1997: In New Jersey, same-sex couples are given the right to jointly adopt children

1982: San Francisco mayor Dianne Feinstein vetoes a domestic partnership bill.

1924: Henry Gerber, a German-born immigrant, receives a charter from the state of Illinois for a nonprofit corporation in Chicago named the Society for Human Rights. It becomes the earliest documented gay rights organization in the United States. Though the organization was intended to be an American equivalent of contemporary German LGBTQ emancipation groups, Gerber is arrested soon after and the society falls apart.

1982: A California judge tosses Marilyn Barnett’s so-called “palimony” suit against tennis star Billie Jean King out of court.

1783: In West Point, New York, Deborah Sampson is honorably discharged from the Massachusetts Regiment. Wounded in one of several battles in which she fought, Sampson had escaped discovery for almost a year and a half until falling sick with a fever. One of the earliest American examples of a passing woman, Sampson formed several attachments with women while dressed as a man. She later marries and receives a military pension.

1982: Former Los Angeles Dodger outfielder Glenn Burke comes out in “Inside Sports”, becoming the first professional baseball player to do so.