1969: In Kew Gardens, Queens, a vigilante group cuts down all the trees and bushes in part of 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 connected protests in the preceeding … Read More
1969: The Mattachine Action Committee of New York City issues a flier urging organized demonstrations in protest of the previous night’s police raid on the Stonewall Inn. 1981: Two fifteen-year-old lndiana boys stab to death a thirty-seven year-old gay man in a parking lot in Burnham, Illinois. They are later caught and charged with murder … Read More
1934: In 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 accuses of having formed a … Read More
1952: The McCarran-Walter Immigration and Nationality Act bars immigrants “afflicted with psychopathic personality,” a phrase that is interpreted to include all homosexuals. 1972: “Gay News”, England’s first national gay newspaper, makes its debut. 1994: Deborah Batts becomes the first openly LGBTQ U.S. federal judge. 2010: Same-sex marriage in Iceland is legalised with Prime Minister Jóhanna Sigurðardóttir … Read More
1935: The Nazis add to Paragraph 175 of the Criminal Code (A male who commits a sex offense with another male or allows himself to be used by another male for a sex offense shall be punished with imprisonment) with “the Amendment to the Law for the Prevention of Offspring with Hereditary Diseases” which allows for … Read More
1962: The United States Supreme Court rules in MANual Enterprises v. Day that photographs of nude or semi-nude men designed to appeal to homosexuals are not obscene and may be sent through the mail. 1972: The United Church of Christ becomes the first mainstream U.S. denomination to ordain an openly gay man, William Johnson. 1978: San Francisco artist … Read More
1970: New York City: Police arrest Gay Activists Alliance members Tom Doerr, Arthur Evans, 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 … Read More
1894: Alfred Kinsey, biologist and pioneer in the study of human sexuality, is born. 1912: Alan Turing, the father of modern computing and breaker of the Nazi Enigma code is born. 40 years later he is convicted of “gross indecency” by the very government he loyally served and dies by suicide two years after that. 1952: … Read More