1962: In New York City, Randy Wicker talks listener-supported radio station WBAI into broadcasting a taped program in which seven gay people discuss homosexuality. Widely publicized in the local press, the program is believed to be the first favorable broadcast on the subject in the U.S. 1975: Santa Cruz County, California, is the first US county to … Read More
1983: In the wake of a House Ethics Committee’s recommendation that he be reprimanded for a consensual sexual affair he had ten years previously with a seventeen-year-old congressional page, Representative Gerry Studds publicly acknowledges his homosexuality, becoming the first member of Congress ever to do so. 2011: California governor Jerry Brown signs the Fair, Accurate, Inclusive and … Read More
1983: The Gray Lady, the NYT, publishes its first front page story on AIDS. 1988: In San Antonio, Texas, the Southern Baptist Convention passes a resolution calling homosexuality “an abomination” and blaming AIDS on gay men. 1992: Just months after her Grammy nominated album, ingenue, is released, singer k.d. lang comes out in a cover … Read More
1950: After months of controversy, the United States Senate authorizes a wide-ranging investigation of homosexuals “and other moral perverts” working in national government. 1973: The Rocky Horror Picture Show (originally titled They Came from Denton High), opens at London’s experimental Theatre Upstairs, where it becomes such a hit that it soon has to be moved … Read More
1967: The U.S. Suprme Court strikes down Loving v. Virginia, a Virginia law against interracial marriages declaring that marriage is a “fundamental civil right” and that decisions in this arena are not those with which the State can interfere unless they have good cause. 1970: In what is described as “the first marriage in the nation … Read More
1983: Italian film director Franco Zeffirelli comes out in an interview with The Advocate, saying, “I’m gay…. This is the first time I’ve talked about it openly. I don’t like to talk about my sexual inclinations. People are not special because they like one thing better than another in bed.” 1990: John Brownell, deputy managing editor … 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
1971: Andy Warhol’s play Pork opens at the La Mama Experimental Theater in New York City. Among the cast, making his acting debut, is an extremely talented, sixteen-year-old drag queen named Harvey Fierstein. 1981: After customs officials at New York’s JFK Airport find a gay love letter in his luggage, British traveler Phillip Fotheringham is … Read More
1980: “Young, Gay and Proud”-the first gay-themed title from the Boston-based publisher Alyson Publications-arrives in bookstores. The publishing house, founded by gay activist Sasha Alyson, goes on to become the country’s principal gay small press giving many prominent gay writers their start. 1983: More than eighteen thousand people fill Madison Square Garden for what is … Read More
1983: Querelle-Rainer Werner Fassbinder’s last film, based on a novel by Jean Genet-opens in New York City. Starring Brad Davis and Jeanne Moreau, the film is almost universally panned by critics. 2011: The United States Department of Labor updates its internal equal employment opportunity policy to bar discrimination on the basis of gender identity.