1976: Gay actor, Sal Mineo, is stabbed to death in the garage of his West Hollywood apartment building at 8569 Holloway Drive. He is only 37 years old. The crime goes unsolved for a number of years until his murderer, Lionel Ray Williams, is caught and convicted. 1982: Making Love opens nationwide. Producers timed the release of the film with … Read More
1965: At the San Francisco trial of the four people arrested at the Council on Religion and the Homosexual’s New Year’s Ball, the judge orders the jury to find the defendants not guilty. The decision is widely seen as a turning point in the homophile movement’s fight for gay and lesbian civil rights. 1967: In … Read More
1976: Garry Trudeau’s Doonesbury introduces a gay character, Andy Lippincott (who had first appeared a month earlier). Five newspapers refuse to carry the story arc of Andy’s coming out to Joanie Caucus. Lippincott appears on and off in the daily strip for years. In 1989, he returned to the strip when he is diagnosed with … Read More
1977: White House aide Midge Constanza meets with officers of the National Gay Task Force to discuss what the Carter administration can do to further the cause of gay rights.
1977: The U.S. State Department lifts its ban on the employment of LGBT people and announces that it will consider gay applicants on a case-by-case basis going forward. 1978: The Oklahoma State House of Representatives passes a so-called “Teacher Fitness” statute, which allows local school boards to fire homosexual teachers or any teacher “advocating . … Read More
1989: After having debated and rejected similar measures for years, the American Bar Association votes 251 to 121 in favor of supporting federal legislation to prohibit discrimination against gay men and lesbians.
1981: Toronto police stage a massive raid on four local gay bathhouses, arresting 305 men (the largest mass arrest in Canadian history). The raids prompt a riot the following night, causing more than one participant to consider this the Canadian Stonewall. 1982: The film Personal Best opens in New York City. It depicts two women … Read More
1973: Twenty year old French actress and star of the The Last Tango in Paris, Maria Schneider, admits to the New York Times that she is bisexual, stating “I’ve had quite a few lovers for my age. More men than women . . . women I love more for beauty than for sex. Men I … Read More
1978: Tom of Finland has his first U.S. exhibit at Robert Opel’s Fey Way Gallery in San Francisco. 1979: A gang of teenage boys stands outside Tennessee Williams’s home in Key West, Florida, and begins throwing beer cans and firecrackers at the house while chanting “Come on out, faggot!” The incident is just the latest … Read More
1975: The American Association for the Advancement of Science passes a resolution deploring discrimination “in any form” against gay men and lesbians. 1977: Washington, D.C.’s Human Rights Commission fines the Grand Central, a local gay bar, over $6,000 for discrimination against women and African-Americans.