1970: The film version of Matt Crowley’s play The Boys in the Band opens in New York, directed by William Friedkin. The director remarks, “I hope there are happy homosexuals. There just don’t happen to be any in my film.” 1977: Two years after having repealed its state sodomy laws, Arkansas’s state legislature votes to … Read More
1680: Legislators of New Hampshire pass the colony’s first capital laws, copied almost word for word from the Plymouth laws of 1671: If any man lie with mankind as he lies with a woman; both of them have committed abomination; They both shall surely be put to death: unless one party were forced, or were under … Read More
1977: The ABC sitcom, Three’s Company, premieres. The “sit” in the sitcom is that an unemployed straight chef (John Ritter‘s Jack Tripper) moves in with two female roommates, but in order to satisfy the landlord’s suspicions that there might be sexual impropriety, pretends he is gay. The show stays in the Nielsen Top Ten for … Read More
1971: More than two thousand protesters march on the steps of the Albany capitol building demanding an end to laws that discriminate against gays and lesbians.
1984: Claiming an “absence of compelling need” for such legislation, California governor George Deukmejian vetoes a gay rights bill that would have prohibited job discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation.
1976: At a campaign stop in Los Angeles, Democratic presidential candidate Jimmy Carter tells an audience that, if elected, he would be willing to issue an executive order banning discrimination against gay people in housing, employment, immigration and the military. 2004: The Wisconsin State Senate approves of an amendment to the state constitution (20-13) that would ban … Read More
2004: The California Supreme Court issues a stay ordering San Francisco officials to cease issuing marriage licenses to same-sex couples.
1985: William Hoffman’s play about AIDS, As Is, opens at New York City’s Circle Rep Theater. Less than six weeks later, Larry Kramer’s The Normal Heart opens at the Public Theater. 1987: AIDS advocacy group ACT UP (AIDS Coalition to Unleash Power) is formed in response to the devastating effects the disease has had on … Read More
1989: Noted gay artist Robert Mapplethorpe dies of AIDS in Boston at the age of 42. Mapplethorpe’s work is later at the center of a major arts funding controversy in the United States.
1970: In the wee morning hours, New York City police raid a gay bar called the Snake Pit, arresting 167 patrons. At the police station, one of the arrestees, an Argentine national named Diego Vinales so feared the possibility of deportation that he leapt from a second-story window of the police station, impaling himself on … Read More