2011: California Governor Jerry Brown announces the signing of the Gender Nondiscrimination Act (AB 887) and the Vital Statistics Modernization Act (AB 443). AB 887 makes illegal discrimination based on gender identity or expression in employment, education, housing, and other public settings and AB 443 allows transgender people to obtain a court order to protect their gender.

1970: In New York City, two policemen invade a private club to interrupt a Daughters of Bilitis-New York business meeting. The blatantly harassing nature of the police action persuades many members of the hitherto low profile group of the need for militancy.

1959: Russell Wolden, running for mayor of San Francisco as a Democrat, accuses the incumbent of welcoming and collaborating with the city’s “sex deviates.” His tactic backfires: the city’s newspapers accuse him of irresponsible mudslinging, and he loses in the next month’s elections.

1998: Matthew Shepard is beaten and pistol-whipped and tied to a fence and left to die in a gay bashing incident near Laramie, Wyoming.

1513: Spanish conquistador Vasco Nunez de Balboa discovers a community of cross-dressing males in present-day Panama and, according to reports, feeds at least 40 of them to his dogs.

1971: W.W. Norton publishes E.M. Forster’s Maurice, written in 1913, but dedicated by Forster “to a happier year.”

1961: In Hollywood, the Motion Picture Producers and Distributors of America (MPPDA) announces a revision of its production code. “In keeping with the culture, the mores and the values of our time,” the revision advises, “homosexuality and other sexual aberrations may now be treated with care, discretion and restraint.” The new ruling paves the way for the release of films like The Children’s Hour and Advise and Consent, but the MPPDA later amends the revision to specify that “sexual aberration” may be “suggested but not actually spelled out.”