1975: The Arizona State House of Representatives votes 37 to 3 to pass an “emergency measure” specifically banning same-sex marriages. Two weeks later, the Colorado Attorney General also rules that gay and lesbian marriages are illegal and orders Clela Rorex, the Boulder, Colorado county clerk who had issued a marriage license to two gay men … Read More
2006: Ernie Fletcher, governor of the U.S. state of Kentucky, rescinds a 2003 executive order banning discrimination based on sexual orientation or gender identity in the public sector. 2011: The Maine Human Rights Commission finds that a rental agency that repeatedly delayed an application from a transgender applicant illegally discriminated against her based on her … Read More
1967: Loving v. Virginia is argued before the U.S. Supreme Court. A Virginia law against interracial marriages would be struck down, with the Supreme Court 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. 1972: The Missouri Supreme … Read More
1982: An article in the Journal of the American Medical Association claims that gay men who take the passive role in anal intercourse may have a twenty-five to fifty times greater risk of anal cancer than heterosexual men. 1986: Georgia outlaws gay bathhouses. 2009: Colorado Governor Bill Ritter signs a domestic partner benefits bill effective … Read More
1947: The Institute for Sex Research, popularly known as the Kinsey Institute after researcher Alfred C. Kinsey, is incorporated in Indiana. 1990: After a five-year, highly publicized battle with AIDS, Ryan White, eighteen, dies of the disease in a hospital in Indianapolis, one month before his high school graduation. White, a hemophiliac, had contracted the … Read More
1970: Midnight Cowboy wins the Oscar for Best Picture, becoming the first (and only) X-rated film to do so. It is also the first major Hollywood film to feature an onscreen sexual encounter between two men. The film’s director, John Schlesinger, also gay, wins for Best Director. [youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jnFoaj8utio] 1976: Civil rights crusader and U.S. Congresswoman Barbara … Read More
1955: Rob Epstein, Oscar-winning producer of The Times of Harvey Milk, Common Threads, and The Celluloid Closet is born in New Jersey. [youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JL_vrb4-6_0]
2005: Kansas voters approve an amendment to the state constitution banning same-sex marriages and civil unions.
1971: Four “reformed” homosexuals go on The David Susskind Show to tout their conversions to heterosexuality and praise the therapy of sometime poet and literary critic Eli Siegel, whose doctrine of “Aesthetic Realism” teaches that homosexuality is the result of a distorted philosophical view of the world. Aesthetic Realists-who never use the word “homosexuality” but … Read More
1972: The U.S. Supreme Court effectively upholds a lower court ruling giving state governments the right to refuse employment to gay men and lesbians. The court had refused to review the case of an openly gay man turned down for a job at a Minnesota university library because of his homosexuality. 1975: New Mexico becomes … Read More