1919: In Berlin, Magnus Hirschfeld opens the Institute of Sexual Research.

1934: The Hays Code, a self-regulatory code of movie ethics, discouraging filmmakers from including frank depictions of sex and sexuality instituted by the Motion Picture Producers and Distributors of America (MPPDA), becomes mandatory.  The code is nicknamed after the head of the MPPDA, former Republican National Committee chairman Will H. Hays. Among its provisions-“Pictures shall not infer that low forms of sex relationships are the accepted or common thing” and “Sex perversion or any inference to it is forbidden on the screen.”

1975: California and Washington decriminalize private consensual adult homosexual acts.

1976: Indiana decriminalizes private consensual adult homosexual acts.

1996: The United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit vacates and remands the district court in Able v. United States of America, which had ruled the military’s gay-exclusionary “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy unconstitutional.

2000: Vermont’s civil union law goes into effect, granting most state-level marriage rights to registered same-sex couples.