1983: A Federal judge concludes that the First National Bank of Louisville did not practice wrongful discrimination – or violate constitutional guarantees of freedom of religion – when it ordered one of its employees, Samuel Dorr, to either give up his position with gay Catholic group, Dignity, or resign from the bank.
2008: Strauss v. Horton, a legal challenge to Proposition 8, is filed.
1999: Aaron McKinney is found guilty of murdering Matthew Shepard. He is sentenced to two consecutive life terms in prison.
1970: To protest a September 1970 Harper’s cover story entitled “The Struggle for Sexual Identity,” in which editor Joseph Epstein had lamented homosexuals as “an affront to our rationality” and homosexuality as “anathema,” Columbia graduate student Pete Fisher stages a sit-in at the magazine’s Park Avenue offices with 40 other Gay Activists Alliance (GAA) members. Although the sit-in does not elicit an official response from the magazine, it leads to GAA’s national Television debut and has an enormous impact on future media coverage of lesbian and gay issues.
1965: In San Francisco, thirty people picketed Grace Cathedral to protest punitive actions taken against Rev. Canon Robert Cromey for his involvement in the Council on Religion and the Homosexual, an alliance between LGBT people and religious leaders. 1970: In Los Angeles, Gay Liberation Front demonstrators persuade bar owners to allow gay patrons to hold hands. … Read More
1992: The Kentucky Supreme Court issues its holding in Kentucky v. Wasson, invalidating the state’s sodomy law as unconstitutional. 2004: Nova Scotia becomes the sixth of Canada’s provinces or territories to have legal same-sex marriage. Neither the federal nor provincial governments opposed the lawsuit filed by three couples, one of whom had already been married … Read More
1964: Chip Kidd, U.S. Author, Editor, and Graphic Designer, perhaps best known for the iconic cover of the novel Jurassic Park and Batman: Black and White, is born near West Lawn, Pennsylvania. 1970: Lola, the Kinks song about transvestism enters the Billboard Top 40, where it stays for 12 weeks. 1992: Anthony Perkins, star of Hitchcock’s Psycho, dies in Hollywood … Read More
1867: In Munich, Karl Heinrich Ulrichs is jeered when he attempts to persuade a conclave of jurists that same-sex love should be tolerated rather than persecuted. He is probably the first to come Out publicly in defense of what he calls “Uranism” (homosexuality). 1992: In Germany, some 250 lesbian and gay couples all over the … 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
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