1953: President Dwight Eisenhower signs Executive Order 10450, banning homosexuals from working for the federal government or any of its private contractors. The Order lists homosexuals as security risks, along with alcoholics and neurotics. 1972: Testifying before Congress, J. Edgar Hoover assures the House Appropriations Committee that there are no gay activists in the Bureau, … Read More
1980: CBS broadcasts an hour-long documentary entitled “Gay Power, Gay Politics” that alleges to be about the emergence of gay political clout in San Francisco, but instead focuses obsessively on more lascivious aspects of gay sexuality, making them seem like the focus of the entire gay rights movement. In one segment, close-ups track the arrival … Read More
1965: An estimated 150 people participate in a sit-in when the manager of Dewey’s restaurant in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania refused service to several people he thought looked gay. Four people are arrested, including homophile rights leader Clark Polak of Philadelphia’s Janus Society. All four are convicted of disorderly conduct. Members of the society also leaflet outside the … Read More
1955: Actor and drag artist John Epperson, aka Lypsinka, is born in Hazlehurst, Mississippi. [youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BxjILGxNNKo]
1967: The Student Homophile League of Columbia University pickets and disrupts a panel of psychiatrists discussing homosexuality. 1984: Secretary of Health and Human Services Margaret Heckler announces in a press conference that the “probable” cause of AIDS has been discovered: a transmissible virus that has recently been isolated by U.S. and French researchers. The … Read More
2005: H.B. 1515, which would have made it illegal to fire an employee based on sexual orientation, is defeated in the Washington state senate by a single vote. Two Democratic-party lawmakers join all 23 Republican state senators to defeat the bill.
1966: Members of the Mattachine Society stage a “sip-in” at the Julius Bar in Greenwich Village, where the New York Liquor Authority prohibits serving gay patrons in bars on the basis that homosexuals are “disorderly.” Society president Dick Leitsch and other members announce their homosexuality and are immediately refused service. Following the sip-in, the Mattachine Society … Read More
1948: Alfred Kinsey publishes Sexual Behavior In The Human Male 1962: Illinois becomes first state in The US to discriminalize homosexual acts between to two consenting adults in the privacy of their homes. 1977: The Nevada State Senate – meeting a mere twenty miles from the nearest legalized brothel and just across the street from the nearest … Read More
1978: 1,500 gays and supporters rally on the steps of the state capitol in St. Paul, Minnesota, in support of the gay rights provision in the city’s human rights ordinance. 1989: In one of the Navy’s worst peacetime tragedies, a gun turret explosion aboard the U.S. battleship Iowa kills forty-seven sailors while the ship is … Read More
1965: Following the previous day’s protest in Washington, D.C., twenty-nine ECHO (East Coast Homophile Organization) demonstrators picket the United Nations in New York City. 1973: The Minnesota State House of Representatives votes 69 to 46 to retain the state’s sodomy laws. 1976: Michael Bennett’s “A Chorus Line” sweeps the Tony Awards, winning nine in all, including one for Best … Read More