1955: In the wake of the murder of a Sioux City, Iowa, boy earlier in the year, 29 men suspected of homosexuality have been committed to mental asylums as a preventive measure authorized by the state’s “sexual psychopath” laws.
1907: Dr. Evelyn Hooker is born. Dr. Hooker published the first empirical research to challenge the notion that homosexuality was a mental illness. Her work was the foundation for an entire field of research that led to removal of homosexuality from the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders. 1967: Dick Michaels, Bill Rand, and Sam … Read More
1940: The Rev. Troy Perry, founder of the Metropolitan Community Church, is born. 1967: In the United Kingdom, nearly ten years after the publication of the Wolfenden Report, the Sexual Offenses Act takes effect, decriminalizing private homosexual acts in England and Wales. The age of consent for homosexual acts is set at 21, compared to 16 … Read More
1967: The U.S. Suprme Court strikes down Loving v. Virginia, a Virginia law against interracial marriages 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. 1970: In what is described as “the first marriage in the nation … Read More
1967: The Student Homophile League of Columbia University pickets and disrupts a panel of psychiatrists discussing homosexuality. 1984: Secretary of Health and Human Services Margaret Heckler announces in a press conference that the “probable” cause of AIDS has been discovered: a transmissible virus that has recently been isolated by U.S. and French researchers. The … 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
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
1965: At the San Francisco trial of the four people arrested at the Council on Religion and the Homosexual’s New Year’s Ball, the judge orders the jury to find the defendants not guilty. The decision is widely seen as a turning point in the homophile movement’s fight for gay and lesbian civil rights. 1967: In … Read More
1967: The Louisiana Supreme Court rules that the state’s statutory ban on “unnatural carnal copulation” applies to women engaged in oral sex with other women.
1967: New York City’s Civil Service Commission makes public its year-old policy of allowing city agencies to hire and employ lesbians and gay men. The new policy comes partly in response to Mattachine Society of New York lobbying efforts. 1984: Dan White is paroled from prison, after having served barely five years for the murders … Read More