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
1967: CBS airs “The Homosexuals”, an episode of CBS Reports. This first-ever national television broadcast on the subject of homosexuality has been described as “the single most destructive hour of antigay propaganda in our nation’s history.” 1972: East Lansing, Michigan becomes the first U.S. City to ban discrimination in city hiring on the basis of sexual … Read More
1987: Vermont becomes the first state to hand out condoms to prisoners on request.