1824: The Marquis de Custine is beaten and left for dead after propositioning a male soldier in Saint-Denis. The scandal forces him out of the closet, but he recovers and lives the rest of his life as an open ‘sodomite’ with his partner Edward St. Barbe. Custine maintains a successful social life in Paris.

1970: Kate Millett becomes one of the first leaders of the growing women’s movement to acknowledge her lesbianism when she comes out as bisexual at a Daughters of Bilitis meeting in New York City.

1981: Love, Sidney a sitcom starring Tony Randall as a middle-aged gay man living with an unwed mother and her daughter premieres on NBC. Though gay in the made-for-TV movie on which the series is based as well as the pilot, creators and even star Randall deny the character’s homosexuality in subsequent interviews.

1998: In Canada, Glen Murray is elected as mayor of Winnipeg, Manitoba. He is the first openly gay man to be elected mayor of a major North American city.

2009: United States President Barack Obama signs the Matthew Shepard Act, which expands federal hate-crime law to include crimes motivated by a victim’s actual or perceived gender, sexual orientation, gender identity, or disability, the first US federal law to extend legal protections to transgender persons.