1970: To protest a September 1970 Harper’s cover story entitled “The Struggle for Sexual Identity,” in which editor Joseph Epstein had lamented homosexuals as “an affront to our rationality” and homosexuality as “anathema,” Columbia graduate student Pete Fisher stages a sit-in at the magazine’s Park Avenue offices with 40 other Gay Activists Alliance (GAA) members. Although the sit-in does not elicit an official response from the magazine, it leads to GAA’s national Television debut and has an enormous impact on future media coverage of lesbian and gay issues.
1989: A planned college production of “The Normal Heart” provokes protests and violence in Springfield, MO. However, all 8 performances sell out in four hours.
1783: In West Point, New York, Deborah Sampson is honorably discharged from the Massachusetts Regiment. Wounded in one of several battles in which she fought, Sampson had escaped discovery for almost a year and a half until falling sick with a fever. One of the earliest American examples of a passing woman, Sampson formed several attachments with women while dressed as a man. She later marries and receives a military pension.
2002: Harry Hay, leader in the early gay rights movement in the United States, co-founder of the Mattachine Society and the Radical Faeries, dies at age 90.
1965: After a series of demonstrations, this was the final East Coast Homophile Organizations (ECHO) White House picket. Demonstrators felt, with this event, that picketing the White House had lost its effectiveness as a tactic.
1986: Surgeon General of the United States C. Everett Koop releases the first government publications for the public on gay safer sex practices.
Frontiers Magazine asked their readers to weigh in on their Los Angeles favorites and The Lavender Effect was nominated for “Favorite Local Charity”
1983: Through a spokesperson, the Orthodox Eastern Churches in the United States threaten to withdraw from the National Council of Churches if the predominantly gay and lesbian Metropolitan Community Church is allowed to join. In response, the council decides to table the group’s application for membership.
As of today, October 21, 2013, Marriage Equality is legal in New Jersey!
1976: Ads appear in The Advocate for “Gay Weekend”, a board game in which players try to accumulate as many “tricks” as possible
