biographers revealed that he also slept with men. They include author Truman Capote (September 30, 1924 – August 25, 1984) and American business magnate, investor, record-setting pilot, film director, and philanthropist Howard Hughes (December 24, 1905 – April 5, 1976).
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1917
Donald Vining (June 20, 1917 – January 24, 1998) was a diarist. At best, Vining had minor success as a playwright and short story writer. His importance rests in the five volumes of his published diary, appearing between 1979 and 1993. In his review of the first volume of the diary in Body Politic, John D’Emilio said that “A Gay Diary is, unquestionably, the richest historical document of gay male life in the United States that I have ever encountered‚Ķ. It chronicles a whole life in which homosexuality is but one part and an ever-changing part at that‚Ķ. It illuminates a critical period in gay male American history.” D’Emilio discusses the earlier years of the diary at some length in his Sexual Politics, Sexual Communities: The Making of a Homosexual Minority. Many of Vining’s original diaries for the 1932-1958 period are now at Yale University. There is a substantial archive of Vining’s playscripts, correspondence, and related material in the Humanities and Social Sciences Library of the New York Public Library. He died in New York City on January 24, 1998 at the age of 80, and is buried alongside Richmond Purinton at Forest Grove Cemetery, Augusta, Maine.
1923
Fred G. Thompson was arrested and tried for the murder of Richard Tesmer. Thompson had posed as Mrs. Frances Carrick for the previous 14 years. Thompson/Carrick was found not guilty. The judge ruled that Frank Carrick, husband of Fred/Frances, did not have to testify due to spousal immunity. The jury acquitted her after two hours. Fred G. Thompson was born in Columbus, Ohio. At age thirteen, his father kicked him out, and he went to Chicago, started living as female and took a job as a chambermaid. Later Frances used her high soprano voice to become a singer in a cabaret. In 1912 Frances married Frank Carrick, a chauffeur, in Crown Point, Indiana. The two of them were arrested on suspicion that there was something amiss in their relationship, but they were able to produce a valid marriage license and so were let go.
1940
John Mahoney (June 20, 1940 – February 4, 2018) is a British-American actor born on this day in Blackpool, Lancashire, England. Mahoney started his career on the stage in 1977 as the body double for Steve McQueen and moved into film in 1980. He also worked as a voice actor, and performed on Broadway and in Chicago theatre. He is best known for his role as the retired police officer father of Kelsey Grammer’s character, Dr. Frasier Crane, in the popular American TV series “Frasier.” Along with David Hyde Pierce, Mahoney is godfather to Frasier co-star Jane Leeves’ son Finn. Mahoney scarcely talked about his private life, but in a 2002 article he revealed he has been in several relationships, although he has never married. Mahoney lived in Oak Park, Illinois. He died in a Chicago hospice on February 4, 2018, of complications from throat cancer, originally diagnosed in 2014. He was 77 years old.
1950
Ellen Ratner (born June 20, 1950) is a publicly gay American news analyst on the Fox News Channel and appears on The Strategy Room and
The Long and Short of It. She is also White House correspondent and bureau chief for Talk Media News which she also manages, covering the White House and is heard on more than 400 radio stations across the U.S. Her brothers are New York City-based developer Bruce Ratner and the late human rights attorney Michael Ratner. Ratner attended Goddard College and Harvard for a Master’s in Education. She is married to Dr. Cholene Espinoza (born 1964), the second woman to fly the U-2 reconnaissance aircraft in the U.S. Air Force. She is a military correspondent for Talk Radio News Service.
1952
Indian poet, novelist, travel writer, librettist, children’s writer, biographer and memoirist Vikram Seth (June 20, 1952) is born. He has received several awards including Padma Shri, Sahitya Akademi Award, Pravasi Bharatiya Samman, WH Smith Literary Award and Crossword Book Award. Seth’s collections of poetry such as Mappings and Beastly Tales are notable contributions to the Indian English language poetry canon. One of the most celebrated writers of his generation, Seth has expressly acknowledged his ten-year relationship with his former partner violinist Philippe Honore (born March 21, 1967).
1955
Everette Lynn Harris (June 20, 1955 – July 23, 2009) was born on this day. He was an American author and openly gay, best known for his depictions of African American men who were on the down-low and closeted. He authored ten consecutive books that reached The New York Times Best Seller list, making him among the most successful African American or gay authors of his era. His best-selling novels explored the lives of black men in gay relationships. Harris was born in Michigan and worked as a computer salesman before taking up writing. He self-published his first book Invisible Life in 1991. After struggling with his sexuality, he became one of the pioneers of gay black fiction. He died of heart disease in Los Angeles in 2009.
1966
A four-part series on Chicago’s homosexuals began in the Chicago Daily News. It presented gays as deviants and transvestites.
1974
The Lesbian Herstory Archives is founded. Lesbian members of the Gay Academic Union had organized a group to discuss sexism within that organization. Co-founders (born May 12, 1940), Deborah Edel, Sahli Cavallo, Pamela Oline, and Julia Stanley wanted to ensure that the stories of the lesbian community were protected for future generations. The LHA is a New York City-based archive, community center, and museum dedicated to preserving lesbian history, located in Park Slope, Brooklyn. The Archives contain the world’s largest collection of materials by and about lesbians.
1980
The Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence make their debut in San Francisco’s annual Gay Freedom Day Parade. The Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence (SPI), also called Order of Perpetual Indulgence (OPI) 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. In San Francisco alone where they continue to be the most active, between 1979 and 2007 the Sisters are credited with raising over $1 million for various causes, or almost $40,000 on average per year. Over the years the Sisters have named as saints hundreds of people who have helped on various projects behind the scenes organizing, coordinating actions or projects, performing at events as an artist or emcee or even serving the greater LGBT community. Rarely but sometimes they canonize community heroes who have recently died. It is customary for the Sisters to award sainthood with the addition of an elaborate “saint name”.
1988
Tucson, Arizona mayor Thomas J. Volgy declares Lesbian/Gay Pride Week. He was the first mayor in the southwest to publicly issue such a proclamation.
1990
President George W. Bush declines an invitation to attend the 6th International Conference on AIDS and instead sponsors a fundraising event for homophobe hate-monger Jesse Helms.
1998, France
50,000 people demonstrate in Paris to demand the legalization of same-sex marriage.
2003, Egypt
An Israeli tourist, charged with homosexuality, is held for 15 days in an Egyptian jail.
2009
World Refugee Day. “World Refugee Day will go unnoticed by the majority of the world ‚Ķ Many are running for their lives on this day or dying. But whether it is noticed or not, today stands as one of the most important days of the year. It is a day of respect and remembrance for the most vulnerable people in the world.” – Angelina Jolie, Goodwill Ambassador, UNHCR (United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, the U.N. refugee agency)
2013
Exodus International, a group that claims it could cure same-sex attraction through prayer and therapy, announces it will close its doors after more than three decades. The organization’s leader, John Paulk (born April 13, 1963), who admitted to his own “ongoing same-sex attractions,” apologizes to gays, saying, “I am sorry that some of you spent years working through the shame and guilt you felt when your attractions didn’t change.”
June 21
1975
The Texas Gay Conference was held in San Antonio with approximately 125 gay men and lesbians in attendance. It was sponsored by the Texas Gay Task Force, and speakers included Carolyn Innis, founder of the Gay Nurses Alliance and Mary Jo Risher, who was fighting for custody of her two sons.
1997
The first Women’s National Basketball Association game is played, and the lesbians were happy! Sheryl Swoopes (March 25, 1971) is the first lesbian player to come out, in 2005, followed by Brittney Griner, Seimone Augustus, Cappie Pondexter, Angel McCoughtry, Janel McCarville, Sue Wicks, and Sue Bird (born October 16, 1980) who is an American-Israeli player for the Seattle Storm and partner of soccer’s Megan Rapinoe (born July 5, 1985).
1997
Rebecca Black (born June 21, 1997) is born. In April, 202, the “Friday” singer came out as queer. “Every day is different, it’s something that over the past few years I’ve obviously been having a lot of conversations with myself about,” she said in an appearance on the “Dating Straight” podcast. “To me, the word ‘queer’ feels really nice. I have dated a lot of different types of people, and I just don’t really know what the future holds. Some days, I feel a little more on the ‘gay’ side than others.”
2000, Scotland
Section 28 is repealed. It was the law that said that homosexuality may not be taught in schools and that homosexual couples are not a pretend family.
2000
Coca-Cola announces that it will extend spousal health care benefits to the same-sex partners of its U.S. gay and lesbian employees effective January 1, and that it was considering extending the benefit to its international workforce in almost 200 other countries as well.
2001
Two gay male couples made history by publicly holding the first gay wedding in Cuba. Four local men, Michel and Ángel, and Juanito and Alejandro, ranging in ages from 17 to 22, exchanged symbolic vows before their families and friends at a neighborhood recreation center in one of the poorest sections of San Miguel del Padrón, a working-class suburb southeast of Havana. The wedding created such a stir in the neighborhood that some people climbed on their roofs to get a better view. It was a first in Cuba where there was no organized gay community and no public Pride celebrations.
June 22
431, Rome
Paulinus of Nola (354 – June 22, 431 AD) or Pontius Meropius Anicius Paulinus died on this date. He was a Roman Senator who converted to a severe monasticism in 394. Paulinus was from a notable senatorial family with possessions in Aquitaine, northern Spain, and southern Italy. He was educated in Bordeaux, where his teacher, the poet Ausonius, also became his very special friend. Letters from Paulinus to Ausonius have led to speculation that they had a homosexual relationship. He was a patron of the arts and eventually became Bishop of Nola. He helped to resolve the disputed election of Pope Boniface I, and was canonized as a saint.
1910, UK
Peter Pears (June 22, 1910 – April 3 1986) is born. He was a classical singer and devoted partner of composer and conductor Benjamin Britten (22 November 1913 – 4 December 1976). Pears died in Aldeburgh at the age of 75. He was buried beside Britten in the churchyard of the parish church of St Peter and St Paul, Aldeburgh.
1958
Transgender Jennifer Finney Boylan (born June 22, 1958) is an American author and political activist. In 2014, she joined the faculty of Barnard College, Columbia University, having previously been professor of English at Colby College in Maine. Her autobiography She’s Not There: A Life in Two Genders was the first book by an openly transgender American to become a bestseller.
1961, Scotland
Jimmy Somerville (June 22, 1961) is born on this day. He is the lead singer of Bronski Beat. The group’s biggest hit, “Small Town Boy,” was considered groundbreaking because of its lyrical content regarding homophobia. Somerville played the song’s titular character in the music video, leaving his hostile hometown for the city.
1969
Gay icon Judy Garland (born Frances Ethel Gumm June 10, 1922 – June 22, 1969) dies of an overdose of barbiturates barely two weeks after her 47th birthday. Garland began performing in vaudeville with her two older sisters and was signed to Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer as a teenager. She made more than two dozen films with MGM, including nine with Mickey Rooney. Garland’s most famous role was as Dorothy in The Wizard of Oz (1939). Her other roles at MGM included Meet Me in St. Louis (1944), The Harvey Girls (1946) and Easter Parade (1948). Some sources say that the mourning of her death may be partly what led to the Stonewall Riots a week later.
1977
In San Francisco, Robert Hillsborough (March 10, 1944-June 22, 1977), 33, and his friend Jerry Taylor, 27, left a disco and stopped for a burger on the way home. In the parking lot, they were attacked by four young men. Taylor managed to escape to phone 911 but Hillsborough was stabbed 15 times by 19 year-old John Cordova who yelled “Faggot! Faggot!” Witnesses also reported that Cordova yelled, “This one’s for Anita!” Cordova was convicted of second-degree murder and sentenced to ten years in prison. Three other young men were also held – Thomas J. Spooner (21), Michael Chavez (20) and a 16-year-old boy whose name was not released by officials. Both Mayor Mascone and Hillsborough’s mother blamed Anita Bryant and Sen. John Briggs for Hillsborough’s death. The parents of Robert Hillsborough filed a $5 million lawsuit accusing Bryant for conducting a hate campaign against homosexuals. Hillsborough’s parents claimed – and rightfully so – that Bryant’s public comments constituted “a campaign of hate, bigotry, ignorance, fear, intimidation and prejudice” against their son and other homosexuals. This, they said, amounted to a conspiracy to deprive Hillsborough of his civil rights. U.S. District Judge Stanley A. Weigel dismissed the case saying that he lacked jurisdiction because Bryant lives in Florida.
1978
Jai Rodriguez (June 22, 1979) is born. He is an American TV personality and best known as the culture guide on the Emmy-winning TV show Queer Eye for the Straight Guy.
1982
Singer Johnny Mathis (September 30, 1935) comes out in an interview with Us magazine on this day. He is an American singer of popular music and jazz. Starting his career with singles of standard music, he became highly popular as an album artist, with several dozen of his albums achieving gold or platinum status and 73 making the Billboard charts to date. Mathis has sold over 100 million records worldwide.
1985, New Zealand
Heterosexuals Unafraid of Gays (HUG) was founded on this date in Wellington.
1988
Technical Sergeant Leonard P. Matlovich (July 6, 1943 – June 22, 1988) died on this day. He was a Vietnam War veteran, race relations instructor, and recipient of the Purple Heart and the Bronze Star. He was one of the earliest service members to challenge the U.S. military’s exclusion of homosexuals. On June 22, 1988, less than a month before his 45th birthday, Matlovich died in Los Angeles of complications from HIV/AIDS beneath a large photo of Martin Luther King, Jr. 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.” Matlovich’s tombstone at Cemetery in Washington, D.C. is in the same row as that of (not-so-closeted) FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover (January 1, 1895 – May 2, 1972).
1998, Canada
British Columbia passes legislation granting same-sex couples access to pension benefit rights equal to those to which straight married couples are entitled.
2005
Homophobe Jerry Falwell adds his voice to an anti-gay movement to punish Kraft Foods for its sponsorship of the 2006 Gay Games in Chicago. Kraft contributed $25,000 to Gay Games VII.
2007, Jerusalem
Participants in the Jerusalem Pride Parade encounter hundreds of Haredi, Israel’s Ultra-Orthodox sect, who arrived with eggs and bags of human excrement to hurl. Just prior to the parade, police arrested a 32 year-old man carrying a bomb which he said he’d planned to detonate near the parade. Two hundred hate-mongering Haredi were arrested by the 7000 police officers brought in from all over Israel to protect the marchers, who numbered only 1000.
2008, Egypt
The first Egyptian film to portray gay life premiers, called All My Life by Maher Sabry. Sabry (April 11, 1967) is an Egyptian theater director, playwright, film director, producer and screenwriter, poet, writer and cartoonist. A gay activist, he was the first director to portray gay and lesbian love in lyrical and sympathetic manner on the Egyptian stage and pioneered with other gay forums for Egyptian LGBT on the internet, using the pseudonym “Horus”. In 2003, he appeared in a documentary by John Scagliotti entitled Dangerous Living: Coming Out in the Developing World. The documentary focusses on the Cairo 52 case and features a Maher Sabry interview in addition to various insights from activists from Brazil, Honduras, Namibia, Uganda, Malaysia, Pakistan, India, Vietnam, Fiji and the Philippines.
2011, Nepal
Sunil Babu Pant (born 1972) is Nepal’s only openly gay member of Parliament. He is an activist and former politician who was the first openly gay federal level legislator in Asia. He created the Blue Diamond Society, a shelter for battered LGBT people from surrounding countries.
June 23
1629
Five “Sodomitical Boys” are caught aboard the Puritan ship Talbot set for Salem, MA. The boys are sent back to England. In England, sodomy was a crime for which males over fourteen could be hanged. The boys’ fate is unknown.
1882
Dr. William Hammond delivers a paper to the American Neurological Association on a “disease” which makes males believe themselves to be females. As an example, he told of Native Americans who lived as the opposite sex.
1894
Biologist and pioneer of human sexuality Alfred Kinsey is born. Alfred Charles Kinsey (June 23, 1894 – August 25, 1956) was an American biologist, professor of entomology and zoology, and sexologist who in 1947 founded the Institute for Sex Research at Indiana University, now known as the Kinsey Institute for Research in Sex, Gender, and Reproduction. He is best known for writing Sexual Behavior in the Human Male (1948) and Sexual Behavior in the Human Female (1953), also known as the Kinsey Reports, as well as the Kinsey scale. Kinsey’s research on human sexuality, foundational to the field of sexology, provoked controversy in the 1940s and 1950s. His work has influenced social and cultural values in the United States, as well as internationally.
1912, UK
British mathematician and computer pioneer, Alan Turing (June 23, 1912 – June 7, 1954) is born near London. Turing designed some of the world’s first computers during WWII, and during the early 1950’s further experimented with artificial intelligence. Turing is widely considered to be the father of theoretical computer science and artificial intelligence. He played a pivotal role in cracking the German code that enabled the Allies to defeat the Nazis in many crucial engagements including the Battle of the Atlantic, and in so doing helped win the war. He was sentenced to a year of hormonal treatments causing impotence and breast development for “gross indecency with males.” Turing was prosecuted in 1952 for homosexual acts, when the Labouchere Gross Indecency Amendment was still criminal 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, from cyanide poisoning. 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.
1948, Denmark
The first Danish gay society, F-48, was founded by Axel Axgil. Soon after, a Norwegian and Swedish section under F-48 followed. F-48 was very successful and had 1,339 members by 1951. When Axgil stepped down as chairman in 1952 it had reached 2,600. Axel Axgil (April 3, 1915 – October 29, 2011) and Eigil Axgil (April 24, 1922 – September 22,1995) were Danish gay activists and a longtime couple. They were the first gay couple to enter into a registered partnership anywhere in the world following Denmark’s legalization of same-sex partnership registration in 1989, a landmark law which they were instrumental in bringing about. They adopted the shared surname, Axgil, a combination of their given names, as an expression of their commitment.
1952
Dale Jennings (October 21, 1917 – May 11, 2000), a founder of the Mattachine Society in Los Angeles, admits in court that he is a homosexual and accuses the officer who arrested him of entrapment. The jury deadlocked, and the case was dismissed. William Dale Jennings was an American LGBT rights activist, playwright and author. In November 1950, Jennings accompanied his then-boyfriend Bob Hull, to a meeting with Harry Hay (April 7, 1912 – October 24, 2002) and Chuck Rowland to discuss a prospectus that had called on the “androgynies of the world” to unite. This meeting began the first official meeting of the International Bachelors Fraternal Order for Peace and Social Dignity, which would later be renamed as the Mattachine Society. The Society sought to gain acceptance through greater communication between homosexuals and heterosexuals. The group began to grow and by the summer of that year they had adopted official missions and purposes which proclaimed homosexuals to be one of the largest minorities in America.
1957
Theater director John Tasker (25 May 1933 – 18 June 1988) writes to novelist Colin Spencer (born 1933) , “I was afraid to say-I want to be with you-because I really want to say, I love you.” They became lovers after they met in Brighton in 1957. Their off-and-on two-year relationship dramatically changed when Spencer married archaeologist Gillian Chapman in October 1959. Tasker went to Australia where he became a theatre director and died of cancer in 1988. Tasker had arranged for his letters to be returned to Spencer. Upon re-reading them, Spencer published his book Which of Us Two as a form of atonement.
1962
The Mansfield, Ohio Gay Sex Sting of 1962, happens. In the summer of 1962, the Mansfield, Ohio Police Department photographed men having sex in a public restroom under the main square of the city. A cameraman hid in a closet and watched the clandestine activities through a two-way mirror. The police filmed over a three-week period, and the resulting movie was used to obtain the convictions of over 38 local men on charges of sodomy. All of the 38 men were convicted of sodomy. They were publicly humiliated and found themselves ensnared by the state’s Ascherman Act which ordered all felons deemed a danger to society to be institutionalized for a potentially indefinite period; all were required to serve the minimum sentence, even those judged by medical professionals to be “cured” prior to that time. Treatment then involved a number of now-discredited methods, including electroshock and various other aversion therapy techniques, and drugs with known severe side effects. After their release few recovered from the trauma and many were ostracized from families and friends and some committed suicide. It wasn’t until 1973 that the American Psychiatric Association struck homosexuality from its list of mental disorders; until that moment, the psychiatric profession had essentially lent its tacit endorsement to these laws and practices. The footage itself is chilling and stark. One must always remember that it was not only the fact that these men were having sex in a public bathroom that got them arrested. It was the fact that they were gay. The sex act on film was the evidence. With some of the footage the Mansfield Police even went so far to produce Camera Surveillance, an instructional film circulated in law enforcement circles. It showed how to set up a sting operation to film and arrest the criminal “sex deviants.” Shortly after these stings took place, the city of Mansfield bulldozed the men’s room and filled it in with concrete to remove the homosexual scourge.
1976
The FBI acknowledges that it had been keeping files on the gay newsmagazine The Advocate.
1990, Prague
Activists organize SOHO, the country’s first national network of lesbian and gay organizations.
1994
The Gay Officers Action League of New York (GOAL) was founded by Charles Henry “Charlie” Cochrane, Jr. (August 5, 1943-May 5, 2008), a sergeant of the New York City Police Department, who after delivering a public testimony on anti-gay discrimination legislation pending before the New York City Council, became the first openly gay officer of the NYPD. On this day GOAL creates and hosts the first International Conference Of Gay And Lesbian Criminal Justice Professionals. Held in New York City at the exclusive Merchants Club, it was the first time that GLBT law enforcement personnel from all over the world met to collectively address issues that they have in common and, in the spirit of unity, offer each other mutual support. The conference also included the premier of an exhibit in the lobby of the NYPD headquarters covering the history of LGBT professionals working within criminal justice arena. Carroll M. Hunter, a longtime pioneer in the equality movement serving LGBT criminal justice and law enforcement professionals, convened the conferenced. He had a distinguished career in law enforcement spanning over thirty years.
2000
President Bill Clinton issues Executive Order 13160 prohibiting discrimination based on sexual orientation in federally conducted education and training programs.
2001, Canada
John Herbert (13 October 1926 – 23 June 2001), drag queen, pioneering gay playwright and “mordant gadfly” of the Canadian theatre scene in the 1960s and 70s, dies at his Toronto home. He was 74 and had been ill for a month after undergoing a biopsy for prostate cancer Herbert was best known as the author of Fortune and Men’s Eyes, his 1964 play that mercilessly exposed the homosexual reality of prison culture
2003
The U.S. Supreme Court strikes down state laws that criminalize sodomy in Lawrence v. Texas. Lawrence v. Texas, 539 U.S. 558 (2003) is a landmark decision by the United States Supreme Court, invalidating 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.
2003
The first U.S. memorial to solely honor lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender Holocaust victims was dedicated in San Francisco. Pink Triangle Park is located near the heart of the city’s Castro district. The Pink Triangle Park is a triangular shaped mini-park located in the Castro District of San Francisco, California, at the intersection of 17th Street and Market Street, directly above the Castro Street Station of Muni Metro. It is the first permanent, free-standing memorial in America to the thousands of persecuted homosexuals in Nazi Germany during the Holocaust of World War II.
2005
NBC announces that same-sex couples are eligible for “Today Throws a Hometown Wedding,” the popular series in which Today viewers plan and watch the wedding of the contest winners.
2005
A Missouri high school promised the American Civil Liberties Union it will no longer censor students for wearing t-shirts supporting gay rights. According to the ACLU, Webb City High School students can freely enjoy their First Amendment rights.
June 24
1730, Amsterdam
Five men who had been found guilty of sodomy two days earlier are executed. Pietr Marteyn, Janes Sohn, and Johannes Keep are strangled and burned. Maurits van Eeden and Cornelis Boes are drowned in a barrel of water.
1895
An article in the New York Times about intimacy between women states that fidelity could not exist between women because “there are no Davids and Jonathans among women.” The author claims that fundamental antagonism exists between women, and it is in woman’s nature to lack humanity.
1952
Dale Jennings is arrested in his own home in Los Angeles for lewd conduct. Harry Hay and other Mattachine members create the Citizens Committee to Outlaw Entrapment to raise funds for Jennings’ legal defense and to publicize the case. William Dale Jennings (October 21, 1917 – May 11, 2000) was an American LGBT rights activist, playwright and author.
1970
Police in New York City arrest Gay Activists Alliance members Tom Doerr (1947 – August 2, 1987), Arthur Evans (October 12, 1942- September 11, 2011), Jim Owles, Phil Raia, and Marty Robinson for staging a sit-in at the headquarters of the Republican State Committee. The men, who wanted to present their demands for “fair employment” practices to New York State Governor Nelson Rockefeller, become known as the Rockefeller Five.
1970
Myra Breckinridge, starring Mae West and Raquel Welch, debuts. Myra Breckinridge is a 1970 American comedy film based on Gore Vidal ‘s (October 3, 1925 – July 31, 2012)1968 novel of the same name. The film was directed by Michael Sarne, and featured Raquel Welch in the title role. It also starred John Huston as Buck Loner, Mae West as Leticia Van Allen, Farrah Fawcett, Rex Reed, Roger Herren, and Roger C. Carmel. Tom Selleck made his film debut in a small role as one of Leticia’s “studs.” Theadora Van Runkle was costume designer for the film, though Edith Head designed West’s costumes. Like the novel, the picture follows the exploits of Myron Breckinridge, a gay man who has a sex change and becomes Myra Breckinridge. She goes to Hollywood to turn it inside out. The picture was controversial for its sexual explicitness but unlike the novel, Myra Breckinridge received little to no critical praise and has been cited as one of the worst films ever made.
1971
The Gay Activists Alliance hold a candlelight march to City Hall in New York to support a bill that would have added sexual orientation to New York City’s Human Rights Law.
1973
In the final day of New Orleans Pride Weekend, the UpStairs Lounge, a gay bar located on the second floor of the three-story building at 141 Chartres Street in the French Quarter of New Orleans, Louisiana, was arsoned. Thirty-two people died as a result of fire or smoke inhalation. The official cause is still listed as “undetermined origin.” The most likely suspect, a gay man who had been thrown out of the bar earlier in the day, was never charged. He took his own life in November of 1974. Until the 2016 Orlando Pulse nightclub shooting, it was the deadliest known attack on a gay club in U.S. history.
1976, Canada
Gay activist Stuart Russell and four others are fired from the Olympic organizing committee in Montreal for political activity and sexual orientation.
1978, Australia
Two thousand people march for gay rights in Sydney. Police revoke their permission to march and people were arrested and outed in the newspapers. This event is the beginning of the Sydney Gay and Lesbian Mardi Gras.
1980, Canada
In Vancouver the Gay Alliance Toward Equality (GATE), one of Canada’s oldest and most active gay rights organizations, announces dissolution.
1984, The Netherlands
Rev. Herman Verbeek (17 May 1936 – 1 February 2013) of The Netherlands, the first openly gay member of the European Parliament, takes office. He was a priest in the diocese of Groningen, but in 1999, he was openly in conflict with the Groningen bishop about his views on sexuality, becoming openly gay.
1990
Activists associated with Queer Nation distribute a manifesto emblazoned with the words “Queers Read This” at New York City’s annual Pride Celebration march. Headlined “I Hate Straights” and signed “Anonymous Queers,” the broadsheet is a harbinger of revitalized militancy among lesbian and gay activists.
1994, Philippines
The first Gay Pride march in Asia is celebrated in the Philippines.
2011
New York Governor Andrew Cuomo signs a law legalizing same-sex marriage. The law takes effect July 24th. The law more than doubles the number of Americans living in gay marriage states.
2016
President Barack Obama announces the designation of the first national monument to lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) rights. The Stonewall National Monument encompasses Christopher Park, the Stonewall Inn and the surrounding streets and sidewalks that were the sites of the 1969 Stonewall uprising.
June 25
1844
Thomas Eakins (July 25, 1844 – June 25, 1916) was an American realist painter, photographer, sculptor, and fine arts educator who is born on this day. 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. Eakins was a controversial figure whose work received little by way of official recognition during his lifetime. Since his death, he has been celebrated by American art historians as “the strongest, most profound realist in nineteenth- and early-twentieth-century American art.” 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.
1945
Rictor Norton (born June 25, 1945 ) is an American writer of literary and cultural history, particularly gay history. The first individual in the United States to receive a PhD for work dealing with the history of homosexuality, Norton, was a graduate student in English at Florida State University in Tallahassee from 1967 to 1972. He worked as an instructor at Florida State University from 1970 to 1972, where he taught a course on gay and lesbian literature in 1971, one of the earliest gay courses in the United States. He was an active member of the Gay Liberation Front from and was involved in campaigning for the repeal of Florida’s sodomy statute. In 1973, he moved to London where he has lived since, working as a journalist, publisher, researcher and freelance scholar. He was a research editor for the fortnightly London news journal Gay News from 1974 to 1978 and wrote articles on gay history and literature for publications such as Gay Sunshine and The Advocate throughout the 1970s, and for Gay Times later. In December 2005 he formed a civil partnership with his partner of nearly thirty years. The second PhD in the United States on the history of homosexuality went to Salvatore Licata (1939-1990), a graduate student in history at the University of Southern California in Los Angeles, from 1971 to 1978. The third American doctoral dissertation that discusses the history of homosexuality is the work of Ramon Gutierrez, a graduate student in the History Department at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, from 1974 to 1980.
1962
U.S. Supreme Court rules in MANual v. Day that photos of nude and semi-nude men designed to appeal to homosexuals are not obscene and may be sent through the U.S. mail. It was the first case in which the Court engaged in plenary review of a Post Office Department order holding obscene matter “nonmailable.”
1963
Openly gay pop star George Michael is born on this day in 1963. Georgios Kyriacos Panayiotou (June, 25 1963 – December 25, 2016), known professionally as George Michael, 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). Since 2012, Michael had been in a relationship with Fadi Fawaz, an Australian celebrity hairstylist and a freelance photographer of Lebanese descent based in London. It was Fawaz who found Michael’s body on Christmas morning 2016.
1970
The Vatican issues a statement reaffirming its stance that homosexual unions are a “moral aberration that cannot be approved by human conscience.”
1972
The Rev. Dr. William R. Johnson (born June 12, 1946 in Houston, Texas) was the first openly gay person ordained in the United Church of Christ (UCC) and the first such person ordained in the history of Christianity. His ordination took place on June 25, 1972 at the Community UCC in San Carlos, California, authorized by the Golden Gate Association of the Northern California/Nevada Conference UCC. His ordination is the subject of the Michael Rhodes documentary film, A Position of Faith (1973; released on video in 2005). Throughout his career, Bill provided counsel and support to hundreds of LGBT seminarians and clergypersons in the UCC and ecumenically. Bill was the primary author of the extensive body of social justice policies regarding lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender persons adopted by UCC General Synods and the UCC Executive Council dating back to 1973. Bill Johnson retired from active ministry on July 1, 2013 at the 29th UCC General Synod in Long Beach, CA, having served in ministry for 41 years.
1972
Jeanne Manford (December 4, 1920 – January 8, 2013) marches with her son Morty in the Christopher Street Liberation Day Parade in New York City. She carries as sign that reads: Parents of Gays: Unite in Support of Our Children. She is a co-founder of PFLAG, Parents and Friends of Lesbians and Gays for which she was awarded the 2012 Presidential Citizens Medal.
1977, Toronto
The newly formed Coalition to Stop Anita Bryant organizes demonstration in Toronto. It is the first of several coalitions and public actions across Canada reacting to Bryant’s anti-gay crusade.
1978
The first Rainbow Flag, designed by Gilbert Baker (June 2, 1951 – March 31, 2017) flies at the San Francisco Gay Freedom Day parade. 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. In 2015, the Museum of Modern Art ranked the rainbow flag as an internationally recognized symbol as important as the recycling symbol. Baker died at home in his sleep on March 31, 2017 at age 65, in New York City. The New York City medical examiner’s office determined cause of death was hypertensive and atherosclerotic cardiovascular disease. Upon Baker’s death, California state senator Scott Wiener said Baker “helped define the modern LGBT movement”. In Baker’s memory, NewFest and NYC Pride partnered with a design team to create ‘Gilbert’, a rainbow font inspired by the Rainbow Flag. As well, on June 2, 2017, the 66th anniversary of his birth, Google released a Google Doodle honoring Baker.
1979
The opening of the movie Cruising in New York is greeted by protests due to the nature of the depiction of “gay life” within the film. Cruising is an American crime thriller film written and directed by William Friedkin, and starring Al Pacino, Paul Sorvino and Karen Allen. It is loosely based on the novel of the same name by The New York Times reporter Gerald Walker, about a serial killer targeting gay men, in particular those associated with the leather scene. The title is a play on words with a dual meaning, as “cruising” can describe police officers on patrol and also cruising for sex.
1984, France
Michel Foucault dies of AIDS in Paris. He was a French philosopher, historian of ideas, social theorist, and literary critic. Foucault’s theories primarily addressed the relationship between power and knowledge, and how they are used as a form of social control through societal institutions. Though often cited as a post-structuralist and postmodernist, Foucault rejected these labels, preferring to present his thought as a critical history of modernity. His thought has influenced academics, especially those working in sociology, cultural studies, literary theory and critical theory. Activist groups have also found his theories compelling. Foucault died in Paris of neurological problems compounded by HIV/AIDS; He became the first public figure in France to die from the disease, his partner sociologist Daniel Defert (born 10 September 1937) founded the AIDES charity in his memory.
1985
It is revealed that actor Rock Hudson is battling AIDS. Born Roy Harold Scherer, Jr. (November 17, 1925 – October 2, 1985), 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 soap opera Dynasty. According to the 1986 biography Rock Hudson: His Story by Hudson and Sara Davidson, Hudson was good friends with American novelist Armistead Maupin. The book also names certain of Hudson’s lovers, including Jack Coates, Tom Clark (who published a memoir about Hudson, Rock Hudson: Friend of Mine), actor and stockbroker Lee Garlington, and Marc Christian who later won a suit against the Hudson estate. Following Hudson’s death, Marc Christian sued his estate on grounds of “intentional infliction of emotional distress”. Christian claimed that Hudson continued having sex with him until February 1985, more than eight months after Hudson knew that he had HIV. Although he repeatedly tested negative for HIV, Christian claimed that he suffered from “severe emotional distress” after learning from a newscast that Hudson had died of AIDS. For his contribution to the motion picture industry, Hudson was given a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame (located at 6116 Hollywood Blvd). Following his death, Elizabeth Taylor, his co-star in the film Giant, purchased a bronze plaque for Hudson on the West Hollywood Memorial Walk. In 2002, a Golden Palm Star on the Palm Springs Walk of Stars was dedicated to him.
1993
President Bill Clinton appoints Kristine Gebbie (born June 26, 1953) as the nation’s first AIDS coordinator. Dr. Gebbie is best known for being the first U.S. AIDS Czar, from 1993 to 1994, during the Clinton Administration. She was a member of the President’s Commission on the HIV Epidemic, formed by President Reagan, and an outspoken opponent of the Reagan Administration policies on AIDS testing.
1998
Actress Kathy Najimy (February 6, 1957) is an American actress and comedian. She thanks the participants in San Diego gay pride for “being here because your being here gives me the chance to help my daughter love whoever the f**k she wants.”
2006
First Transgender Pride March with over 2000 people is held, in San Francisco.
June 26
1892
Newspapers across the U.S. report on the murder of 17-year-old Freda Ward by her lover, 19-year-old Alice Mitchell ( February 23, 1892- March 31, 1898). Both members of upper-class Memphis society, the two women had vowed never to separate. When Ward’s family refused to allow Mitchell to have contact with her, Mitchell waylaid Ward on a train and slashed her throat. Besides being one of the first times lesbianism is discussed in the nation’s media, the Mitchell-Ward case becomes a frequently cited example of the dangerous “pathology” of same-sex love. Mitchell is later found insane and committed to an asylum. 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.
1964
Life magazine runs a twelve-page feature of gay men’s culture in an article called “Sordid World of Homosexuality in America.”
1969
A group of New York drag queens organize a memorial for the next night for Judy Garland who died several days earlier. Little did they know the wake would turn into a riot and give birth to the gay liberation movement.
1977
Gay Pride celebrations across the country, including the original Stonewall-inspired New York City march, are held today, attract record numbers of participants. The heavy turnout is a response to the backlash against gay and lesbian rights inspired by anti-gay Anita Bryant’s campaign.
1988
Art Agnos is the first San Francisco mayor to ride in a Gay Pride celebration parade.
2003
The U.S. Supreme Court overturns Bowers v. Hardwick, the 1986 case that upheld sodomy laws. The case was overturned in 2003 in Lawrence v. Texas, though the statute had already been struck down by the Supreme Court of Georgia in 1998. Justice Anthony Kennedy said for the court, according to The New York Times, “The state cannot demean their existence or control their destiny by making their private sexual conduct a crime.”
2005, Greece
The first LGBT Pride parade is held in Athens.
2006
Longtime gay activist and author Eric Rofes (August 31, 1954 – June 26, 2006) dies of a heart attack in Provincetown, Massachusetts. A former executive director of the Los Angeles Los Angeles Gay and Lesbian Community Services Center, Rofes also wrote 12 books on the HIV/AIDS epidemic and the gay community. He was an associate professor of education at Humboldt State University in Arcata, California and a major contributor to the NGLTF annual Creating Change conference. Humboldt State established the Eric Rofes Center after his death as a new program in honor of his legacy and to continue his work in queer-feminist activism. The Eric Rofes Multicultural Queer Resource center is a student-run, student-funded initiative that provides programming and resources for Humboldt State University’s LGBTQIA community.
2013
The U. S. Supreme Court heard a challenge to DOMA on March 27, 2013. President Bill Clinton, who signed the legislation, came out against the law and asked the Supreme Court to repeal it. On June 26, SCOTUS declares the law unconstitutional and also holds that defenders of California’s same-sex marriage ban did not have the right to appeal lower court rulings striking down the ban.
2015
The U.S. Supreme Court rules 5 to 4 in Obergefell et al v. Hodges that the Constitution requires that same-sex couples be allowed to marry no matter where they live in the United States. With this ruling, the United States becomes the 17th country to legalize same-sex marriages entirely.
June 27
National HIV Testing Day
1869, Russia
Emma Goldman (June 27, 1869 – May 14, 1940) is born. She was an anarchist, political activist and writer and played a pivotal role in the development of anarchist political philosophy in North America and Europe in the first half of the 20th century. In 1910, an outspoken critic of prejudice against homosexuals, she begins speaking publicly in favor of homosexual rights. Her belief that social liberation should extend to gay men and lesbians was virtually unheard of at the time, even among anarchists. As German sexologist Magnus Hirschfeld wrote, “she was the first and only woman, indeed the first and only American, to take up the defense of homosexual love before the general public.” In numerous speeches and letters, she defended the right of gay men and lesbians to love as they pleased and condemned the fear and stigma associated with homosexuality. As Goldman wrote in a letter to Hirschfeld, “It is a tragedy, I feel, that people of a different sexual type are caught in a world which shows so little understanding for homosexuals and is so crassly indifferent to the various gradations and variations of gender and their great significance in life.” She was married to activist Alexander Berkman and advocated passionately for the rights of women.
1952
The McCarran-Walter Immigration and Nationality Act bars immigrants “afflicted with psychopathic personality,” a phrase that is interpreted to include all homosexuals.
1972, UK
The fortnightly Gay News, the first and best-known British gay newspaper, is founded in collaboration between former members of the Gay Liberation Front and members of the Campaign for Homosexual Equality (CHE). At the newspaper’s height, circulation was 18,000 to 19,000 copies. Gay News Ltd ceased trading on 15 April 1983.
1987
The NAMES Project displays the first 40 panels of The Quilt from the Mayor’s balcony at San Francisco City Hall. Each panel measured 3’x6‚Ä≤, the size of a human grave, and bore the name of an individual lost to AIDS. The NAMES Project AIDS Memorial Quilt is an enormous quilt made as a memorial to celebrate the lives of people who have died of AIDS-related causes. Weighing an estimated 54 tons, it is the largest piece of community folk art in the world as of 2016. The idea for the NAMES Project AIDS Memorial Quilt was conceived in 1985 by AIDS activist Cleve Jones (born October 11, 1954) during the candlelight march, in remembrance of the 1978 assassinations of San Francisco Supervisor Harvey Milk(May 22, 1930 – November 27, 1978) and Mayor George Moscone.
1994
Deborah Batts (April 13, 1947- February 3, 2020) becomes the first openly lesbian or gay U.S. federal judge. She is a senior judge of the District Court for the Southern District of New York. She is also the nation’s first openly African American federal judge. On January 27, 1994, following the recommendation of Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan, President Bill Clinton nominated Batts to the seat. 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. She continues to serve concurrently as an adjunct professor at Fordham University.
2006, Iceland
Iceland’s Parliament approves parenting equality.
2010, Iceland
Iceland legalizes same-sex marriage. The first legal wedding of an LGBT world leader occurs when Johanna Siguardardottir (October 4, 1942), Iceland’s prime minister, marries her partner of 30 years, Jonina Leosdottir. She became Iceland’s first female Prime Minister and the world’s first openly gay head of government on February 1, 2009.
2011, Brazil
The first same-sex civil union is converted into same-sex marriage by Sao Paolo State Judge Fernando Henrique Pinto.
2015
The first-ever conference of LGBT College and University presidents is held in Chicago.
June 28
1934, Germany
Approximately 300 Nazi Party members are arrested and murdered in a purge ordered by Adolf Hitler that comes to be known as the Night of the Long Knives. The most prominent victim of the purge is SA (Brown Shirts) chief Ernst Rohm, a gay man whom Hitler accused of having formed a subversive “homosexual clique.”
1934, Germany
The Nazi government expands Paragraph 175 of the German Penal Code to read: “A male who commits a sex offence with another male or allows himself to be used by another male for a sex offence shall be punished with imprisonment. Where a party was not yet twenty-one years of age at the time of the act, the court may in especially minor cases refrain from punishment.” The law did not include so-called “Aryan” women who loved women since the Nazis asserted that Aryan lesbians could still produce Aryan children for the “New Germany.” Paragraph 175a was also instituted: “Penal servitude up to ten years or, where there are mitigating circumstances, imprisonment of not less than three months shall apply to‚Ķa male over twenty-one years of age who seduces a male person under twenty-one years to commit a sex offence with him or to allow himself to be abused for a sex offence‚Ķ.” Arrests skyrocket from under 1000 in 1932 to over 8500 by 1938.
1959
In New York City, Ardouin Antonio, a 49-year-old Jamaican-American shipping clerk dies of Pneumocystis carinii pneumonia, a disease closely associated with AIDS. Dr. Gordon Hennigar, who performed the postmortem examination of the man’s body, found “the first reported instance of unassociated Pneumocystis carinii disease in an adult” to be so unusual that he preserved Ardouin’s lungs for later study. The case was published in two medical journals at the time, and Hennigar has been quoted in numerous publications saying that he believes Ardouin probably had AIDS.
1969
A St. Louis teenager, identified as Robert Rayford, dies of an illness that baffles his doctors. Eighteen years later, molecular biologists at Tulane University in New Orleans test samples of his remains and find evidence of HIV.
1969
Late night and into the early morning hours the next day, patrons of the Stonewall Inn at 53 Christopher Street in New York’s Greenwich Village, fight back during a police raid, sparking three days of riots and the modern gay pride movement. Police raid the bar on the charge of selling alcohol without a license. Storm√© DeLarverie (December 24, 1920 – May 24, 2014), a butch lesbian, is said to have been responsible for starting the riot at 1:20 am. A brave woman of color, she was hit on the head with a billy club and handcuffed. She was bleeding from the head when she brazenly turned to the crowd and hollered, “WHY DON’T YOU DO SOMETHING!?” Patrons, and the crowd gathered outside, fight back. The American Gay liberation movement begins. Clientele fling bottles, rocks, bricks, and trash cans at the police and use parking meters as battering rams on this day and for the next five days and nights. Transgender Sylvia Rivera (1951-2002) and Marsha P. Johnson (August 24, 1945 – July 6, 1992) are also ringleaders of the Stonewall Riot. Rivera is a founding member of both the Gay Liberation Front and Gay Activists Alliance, but the role of Rivera and her Street Transvestite Action Revolutionaries (STAR) in helping to initiate the modern gay rights movement is quickly forgotten as gay activists seek to enter the mainstream.
1970
Christopher Street Liberation Day marks the first anniversary of the Stonewall riots in New York City with the first Gay Rights Parade in U.S. History. Simultaneous marches take place in Los Angeles, San Francisco and Chicago. Community members in New York City march through the local streets to recognize the one-year anniversary of the Stonewall riots. Named the Christopher Street Liberation Day, it is now considered the first gay pride parade. About 15,000 people participate.
1970
Los Angeles celebrates the Stonewall anniversary with a march down Hollywood Boulevard that draws about 1,000 people. Smaller marches take place in Chicago and San Francisco. The anniversary is also marked by special celebrations at gay bars around the world, including clubs in Buenos Aires, Argentina; Lima, Peru; and Managua, Nicaragua.
1975
The first reports of wasting and other symptoms, later determined to be AIDS, are reported in residents of Africa. The daughter of Norwegian sailor Arvid Noe dies in January 1975. It is later determined that Noe contracted HIV/AIDS in Africa during the early 1960s. Margrethe (Grethe) P. Rask (1930 Р12 December 1977) was a Danish physician and surgeon in Zaïre (now the Democratic Republic of the Congo). She returned to Denmark in 1977 after developing symptoms of an unknown disease which was later discovered to be AIDS. Rask is one of the first non-Africans to die of AIDS.
1978, Canada
The Sixth National Gay Conference is hosted by the Gay Alliance for Equality in Halifax. At this meeting the National Gay Rights Coalition changed its names to the Canadian Lesbian and Gay Rights Coalition.
1982, Columbia
The first Pride parade takes place. Thirty-two marchers and 100 police officers attended.
2000
The U.S. Supreme Court rules that the Boy Scouts of America can discriminate against gays and bisexuals saying it is a private organization and not bound by local human rights laws. Boy Scouts of America et al. v. Dale, 530 U.S. 640 (2000) was a case of the Supreme Court of the United States decided on June 28, 2000, that held that the constitutional right to freedom of association allows a private organization like the Boy Scouts of America (BSA) to exclude a person from membership when “the presence of that person affects in a significant way the group’s ability to advocate public or private viewpoints”. In a five to four decision, the Supreme Court ruled that opposition to homosexuality is part of BSA’s “expressive message” and that allowing homosexuals as adult leaders would interfere with that message. It reversed a decision of the New Jersey Supreme Court that had determined that New Jersey’s public accommodations law required the BSA to readmit assistant Scoutmaster James Dale(born August 2, 1970) who had made his homosexuality public and whom the BSA had expelled from the organization.
2005
Brenda Howard (December 24, 1946 – June 28, 2005) dies. She was an American bisexual rights activist, sex-positive feminist, polyamorist and BDSM practitioner. Howard was an important figure in the modern LGBT rights movement. In 1987 Howard helped found the New York Area Bisexual Network to help co-ordinate 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. Brenda Howard is known as the “Mother of Pride” for her work in coordinating the first LGBT Pride march, and she also originated the idea for 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 rights activists Robert A. Martin (aka Donny the Punk) and L. Craig Schoonmaker, are credited with popularizing the word “Pride” to describe these festivities. As LGBT rights activist Tom Limoncelli (born December 2, 1968) put it, “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.
2010
The U.S. Supreme Court rules in Christian Legal Society v. Martinez that public universities may refuse to recognize student organizations with discriminatory membership policies. Christian Legal Society v. Martinez, 561 U.S. 661 (2011) is a United States Supreme Court case in which the Court upheld, against a First Amendment challenge, the policy of the University of California, Hastings College of the Law governing official recognition of student groups, which required the groups to accept all students regardless of their status or beliefs in order to obtain recognition.
2012, Jamaica
On this day Diana King (born Nov. 8, 1970) declared “Yes I am a Lesbian” to her fans from her official Facebook page thus becoming the first Jamaican artist to ever publicly come out.
June 29
LGBTQ PRIDE DAY
1626, Vatican City
Pope Urban the Eighth gives Catalina de Erauso (Feb. 10, 1592-1650) the right to live as a man named Francisco de Loyola who became a conquistador. Catalina de Erauso (in Spanish) or Katalina Erauso (in Basque), also known in Spanish as La Monja Alf√©rez was a personality of the Basque Country, Spain and Spanish America in the first half of the 17th century. For nearly 400 years, Catalina Erauso’s story has remained alive through historical studies, biographical stories, novels, movies and comics. New scholarship has questioned Erauso’s sexual orientation and gender identity. While Erauso never mentions specifically in his memoir being attracted to a man, there are numerous instances of relationships with other women.
1892, Germany
Henry Gerber (June 29, 1892- December 31, 1972) is born in Bavaria. He emigrated to the United States in 1913. He and others in his family settled in Chicago because of its large German immigrant population. In 1917, Gerber was briefly committed to a mental institution because of his homosexuality. When the United States declared war on Germany, Gerber was given a choice: be interned as an enemy alien or enlist in the Army. Gerber chose the Army and was assigned to work as a printer and proofreader with the Allied Army of Occupation in Coblenz. During his time in Germany, Gerber learned about Magnus Hirschfeld (14 May 1868 – 14 May 1935) and the work he and his Scientific-Humanitarian Committee were doing to reform anti-homosexual German law, especially Paragraph 175which criminalized sex between men. Gerber traveled to Berlin which supported a thriving gay subculture and subscribed to at least one homophile magazine. He absorbed Hirschfeld’s ideas, including the notion that homosexual men were naturally effeminate. Following his military service, Gerber returned to the United States and went to work for the post office in Chicago. He created the first gay rights organization in the United States, the Society for Human Rights which received a charter from the State of Illinois, and produced the first American publication for homosexuals, Friendship and Freedom. A few months after being chartered, the group ceased to exist in the wake of the arrest of several of the Society’s members including Henry. Despite its short existence and small size, the Society has been recognized as a precursor to the modern gay liberation movement.
1936, Germany
In preparing Berlin for the Olympics, 52 gay men were taken to Mauthausen concentration camp.
1968, West Germany
The anti-gay Paragraph 175, adopted in 1871, is eased. After WWII, gay men liberated from the concentration camps were sent to prison rather than set free. Those still alive in 1968 were finally released. Paragraph 175 was repealed in 1994.
1969
New York City’s Mattachine Action Committee issues a flier urging organized demonstrations in protest of the previous night’s police raid on the Stonewall Inn.
1972, Canada
Gays demonstrate at Queen’s Park (site of the Ontario legislature in Toronto) to protest the omission of sexual orientation from amendments to Ontario Human Rights Code then being considered by legislature. It is the first public gay action around rights code reform.
1973
The first bisexual religious organization, The Committee of Friends of Bisexuality, is founded by Stephen Donaldson (July 27, 1946 – July 18, 1996) (aka Donny the Punk) in Ithaca, New York. They issue the “Ithaca Statement on Bisexuality” supporting bisexuals. The Statement, which may have been “the first public declaration of the bisexual movement” and “was certainly the first statement on bisexuality issued by an American religious assembly,” appeared in the Quaker Friends Journal and The Advocate in 1972.
1977
Coors Beer Company takes out a full-page ad in The Advocate announcing that the Coors family did not contribute in any way to the defeat of Miami’s gay rights ordinance. Coors was already reeling from a union boycott.
1977, Canada
A Gallup Poll shows that 52 percent of Canadians believe gay people should be protected against discrimination under new Canadian Human Rights Act.
1989
The Washington Times reports that VIP officials in the Reagan and Bush administrations were implicated in a federal investigation into a gay prostitution ring. After being identified as one of those under investigation, Elizabeth Dole’s adviser Paul Balach was forced to resign. Republican National Committee chairman Lee Atwater stated that it was wrong for people to be forced out of their jobs because of something that is strictly a personal matter.
1993, Ireland
Ireland decriminalizes same-sex relations for consenting adults and sets the age of consent at 17 for all sexual activities.
1998
Researchers at the 12th World Conference on AIDS report that a drug-resistant strain of HIV had been identified.
1999
California adopts a domestic partner law allowing same-sex couples equal rights, responsibilities, benefits, and protections as married couples. Enacted in 1999, the domestic partnership registry was the first of its kind in the United States created by a legislature without court intervention. Initially, domestic partnerships enjoyed very few privileges-principally just hospital-visitation rights and the right to be claimed as a next of kin of the estate of a deceased partner.
2002, Croatia
The first Croatian Pride parade, in Zagreb, occurs.
2008
Thomas Beatie (January 20, 1974), a transman, gives birth. Born Tracy Lehuanani LaGondino, he is an American public speaker, author, and advocate of transgender and sexuality issues with a focus on trans fertility and reproductive rights. Beatie had gender reassignment surgery in 2002 and became known as ‘The Pregnant Man’ after he became pregnant through artificial insemination in 2007. Beatie chose to become pregnant because his wife Nancy was infertile. Beatie’s first pregnancy resulted in an ectopic pregnancy with triplets, requiring emergency surgery and resulting in the loss of all three fetuses. Beatie has since given birth to three children. The couple filed for divorce in 2012. The Beatie case is the first of its kind on record, where a documented legal male gave birth within a traditional marriage to a woman, and for the first time, a court challenged a marriage where the husband gave birth.
2009
The U.S. government apologizes to openly gay Frank Kameny (May 21, 1925 – October 11, 2011) for firing him in 1957. John Berry, Director of the Office of Personnel Management in the Obama administration, formally apologizes and presents Kameny with the Theodore Roosevelt Award, the department’s most prestigious honor. Kameny was an American gay rights activist, 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.
2012
Fred Karger (January 31, 1950) ends his bid for president, making him the nation’s first openly gay Republican presidential candidate. He did not get far. Karger is an American political consultant, gay rights activist and watchdog, former actor, and politician. His unsuccessful candidacy for the Republican nomination for the 2012 U.S. Presidential election made him the first openly gay presidential candidate in a major political party in American history. Although he had not held elected or public office, Karger has worked on nine presidential campaigns and served as a senior consultant to the campaigns of Presidents Ronald Reagan, George H. W. Bush, and Gerald Ford. Karger was a partner at the Dolphin Group, a California campaign consulting firm. He retired after 27 years and has since worked as an activist on gay rights causes including protecting the gay bar The Boom by using his organization Californians Against Hate to investigate The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS Church) as well as the National Organization for Marriage’s campaigns to repeal the state’s same-sex marriage law.
June 30
1865
Walt Whitman (May 31, 1819 – March 26, 1892) is fired from his job in the U.S. Dept. of the Interior on moral grounds after his boss finds an 1860 copy of Leaves of Grass. He 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 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. His poetry depicts love and sexuality in a more earthy, individualistic way common in American culture before the medicalization of sexuality in the late 19th century. Though Leaves of Grass was often labeled pornographic or obscene, only one critic remarked on its author’s presumed sexual activity: in a November 1855 review, Rufus Wilmot Griswold suggested Whitman was guilty of “that horrible sin not to be mentioned among Christians.” Peter Doyle (June 3, 1843- April 19, 1907) was most likely the love of Whitman’s life.
1919, Germany
The film entitled Different from the Others is released. It’s one of the first sympathetic portrayals of homosexuals. It was produced during the Weimar Republic, starring Conrad Veidt and Reinhold Sch√ºnzel. The story was co-written by Richard Oswald and Dr. Magnus Hirschfeld 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 175which made homosexuality a criminal offense.
1957
Ilene Chaiken (born June 30, 1957) is an American television producer, director, writer, and founder of Little Chicken Productions. Chaiken is best known as the co-creator, writer and executive producer of the television series The L Word and is an executive producer on the hit television series Empire. Chaiken has been married to LouAnne Brickhouse, a former executive at Disney, since 2013. Chaiken is co-parent to twin daughters Tallulah and Augusta with her former partner, English architect Miggi Hood.
1969
In Kew Gardens, Queens, New York, a vigilante group cuts down trees and bushes in a local park popular as a gay male cruising area. Lamenting the loss of greenery, The New York Times runs nine different articles on the ensuing controversy. The Stonewall Uprising and the protests that follow are mentioned a total of three times.
1969
Ben Patrick Johnson (June 30, 1969) is born. He is a model and voice-over actor. Johnson’s first national exposure came in 1994 when he was chosen as co-host for Extra, the TV entertainment magazine show. Extra demoted Johnson to Senior Correspondent shortly after he came out as gay in the LGBT press and on KABC talk radio where he had been director of production prior to Extra. Warner Bros. Television, the producers of Extra, declined to comment on the demotion.
1973, Canada
The first lesbian conference in Canada is held at the YWCA in Toronto.
1979
A group of 40 people in Cincinnati Ohio who had reserved a city park pool for a gay pride party were outnumbered and attacked by local residents who threw rocks and bottles at them. Police arrived, watched for a while, and then drove away. One man had to be rescued by a television news crew. Police refused to return even after several calls reporting a riot.
1981
Florida governor Bob Graham signs the Bush-Trask Amendment into law. It denies state funding (including football money and scholarships) to any university or college that allows gay student organizations. The Florida (Gay and Lesbian Civil Right) Task Force, led by Ronni Sanlo (born March 20, 1947) and several teachers’ organizations fought the amendment in the Florida Supreme Court where it was unanimously struck down as unconstitutional.
1984
The Unitarian Church votes to approve ceremonies uniting same-sex couples.
1986
The U.S. Supreme Court upholds the sodomy law in the Bowers v. Hardwick decision that criminalizes sex in private between consenting homosexual adults. The ruling is overturned in 2003 in the Lawrence v. Texas decision.
1990
A wreath is laid at the London Cenotaph in memory of gays killed during the Holocaust. Estimates are that 250,000 gay men were murdered in the death camps, with an unknown number of lesbians killed.
2005, Spain
In Madrid, the Parliament legalizes same-sex marriage, defying conservatives and clergy who opposed making traditionally Roman Catholic Spain the third country to allow same-sex unions.
2006 U.K.
Gay and lesbian naval personnel march in full uniform for the first time at the inaugural EuroPride parade. More than 40 sailors, ranging from able seamen to Royal Navy reserve commanders, led the parade in London. It was the first time that any military organization in the world allowed gay and lesbian service personnel to march in uniform at such an event. In 2000, the UK passed a landmark ruling to allow gay people to serve openly in the British armed forces.
2013, Russia
Putin signs an anti-gay propaganda law. The Russian federal law “for the Purpose of Protecting Children from Information Advocating for a Denial of Traditional Family Values”, also known in English-language media as the gay propaganda law and the anti-gay law, is a bill that was unanimously approved by the State Duma on June 11, 2013, with MP Ilya Ponomarev as the only abstention.
2016
Secretary of Defense Ash Carter announces that the Pentagon is lifting the ban on transgender people serving openly in the US military. The decision removes one of the last remaining barriers to LGBT participation in the armed forces.
2016
The United Nations Human Rights Council, in a defining vote, adopted a resolution on June 30, 2016, on “Protection against violence and discrimination based on sexual orientation, and gender identity,” to mandate the appointment of an independent expert on the subject. It is a historic victory for the human rights of anyone at risk of discrimination and violence because of their sexual orientation or gender identity, a coalition of human rights groups said today. This resolution builds upon two previous resolutions, adopted by the Council in 2011 and 2014.
2019
New York Governor Andrew Cuomo signs a law banning the use of the so-called gay and trans panic legal defense strategy. The tactic asks a jury to find that a victim’s sexual orientation or gender identity is to blame for a defendant’s violent reaction. New York follows California, Rhode Island, Illinois, Nevada and Connecticut as the sixth state to pass such a law.