1955: Frank Kameny is fired from his job as an astronomer in the United States Army’s Map Service in Washington, D.C. because of his homosexuality. A few days later he is blacklisted from seeking federal employment. These events spur Kameny into being a gay rights activist.
1975: The Washington Star begins a series on homosexuality in American Sports. Inspired, Washington Redskins linebacker Dave Kopay agrees to come out to the series’ author, Lynn Rosellini.
1993: In Texas, Williamson County commissioners reverse the previous week’s decision to deny Apple Computer tax breaks for a new facility in the county because of its policy of extending benefits to employees’ same-sex domestic partners. Several of the commissioners, however, continue to express condemnation of “the gay lifestyle.”
2013: The first official day that LGBTQ couples in Hawaii (both residents as well as tourists) can marry in the Aloha State.
1999: Aaron McKinney is found guilty of murdering Matthew Shepard. He is sentenced to two consecutive life terms in prison.
1999: Nancy Katz becomes the first openly-lesbian judge in the U.S. state of Illinois.
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.
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.
1985: Movie star and matinée idol Rock Hudson dies of AIDS in Los Angeles at age 59.
1970: Chicago Gay Alliance separates from the local Gay Liberation Front (GLF), declaring in a position statement that GLFs political agenda is too broad to be effective in the struggle for gay and lesbian civil rights. 1974: The National Gay [later: and lesbian] Task Force and other lesbian and gay activists persuade major consumer advertisers…
