December 9 in LGBTQ History
1975: The Washington Star begins a series on homosexuality in American Sports. Inspired, Washington Redskins linebacker Dave Kopay agrees to come out to the series’ author, Lynn Rosellini.
November 24 in LGBTQ History
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.
November 18 in LGBTQ History
2003: The Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court rules it violates the state constitution to bar same-sex marriage.
November 5 in LGBTQ History
2008: Strauss v. Horton, a legal challenge to Proposition 8, is filed.
October 30 in LGBTQ History
1968: Popular silent film star, Ramon Novarro, is murdered in his North Hollywood home by Paul and Tom Ferguson, aged 22 and 17, whom he had hired from an agency to come to his home for sex.
October 15 in LGBTQ History
1952: In Los Angeles, W. Dorr Legg and six friends, including Dale Jennings, all with ties to the Mattachine Society, discuss forming a group to promote education and research activities beneficial to gay men and lesbians. ONE, Inc., results from the meeting.
October 4 in LGBTQ History
1971: W.W. Norton publishes E.M. Forster’s Maurice, written in 1913, but dedicated by Forster “to a happier year.”
September 27 in LGBTQ History
1970: Chicago Gay Alliance separates from the local Gay Liberation Front (GLF), declaring in a position statement that GLFs political agenda is too broad to be effective in the struggle for gay and lesbian civil rights. 1974: The National Gay [later: and lesbian] Task Force and other lesbian and gay activists persuade major consumer advertisers…
June 8 in LGBTQ History
1974: The Lambda Rising Bookstore opens its doors in Washington, D.C., with a stock of three hundred titles and average sales of about $25 a day. By 1987, it has opened a second store, established a thriving mail-order business, offers more than twenty thousand titles, and has annual sales of $1.5 million. 2011: Cambridge, Massachusetts announces…
May 14 in LGBTQ History
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…
