1967: The U.S. Suprme Court strikes down Loving v. Virginia, a Virginia law against interracial marriages declaring that marriage is a “fundamental civil right” and that decisions in this arena are not those with which the State can interfere unless they have good cause. 1970: In what is described as “the first marriage in the nation … Read More
1973: Haworth Press announces plans to publish the Journal of Homosexuality, an academic quarterly devoted to scholarly research on the subject. The first issue-featuring articles on gender identity, transsexualism, and public attitudes toward homosexuality, as well as a review of the 1815 Africaine courts-martial, in which four British seamen were hanged for “buggery”-premieres a year later, in … Read More
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. … Read More
1983: Italian film director Franco Zeffirelli comes out in an interview with The Advocate, saying, “I’m gay…. This is the first time I’ve talked about it openly. I don’t like to talk about my sexual inclinations. People are not special because they like one thing better than another in bed.” 1990: John Brownell, deputy managing editor … Read More
1974: The Lambda Rising Bookstore opens its doors in Washington, D.C., with a stock of three hundred titles and average sales of about $25 a day. By 1987, it has opened a second store, established a thriving mail-order business, offers more than twenty thousand titles, and has annual sales of $1.5 million. 2011: Cambridge, Massachusetts announces … Read More
1954: Alan Turing, considered to be the father of modern computer science, commits suicide by cyanide poisoning, 18 months after being given libido-reducing hormone treatment for a year as a punishment for homosexuality. He is only 41 years old. 1977: Florida Governor Reubin Askew signs a law prohibiting gay men and lesbians from adopting children. … Read More
2011: The Wyoming Supreme Court reverses a lower court ruling and allows a LGBT couple married in Canada to divorce. The ruling recognized same-sex marriage in Wyoming only in the context of divorce.
1981: The first official documentation of the condition to be known as AIDS is published by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) in its Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report. The L.A. Times reports the first mention of AIDS in the mainstream American press. 1983: Torch Song Trilogy-Harvey Fierstein’s poignant, autobiographical four-hour comedy about … Read More
1920: House of Representatives Subcommittee of the Committee on Military Affairs approves “Revisions to The Articles of War”, which criminalizes sodomy.
1980: Three local gay rights measures in California-in Davis, San Jose, and Santa Clara County are defeated in referendum elections. 1984: Harvey Fierstein wins his third Tony Award, this time for Best Book of a Musical for La Cage aux Folles. In open defiance of the Tonys’ executive producer-who had begged everyone to “please, please … Read More