1928: Having been published in Paris the previous July, Radclyffe Hall’s The Well of Loneliness, the first major novel in English with an explicitly pro lesbian theme, is published in the U.S. Americans buy more than 20,000 copies of the book within the next month, making it a bestseller.
1624: In the Virginia Colony, Richard Cornish is hanged for allegedly making advances on a ship’s steward. His conviction and execution, angrily contested by his brother and others, is the first to be recorded in the American colonies.
1988: A Dallas judge sentences the killer of two gay men to 30 years in prison instead of a life sentence because, as he later tells the Dallas Times Herald, “I don’t much care for queers cruising the streets.” The Dallas Gay Alliance joins political leaders across the country in protesting the judge’s decision.
2010: Voters in El Paso, Texas pass an initiative that strips health insurance benefits from the unmarried partners of city employees. Supporters say that their intention was to target gay city employees and their partners.
2002: Harry Hay, leader in the early gay rights movement in the United States, co-founder of the Mattachine Society and the Radical Faeries, dies at age 90.
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.
1979: The first National March on Washington for Lesbian and Gay Rights takes place in Washington, DC. Approximately 100,000 people marched in the largest pro-gay rights demonstration up to that time.
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.
1977: Soap premieres on ABC with then unknown Billy Crystal playing Jodie Dallas, one of TV’s first prominent and sympathetic gay characters. 1996: In the U.S. Congress, a bill that would ban employment discrimination against lesbians and gay men is defeated by one vote. 1997: The newly crowned Miss America, Kate Shindle, vows to dedicate her…
1969: West Germany repeals laws prohibiting gay acts between consenting adults-applies to males only as lesbianism was never proscribed by W. German law. 1977: The present-day Log Cabin Republicans organization is founded as the “Gay Republicans” club, a group of lesbians and gays within the United States’ Republican Party. 1979: New Jersey decriminalizes private consensual…
