December 17 in LGBTQ History
1997: In New Jersey, same-sex couples are given the right to jointly adopt children
December 12 in LGBTQ History
1970: A struggling young pianist and songwriter takes a day job performing at New York’s Continental Baths. His name is Barry Manilow.
December 7 in LGBTQ History
1993: In Texas, Williamson County commissioners reverse the previous week’s decision to deny Apple Computer tax breaks for a new facility in the county because of its policy of extending benefits to employees’ same-sex domestic partners. Several of the commissioners, however, continue to express condemnation of “the gay lifestyle.”
December 4 in LGBTQ History
1970: New York City’s first gay Community Center opens in Greenwich Village.
November 27 in LGBTQ History
1978: Harvey Milk and San Francisco Mayor George Moscone are assassinated by former City Supervisor Dan White.
October 28 in LGBTQ History
1824: The Marquis de Custine is beaten and left for dead after propositioning a male soldier in Saint-Denis. The scandal forces him out of the closet, but he recovers and lives the rest of his life as an open ‘sodomite’ with his partner Edward St. Barbe. Custine maintains a successful social life in Paris.
October 27 in LGBTQ History
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.
October 13 in LGBTQ History
1970: Bob Mellors and Aubrey Walter host the United Kingdom’s first Gay Liberation Front meeting at the London School of Economics. 1982: Jerry Falwell and National Gay Task Force director Virginia Apuzzo debate gay rights on the Donahue show. 1987: Over 600 lesbians, gay men, and supporters are arrested on the steps of the U.S….
October 9 in LGBTQ History
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.
October 8 in LGBTQ History
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.
