December 9 in LGBTQ History
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.
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.
1642: A Massachusetts Bay servant is sentenced to be whipped for “unseemly practices” with another woman in the first documented example of legal prosecution in North America for same-sex relations between women.
1968: At the Metropolitan Community Church in Los Angeles, the Reverend Troy Perry officiates at what is probably the first public same-sex union ceremony in the US.
As promised, this evening Illinois Governor Pat Quinn signed the marriage equality in Illinois into law.
This afternoon, Hawaii Governor Neil Abercrombie, signed that state’s Marriage Equality law.
2012: Washington voters approve Referendum 74 legalizing same-sex marriage.
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.
As of today, October 21, 2013, Marriage Equality is legal in New Jersey!
1987: 2,000 gay and lesbian couples exchange vows in a mass wedding held on the steps of the I.R.S. building in Washington, DC.
1983: New York State sues a West 12th Street co-op for trying to evict Dr. Joseph Sonnabend for treating AIDS patients. He later receives $10,000 and a new lease. 1985: A three-judge panel of the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, in a 2—1 opinion written by Anthony Kennedy, affirms in the case of … Read More