1955: In the wake of a moral panic brought on by the sexual assault and murder of a boy in 1954, Iowa enacts a “sexual psycopath” law, allowing for the involuntary commitment of anyone charged with a public offense who possessed “criminal propensities toward the commission of sex offenses”. Twenty gay men from the Sioux City area, none of them suspected of having any connection with the crime that inspired the law, were committed in 1955.

1983: Citing financial problems, Great Britain’s only national gay newspaper, Gay News, ceases publication after eleven years.