1980: Thirty-two-year-old Italian Enso Francone, in Moscow for the summer Olympics, chains himself to a fence in Red Square to protest Soviet persecution of homosexuals. With Western journalists looking on, a group of KGB officers moves in and drags Francone away. 1981: George Hamilton plays the twin roles of Don Diego Vega and his look-alike gay brother … Read More
1845: In Paris, a mob attacks a group of about 50 men arrested by police in a sweep of the Tuileries Gardens, a popular cruising area. 1951: The “Missions and Purposes” of the Mattachine Society are ratified under a California corporation. 1981: Despite having privately acknowledged her bisexuality to officials from the Immigration and Naturalization Service, Czechoslovakian- born … Read More
1973: Infuriated and disgusted by “all those young punks who have been beating up” gay men in San Francisco, a gay Pentecostal Evangelist, the Rev. Ray Broshears, founds the so-called Lavender Panthers, a group of street vigilantes who patrol the city’s gay meeting areas to ward off potential attacks from “fag-bashers.” Shortly after their founding, the … Read More
1975: The US Civil Service Commission decides to consider applications by lesbians and gay men on a case-by-case basis. Previously, homosexuality was grounds for automatic disqualification. 1978: Actor James Daly, father of actors Tyne Daly and Timothy Daly, dies at the age of 59. His live-in lover, male model Randal G. Jones, files a “palimony” suit … 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
1981: The so-called McDonald Amendment-prohibiting Legal Services Corporation from assisting in “any case which seeks to promote, defend or protect homosexuality”-is passed by the U.S. House of Rcpresentatives, 281 to 124. The measure was introduced by ardently homophobic congressman Larry McDonald, a conservative Dcmocrat from Georgia. 1992: The soap opera One Life to Live introduces the … Read More
1981: The first official documentation of the condition to be known as AIDS is published by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) in its Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report. The L.A. Times reports the first mention of AIDS in the mainstream American press. 1983: Torch Song Trilogy-Harvey Fierstein’s poignant, autobiographical four-hour comedy about … Read More
1921: Patrick Dennis, author of Auntie Mame, is born. 1934: Artist and Christopher Isherwood’s muse and partner, Don Bachardy, is born. 1981: Lawrence Mass, a gay physician and writer, publishes the first media mention of AIDS in an article in the New York Native, “Disease Rumors Largely Unfounded”.
1981: More than twenty people marching in a gay rights demonstration in Helsinki, Finland, are arrested by the police and charged with “encouraging lewd behavior.” 1986: Top Gun opens nationwide in the U.S. and is applauded for years as a homoerotic fantasy.