1940: The German Reich Commissar of the occupied Netherlands territories makes all sexual activities between men illegal. 1965: Lesbian and gay demonstrators picket the Pentagon to protest discrimination in the military. 1969: In New York City, militants separate from the more moderate homophile movement to form a counterculture-inspired group they vote to call the “Gay Liberation Front”. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gay_Liberation_Front … Read More
1969: The New York Times notes that filming is under way for the movie version of Matt Crowley’s play The Boys in the Band, which is scheduled for release the following March. 1984: Appearing on a San Francisco talk show, Jerry Falwell offers $5,000 to anyone who can prove he once called the Metropolitan Community Church “vile … Read More
1969: The Mattachine Society of New York invites activists to gather in Greenwich Village for the first “gay power” meeting. 1986: New Zealand repeals its laws prohibiting homosexual acts between consenting adults. 2008: The United States Court of Appeals for the First Circuit in Thomas Cook v. Robert Gates upholds the constitutionality of the U.S. military’s “Don’t Ask, … Read More
1855: Walt Whitman publishes the first edition of his Leaves of Grass. 1965: At Independence Hall in Philadelphia, picketers begin staging the first Reminder Day to call public attention to the lack of civil rights for LGBT people. The gatherings continue annually for five years. 1969: Daughters of Bilitis and Mattachine society members picket Independence Hall in Philadelphia … Read More
1969: Just a few days after the riots at the Stonewall Inn in New York City, 500 marchers confront police in the first “gay pride” demonstration, a march down Christopher Street. 1970: The Fifth Biennial Convention of the Lutheran Church in America expresses its opposition to discrimination and oppression of gay men and lesbians. 1997: … Read More
1969: In Kew Gardens, Queens, a vigilante group cuts down all the trees and bushes in part of a local park popular as a gay male cruising area. Lamenting the loss of greenery, The New York Times runs nine different articles on the ensuing controversy. The Stonewall Uprising and the connected protests in the preceeding … Read More
1969: The Mattachine Action Committee of New York City issues a flier urging organized demonstrations in protest of the previous night’s police raid on the Stonewall Inn. 1981: Two fifteen-year-old lndiana boys stab to death a thirty-seven year-old gay man in a parking lot in Burnham, Illinois. They are later caught and charged with murder … Read More
1934: In Germany, approximately 300 Nazi Party members are arrested and murdered in a purge ordered by Adolf Hitler that comes to be known as the Night of the Long Knives. The most prominent victim of the purge is SA (Brown Shirts) chief Ernst Rohm, a gay man whom Hitler accuses of having formed a … Read More
1969: Gay icon Judy Garland dies of an overdose at the age of 47. Four days later, on June 26, 1969, her remains are taken (by her fifth husband, Mickey Deans) to New York City, where an estimated 20,000 people lined up for hours at the Frank E. Campbell Funeral Chapel in Manhattan to pay … Read More
1897: In Germany, Magnus Hirschfeld founds the Scientific Humanitarian Committee to organize for homosexual rights and the repeal of Paragraph 175. 1969: Canada decriminalizes homosexual acts between consenting adults with the passage of the Criminal Law Amendment Act, 1968-69. 1974: The first federal gay civil rights bill, extending antidiscrimination protection to gay men and lesbians under the … Read More