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
1969: Gay icon Judy Garland dies of an overdose at the age of 47. Four days later, on June 26, 1969, her remains are taken (by her fifth husband, Mickey Deans) to New York City, where an estimated 20,000 people lined up for hours at the Frank E. Campbell Funeral Chapel in Manhattan to pay … Read More
2004: Maine Governor John Baldacci issues an executive order requiring businesses contracting with the state not to discriminate on the basis of sexual orientation.
1980: The Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence make their debut in the San Francisco’s annual Gay Freedom Day Parade. 1980: Can’t Stop the Music – a sanitized film “biography” of the Village People, directed by Nancy Walker, opens nationwide. The Advocate calls it “thunderingly bad,” while The New York Times dismisses it as “mostly dead air … … Read More
1972: The first officially proclaimed “Gay Pride Week”—decreed by the city council several weeks earlier—gets under way in Ann Arbor, Michigan. 1975: The American Medical Association approves a resolution recommending the repeal of state laws against consensual same-sex acts between adults. 1995: In Hurley v. Irish-American Gay, Lesbian, and Bisexual Group of Boston the United States … Read More