1976: West Virginia becomes the sixteenth state to repeal its sodomy statutes. Two weeks later, Iowa becomes the seventeenth.

1982: German film director Rainer Werner Fassbinder, thirty-six, dies of an overdose of cocaine and tranquilizers in Munich.

2003: Michael Stark and Michael Leshner are wed in Ontario, becoming the first legal same-sex marriage in Canada.

2011: The Obama administration issues a “guidance” memo stating that under existing law, states may choose to offer the same level of asset protection to same-sex couples under Medicaid asset recovery plans as it offers to straight married couples.