This chronology provides a look at the history of GLBT (gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender) folk, from ancient times to today. It also addresses various popular "myths" and misconceptions about homosexuals and homosexuality. My impetus for starting work on it was a simple timeline that appeared in an October 2005 issue of The Gayzette, a biweekly publication of Omaha's Rainbow Outreach Resource Center. Of course, as won't surprise anyone who knows me, once I got started, the project grew far beyond reason. I worked on it for about eight months, but haven't done much with it since, so it only extends as far as the summer of 2006. Eventually, I plan to put together a much shorter history, replacing the timeline with actual text and paring down the sheer volume to something more reasonable, but I've no idea when I'll finally get to it.       [ Ancient ] [ 533-1861 ] [ 1862-1968 ] [ 1969-1980 ] [ 1981-1995 ] [ 1996-2006 ] [ Notes ]     The Ancient World SUMMARY: HOMOSEXUALITY IN THE ANCIENT WORLD Contrary to the assumptions of many, homosexuals have not always been reviled and persecuted. In fact, the evidence is overwhelming that through much of human history, in a wide variety of cultures, "queer" behavior has been seen simply as part of the normal range of human activity. The acceptance of homosexuality in ancient Greece and throughout the Roman Empire is, of course, well documented. But the Mediterranean world was hardly alone in its views on the matter. Homosexuality was just as widely tolerated, for example, in many Oriental cultures. The first law criminalizing male homosexuality in China was not passed until 1740, after Jesuit Christian missionaries had gained considerable influence, and same-sex marriages were recognized in certain regions of the country until the early twentieth century. In the "New World," the situation was much the same. Homosexuality and transgenderism were readily accepted in many Native American cultures. Indeed, "two-spirit men," males who from an early age heeded a calling to take on female gender with all its responsibilities, were prized as wives by other men, and were respected as being especially powerful shamans. The anti-homosexual sentiment so prevalent in the modern Western world, which views homosexuals as sinners or perverts, has its roots in the prohibitions against same-sex activity in the Levitical laws of Judaism. Interestingly, though, there is no record of anyone ever being prosecuted for violation of those prohibitions. And many scholars and theologians now believe that they were not originally intended as blanket condemnations of all homosexual activity, anyway. In Christian teachings, anti-homosexual sentiment became much more pronounced, but it seems to have been a slow process. Although the evidence is as yet far from conclusive, there is good reason to believe that early Christians actually accepted and perhaps even sanctioned same-sex unions. It was only in the fifth century, under the guidance of St. Augustine and as part of an organized effort to undermine the pagan cults still influential throughout the Roman Empire, that the Church began to establish a doctrine that portrayed all non-procreative sexual acts, including homosexual sex, as heretical and evil. The First Gay Couple in Recorded History? In 1964, in the ancient necropolis of Saqqara, archaeologist Ahmed Moussa discovered a tomb unlike any other known to Egyptologists. It appeared to have been built for a married couple, which in itself was hardly unusual, but those interred within it, Khnumhotep and Niankhkhnum, were both men. Khnumhotep and Niankhkhnum had served Pharoah Nyuserre during Egypt's fifth dynasty, some 4,500 years ago (c. 2450 BC), sharing the title of Overseer of the Manicurists. They are described in inscriptions in their tomb as "royal confidants." In one inscription, the men's names are combined in a linguistic reference to their closeness. Several illustrations depict the men embracing and holding hands. In a banquet scene, they are entertained by dancers, clappers, musicians and singers; in another scene, they oversee their funeral preparations. In the most striking portrayal, the two embrace in the most intimate pose allowed by canonical Egyptian art, surrounded by what appear to be their heirs. Some Egyptologists, not wanting to accept what would seem to be the obvious interpretation, have postulated that the men were actually brothers, perhaps even identical twins. But their representation is entirely consistent with the tomb representations of mixed-gender couples universally believed by researchers to be husbands and wives. To see Khnumhotep and Niankhkhnum as brothers would imply that these others, too, should be seen as siblings rather than as married couples, a theory which has not been put forward by any expert in the field. Same-Sex Couples in the Old Testament The Bible describes three emotionally close relationships between two people of the same gender, each of which appears to have progressed well beyond casual friendship. While there is no unmistakable evidence that any of the three were sexually active partnerships, analysis of the original texts and of the historical contexts of the relationships strongly suggests that they were. The first such relationship (c. 1100 BC) is that between Ruth, the great-grandmother of King David, and Naomi, and is described in "Ruth" chapters 1 and 2. The second (c. 1025 BC) is that between King David himself and Jonathan, known from "I Samuel" chapters 18 and 20 and from "II Samuel" chapter 1. The third (c. 650 BC) is the relationship between the prophet Daniel and Ashpenaz, the story of which is recounted in "Daniel" chapter 1. Homosexuality in Ancient Greece and Rome Greece: Among the ancient Greeks, it was taken for granted that what we now consider bisexuality was normal, though it was also recognized that some people were inherently attracted only to members of the opposite sex or to members of the same sex. (Aristotle wrote that the homosexual disposition "occurs in some people naturally... and whether the individual so disposed conquers or yields to it is not properly a moral issue.") As well, pederastic relationships between men and male youths were held in high esteem. Homosexual pairings, both pederastic and egalitarian, were thus quite common, and as a result, it's almost impossible to find any famous figure from Greek history or myth who didn't have at least one same-sex lover. A great many Greek poets, dramatists, lawmakers and philosophers are known to have had same-sex lovers, including Solon, Sappho, Sophocles, Euripides, Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, Demosthenes and Zeno. It is important to realize, of course, that while most of what we know about homosexuality in ancient Greece involves pederastic relationships, those were not the only same-sex relationships that existed. But as they were held in especially high esteem, those relationships were the ones most likely to be immortalized in poems, myths and histories. Egalitarian relationships, those between men of similar ages, were considered less worthy of note, and were thus less often recorded, or were recorded with "poetic license." Some of the pederastic pairings which appear in Greek mythology, for example, such as the relationship between Achilles and Patroclus which is central to Homer's Iliad, actually seem originally to have been egalitarian in nature. The differences in age between the lovers appear to have been exaggerated by later storytellers who wanted to bring the relationships more in line with the "romantic ideal." In history as well as in myth, homosexual relationships sometimes played an important role in the unfolding of events. The overthrow of the sons of Peisistratus and the subsequent institution of democracy in Athens, for example, was tied, albeit indirectly, to a same-sex couple and a romantic rejection. In 514 BC, Hipparchus, who ruled Athens jointly with his brother, Hippias, was murdered by Harmodius and Aristogeiton. The young Harmodius had become the object of Hipparchus' desires, but as he and Aristogeiton were already lovers, Harmodius had rejected his advances. Hipparchus had responded by refusing to allow Harmodius' sister to participate in a religious festival, insinuating that she was not a virgin. This was such an insult that Harmodius and Aristogeiton had plotted to assassinate both Hipparchus and his brother. Though the lovers were themselves executed after killing only Hipparchus, Hippias thereafter became such a tyrant that the Athenians sought Sparta's help in overthrowing him only four years later. His death was followed by the reforms of Cleisthenes, who established a democracy in Athens. Harmodius and Aristogeiton came to be known as "the Liberators," and were seen well into Roman times as martyrs to the cause of Athenian freedom. A hundred and fifty years later, a general by the name of Gorgidas founded the Sacred Band of Thebes, an elite military corps consisting of 150 pairs of pederastic lovers. The idea for such a group had originated with Plato, and was explained by Plutarch, who chronicled the history of the Sacred Band, as follows: "For men of the same tribe or family little value one another when dangers press; but a band cemented by friendship grounded upon love is never to be broken, and invincible; since the lovers, ashamed to be base in sight of their beloved, and the beloved before their lovers, willingly rush into danger for the relief of one another." After three decades of successful campaigning, during which they gained a reputation as fierce warriors, Gorgidas and most of the members of the Sacred Band were finally killed in 338 BC in the Battle of Chaeronea, the decisive battle in which Philip II of Macedon and his son Alexander (later to become known as Alexander the Great) ended the independence of the Greek city-states. Philip erected a memorial in Chaeronea, at the site of the communal grave where they were buried, to commemorate the bravery of the conquered warriors. Both Philip and Alexander are also known to have had same-sex lovers. Philip had an intimate relationship with Pausanias, who later became one of his bodyguards, and eventually killed him. (Although the reasons for Pausanias' actions were not entirely understood even by ancient historians, it seems that they were linked at least indirectly to his jealousy when Philip spurned him for a younger man.) Alexander was almost certainly involved romantically with Hephaestion, his closest friend and second-in-command, and was especially fond of a young Persian eunuch, Bagoas, the only person whom any historical documents describe as his "beloved." Rome: Roman culture was heavily influenced by that of the Greeks, and so it is hardly surprising that the Romans also tended to have a very matter-of-fact view of bisexuality and homosexuality. Pederasty in the Mediterranean region had largely lost its status as a ritual part of education by the time of Rome's rise, though, and so was seen by the Romans instead as an activity primarily driven by sexual desires. Many Roman leaders are known to have had same-sex lovers, including Sulla, Julius Ceasar, Augustus (who ruled as the first Roman emperor from 23 BC to 14 AD), and most of the emperors who followed until the collapse of the original empire late in the third century. A number of well-known Roman poets and writers are also known to have had same-sex lovers, including Virgil (the author of the Aeneid), Horace and Ovid. The social acceptance of pederastic and other homosexual relations waxed and waned during the centuries, reaching its last zenith during the time of Hadrian (emperor from 117 to 138), who erected statues of his beloved and prematurely deceased Antinous throughout the Roman Empire. Nero (emperor from 54 to 66) is reported to have married, at different times, two other men in wedding ceremonies. Other Roman emperors, including Diocletian (emperor from 284 to 305), are reported to have done the same thing. Elagabalus, a young man who ruled as emperor from 218 to 222, is especially interesting to students of GLBT history, as he was almost certainly transsexual. Though he married and divorced five women (one of them a Vestal Virgin), his most stable relationship was with his chariot driver, a blond slave from Caria named Hierocles, whom he referred to as his husband. He is described as having been "delighted to be called the mistress, the wife, the Queen of Hierocles," is noted to have routinely worn heavy makeup, and is said to have offered half of the Roman Empire to any physician who could equip him with female genitalia. HOMOSEXUALITY, PEDERASTY AND PEDOPHILIA Although experts agree that there is no correlation between sexual orientation and pedophilia, it remains a popular misconception that homosexuality and child molestation are somehow linked. Those who actively claim that homosexuals are likely to molest children typically offer, in addition to a general distaste for homosexuality itself, two bits of "evidence" to support their contention. They point first to the fact that much homoerotic literature and pornography involves very young men, and second, to the fact that through most of human history, homosexuality has been tied to pederastic relationships between adults and youths. The first point, of course, is laughably irrelevant; "lolitas" and "barely-legal teens" are at least as common in straight pornography as young men are in the homoerotic variety. An interest in youth is hardly exclusive to homosexuals. The second point, however, needs to be examined a bit more closely. Pederastic relationships, which involve postpubescent males, were indeed common though much of the ancient world, and in fact are still seen in some cultures today. But pedophilia, which technically refers only to sexual relationships with prepubescent children, has been almost universally condemned. This distinction is important in light of the fact that in most cultures, puberty has been seen as the start of adulthood, for both young men and young women. The same societies which expected boys in their mid teens to become involved sexually with older men as part of a pederastic mentoring process also considered girls of that age to be ready for marriage. Sexual activity between adults and what we in the modern Western world would consider children was not unique to homosexual relationships; indeed, it was probably even more common among heterosexuals. The prevalence of pederastic relationships in many cultures of the ancient world no more links pedophilia to homosexuality than the prevalence of "child brides" in those same cultures links it to heterosexuality. Homosexuality in Asia The Middle East: The cultures of the Middle East were extensively Hellenized in the centuries following the conquests of Alexander the Great, and ritual pederastic traditions based on those of the Greeks survived in those cultures for much longer than they did in the Roman Empire. Such traditions are reflected in Islamic teaching, which expects that men will be more attracted to beautiful boys than to beautiful women, even while exhorting them to resist the temptations they present. It is related that the Prophet Muhammad himself enjoined his followers in the early seventh century to "beware of beardless youth, for they are a greater source of mischief than young maidens." Chaste manifestations of pederastic attraction were incorporated into Islamic mysticism (Sufism) as a meditation known in Arabic as nazar ill'al-murd, "contemplation of the beardless," and in Persian as shahed-bazi, "witness play." This was an act of worship intended to help one ascend to the absolute beauty that is God through the relative beauty that is a boy. Conservative Islamic theologians condemned the custom both on theological grounds, rejecting the idea that human beings can realize themselves in love more perfectly than in religious practices, and on practical grounds, noting that nazar was frequently anything but chaste. Nazar was denounced as rank heresy in the early fourteenth century by Ibn Taymiyya, who complained, "They kiss a slave boy and claim to have seen God!" Despite opposition from clerics, though, the practice survived in many Islamic countries almost to the present day. Non-sublimated pederastic relationships were also widespread, and are widely documented in poetry, literature and art, including in The Book of One Thousand and One Nights, a collection of traditional Persian, Arabic and Indian stories first compiled in the ninth century. The poetry of Abu Nuwas in the late eighth and early ninth centuries, Omar Khayyám's quatrains in the twelfth century, "The Rose Garden" (1258) by Sa'adi and the ghazals written by Hafez in the fourteenth century all celebrate pederastic love, as do the paintings and drawings of artists such as Reza Abbasi in the early seventeenth century. The notoriety of the Persians for boyish pleasures was such that in the late eighteenth century, Sir Richard Francis Burton referred to pederasty as "the Persian vice." China: Chinese culture has a tradition of acceptance of bisexuality and pederasty even older than that of the Greeks, though men who had only male lovers were generally less accepted, as the begetting of children, especially sons, was a very important duty for a man in traditional Chinese society. The first law criminalizing male homosexuality in China was not passed until 1740, after Jesuit Christian missionaries had gained considerable influence. Many Chinese emperors, including nearly all of the emperors of the Western Han dynasty (206 BC to 9 AD) are known to have had male lovers. It is said that Emperor Ai, who ruled from 6 BC to 1 AD, once cut off his sleeve rather than wake up his lover, Dong Xian, who was sleeping across it. This story gave rise to the term "the passion of the cut sleeve" as a Chinese term for homosexual love. In the tenth century, in the province of Fujian, pederastic couples were actually married. These "boy marriages" would last for a set period, after which the younger partner would find a wife, often with the help of the older one. The marriages were celebrated by the two families in traditional fashion, and their popularity gave rise to another euphemistic expression for same-sex love in China, "the southern custom." Men's sexual interest in youths was also reflected in prostitution, with young male sex workers fetching higher prices than their female counterparts as recently as the beginning of the twentieth century. Lesbian marriages were celebrated in the Guangdong region of China during the later part of the Qing or Manchu dynasty (1616-1912). Though the origin of the custom is unknown, these marriages, which were treated in all respects as heterosexual marriages and which were expected to be life-long commitments, continued to be celebrated until early in the twentieth century. Japan: Homosexuality has been recorded from ancient times in Japan, and indeed, during the medieval period, love between men was viewed as the purest form of love. Sex has historically been viewed in Japan not in terms of morality, but rather in terms of pleasure, social position and social responsibility; homosexuality has never been seen as a sin in Japanese society or religion. Even today, despite the influence of Western thought on its culture and attitudes, Japanese law still includes no specific prohibitions against same-sex activity. Some of the earliest references to homosexuality in Japanese literature date from the Heian Period. In the eleventh-century The Tale of Genji, often considered the world's first novel, men are frequently moved by the beauty of youths. Buddhist monasteries appear to have been early centers of homosexual activity in ancient Japan, but same-sex love spread from religious circles to the warrior class. By the fifteenth century, it was customary for a young samurai to apprentice to an older and more experienced man, in a practice which closely paralleled European pederasty. The young samurai would be his mentor's lover for many years. The practice was known as shudo, "the way of the young," and was held in high esteem by the warrior class. As Japanese society became pacified, the middle classes adopted many of the practices of the warrior class. Shudo was given a more mercantile interpretation. Young kabuki actors, known as kagema, became the rage. These male actors moonlighted as prostitutes, and frequently used the stage to advertise their charms. They were much sought after by wealthy patrons, who would vie with each other to purchase their favors. As European influence in Japan increased, however, the practice of shudo fell out of favor. Homosexuality Among the Early Christians Some modern scholars, most notably John Boswell, have argued that the early Christian Church actually sanctioned same-sex unions. Ancient prayer-books in both the Eastern and Western Churches contain, alongside heterosexual marital rites, rites of adelphopoiesis, Greek for "the making of brothers." While many scholars assert that they were merely rites of becoming adopted brothers or "blood brothers," Boswell and others have claimed that the rites were in fact no different that the heterosexual rites, and were intended for the making and blessing of sexual unions. Though Boswell's evidence is impressive, his conclusions remain controversial. However, even scholars who disagree with the idea that the early Church sanctioned homosexual unions generally concede that it did not actively persecute homosexuals. Several pairs of early Christian martyrs are widely believed to have been same-sex couples, including St. Perpetua and St. Felicia, who were martyred in Carthage, and St. Sergius and St. Bacchus, who were martyred in Rome. As well, St. Sebastian, another martyr in Rome, has long been associated with homosexuality and with homosexual causes. It has been speculated that St. Paul of Tarsus (Paul the Apostle) might have been romantically involved with St. Timothy, and it has even been suggested, though the idea is of course extremely controversial, that Jesus himself might have been involved in a same-sex relationship with St. John the Evangelist, the "Beloved Disciple." Whatever the status of homosexuality in the early Church, though, the beginnings of Christian persecution of homosexuality were clearly tied to the rise of Christianity as the official state religion of the Roman Empire. In 313, the Edict of Milan was signed under the reigns of Constantine I in the east and Licinius in the west. The edict established tolerance for Christianity throughout the Roman Empire, but did not yet make it the official state religion. After the Edict was proclaimed, however, the Christian Church rapidly became very influential amongst the ruling classes of the Empire, and its bishops were established in positions of power and influence. Christianity became the single official religion of Rome less than a century later, under Theodosius, the last emperor to rule (from 379 to 395) a united Roman Empire. The power of the Christian Church was demonstrated in 390, when St. Ambrose excommunicated Theodosius, who had ordered the massacre of several thousand inhabitants of Thessalonica in response to the assassination of his military governor stationed in the city. Theodosius was forced to perform several months of public penance before the excommunication was revoked. While Christianity flourished, though, the Empire was by no means uniformly Christian. Paganism remained a significant influence in many areas, a fact which Christian leaders saw as an obstacle to their proselytizing. During Theodosius' reign, and with his approval, pagan temples throughout the empire were destroyed and replaced with Christian churches. Additionally, the Christian Church began usurping pagan customs and celebrations for their own use. As another tactic in the war against paganism, during the fifth century, Christian leaders began to argue for the suppression of pederasty, as it was one of the mainstays of classical pagan culture. This campaign was rationalized by quotations from the Old Testament, most notably the Levitical condemnation of homosexual activity, and by appeals to long-standing Israelite tradition. The writings of St. Augustine of Hippo, who in spite of having had at least one male lover in his own youth, argued persuasively against homosexual and all other non-procreative sex acts, were of substantial influence. The Christian Church thus came to officially regard homosexuality, which not long before it had tolerated, if not embraced, as sin, and homosexuals as sinners.     [ Ancient ] [ 533-1861 ] [ 1862-1968 ] [ 1969-1980 ] [ 1981-1995 ] [ 1996-2006 ] [ Notes ]     533-1861 SUMMARY: A MILLENIUM OF PERSECUTION By the beginning of the sixth century, under the Church's influence, civil authorities throughout Europe and the Byzantine Empire began criminalizing homosexual acts. Through at least the twelfth century, though, prosecution by both civil and religious authorities remained erratic, as a number of Popes and state leaders were openly homosexual, and as the Church was trying to impose a ban prohibiting priests from marrying, for which the support of homosexual priests was important. But by the late medieval period, "sodomites" (a term coined in the eleventh century) had become the targets of widespread, organized persecution. And as Western influence spread, so did that persecution, into Africa, Asia and the Americas. 533 In his codification of Roman law, Emperor Justinian of the Byzantine (Eastern Roman) Empire placed homosexual acts in the same category as adultery, and put them for the first time under civil authority. In a 538 revision of the Justinian Code, homosexuality was criminalized for the first time under Roman law, and possibly for the first time under secular law anywhere in the world. "Because of such crimes there are famines, earthquakes, and pestilences; wherefore we admonish men to abstain from the aforesaid unlawful acts, that they may not lose their souls.... We order the prefect of the capital to... inflict on them the extreme punishments, so that the city and the state may not come to harm by reason of such wicked deeds." A great plague struck Constantinople in 541, wiping out more than a third of the population over the next three years. The emperor and the Church believed that this proved his predictions of the dangers posed by homosexuality. In a 544 revision of the Code, the emperor reminded his citizens that, "Though we stand always in need of the kindness and goodness of God, yet is this specially the case at this time, when in various ways we have provoked him to anger on account of the multitude of our sins.... We ought to abstain from all base concerns and acts -- and especially... the defilement of males which some men sacrilegiously and impiously dare to attempt, perpetrating vile acts with other men." Homosexuals were urged to desist and seek forgiveness through penance. The recalcitrant were turned over to the city prefect; their penalty was death. Justinian and his wife, the Empress Theodora, used the law to attack enemies and to enrich themselves through the confiscation of property. In the process, homosexuals became enemies of the state. 634 King Reccesvinth, the ruler of Visigoth Spain, passed legislation penalizing homosexual behavior, stipulating castration as the penalty. This was the first European secular law to criminalize it. 741 The Edoques, a legal handbook, was issued by Emperor Leo III and his son, Constantine V. It remained the major code of secular law in the East for the next several centuries. It ameliorated the penalty of Byzantine civil law for homosexual behavior from death to mutilation. 955 John XII, Pope from 955 to 963, modeled himself after the third-century Roman emperor Elagabalus, and held homosexual orgies in the papal palace. 1049 The term "sodomy" was coined by Pietro Damiani (Peter Damian) in his Liber Gomorrhianus, in which he attacked homosexual practices and masturbation. Pietro also staunchly opposed clerical marriages. 1093 St. Anselm, Archbishop of Canterbury from 1093 to 1109, though committed to celibacy, wrote romantic love letters to his former companions in the Benedictine monastery of Bec in Normandy, indicating his yearning and frustrated desire. 1120 The Church Council of Nablus specified burning at the stake as the penalty for homosexual acts. 1123 The first Lateran Council in Rome declared clerical marriages invalid. Contemporaries pointed out that homosexual priests were more likely to enforce the prohibition. 1157 St. Aelred, Abbot of Rievaulx, celebrated intimate friendship in On Spiritual Friendship. He explored the relation between spiritual and human friendship in a monastic context, revealing his own conscious homosexual orientation and giving love between persons of the same gender its most profound expression in Christian theology. He encouraged virginity among the unmarried and chastity (not necessarily abstinence) in marriage and widowhood, and warned against any sexual activity outside of marriage, treating same-sex and opposite-sex attraction as equally likely and equally dangerous to the person sworn to celibacy. 1179 The third Lateran Council decreed degradation and confinement within a monastery for clerics guilty of sodomy, and excommunication for laymen. 1212 In Paris, the penalty for sodomy was fixed at death. This was the first secular law to criminalize sodomy since the Spanish Visagoth law of 654, and was the first in Europe to prescribe the death penalty. 1233 The papacy accused the forces of the Holy Roman Empire, with which it was fighting, of sodomy, and enlisted the aid of the newly-founded Franciscan and Dominican orders (who were then directing the Inquisition in southern France) to denounce the supporters of Emperor Frederick II of heresy, sodomy and other offenses against morality. 1266 With the end of the conflict between the papacy and the empire, the Inquisition returned to attacking political opponents as heretics, sodomites and adulterers. 1292 John de Wettre, a knife-maker, was burned at the stake for sodomy after being condemned at Ghent, in present-day Belgium. His was the first execution for sodomy in Western Europe for which records still exist. 1307 On Friday, October 13, some 2,000 Knights Templar, probably all of the members of the order in France, were simultaneously arrested by agents of Philip the Fair. Under torture, they confessed to worshipping idols, plotting against the Pope and the King, and engaging in obscene practices, including sodomy. When the Templars faced the tribunals of the Inquisition, under the control of Pope Clement V, their leaders withdrew their confessions, and for doing so, were executed. Pressed by Philip, the Pope ordered all Christian princes to arrest the Templars. While the charges of widespread homosexuality among the Templars may well have been true, Philip's real motive for attacking them was to plunder their vast treasuries and to break their considerable power. 1431 Joan of Arc was burned at the stake for heresy. Among her "crimes" were cross-dressing and inappropriate relationships with women. 1432 In Florence, city officials founded "Gli Ufficiali di Notte" (The Officers of the Night) to root out the practice of sodomy. By the beginning of the sixteenth century, over 17,000 men of Florence had been charged with sodomy, and over 3,000 had been convicted. The prevalence of sodomy and pederasty in Renaissance Florence is perhaps best conveyed by the fact that the Germans later adopted the word "florenzen" to describe the act of having relations with a youth. 1471 Shortly after being elected Pope, Sixtus IV appointed his lover as a cardinal. 1474 In Florence, a charge of sodomy was brought against the 22 year-old Leonardo da Vinci following an anonymous accusation, but after he had spent two months in jail and endured intense questioning by police, he was acquitted, as no witnesses had come forward. By this time, persecution of sodomites was becoming common throughout Italy, France and Spain. 1497 In Venice, Timeotoda Lucca of the Order of the Observants of St. Francis gave a speech at the Church on San Marco in which he blamed a plague terrorizing the city on sodomites. 1507 Article 141 of the Constitutio Criminalis Bambergenis, the criminal code of the German city of Bamberg, contained a prohibition of sodomy of a human being with a beast, a man with a man, or a woman with a woman. This was the first appearance of sodomy as a crime within German law. 1512 On August 31, in Florence, a group of 30 young aristocrats staged history's first gay rights demonstration by charging into City Hall, forcing a senior justice official to resign, and demanding that the council revoke the sentences of all those who had been exiled or deprived of office for sodomy. Remarkably, after a palace coup by the Medici family two weeks later, those demands were actually acceded to. 1513 The Spanish explorer Balboa encountered homosexuality among the chiefs at Quarqua in Panama. A contemporary British account reported that "the most abhominal and unnaturall lechery" was practiced by "the Kynges brother and many other younger men in womens apparell, smoth and effeminately decked, which by the report of such as dwelte aboute hym, he abused with preposterous Venus." To keep "this stynkynge abhomination" from spreading, Balboa turned to the expediency of throwing 40 of these men to be torn apart by his dogs. Many similar observations by a multitude of European explorers followed during the next 300 years, making it clear that homosexuality and transgenderism were readily accepted among Native Americans. (Indeed, "two-spirit men," males who from an early age heeded a calling to take on female gender with all its responsibilities, were prized as wives by other men, and were respected as being especially powerful shamans.) Of course, in the eyes of the Europeans, this toleration of sodomy and crossdressing merely proved that the natives were, indeed, savages desperately in need of help. 1532 Section 116 of the Constitution of Charles V, Emperor of the Holy Roman Empire, stated that "if anyone commits impurity with a beast, or a man with a man, or a woman with a woman, they have forfeited their lives and shall, after the common custom, be sentenced to death by burning." The Constitution represented a culmination of the work to codify the penal code of the Holy Roman Empire begun at the Diet of Freiberg in 1498, and formally adopted by the Diet in Regensburg in 1532. The Carolinian constitution had a great impact on future European penal law, not only in the German states, but also in France and Russia, and brought sodomy under secular jurisdiction for the first time in much of the Germanic and Slovak portions of the empire. 1533 The Buggery Act was adopted in England. Introduced by Henry VIII, and piloted through Parliament by Thomas Cromwell, it was the first legislation against homosexuals in the country, and became the basis for American as well as British law on the subject. The act made "buggery" with man or beast punishable by hanging, though in practice, sentences were frequently commuted to exposure in the pillory. The act was never prosecuted as aggessively as were similar laws in other European states. The artist Michelangelo wrote to Tommaso Cavalieri, the great love of his life, "I could as easily forget your name as the food by which I live; nay, it would be easier to forget the food, which only nourishes my body, than your name, which nourishes both body and soul." Michelangelo wrote a great many love letters and ardent love poems to Cavalieri, and also sent him a series of erotic drawings, the most famous of which depicts Zeus, disguised as an eagle, abducting the young Ganymede. In the drawing, the eagle presses its body tightly against the back of the smiling, pliant Ganymede. 1540 Lord Hungerford of Heyetsbury became the first person executed for violation of England's Buggery Act, though it is likely that the real reason for his execution was treason. 1541 Nicholas Udall, a cleric, playwright, and Headmaster of Eton College, became the first person to be charged for violation of the Buggery Act alone. His sentence was commuted to imprisonment, and he was released in less than a year. 1551 Pope Julius III created a scandal by picking up a young, uneducated hustler and appointing him to the rank of cardinal. 1566 In Florida, then under Spanish rule, Guillermo, a French interpreter, was accused of being a traitor and "a great Sodomite." His was the first recorded execution for sodomy in North America. 1568 Felipe II of Spain ordered the death of all sodomites in his realms. His reign, which lasted until 1598, was extremely oppressive. In Sicily, which was under Felipe's control, however, there was a tradition of tolerance for male-male sexuality, and local authorities resisted his orders and succeeded in handing down lesser sentences in a great many cases. 1605 The Jesuit missionary Matteo Ricci included an engraving of the destruction of Sodom in his essay in Chinese on "Depraved Sexuality," introducing Western attitudes towards homosexuality to China. 1610 The Virginia colony adopted the "buggery" laws of England, making sex between two men a capital crime. This was the first "anti-sodomy" law enacted in North America. By the time of the Revolutionary War, such laws existed throughout the colonies. (Adultery was also a capital crime under Virginia law.) 1629 The acting governor of Virginia, John Pott, heard testimony in the matter of Thomas/Thomasina Hall, who claimed to be both male and female, and who had at various times (both before and after coming to Virginia) dressed and worked both as a man and as a woman. Pott concluded that Hall was a true hermaphrodite, and so ruled that he/she should "goe Clothed in mans apparell, only his head to bee attired in a Coyfe and Croscloth wth an Apron before him." Thus was the confused and probably deeply unhappy Hall condemned to endure daily derision. 1634 The Irish House of Commons passed a law modeled on the British Buggery Act. John Atherton, Bishop of Lismore and Waterford, was the driving force behind its passage, and ironically, seven years later, became the first to be hanged for violating it. It is likely, however, that he was not in fact guilty, but was instead the victim of a conspiracy. 1637 A Plymouth colony court tried John Allexander and Thomas Roberts for "often spending their seed one upon the other." Both were found guilty and were severely whipped, and Allexander was branded on the shoulder and banished from the colony. Although the colony had made sodomy punishable by death the previous year, that penalty required penetration, which had not been proven in this case. 1642 In Salem, Massachusetts Bay, Elizabeth Johnson was fined five pounds and severely whipped for several offenses, among them "unnatural acts" with another woman. 1646 In the New Netherlands colony, Jan Creoli, a Negro, was "choked to death, and then burnt to ashes" for sodomy. (It was his second offense.) Manuel Congo, the 10 year-old boy whom Creoli allegedly sodomized, received a public flogging. 1649 Mary Hammon and Sara Norman were charged with "lude behavior... upon a bed" in Plymouth, Massachusetts. Charges against the 16 year-old Hammon were dropped, but Norman was forced to publicly acknowledge her unchaste behavior, and was warned that if there were any subsequent offenses, her punishment would be greater. (The death penalty in Plymouth applied only to sex between men.) Norman is believed to have been the first woman in North America to have been tried and punished solely for lesbianism. 1653 With Oliver Cromwell's rise to power following the beheading of Charles I, executions for sodomy and adultery in England became significantly more common. 1656 The Puritans in New Haven passed a law that punished by death "men lying with men as with women" and women changing "the natural use, into that which is against nature." The law broke from British legal tradition by explicitly citing the Bible as its basis. It was also unique in colonial legislation for its inclusion of women's "unnatural acts." 1658 In Mexico, 14 men were burned to death, and one was given 200 lashes, after having been convicted of sodomy. Four years later, a leader of the Mexican Inquisition sent a letter to his supervisors in Spain complaining that the severe punishments being given to sodomites had proven "ineffective." He noted that over 100 had been indicted, that a large number of the offenders were clergy, and that torture had been used to extract confessions. (One man had been tortured to the point of confessing to sex with forty men, three or four mules and two or three chickens.) 1668 The representative assembly of New Jersey made sodomy a capital crime. Exceptions were made for victims of rape and for those under 14; they could not be executed, but could be sentenced to whatever other punishment the court deemed appropriate. Three years later, the General Court of the Plymouth Colony added sodomy to its list of capital offenses, with similar exceptions. 1682 The Province of Pennsylvania, under a strong Quaker influence, repealed a 1676 law which had made sodomy a capital offense. Under the province's new law, a sodomy conviction resulted only in six months imprisonment, whipping, and the forfeiture of one third of the convict's assets. It was the first American colony to show such leniency. The revision made the province one of only two in North America where a man could not be put to death for sodomy. In West New Jersey, also a Quaker colony, no "anti-sodomy" law had yet been put into effect. 1692 In Massachusetts Bay colony, the Salem witch trials resulted in at least 25 executions. 1700 A new law concerning sodomy was passed by the Pennsylvania assembly. If committed by a white man, sodomy was punishable by life in prison with, at the discretion of the judge, a whipping every three months for the first year. If he was married, the man was castrated and his wife was granted a divorce. If committed by a black man, however, the punishment for sodomy was death. (Such distinctions based on the race of the offender were common throughout the colonies.) 1706 Peter the Great issued a new military legal code based on Sweden's military code. The first Russian law to penalize consensual male homosexuality, it prescribed burning at the stake for sodomy, though it is not known to have ever been enforced. A 1716 revision prescribed corporal punishment, reserving the death penalty for rape or use of violence. The code applied only to the military. Peter himself was reputedly bisexual. 1708 Edward Hyde, Lord Cornbury, was withdrawn as Governor of New York and New Jersey. He was widely reputed to have been a crossdresser, though he is not believed to have been a homosexual. Anne Horton and Alice Pickford were married in England, one of two female couples whose marriages were registered in the parish of Taxal, Cheshire. 1718 The British forced Pennsylvania to bring its laws into compliance with British legal tradition, and so sodomy was made a capital offense. 1725 In England, undercover police officer Samuel Stephens entered Mother Clapp's molly house (a meeting place for gay men) to gather evidence for a raid. He observed men kissing, holding hands, hugging, sitting in each other's laps and dancing, and noted that there were rooms where men could go to have sex. His report led to the arrest of Mother Clapp, who was fined and sentenced to two years in prison. 1726 In England, Gabriel Lawrence, William Griffin and Thomas Wright were hanged after being arrested during a raid on Margaret Brown's molly house. George Kedger, another man who had been sentenced to death, was spared when a judge overturned his conviction. 1727 In England, Charles Hitchin, a policeman and crime lord, and a regular at several molly houses, was turned in by a remorseful partner. He was found guilty of attempted sodomy and fined 20 pounds, sentenced to six months in prison, and forced to stand in the pillory. After he was put in the pillory, several of his friends from the molly houses attempted to protect him from the crowd. The crowd attacked them, and a bloody battle resulted. It was the earliest recorded act of gay resistance. 1729 In Prussia, a baker named Ephraim Ostermann was sentenced to death after confessing to fellating another man, Martin Kohler. When Kohler died soon after, his death was attributed to unnatural loss of semen. 1730 In Amsterdam, four men were arrested for sodomy. All of them confessed and were executed, but not before one of them, Pieter Martijn, had given the court the names of 40 other men whom he accused of being sodomites. Fearing divine retribution, Dutch officials launched an unprecedented campaign to eliminate sodomites from the Netherlands. Far more aggressive than their contemporaries in England and France, over the next 80 years, they convicted nearly 600 men of sodomy, and executed more than 50. Dutch law left the method of execution to the discretion of judges, but the most common method was garroting (strangulation with a thin wire or rope), because it was a typical method of executing women. 1740 The Qing (Manchu) government enacted a male rape law, and for the first time in Chinese history, outlawed homosexual acts between consenting males. 1748 Stating what now seems obvious, the French philosopher, Montesquieu, warned in his "The Spirit of Laws" that charges of sodomy, like charges of heresy or witchcraft, could easily be used for political ends. 1775 The first battles of the American Revolutionary War were fought. 1776 In America, the "Declaration of Independence" was signed. In the Netherlands, in the wake of the new wave of persecutions, an anonymous tract attributed to Abraham Perrenot, legal advisor to William V of Orange, defended homosexuals as being of little harm to society, and argued that homosexuality should only be considered a crime when committed with underage boys. 1777 Thomas Jefferson, in a move seen as liberal at the time, proposed a revision of Virginia law to reduce the penalty for sodomy from death to castration. The proposal was rejected. In England, Ann Marrow was found guilty of impersonating a man in marriage and was sentenced to the pillory, where she was so severely pelted that she was blinded. 1778 Lieutenant Frederick Gorthold Enslin became the first American soldier to be court-martialed and discharged from the newly-formed Continental Army for "attempting to commit sodomy." 1783 After almost two years of service in the Fourth Massachusetts Regiment of the Continental Army and several combat wounds, Robert Shirtliff was discovered to actually be Deborah Sampson, a descendant of Governor William Bradford. She was given an honorable discharge, and later recieved a military pension. She was excommunicated from the First Baptist Church of Middleborough, Massachusetts, for "dressing in men's clothes" and behaving "very loose and unchristianlike." Though she had formed attachments with several women during her time as "Robert," she later married a man, with whom she had three children. 1786 Pennsylvania became the first of the 13 American states to drop the death penalty for sodomy. The new sentence was 10 years in prison and the forfeiture of all property. The liberalism of Pennsylvania's legislature did not reflect a new-found sympathy for sodomites, but rather, a general liberalization of the legal code the young United States had inherited from England. Other states eventually followed Pennsylvania's example, though convicted sodomites could be sentenced to death in South Carolina until 1873. 1789 The U.S. Constitution officially went into effect, and George Washington became the first U.S. President. 1791 In the United States, the Bill of Rights was ratified. In France, Louis Michel le Peletier, de Saint-Fargeau presented a new criminal code to the National Constituent Assembly. He explained that it outlawed only "true crimes" and not "phoney offenses, created by superstition, feudalism, the tax system, and [royal] despotism." He did not list the crimes "created by superstition" (meaning the Christian religion), but these certainly included blasphemy, heresy, sacrilege and witchcraft, and most probably also included incest, bestiality and same-sex sexual acts, none of which was mentioned in the new Code Penal. All these former offenses were thus effectively decriminalized. 1794 Prussia became the first country in Europe to rescind the death penalty for sodomy without decriminalizing it, replacing the penalty with imprisonment and banishment. 1803 The last known execution for sodomy in the Netherlands occurred in the town of Schiedan, near Rotterdam. 1804 In France, the Napoleonic Code was adopted. Following the example of the Code Penal, it punished sexual acts only when someone's rights were injured, as in the case of a non-consensual act. This effectively legalized homosexuality. (Jean Jacques Régis de Cambacérès, the primary author of the Napoleonic Code, was himself a homosexual.) 1810 Chevalier Charles-Genevieve Louis-Auguste-Andre-Timothee d'Eon de Beaumont, whose gender was a source of considerable controversy during his lifetime, died. He had lived 49 years as a man and 34 as a woman. An aristocrat, diplomat, soldier and spy, d'Eon had worked for the French government in both male and female roles, exhibiting a chameleon-like ability to change from man to woman and back again. In 1762, after being wounded in battle, he had been offered a diplomatic assignment at the British royal court. (French king Louis XV had congratulated him on his new post in a letter in which he wrote, "You have served me just as well in women's clothing as you have in the clothes you are now wearing.") While serving in London, his slight build and pretty features had led many to believe that he was really a crossdressed woman, and people in both England and France had begun placing wagers on his sex. King Louis XV had finally sent a letter to George III of England to settle the matter, stating that d'Eon was a woman. Rather than calming public doubts, though, this had created an even greater frenzy. Lawsuits had been filed by losing bettors, and doctors had been called in to testify. Finally, d'Eon had officially been declared a woman by an English court. The chevalier had responded to this public humiliation with dignity and defiance, writing to a friend, "I am what the hands of God have made me." In exchange for his agreement to live quietly as a woman, d'Eon had been granted a generous pension by the French government. When d'Eon died, five men who had known him were asked to examine the body and record their observations, in order to definitively settle the question of the chevalier's sex. All five men testified that the body was anatomically male. Nicholas Biddle, a member of the Lewis and Clark expedition, recorded that "among Minitarees [Indians] if a boy shows any symptoms of effeminacy or girlish inclinations he is put among the girls, dressed in their way, brought up with them & sometimes married to men. The French called them Birdashes." 1811 In an account of events at Fort Astoria in the Oregon Territory, Gabriel Franchere made the first written reference to a female berdache, from the Kutenai Indian nation, who dressed as a man and was accompanied by a wife. 1836 The last execution in England for "buggery" took place, although it remained a capital offense until 1861. 1848 The first Women's Rights Convention was held in Seneca Falls, New York. This convention propelled several probable lesbian and bisexual women into the national limelight, most notably Susan B. Anthony. 1849 In one of the first experiments to demonstrate the effect of hormones on sexuality, Arnold Adolf Berthold, professor of physiology at the University of Gottingen, removed the testicles from four roosters. Two became "fat pacifists," while the other two, in whom he had grafted new testicles, began to act like normal roosters again. 1860 Walt Whitman published the first of his homoerotic "Calamus" poems in the third edition of Leaves of Grass, inspiring many later gay poets. 1861 Abraham Lincoln became President of the United States, the Confederate States of America was established under President Jefferson Davis, and the U.S. Civil War began. In England, the Offenses Against the Person Act reduced the penalty for buggery from death to imprisonment of 10 years to life. This was a part of an ongoing process of removing numerous crimes from the category of capital offenses, and did not reflect any particular interest in sodomy, per se.     [ Ancient ] [ 533-1861 ] [ 1862-1968 ] [ 1969-1980 ] [ 1981-1995 ] [ 1996-2006 ] [ Notes ]     1862-1968 SUMMARY: THE CENTURY BEFORE STONEWALL In the late nineteenth century, there was for the first time in centuries a fundamental change in the way that homosexuality was viewed by Western society. A growing number of doctors, beginning to understand homosexuality as an orientation rather than simply as a behavior, argued that it ought to be considered a disease or pathology rather than a crime or sin. (A few actually went so far as to argue that it was just a normal and healthy variation of human sexuality, but their view was largely ignored.) At the same time, traditional gender roles in the Western world were being seriously challenged for the first time. The so-called "New Women" sought self-determination and self-fulfillment, refusing to be defined solely as daughters, wives or mothers, and displaying a "masculine" thirst for education and work. Meanwhile, the dandies or aesthetes, such as Oscar Wilde and other "decadent" artists and writers, embraced such "feminine" values as attention to style, extravagance and artificiality. These languorous men, many of them (unlike Wilde) heterosexuals, were the forefather's of today's "metrosexuals." In a practical sense, though, nothing really changed at all. Homosexuals were still ostracized by society, and most still had to hide lest they be discovered and punished. The world's first homosexual rights organization, the Scientific Humanitarian Committee, was founded in Berlin by Magnus Hirschfeld in 1897. Hirschfeld went on to found the Institute of Sexology following the end of the first World War, where groundbreaking work was done in the investigation of bisexuality and transgender issues, and where the earliest complete sex-reassignment surgeries were performed. Most of Hirschfeld's work was lost, though, when the Nazis destroyed the Institute and burned the library in 1933. Thousands -- perhaps tens of thousands -- of gay men subsequently died or were murdered in Nazi concentration camps. However, while homosexuals and others who violated the standards of "correct" gender behavior suffered their most blatant persecution in the twentieth century at the hands of the Nazis in Germany, a much more subtle and pervasive persecution had already begun and was continuing in the United States. Even as the women's rights and civil rights movements were bringing the need for equality into the open and were producing legislation aimed at giving women and minorities the same rights enjoyed by white males, homosexuals were being pushed further into the shadows. In the wake of the "Lavender Scare" fomented by Joseph McCarthy in the early 1950s, gays and lesbians in America were denied even basic legal protections. By the late 1960s, the situation had become a proverbial "powder keg," awaiting only a catalyst event to trigger an explosive reaction. 1862 Pioneer sexologist Karl-Heinrich Ulrichs, who had worked as an official legal adviser for the district court of Hildesheim in the Kingdom of Hanover before being dismissed when his homosexuality became apparent, took the momentous step of telling his family and friends that he was, using his own word, a "Uranian." ("Uranian" comes from the Greek "uranos" [heaven], and is a reference to Plato's theory of the two gods of love: Pandemian [vulgar] Eros, who governs heterosexual love, and Uranian [heavenly] Eros, who governs love between men.) He also wrote a statement of legal and moral support for a man arrested for homosexual offenses. This was the first public "coming out" and one of the first recorded examples of gay rights activism. Two years later, he published the first of his studies on homosexuality, in which he argued that homosexuality, hermaphroditism and bisexuality were the work of nature, and thus innate and unavoidable. 1865 President Abraham Lincoln was assassinated just before the end of the U.S. Civil War ended. 1867 Karl-Heinrich Ulrichs spoke out for the rights of homosexuals at the Congress of German Jurists in Munich, urging repeal of all anti-homosexual laws. He was shouted down. 1868 Pope Leo XIII discontinued the long-standing practice of castrating young boys for the choirs of the Sistine chapel. 1869 Hungarian psychologist Karl-Maria Kertbeny (born Karl-Maria Benkert) wrote a series of anonymous pamphlets in which he argued against the criminalization of homosexual sex and put forward the view that homosexuality was inborn and unchangeable. In the course of these writings, he introduced the terms "heterosexual" and "homosexual." (He had originally used the terms at least a year earlier in private correspondence with Karl-Heinrich Ulrichs.) 1870 Bayard Taylor's Joseph and His Friend, the first U.S. novel to touch on the subject of homosexuality, was published. The fifteenth amendment to the U.S. Constitution prohibited the states or the federal government from using a citizen's race, color or previous status as a slave as a voting qualification. Its basic purpose was to enfranchise former slaves. But it was not really until the Voting Rights Act was passed in 1965, almost a century later, that this purpose was actually achieved in all states. 1871 Paragraph 175 of the criminal code of the newly-created German Empire made homosexual acts between males a crime. 1873 South Carolina became the last of the original 13 U.S. states to rescind capital punishment for sodomy. 1881 E.C. Spitzka of New York presented the case of Lord Cornbury, the colonial governor of New York and New Jersey in the early 1700s, in a Chicago medical journal. Spitzka described Cornbury, who was reputed to have been a crossdresser, as a sexual pervert, "a degraded, hypocritical and utterly immoral being." 1882 William Hammond delivered a paper to the American Neurological Association on a "disease" which makes males believe themselves to be females. As an example, he told of Native Americans who lived as members of the opposite sex. 1883 The term "lesbian" appeared in print in its modern context for the first time, in an article about the crossdressing Lucy Ann Lobdell in the Alienist and Neurologist medical journal. 1884 An editorial in a New York medical journal said that "urnings" (a term coined by Karl-Heinrich Ulrichs to describe men who are attracted to other men) had an irrepressible desire to act like females, and that their "perverted feelings" led to insanity and suicide. The editorial reflected the growing sentiment that homosexuality should be moved from the criminal realm to the medical. 1885 The British Parliament enacted the Labouchere Amendment, which prohibited "gross indecency" between males, a broad term that was understood to encompass most or all male homosexual acts. (It is widely believed that lesbianism was omitted from the act because Queen Victoria refused to believe that it existed; however, it is more likely that those presenting the amendment omitted it for fear that criminalizing lesbianism would alert women to its possibility.) 1886 Borrowing Kertbeny's terminology, noted sexologist Richard von Krafft-Ebing listed homosexuality along with 200 other case studies of deviant sexual practices in his definitive work, Psycopathia Sexualis. The book was so influential that "heterosexual" and "homosexual" became the standard terms for the sexual orientations, superceding Ulrichs' term, "urning." A 21 year-old man identified only as J.M. was admitted to the Insane Department of the Philadelphia Hospital. Philip Leidy later wrote of the case as an example of sexual perversion because J.M. claimed that his name was Jane and that he was a girl, spoke in an effeminate voice, masturbated, and liked to fondle men with both his mouth and his hands. Annie Ryan married Annie Hindle, who gave her name as Charles Hindle, in Grand Rapids, Michigan. Gilbert Sarony, a female impersonator, was one of the witnesses. 1889 G. Frank Lydston gave a lecture at the Chicago College of Physicians and Surgeons in which he claimed that sexual perversion was a result of moral, physical and mental defect. He said that those who prefer their own sex are often effeminate and have an inferior physical make up, are likely to recognize one another and congregate together, and are more frequently male than female. Other sexual perversions he discussed included bestiality, and oral sex with a member of the opposite sex. The Denver Times ran a story about two women from Aspen who had come to Denver to elope. Clara Dietrich and Ora Chatfield were ordered by the sheriff to cease living together. They complied for a short time, but then arranged to meet and run away together. 1891 The word "homosexual" was introduced into the English language by J. A. Symonds in A Problem in Modern Ethics. The following year, Charles Gilbert Chaddock, the translator of Psychopathia Sexualis introduced "homosexuality" into the language. Charles Dana presented a paper on sexual neuroses at the New York Post-Graduate School of Medicine. Lumped together in this category were masturbation, same-sex attraction, pederasty, bestiality, flagellation, exhibitionism and sexual murder and cannibalism. 1892 Lord Alfred Douglas, Oscar Wilde's partner at the time, wrote the poem, "Two Loves," which ends with the famous line describing homosexuality as "the Love that dare not speak its name." 1893 F.E. Daniel, editor of The Texas Medical Journal, presented a paper which advocated the castration of male and female sexual perverts, including homosexuals, to prevent them from reproducing and passing on their traits. He also recommended that those convicted of such offenses be stripped of all rights. 1894 John Sholto Douglas, the ninth Marquess of Queensberry, wrote privately to his son Lord Alfred Douglas, complaining about Alfred's relationship with Oscar Wilde, which had begun in 1891. The elder Douglas then went on to publicly accuse Wilde of being a "somdomite," in response to which Wilde charged him with criminal libel. Their conflict led to Wilde's conviction and two-year imprisonment for "gross indecency." 1895 Oscar Wilde was imprisoned for "gross indecency" after a very public trial that raised the topic of homosexuality throughout the English-speaking world, and through most of Europe, as well. An article in The New York Times about intimacy between women stated that fidelity could not exist because "there are no Davids and Jonathans among women." The author claimed that fundamental antagonism existed between women, and it was in a woman's nature to lack humanity. 1896 For the first time on the American stage, two women hugged and kissed in a scene of the play, "A Florida Enchantment." Though the play was not lesbian in content, the scene was so controversial that during intermission, ushers offered ice water to any audience members who felt faint. (The play's story involved some of the characters swallowing magic seeds which transformed them into members of the opposite sex. It was described by The New York Times as vile and stupid, and the worst play ever produced in New York.) Sexual Inversion, the first English-language medical text book on homosexuality, was published by Havelock Ellis and John Addington Symonds. It described the sexual relations of homosexual men, something that Ellis, a British doctor, sexual psychologist and social reformer, did not consider to be a disease or a crime. A bookseller was prosecuted in 1897 for stocking it. Ellis' followup, Studies in the Psychology of Sex, was published in German to avoid British censorship. (The English term "sexual inversion" was a mistranslation of a German term that Karl Westphal, a respected German physician, professor, and journal editor, had coined in 1869. He had theorized that women and men whose sexual desires turn toward members of their own sex possess "contrary sexual feeling" and associated mental illnesses.) 1897 After working for several years as a general practitioner in Magdeburg, Germany, Magnus Hirschfeld (himself a gay man and occasional crossdresser, sometimes called "Auntie Magnesia," or later, "the Einstein of Sex") founded the Scientific Humanitarian Committee to defend the rights of homosexuals and to work toward repeal of Paragraph 175. It was the world's first homosexual rights organization. 1898 August Bebel, leader of the German Social-Democratic Party, argued on the floor of the Reichstag in favor of the repeal of Paragraph 175, the German "anti-sodomy" law. Bebel brought with him a petition circulated by the Scientific Humanitarian Committee, which he had signed. Other signers included finance minister Rudolf Hilferding, Albert Einstein, and author Hermann Hesse. Leo Tolstoy sent a letter in support of the petition. 1900 Sigmund Freud published The Interpretation of Dreams, his first major work detailing his ideas on psychoanalysis. Dealing as it did with sexual urges, psychoanalysis was frequently used in the treatment of homosexuality, and much discussion of psychoanalysis was devoted to the issue of homosexuality as a sexual disorder. Because homosexuals were classified as mentally ill, they were of course prevented from entering psychoanalytic training, and thus had no voice in the formation of psychoanalytical theory themselves. The rise of psychoanalysis popularised the idea of homosexuality as a disease, which in turn increased the number of homosexuals placed in mental hospitals and prisons. Researchers seeking a "cure" utilized a wide variety of therapies, including aversion therapy, nausea-producing drugs, castration, electric shock, brain surgery and breast amputation. None had any significant success rate. 1901 The death of Murray Hall revealed that the respected New York politician of over 30 years, who had married two women, was in fact one Mary Anderson. It is widely assumed that she was a lesbian who "passed" as a man, but it is also possible that she was transsexual, and saw herself as a man in spite of her female anatomy. 1903 In New York City, police conducted the first recorded raid on a gay bathhouse, the Ariston on West 55th Street. Twenty-six men were arrested, and twelve of them were brought to trial on sodomy charges. Seven received sentences ranging from four to twenty years in prison. 1906 William Lee Howard presented a paper to the American Association of Medical Examiners in Boston warning of the dangers of providing life insurance to male or female homosexuals. He said that they were prone to disease, abused drugs and alcohol, and that males especially detested any form of physical exercise. In an essay published in The St. Louis Medical Review titled "The Problem of Sexual Variants," T.H. Evans claimed that homosexuality was increasing, and that this was due to the decreased need for propagation of the species and to changes in the sexual division of labor which had had an impact on erotic interest. 1907 In Trinidad, Colorado, Katherine Vosbaugh died. She had lived as a man for 60 years, and had married a woman. Even after being hospitalized in 1905 for pneumonia and being discovered to be physically female, Vosbaugh had continued to live as a man, and was referred to by the nickname "Grandpa." (Ironically, Trinidad later came to be known as "the sex change capital of the world," as over half of the sex-reassignment operations in the U.S. during the 1970s and '80s were performed there.) 1909 The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) was founded. 1912 At Polly Halliday's restaurant in New York City, Heterodoxy, a feminist luncheon club for "unorthodox women," began meeting bimonthly. 1913 Colonel Alfred Redl, former chief of Austrian counterintelligence, committed suicide when it became known that he had been blackmailed, on account of his homosexuality, into working for Russia for the previous year. In 1950, the Redl affair was cited by U.S. senators as evidence of the security risk homosexuals posed. 1914 The earliest known reference to the word "fag" in print appeared in Jackson and Hellyer's A Vocabulary of Criminal Slang, with Some Examples of Common Usages. Under the word "drag," the following example was listed: "All the fagots (sissies) will be dressed in drag at the ball tonight." 1916 The Provincetown Playhouse, the first major off-Broadway theater, was founded in New York's Greenwich Village. Sir Roger Casement was hanged in England for treason. The evidence against him was so weak that there were pleas from all over the world asking for clemency, including from U.S. President Woodrow Wilson. To stop the demands, the British government released entries from Casement's diary showing that he was a homosexual. Calls for a reprieve came to an abrupt halt, and he was executed. 1917 The United States entered the Great War (World War I). The Immigration Act of 1917 excluded from immigration into the U.S. "persons of constitutional psychopathic inferiority." The wording was construed to include homosexuals. Following the Russian Revolution, the Bolshevik government removed all Tzarist laws, including those regulating sexual behavior. A book review of House-Mates by J.D. Beresford appeared in The New York Times. In the book, Wilfrid Hornby falls in love with Judith Carrington, but must compete with Helen Binstead for her affection. The reviewer stated that Helen's jealousy was a weak point in the plot, because such behavior would be highly improbable. 1919 The U.S. military revised the Articles of War to make sodomy a felony. Dispatching a squad of young enlisted men to act as decoys, the U.S. Navy, under the orders of Assistant Secretary of the Navy Franklin D. Roosevelt, initiated a search for "sexual perverts" at the Newport, Rhode Island, Naval Training Station. Twenty sailors and sixteen civilians were arrested. Following the end of World War I, Magnus Hirschfeld founded the Institute for Sexology in Berlin. The Institute housed his immense library on sex, and provided educational services and medical consultations. People from around Europe visited the Institute to gain a clearer understanding of their sexuality. The Institute also housed the Museum of Sex, an educational resource for the public which is reported to have been visited by school classes. Hirschfeld's work, which built upon that of Karl-Heinrich Ulrichs, in many ways anticipated Alfred Kinsey's. He was one of the first prominent European researchers to view homosexuality as a normal (and not particularly unusual) part of human sexual behavior. His investigations into bisexuality and transgender issues led to theories about a third, or "intermediate," sex, which conform well to modern research in biology. He invented the term "transvestite," and was one of the first researchers to recognize that crossdressers are frequently not homosexuals. The earliest complete sex-reassignment surgeries were performed at the Institute by Hirshfeld's colleagues, Ludwig Levy-Lenz and Felix Abraham. (One of their early patients, Lili Elbe, originally Einar Wegener, was the subject of a fictionalized biography, Man Into Woman, published in 1933.) Most of Hirschfeld's work was lost, though, when the Nazis destroyed the Institute and burned the library in 1933. Fortuitously, Hirschfeld himself was away from Germany on a world speaking tour at the time. He never returned to Germany, and died in exile in France in 1935. The first showing of the first gay liberation film, "Different From Other People," took place in Berlin. It was banned the following year. 1920 When an Episcopal clergyman was accused of soliciting homosexual contacts at the Newport, Rhode Island, YMCA, where he worked, protests by members of the Newport Ministerial Union and the Episcopal Bishop of Rhode Island, together with a campaign by The Providence Journal, forced the Navy to conduct a further inquiry into the methods used in uncovering homosexual activity at the Newport Naval Training Station. The investigation was critical of the methods used, but cleared the officers who ordered them of any wrongdoing. The ministers then turned to the Republican-controlled Senate Naval Affairs Committee, which investigated the charges. Their "Report on Alleged Immoral Conditions and Practices at the Naval Training Station, Newport," issued in l921, condemned the conduct of naval officers, including Assistant Secretary of the Navy Franklin D. Roosevelt, for the methods used to entrap homosexuals. The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) was founded. The nineteenth amendment to the U.S. Constitution, the so-called "Susan B. Anthony Amendment," extended the right to vote to women. 1921 The U.S. Army issued psychiatric screening regulations excluding men with feminine physical characteristics and "sexual perverts." These regulations remained in effect until just before World War II. Theatre des Eros, the first theater in the world devoted entirely to gay plays, was founded in Berlin. 1922 Canadian immigration authorities allowed the Irish lover of a Canadian citizen to immigrate legally. This was the first time in North America that a same-sex relationship was used as the basis for immigration. Sholom Asch's play, "The God of Vengeance," opened at the Provincetown Playhouse. It was the first play on an American stage to depict gay or lesbian characters, and created a furor when it premiered on Broadway the following year. Magnus Hirschfeld presented a petition to the Reichstag, urging the abolition of Paragraph 175. It was unsuccessful, though it was signed by such prominent intellectuals as Albert Einstein, Herman Hesse, Thomas Mann and Leo Tolstoy. 1923 A delegation of doctors from Russia viewed the gay rights film, "Different from Other People," in Berlin. They expressed surprise that such a film would be banned. During a speech by homosexual rights activist Magnus Hirschfeld in Vienna, Nazi youth stormed in. They hurled stink bombs and opened fire. Hirschfeld was unharmed, but many audience members were wounded. The U.S. Federal Government established the Uniform Marriage and Marriage License Act in an attempt to unify the marriage licensing laws which had been adopted by a number of states since the mid-1800s to limit or prevent interracial marriages. By 1929, every state in the union had marriage licensing laws conforming to the federal standards, and for the first time, every marriage, in order to be legally recognized by the U.S. government, had to be licensed. This was, arguably, the point at which marriage in America officially ceased to be primarily a religious matter, and became primarily a civil matter. 1924 The Society for Human Rights was founded in Chicago, dedicated to promoting and protecting the interests of people who, because of "mental and physical abnormalities," were hindered in the pursuit of happiness. This guarded attempt to found a homosexual rights organization in the United States failed when the society was forced to disband in less than a year due to police and media harassment. Members of the group were arrested for publishing an "obscene" paper, and Henry Gerber, its founder, lost his job as a postal clerk. 1926 "The Captive," a lesbian-themed play about a single woman's obsessive love for a married woman, opened on Broadway, starring Helen Menken, then the wife of Humphrey Bogart. It sparked such controversy that the cast members were at one point arrested and that the "Padlock" law was enacted the following year to prohibit Broadway plays (or any other plays in the state of New York) from depicting "sex perversion." Brooks Atkinson, a theater critic for The New York Times, referred to the woman-woman love as twisted, warped infatuation, loathsome and doomed. He described the woman who successfully challenged a man for possession of his wife as a monster who preyed on helpless victims. 1927 "The Drag," the first play with gay male content to be produced in the U.S., debuted in Connecticut on its way to Broadway. It was written and produced by Mae West, who said she wrote it to call attention to the great problem of homosexuality. She described gay men as perverts and mental prostitutes. 1928 Radclyffe Hall's classic lesbian novel The Well of Loneliness was published in France. A London judge found it obscene, and ordered all the copies which had been seized by British customs agents to be destroyed. Forty distinguished witnesses, including Rudyard Kipling, George Bernard Shaw and H.G. Wells, had appeared in court to testify in favor of the novel, but the judge had refused to hear any of them. 1929 New York publisher Covici-Friede was convicted of obscenity for publishing Radclyffe Hall's lesbian novel The Well of Loneliness. The conviction was appealed and overturned that same year. A statement was published by the Nazi party declaring that anyone who even thought of committing homosexual acts was an enemy of Germany. The first uncontested use of the word "gay" to refer to homosexuals appeared in Noel Coward's musical, "Bitter Sweet." The Great Depression began in the United States. 1930 In Hollywood, the Motion Picture Producers and Distributors of America introduced a self-regulatory code of movie ethics, nicknamed the Hays Code, which discouraged filmmakers from including depictions of sex and sexuality. The regulations became mandatory four years later. The words "homosexual" and "heterosexual" were used for the first time in The New York Times, in a book review of the lesbian novel That Other Love by Geoffrey Moss. 1932 In a book review of Sappho of Lesbos by Arthur Weigell, reviewer Florence Finch Kelly praised the author for focusing on the beauty of her poems and not condemning her by current morality standards. The reviewer explained that since the Greeks "had no sexual morals whatever," Sappho was merely a product of her environment. 1933 Hitler became Chancellor of Germany. His regime immediately banned all gay press. On May 6, the Nazis raided the Institute for Sexology, burning 12,000 books, periodicals and documents while a brass band played outside. (Among the irreplaceable items lost were unpublished manuscripts by Karl Ulrichs and Richard von Krafft-Ebing.) On that same day, libraries were ordered to remove and destroy all books with positive or neutral references to homosexuality. In July, Kurt Hiller, who had published the last of the irregular series of newsletters of the Scientific Humanitarian Committee in February, was arrested and sent to a concentration camp. The Nazis passed a law providing for "surgical castration as a therapy and crime prevention measure." Homosexuals were the major victims of this law. In the U.S.S.R., a revision of the Soviet penal code outlawed consensual homosexuality, reflecting the growing Stalinist repression. Maxim Gorki, writing in Pravda and Izvestia, called it a "triumph of proletarian humanitarianism," and warned that the legalization of homosexuality had been the main cause of Fascism in Germany. Mass arrests of gays followed in Moscow, Leningrad, Kharkov and Odessa. A large number of those arrested were actors, musicians or artists. Accused of engaging in "homosexual orgies," they received years of imprisonment or exile in Siberia. Denmark repealed its "anti-sodomy" law. Psychoanalyst A.A. Brill presented a paper on homosexuality and paranoia at a joint meeting of the American Psychiatric Association and the American Psychoanalytic Association in Boston. He stressed that homosexuality was part of the normal sexual instinct and plays a useful part in social relationships, and that homosexuality was only pathological when combined with adjustment difficulties. However, he also equated homosexuality with paranoia by saying that homosexuals experienced "delusions" of persecution. The Broadway Brevities, a New York weekly tabloid, carried a story which warned of rampant "third-sexers" who had descended on Broadway and were making life intolerable for "normal" people. 1934 Despite the "Padlock" law, Lillian Hellman's play, "The Children's Hour," about two teachers accused by a student of having a lesbian relationship, opened on Broadway. The Soviet law punishing homosexual acts with imprisonment became a federal statute through the active intervention of Stalin. All the republics were required to insert the law into their penal codes. In Germany, on June 30, Hitler's official persecution of homosexuals began with the murder of his long-time ally and head of the Storm Troops, the openly gay Ernst Roehm, and several hundred other real or perceived political enemies, in the "Night of the Long Knives." In a speech justifying the action, Hitler equated being homosexual with being a traitor, and referred to the purge's victims as "homosexual pigs who have besmirched the honor of the party." An editorial in The New York Times defended Hitler's actions, saying that because of the immorality among those arrested, it was impossible to take pity, and that Hitler "gave orders for this plague to be done away with ruthlessly. In the future he will not permit millions of decent people to be compromised by a few such sick men." 1935 Germany's notorious Paragraph 175 (which forbade homosexual sex) was rewritten by the Nazis, broadening the definition of the activity covered, such that mutual physical contact was no longer even required. (Kissing, lewd glances and fantasies all became punishable.) The penalty for violation of the law was also increased, changing homosexual sex from a minor offense to a felony. The number of convictions increased tenfold, to 8,000 annually. Most men convicted under Paragraph 175 were merely sent to jail; however, as the Gestapo were authorized to take gay men into preventive detention of arbitrary duration without an accusation (or even after an acquittal), many, including a number of so-called "repeat offenders," were sent for "re-education" in concentration camps, even if they'd already completed jail sentences. The law remained as the Nazis wrote it for well over a decade. East Germany reverted to the pre-Nazi version of the law in 1950, limited its scope to sex with youths under 18 in 1968, and abolished it entirely in 1988. West Germany retained the Nazi-era statute until 1969, when it was limited to "qualified cases," further attenuated it in 1973, and finally revoked it in 1994 after German reunification. Louis W. Max of New York University addressed a meeting of the American Psychological Association, reporting that he had successfully treated a case of homosexuality by using electroshock therapy delivered at "intensities considerably higher than those usually employed on human subjects." 1936 Mona's, one of the first lesbian bars in the U.S., opened in San Francisco. It became a famous tourist attraction thanks in part to a marquee which read, "Where Girls Will Be Boys." As part of the preparations for the Berlin Olympics, Nazis sent 52 gay men to Mauthausen concentration camp. Random House printed a four-volume edition of Havelock Ellis' Studies in the Psychology of Sex. Prior to its publication, only doctors and lawyers could legally purchase books dealing with human sexuality. 1937 Physicians at Albany Medical College treated an underdeveloped 27 year-old male youth with the newly-synthesized hormone, testosterone, and witnessed an amazing transformation. Within a month, the young man's sexual feelings increased along with his penis size, his voice deepened, hot flashes and migraines which had plagued him for years disappeared, his confidence and energy increased, and hair began to grow on his face and chest. This case, the first in which a human was treated with the hormone, confirmed, as experiments with castrated rats, guinea pigs, and other animals had suggested decades earlier, that "manhood" -- sexuality -- was hormonal. Switzerland repealed its "anti-sodomy" law. Nazis began using pink triangles to identify gay men and black triangles to identify "socially unacceptable" women, including lesbians. THE PINK TRIANGLE The pink triangle was one of the Nazi concentration camp badges, used to identify male prisoners who had been sent there because of their homosexuality. Every prisoner had to wear a badge on his or her jacket, to categorize him or her "according to his kind." Jews had to wear yellow stars, and "socially unacceptable" women, including lesbians, wore black triangles. Not all of the prisoners with pink triangles identified themselves as gay, of course, and most of the gay men who suffered and died in Nazi concentration camps actually wore yellow stars, as they were both gay and Jewish. As a result, it is difficult to construct a coherent gay victim group and count its numbers. The official Nazi estimate of "pink triangle" prisoners was approximately 10,000; other sources put the number at 50,000 or even higher. Fewer than half of those men survived the camps. For non-Jews, their death toll was far above average. In the late 1970s, gay liberation groups resurrected the pink triangle as a symbol for the gay rights movement. Not only is the symbol easily recognized, but it draws attention to oppression and persecution, both then and now. In the 1980s, ACT-UP began using the pink triangle for their cause, but inverted the symbol, making it point up, to signify an active fight back rather than a passive resignation to fate. Today, for many, the pink triangle represents pride, solidarity and a promise to never allow another Holocaust to happen. It is second in popularity only to the rainbow flag as a GLBT symbol. 1939 World War II began when Germany invaded Poland. Bugs Bunny appeared for the first time in drag (as a female dog) in "Hare-Um Scare-Um," his third cartoon. He donned women's apparel in over three dozen additional cartoons over the next 25 years, nearly a quarter of the cartoons in which he appeared. 1940 Franklin D. Roosevelt defeated Wendell Wilkie in the presidential election, and thus became the United States' first third-term president. 1941 The word "straight" in reference to sexual orientation was coined by gay author G.W. Henry in a book describing conversations with other gay men. He wrote that "to go straight is to cease homosexual practices and to indulge -- usually to re-indulge -- in heterosexuality." The word originally shared a kinship with the phrase "gone straight," used in reference to former drug addicts. While the word "straight" was not originally intended to refer to people who are inherently heterosexual, it has been corrupted over the years to mean exactly that. The term "drag queen" first appeared in print. ("Drag" had been part of theater slang at least since the nineteenth century, though the popular story that it originated as an acronym for "dressed as girl" seems unlikely.) In December, the bombing of Pearl Harbor by the Japanese propelled the United States into World War II. 1942 Although the U.S. Surgeon General, as the U.S. was entering World War II, had declared that gay and lesbian relationships in the armed forces ought to be tolerated as long as they were kept private, the U.S. military revised its code to make it easier to discharge homosexuals. Instead of having to be witnessed committing sodomy, soldiers could be discharged simply for being gay. Philip Wylie's A Generation of Vipers was published, coining the term "Momism" and blaming American mothers for overprotecting their sons and raising "unmasculine" boys unfit for military service. Atlantic City closed its burlesque and drag shows. The Chief of Police stated, "Female impersonators as entertainers are out." In Los Angeles, Jim Kepner began his private collection of gay-related books, clippings, photographs and artifacts, which later became the International Gay and Lesbian Archive, the oldest and largest in North America. The archive opened to the public in 1979. 1943 The Great Depression officially ended as the United States' involvement in World War II brought unemployment to record low levels. 1944 Sweden repealed its anti-gay laws, though the legal age of consent for homosexuals was set higher than that for heterosexuals. A U.S. military directive established homosexuality as a disqualification from the Women's Army Corps (WACS), clearing the way for a purge of lesbians at the war's end. Section VIII, Psychopathic Personality, was added as a category for discharge from the U.S. military, as a "catch-all" that included homosexuality as well as other traits the military considered unsuitable. Those receiving Section VIII (or "blue") discharges were excluded from all military benefits, which became a post-war grievance for many gay GIs. 1945 Following the end of World War II, the Veterans Benevolent Association was founded in New York City. Primarily a social organization for gay veterans, it became peripherally involved in the grievances of GIs denied benefits as a result of Section VIII discharges, and also offered educational programs. The Veterans Administration denied GI Bill benefits to servicemen discharged because of homosexuality. Bob Mizer founded the Athletic Model Guild in Los Angeles. Mizer, a pioneer in erotic male photography, began publishing Physique Pictorial magazine in 1950. 1946 The United Nations met for the first time. ENIAC, the first general-purpose computer, was unveiled at the University of Pennsylvania. 1947 Lisa Ben (Edythe Eyde's pseudonym, an anagram of "lesbian") began publishing Vice Versa, the first U.S. lesbian magazine, in Los Angeles, "printing" it a few copies at a time on a typewriter with carbon paper. The U.S. Army changed its policy of discharging homosexuals with a "blue" discharge (neither honorable nor dishonorable), discharging them instead with a dishonorable discharge if they had been found guilty of an actual homosexual offense, and an undesirable discharge otherwise. Newsweek, in an article titled "Homosexuals in Uniform," reported that between 3,000 and 4,000 homosexuals had been discharged from the military during World War II. The article described homosexuals as abnormal and as neuropsychiatric cases, but also noted that according to Army files they had higher intelligence than the average soldier, performed admirably, and were law-abiding and hard-working. The U.S. Senate gave the Secretary of State authority to dismiss any employee at his discretion. Although it was primarily intended to allow him to dismiss communists, the "McCarran Rider" also specifically mentioned homosexuals. 1948 Alfred Kinsey, a biology professor who was one of the first to study widespread trends in human sexuality, released his groundbreaking study, "Sexual Behavior in the Human Male." The study reported a number of findings that surprised the nation, and became the focus of controversy for decades. Homosexual behavior was not restricted to people who identified themselves as homosexuals, Kinsey found, and by adding those who were but did not identify as homosexuals to those who reported exclusively homosexual experiences, he concluded that roughly 10% of the population was homosexual. (Previously, it had been widely assumed that homosexuals comprised less than 1% of the population.) Further, Kinsey saw heterosexuality and homosexuality only as opposite ends of continuum of sexual orientations, and to the surprise, dismay or outrage of many, he added five different hybrid sexualities in between these two poles to form a seven-point sexuality scale. A subsequent study on female sexuality released in 1953 concluded that 7% of women are exclusive lesbian. Later researchers have failed to precisely duplicate Kinsey's results, coming up with figures indicating that the human race may be as high as 27% gay or as low as 3%. While some of Kinsey's methods and assumptions have become the subjects of controversy, his conclusions are still widely accepted, and his importance as a pioneer in the field of sexual research remains unchallenged. Gore Vidal published The City and the Pillar. The novel received widespread attention, and its publication marked the beginning of a post-war surge in gay writing. The first Danish gay society, F-48, was founded by Axel Axgil. F-48 was very successful, and by the time Axgil stepped down as chairman in 1952, it had reached what was then a world record of 2,600 members in a gay group. Murray Llewellyn Barr, a Canadian geneticist, discovered that inactivated X chromosomes exist in (and only in) the cells of females. The discovery of these "Barr bodies" allowed for determination of an individual's "chromosomal sex," gave rise to a new science, cytogenetics, and led to the discovery of genetic causes for some gender anomalies. Barr was later nominated for a Nobel prize for his discovery. 1949 Newsweek published a story titled "Queer People," which called gays perverts and compared homosexuals to exhibitionists and sexual sadists. It challenged the idea that homosexuals hurt no one but themselves. Two separate events, the explosion of the first Soviet atomic bomb and the victory of the Chinese communists over American ally Chiang Kai-Shek, raised American "Cold War" fears to new heights, and set the stage for the paranoia of McCarthyism and the second "Red Scare." (The first "Red Scare" had followed the Russian Revolution in 1917.) 1950 Physique Pictorial began publication in Los Angeles. This was the first of the gay "beefcake" or "physique" magazines. The Mattachine Society was created in Los Angeles by Harry Hay, Chuck Rowland and others. It was named after Mattacino, a character in Italian theater, a sort of court jester who would speak the truth to the king when nobody else would. The primary goal of the organization was to encourage the public to view homosexuals as a persecuted minority rather than as mental deviants. The term "homophile" was coined, and became the self-reference of choice for homosexual activists during the 1950s and '60s. After Stonewall, however, it fell out of favor, replaced by "gay" and "lesbian." Senator Joseph McCarthy's report, "Employment of Homosexuals and Other Sex Perverts in Government," claimed that homosexuals were serious security risks, and led to "witch hunts" for homosexuals working in the government. McCARTHYISM AND THE "LAVENDER SCARE" During a February 1950 Senate investigation of "subversives" (primarily communists) in the U.S. government, Undersecretary of State John Puerifory had spoken of a shadowy "homosexual underground" in Washington that was participating in the "communist conspiracy" against America. Although Puerifory's comments had been made in the context of assuring the public that the U.S. State Department was quite aware of and was actively eliminating security risks, Senator Joseph McCarthy, who had already made a name for himself with his (imaginary) lists of "known communists" being sheltered by the Truman administration, was quick to seize on the political potential of the revelation. McCarthy and others, most notably Senator Kenneth Wherry, whipped up a controversy about the new "pervert peril." (Ironically, McCarthy's anti-homosexual campaign was largely orchestrated by his top aide, Roy Cohn, a closeted gay man who died of AIDS in 1986.) Republican National Committee Chairman Guy Gabrielson declared, "Perhaps as dangerous as the actual communists are the sexual perverts who have infiltrated our Government in recent years." The media was quick to echo their concerns; The New York Times alone ran at least seven stories on the subject during May and June of 1950. In response, the U.S. Senate ordered a full-scale investigation into the matter in June, and appointed Democratic Senator Clyde R. Hoey to lead the investigating committee. Although the Truman administration asked Senator Hoey to downplay the problem, Senator McCarthy effectively ran the committee, and when its report, "Employment of Homosexuals and Other Sex Perverts in Government," was released in December, it stated that the matter was of deadly seriousness. Homosexuals, the report claimed, were unsuitable for government employment due to their inherently weak moral fiber and to the high security risks they presented because of their susceptibility to blackmail, and had to be rooted out. Government bureaucrats, fearful of being charged with protecting "subversives," dramatically increased their efforts to rid their departments of gays and lesbians. Dismissals of gays from civilian government jobs throughout the United States increased from an average of five per month in the years preceding the "Lavender Scare" to an average of more than sixty per month by the end of 1950. Similarly, the Democratic Truman administration, in trying to prove that it was not sympathetic to "perverts," increased dismissals after the Senate report was released; firings of homosexuals in the State Department alone increased from 54 in 1950, to 119 in 1951, and to 134 in 1952. When the Republican Dwight D. Eisenhower became President in 1953, largely thanks to the suspicions of the Democrats raised by Senator McCarthy and his cohorts, the government became even less sympathetic to homosexuals. One of Eisenhower's first acts as President was to sign an executive order making "sexual perversion" grounds for firing any person working for the federal government, and prohibiting the government from hiring any homosexual man or woman. Soon, state and local governments also began requiring workers to sign "loyalty oaths" swearing their "moral purity" before they would be given jobs, and even many private businesses and organizations adopted similar techniques to screen their employees. For a very large majority of American gays and lesbians, simply being found out could mean automatic dismissal. By the time Senator McCarthy was discredited in 1954, when it was discovered that his lists didn't exist and that many of his charges had been fabricated simply to win political support, the damage was already done. Regulations banning homosexuals from federal civil jobs were not repealed until 1975. For nearly a quarter of a century, thanks in large part to the actions and influence of Senator Joseph McCarthy, gays and lesbians throughout America lived in constant fear of being caught in one of the periodic "witch hunts" intended to round up and eliminate "subversives" from government service. 1951 A lesbian WAF who had received an undesirable discharge sent a letter to the ACLU requesting that they take action to stop the military from destroying lives by discharging homosexuals. The response she received stated that discrimination against homosexuals was not a violation of civil liberties, and recommended that she drop the whole matter and seek medical treatment to get rid of her homosexual desires. The Homosexual In America by Donald Webster Cory was published. The book was a call to action on the part of homosexuals on the model of the emerging civil rights movement. The California Supreme Court ruled that the state's Alcoholic Beverage Control Department had acted improperly in closing the Black Cat in San Francisco in 1949. The court ruled that mere patronage of a public restaurant and bar by homosexuals was not sufficient reason to close it. This was the first time in American history that gay men and lesbians legally won the right to gather openly and publicly. 1952 The U.S. Congress enacted a law banning gays and lesbians from entering the country. The law remained on the books until 1990. The first edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-I), the so-called "bible" of psychiatry, was published. It listed homosexuality as a disorder. The first benefit for a gay rights cause was held in Los Angeles, to assist with the defense of Dale Jennings of the Mattachine Society, who was being tried for indecency. Jennings admitted in court that he was a homosexual, but denied any wrongdoing, accusing the officer who had arrested him of entrapment. The jury deadlocked, and the case was dismissed. One, Inc., was created as an offshoot of the Mattachine Foundation. The organization included founders of the Knights of the Clock, a support group for interracial gay couples that had begun in Los Angeles in 1950. The name was based on a quote from Thomas Carlyle, who wrote, "A mystic bond of brotherhood makes all men one." Evelyn Hooker began her historic study of the male homosexual personality. In the late 1950s, she published the findings of her research in a series of monographs, reporting that she could find no signs of maladjustment in gay men's personalities. Her conclusions differed from those of previous researchers in large part because she did not focus exclusively on men who sought to be "helped," instead finding subjects through organizations such as the Mattachine Society. 1953 Newly-elected President Eisenhower banned employment of gays by executive order. This order was not repealed until 1975. Choreographer Jerome Robbins "named names" before the House Un-American Activities Committee, after being threatened with exposure. This was one of the few documented examples of political blackmail of a homosexual. In response to a demand from the House Appropriations Committee, the State Department finally released an actual count, rather than an estimate, of the number of homosexuals who had been dismissed since the "problem of perversion" first made headlines. It announced that 425 employees had been fired since 1947 for "homosexual proclivities." Only 106 non-homosexual "security risks" had been fired during those same years. Illinois' Secretary of State banned the distribution within the state library system of any book "relating to sex." Eight thousand books were withdrawn from circulation before sanity prevailed. In February, Christine Jorgensen, originally George Jorgensen, a former sergeant in the U.S. Army, returned to the United States after spending nearly three years in Denmark undergoing a sex change. She was the first transsexual to gain international notoriety. A letter to her parents, in which she had written, "Nature has made a mistake, which I have corrected, and I am now your daughter," had been leaked by a family friend to the press. More news stories were filed on Jorgensen in 1953 than on any other single individual or event. "Ex-GI Becomes Blonde Bombshell," headlines screamed, as the world press treated her recovery from the surgery both as a matter of profound international importance and as a sexual scandal. Jorgensen has been called the first star of the dawning "Age of Celebrity," the first American to become internationally known not because of her profession, her talents, her lineage, her looks or her wit, but instead, simply because she was who she was. In the wake of the publicity surrounding Christine Jorgensen's sex-change operation, Edward D. Wood, Jr., himself a transvestite, wrote, directed and starred in the feature film "Glen or Glenda," which also starred Bela Lugosi. (Wood, who is widely considered to have been the worst director in Hollywood history, is best known for his 1959 film, "Plan 9 from Outer Space.") Though "Glen or Glenda" was never widely distributed, and like Wood's other films, featured poor production values and writing that frequently devolved into gibberish, it was nonetheless of note both as Wood's first film and as the first film to deal, however ineptly, with the issue of transvestism, treating crossdressing as something other than a comedic device. One, Inc., began publishing One magazine, the first U.S. pro-gay publication, and sold it openly on the streets of Los Angeles. It was designed to present gay and lesbian opinions and concerns to the public. The magazine was the subject of a lawsuit against the U.S. Postal Service, won in 1958, and was published regularly until 1967. Harry Hay agreed to relinquish leadership of the Mattachine Society. As the "Red Scare" had progressed, the association of the society with communism had concerned some members and supporters, and Hay, a known communist, was viewed as a liability. Other of the society's founders were similarly ousted. During the 1960s, Mattachine was one of the foremost gay rights groups in the United States, but following the Stonewall riots of 1969, it was increasingly seen as stodgy, traditional and unwilling to be confrontational. The Mattachine Society was officially disbanded in 1987. The Korean War ended. 1954 Lieutenant Louis Morgan and six patrolmen of the Pittsburgh Vice Squad were jailed for "shaking down" homosexuals, taking bribes and framing innocent men. Senator McCarthy was publicly discredited, but the "Lavender Scare" mentality he helped to create in the government remained for years. Frederick Wertham's Seduction of the Innocent accused comic books of contributing to juvenile delinquency, caused a public uproar, and led to Congressional inquiries of comic book publishers, writers and artists. Prominent among its complaints was the supposedly homoerotic nature of the relationships between costumed superheroes and their young sidekicks. John Money, a psychologist with Johns Hopkins University, began publishing a series of papers in which he argued that sexual identity was not established until after birth. His ideas, though since discredited, were widely accepted at the time, and were profoundly influential. They sent a generation of feminists on a futile quest to prove that men and women were really "exactly the same" once societal influences were removed, and convinced a generation of doctors that it was acceptable to arbitrarily "assign" a sex to an intersexed infant through surgery and hormonal treatments. Though such medical intervention was theoretically to be conducted shortly after birth, in reality, the surguries and treatments often lasted well into childhood or even early adulthood. The U.S. Supreme Court, in Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, explicitly outlawed racial segregation of public education facilities, ruling so on the grounds that the doctrine of "separate but equal" public education could never truly provide black Americans with facilities of the same standards available to white Americans. In August, the body of William Simpson, a flight attendant, was found in North Miami. Four days later, two suspects were arrested, who told police that they had shot Simpson in self-defense after he made a pass at them. The press and public officials showed far more sympathy for the murderers than for their victim. (Public hysteria had already been directed at the homosexual community by Miami area newspapers, politicians and police in the wake of a series of highly sensationalized cases of child molestation and murder the previous year.) The "moral panic" which followed publication of the young men's story led to further police harassment of gay men and lesbians in the city. Gay bars were raided almost nightly by a special police squad known as the "fruit pickers," and patrons were arrested and detained under the pretense of checking for venereal disease. Miami Mayor Abe Aronovitz introduced an ordinance prohibiting same-sex dancing or embracing in public, adopting the mannerisms, gestures or dress of the opposite sex, and association with homosexuals in public places. Commissioners revised the proposed law, limiting it to a ban on bars catering to homosexuals. The city ordinance, passed in October, made it illegal for a bar to sell alcohol to a homosexual, to employ a homosexual, or to allow two or more homosexuals to congregate on the premises. 1955 The Mattachine Review began publication. The New York branch of the Mattachine Society was founded. The Daughters of Bilitis was formed in San Francisco, California, as an explicitly lesbian alternative to other "homophile" groups such as the Mattachine Society. The organization remained influential throughout the 1950s and '60s, but was torn apart by factionalism in the 1970s, when its members split over whether to give more support to the gay rights movement or to feminism. Following the kidnapping and murder of a young boy, the county attorney in Sioux City, Iowa, ordered the detention of known homosexuals, and using Iowa's sexual psychopath law, committed 29 men to asylums without trial. In Boise, Idaho, three men were arrested for homosexual activity. The case exploded into a major "witch hunt," and eventually, over 1,000 men (in a city with a population of only 40,000) were investigated. Nine men were ultimately sentenced to prison terms of 15 years each. The case was the basis for The Boys of Boise, a book by John Gerassi, a former editor of Time and Newsweek magazines, in which it was revealed that the investigations were politically motivated, with the mayor, prosecuting attorney and police all trying to capitalize on homophobia to build their own political careers. Richard Roscoe, a San Francisco photographer for gay "physique" magazines, was tried in federal court on obscenity charges. Though his photographs were clearly not obscene, they featured undraped males, which was sufficient for conviction. "The mother of the civil rights movement," Rosa Parks, a black seamstress in Montgomery, Alabama, refused to give up her seat on a city bus to a white man. She was arrested, triggering a year-long boycott of the bus system organized by a then little-known Baptist minister, Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. The American Law Institute published its Model Penal Code. The code recommended decriminalization of private sexual acts between consenting adults. In 1961, Illinois became the first state to adopt the code and to decriminalize homosexual acts. 1956 The Ladder: A Lesbian Review, the newsletter of the Daughters of Bilitis, was first published. The Church of ONE Brotherhood was founded in Los Angeles. It survived only one year, but was nonetheless of note as the first gay church in the United States. 1957 The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) adopted a national policy statement sustaining the constitutionality of state "anti-sodomy" laws and federal security regulations denying employment to gay men and lesbians, and stating that the organization would specifically defend homosexuals only in cases of denial of due process, entrapment, or use of sex offender registration laws against adults engaged in consensual sex. The ACLU reversed its stance on "anti-sodomy" laws and security regulations in 1967. The Crittenden Report, a 639-page summary of an investigation undertaken by the U.S. Navy, stated that there is "no sound basis" for barring gays from the military as a security risk, and that, in fact, "there is some information to indicate that homosexuals are quite good security risks." The Pentagon suppressed the report for nearly two decades. In Great Britain, the Report of the Departmental Committee on Homosexual Offences and Prostitution (better known as the Wolfenden Report, after Lord Wolfenden, the chairman of the committee) was published, following the conviction of a succession of well-known men for homosexual offenses. Disregarding the conventional ideas of the day, the committee recommended that "homosexual behavior between consenting adults in private should no longer be a criminal offence," finding that "homosexuality cannot legitimately be regarded as a disease, because in many cases it is the only symptom and is compatible with full mental health in other respects." The report added, "The law's function is to preserve public order and decency, to protect the citizen from what is offensive or injurious, and to provide sufficient safeguards against exploitation and corruption of others.... It is not, in our view, the function of the law to intervene in the private life of citizens, or to seek to enforce any particular pattern of behaviour." Wladziu Valentino Liberace, high camp performer, candelabrist and pianist, successfully sued the London Daily Mirror for libel after a columnist implied that he was a homosexual. 1958 The Homosexual Law Reform Society was founded in London by straights interested in repealing England's ban on gay sex. The U.S. Supreme Court voted unanimously to overturn the decision of the lower courts in One, Inc. v. Oleson, stating that homosexual publications could not be held to a different standard of obscenity than other publications. The publishers of One magazine had sued the U.S. Postal Service in 1954 after it had declared the magazine "obscene, lewd, lascivious and filthy" and had refused to distribute it simply because it dealt with homosexual issues. 1959 U.S. Postmaster Summerfield launched an anti-smut drive, directed largely at gay "physique" magazines and their readers. During a radio speech, Russell L. Wolden criticized the mayor of San Francisco. "Under the benign attitude of the Christopher administration," he said, "those who practice sex deviation operate in San Francisco today to a shocking extent, under shocking circumstances, and in open and flagrant defiance of the law. So favorable is the official San Francisco climate for the activities of these persons that an organization of sex deviates known as the Mattachine Society actually passed a resolution praising Mayor Christopher by name for what the resolution described as the 'enlightened attitude' of his administration toward them." "Some Like It Hot," starring Marilyn Monroe, Tony Curtis and Jack Lemmon, was released. Acclaimed worldwide as one of the greatest movie comedies ever made, it featured Curtis and Lemmon as struggling musicians who hid from the Mafia by disguising themselves as women and joining an all-girl band. 1960 More than a thousand people attended the first public meeting of the Homosexual Law Reform Society in London. The April issue of Manual, a gay "physique" magazine, was seized by the Post Office. The eventual U.S. Supreme Court decision in Manual v. Day (handed down on June 25, 1962, the same day as the ruling in Engel v. Vitale which declared that prayers in public schools are unconstitutional) echoed the decision in One, Inc. v. Oleson, stating that homosexual material must be judged by the same standards as heterosexual material. The first national lesbian conference, a convention of the Daughters of Bilitis, was held in San Francisco. 1961 Illinois became the first state in the U.S. to decriminalize consensual homosexual sex. In San Francisco, drag performer Jose Sarria, a popular entertainer at San Francisco's Black Cat, became the first openly gay person in the United States to campaign for public office. (He wasn't elected.) "The Rejected," the first television documentary about homosexuality, was aired on KQED, a San Francisco public station. Guests included anthropologist Margaret Mead, Episcopal Bishop of California Rev. James Pike, several members of the Mattachine Society, and Evelyn Hooker, the first psychologist to prove that homosexual men were no more likely to suffer from mental illness than heterosexual men. Producer John Reavis had a budget of less than $100 to work with. The purpose of the documentary was to challenge stereotypes and common misunderstandings about homosexuals. Hollywood's new movie code allowed for "restrained" portrayals of homosexuals. Shirley MacLaine and Audrey Hepburn starred in "The Children's Hour," a film version of Lillian Hellman's depressing and tragic drama about the fallout from a child's rumor that two teachers are lesbian lovers. Czechoslovakia repealed its anti-gay laws. 1962 Raldolfe (Randy) Wicker of the Mattachine Society in New York and six other gay men appeared on a 90-minute talk show on radio station WBAI to discuss what it was like to be homosexual. While it resulted in positive comments in several newspapers and magazines, a group of listeners contacted the FCC to challenge the station's license. The complaint was rejected. The U.S.-Soviet tensions of the "Cold War" reached their greatest height during the Cuban Missile Crisis in October. Hungary repealed its "anti-sodomy" law. Irving Bieber concluded after "scientifically" analyzing homosexuality that it was caused by seductive mothers and hostile fathers. Though the theory wasn't new, Bieber's paper on the subject gave it new publicity. Police raided a drag ball in New York City. Dozens were arrested on charges of indecent exposure, simply because they were dressed in "gender inappropriate" clothing. 1963 The New York Times ran a front page story titled "Growth of Overt Homosexuality in City Provokes Wide Concern." It told of a series of police raids on gay bars. Darryl C. Burgdorf, the compiler of this chronology, was born on July 22. President John F. Kennedy was assassinated on November 22 in Dallas, Texas. 1964 Ian Fleming's twelfth James Bond novel, You Only Live Twice, popularized the Austrialian "poofter" as a derogatory slang term for homosexuals. The Society for Individual Rights (SIR) was formed in San Francisco. The Association for Social Knowledge (ASK), the first "homophile" organization in Canada, was formed in Vancouver. Two, Canada's first gay magazine, began publication. (Its name was inspired by the U.S. publication, One.) It was published until 1966. Life magazine ran a 14-page article titled "Homosexuality in America." It referred to the "gay world" as sad and sordid, and presented promiscuity, leather bars and S&M as being typical of the gay experience. The landmark Civil Rights Act of 1964 prohibited discrimination against minorities and women in public facilities, in government and in employment. "Jim Crow" laws were abolished, and compelled segregation became illegal. The act was a political impetus for the feminist movement, and also laid the groundwork which made later programs such as affirmative action possible. The first homosexual rights demonstration in the United States took place in New York City, when members of the Homosexual League of New York and the League for Sexual Freedom, led by Randy Wicker, demonstrated in front of the U.S. Army's Whitehall Induction Center to protest the military's exclusion of gays and lesbians. The Erickson Educational Foundation (EEF) was established by Reed Erickson, a wealthy transsexual born as Rita Alma Erickson. The Foundation brought together and funded a number of early pioneers in transsexual research, including Harry Benjamin, who had become interested in the subject after working briefly with Alfred Kinsey, and John Money, whose work with intersexual infants had led to work with intersexual and transsexual adults. Harry Benjamin testified at a meeting of the New York Health Department to urge that transsexuals should be allowed to have new birth certificates issued reflecting their gender preference. His recommendations were rejected. In North Carolina, Max Doyle was released after serving three years of a 20-30 year sodomy conviction. Considered a town nuisance, he was a transvestite, and had one previous conviction for prostitution. He wore women's clothes to his first trial. At his appeals hearing, Federal Judge James Braxton Craven remarked that putting Doyle in prison was "a little like throwing Brier Rabbit into the Briar Patch," but also asked, "Is it not time to redraft a criminal statute first enacted in 1533?" The case was dismissed on procedural grounds, after which Doyle was retried and acquitted. On television, the comedy "Bewitched" premiered, starring Elizabeth Montgomery as Samantha and Dick York (replaced in 1969 by Dick Sargent) as Darrin. The show ran until 1972, and was, arguably, the first "gay" television show. Samantha's ongoing struggle to hide her true nature from those around her seemed all too familiar to those hiding their own homosexuality, and some of the secondary characters, most notably Uncle Arthur (Paul Lynde) and Doctor Bombay (Bernard Fox), were flamboyant in a way that fit all the stereotypes. (Though Uncle Arthur was never explicited outed in the show, Montgomery once said in an interview that Lynde, whose own homosexuality was well known in Hollywood, had been cast specifically to play Samantha's "gay uncle.") The Council on Religion and the Homosexual, an organization composed of gays and lesbians and representatives from four major denominations, held a New Year's Eve costume ball in San Francisco. Police harassed and threatened those attending. Four people were arrested, three of them attorneys. Though charges were dropped, the Council published a brief detailing how police oppressed and abused homosexuals. 1965 Seven gay men and three lesbians picketed outside federal offices in Washington to protest the government's employment discrimination against gays. This was the first public protest by homosexuals in the nation's capital. The first "Annual Reminder" march, intended to remind people that in America, homosexuals still did not have basic rights, was held at Independence Hall in Philadelphia. Follow-up marches were held each year until 1969. Using a one-way mirror, police in Mansfield, Ohio, kept the men's room in the town square under surveillance for two months, filming many of its users. Three men were indicted for sodomy, one of whom was given a mandatory 1-20 year sentence. Defense arguments that the evidence was obtained by what constituted an unreasonable search were rejected by the Ohio courts. The U.S. Supreme Court refused to hear the case. Illegally using teenagers as decoys, police arrested 34 men in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, on charges of sodomy and solicitation. The District Attorney promised to "rid our community of this infectious disease." Five hundred gay men and lesbians crossed a police picket line to attend San Francisco's first drag ball. Police photographers were on hand to document everyone who went in or came out through the floodlit entrance. Publicity of the police handling of the event led to the formation of a "Police Liason to the Gay Community." An editorial in Life magazine warned readers of the danger that other states might follow the example of Illinois by legalizing homosexual acts. In New York, the state legislature overwhelmingly approved the American Law Institute's Model Penal Code, including a provision decriminalizing consensual sex. Immediately after the vote, Assemblyman Julius Volker introduced bills reinstating sodomy and adultery as crimes. The adultery law reinstatement failed, but the "anti-sodomy" law reinstatement was passed 115-16. 1966 Time magazine ran a two-page article in January titled "The Homosexual in America." It called homosexuality "a pathetic little second-rate substitute for reality, a pitiable flight from life," and warned against seeing homosexuality as anything other than a "pernicious sickness." The first national convention of gays and lesbians in the United States, the National Planning Conference of Homophile Organizations, met in San Francisco. In later gatherings, its name was changed to the North American Conference of Homophile Organizations (NACHO). The Pride Newsletter, the forerunner of The Advocate, began publication in Los Angeles. It was started by Dick Michaels, who had decided to become politically active after being arrested during a police raid of the Yukon Club, a popular gay bar. The Society for Individual Rights (SIR) opened the SIR Center, the first gay community center, in San Francisco. The ASK Community Center, the first such community center in Canada, opened shortly thereafter in Vancouver. A gay motorcade organized by Mattachine Society founder Harry Hay traveled through Los Angeles to protest the U.S. military's anti-gay policies. The motorcade consisted of 13 cars. In San Francisco, 400 people attended a rally organized by the Committee to Fight Exclusion of Homosexuals in the Armed Forces. Following the election of John Lindsay as New York City's mayor, entrapment of homosexuals by police officers, which had been flagrant under Mayor Robert Wagner, subsided, and arrests of gay men dropped dramatically. Postmaster General O'Brien, under congressional pressure, agreed to stop surveillance of homosexual magazine subscribers. Ed "the Skull" Murphy, who later became the manager of the Stonewall Inn, was arrested along with several other leaders of a nation-wide criminal operation which had blackmailed almost a thousand prominent homosexual men over nearly a decade. The others arrested eventually served prison sentences, but Murphy did not, even though he was widely believed to have been the one person in charge of the entire enterprise. Official explanations for the leniency he received were unconvincing. It later came to light that he had not been prosecuted because one of his blackmail victims was none other than the nation's chief law enforcement officer, J. Edgar Hoover, the head of the FBI. (Though likely not gay, Hoover was a crossdresser.) The National Organization for Women (NOW) was formed. Harry Benjamin, who had been the first (and arguably the most important) researcher to study transsexualism (as distinct from transvestism and homosexuality), published The Transsexual Phenomenon, in which he attempted to dissipate some of the scientific and public ignorance shrouding the subject of gender variance. The Gender Identity Clinic was opened at Johns Hopkins Hospital, under the leadership of John Money. Johns Hopkins was the first hospital in America to openly and publicly study transgender issues and to offer sex-reassignment surgery (SRS). Though the clinic's name had been chosen by Money in an attempt to broaden its scope beyond transsexualism, the term "gender identity" instead became inseparably linked with transsexualism. 1967 A decade after the publication of the Wolfenden Report, private consensual sex between male adults was made legal in England and Wales, except within the military and law enforcement agencies. The ACLU officially reversed its position on gays in the military and government, calling for an end to "anti-sodomy" laws and stating that the burden of proof should be on the government to prove that a gay or lesbian employee was a security risk. Columbia University granted a charter to the Student Homophile League, making it the first U.S. college to recognize a campus gay and lesbian organization. The U.S. Supreme Court struck down the remaining interracial marriage laws across the country by deciding in Loving v. Virginia that the "freedom to marry" belongs to all Americans. The Court described marriage as one of our "vital personal rights" which is "essential to the orderly pursuit of happiness by a free people". Mary Young and Dawn DeBlanc were charged and convicted for "unnatural carnal copulation" in Orleans Parish, Louisiana. They both served 30 months in prison. The first issue of The Los Angeles Advocate (later just The Advocate), the oldest continuing gay publication in the U.S., was printed by Dick Michaels. His decision to start publishing the newsletter was prompted by his growing anger at continuing police raids of gay bars in Los Angeles. The first nationally-broadcast documentary on homosexuality in the U.S. was aired on "CBS Reports," a show which examined controversial social issues. Public service announcements aired instead of commercials, because the network was unable to get sponsors. Mike Wallace hosted the show, the stated purpose of which was to raise awareness of the challenges homosexuals faced. "The average homosexual," Wallace declared, "if there be such, is promiscuous. He is not interested in, nor capable of, a lasting relationship, like that of a heterosexual marriage. His sex live, his love life, consists of a series of chance encounters at the clubs and bars he inhabits, and even on the streets." The U.S. television show "NYPD" aired an episode about the blackmail of gay people. It was the first time that gay characters were portrayed, or that the word "homosexual" was used, in a network drama. The episode avoided stereotypes, and featured a black police officer who sympathized with the gay characters, recognizing the parallels between his own situation and theirs. The Oscar Wilde Memorial Bookshop, the first gay bookstore in the U.S., was opened in New York City. It relocated in 1973, but remains open today. The Stonewall Inn, a gay bar run (as was typical) by the Mafia, was opened in New York City's Greenwich Village. The Village was, at the time, both the nation's best-known gay community and one of the places where homosexuality was most aggressively policed. 1968 Radio station WMEX in Boston carried a three-hour program on homosexuality with Dick Leitsch, President of the New York Mattachine Society, and Frank Morgan, founder of the Boston Mattachine Society. Later, Boston Mayor Kevin White appeared on the radio station and stated that he would not favor legislation decriminalizing private consensual homosexual acts, and that he did not support the idea that homosexuals have the same rights as other citizens. Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr., was assassinated in April. The second edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-II) was published. Homosexuality was still listed as a disorder. In July, The Wall Street Journal published a lead front-page article that noted the growing militancy among homosexuals who were fighting for "a piece of the action" in America. The response to the article was so strong that a later issue devoted an entire "Letters to the Editor" column to correspondence about it. In August, police clashed violently with antiwar protesters in Chicago, outside the Democratic National Convention. Radio station WBAI in New York began broadcasting "The New Symposium," a weekly program on homosexuality aimed at "inspiring a sense of social identification" within the homosexual subculture. The first congregation of what was to become the Universal Fellowship of Metropolitan Community Churches was founded in Los Angeles by the Rev. Troy Perry, a former Pentacostal minister who had been defrocked when his own homosexuality was discovered. MCC began with a dozen people gathered in a private home. Just two years later, there were over 500 members, and today, MCC has a presence in 23 countries, with over 300 member churches. Rev. Perry performed the first public same-sex marriage in the United States in Huntington Park, California, in 1969; in 1970, he filed the first lawsuit in the U.S. seeking legal recognition for same-sex marriages. Three decades later, Rev. Brent Hawkes and the Metropolitan Community Church of Toronto were key players in the legal action that ultimately brought same-sex marriage to Canada. HOMOSEXUALITY AND THE BIBLE Even today, there are those who find the very idea of a church or temple with a pro-gay stance to be oxymoronic, if not downright heretical. After all, many people still believe, and many churches still teach, that homosexuality is a sin. But a steadily-growing number of Jewish and Christian theologians and scholars, representing nearly every doctrinal branch, are coming to the conclusion that what churches have taught about homosexuality for centuries is not, in fact, what the Scriptures teach, and that what seem in some English translations to be clear condemnations of homosexuality are actually, when the original texts and contexts are studied, something else entirely. For example, most scholars now agree that the "sin of Sodom" was not homosexuality, but that, rather, the residents of Sodom were condemned by God for violence, rape and inhospitality. The Levitical laws prohibiting same-sex activity are now thought by many theologians and Talmudic scholars to have been much more limited in scope than popular translations would suggest, and to have considered the prohibited activities not sins, but merely matters of ritual uncleanliness. Similarly, St. Paul's apparent exhortation to the Romans against homosexual sex was, in the view of many theologians, actually a prohibition against participation in specific pagan temple rites, common in Rome at the time, involving young male prostitutes. More and more scholars are reaching the conclusion that far from labeling it a sin, the Bible in fact has little or nothing to say on the subject of homosexual sex between loving partners. And as a result, a small but growing number of churches are beginning to pay more attention to the Bible's clear admonitions toward love and charity than to its supposed condemnations of homosexuality.     [ Ancient ] [ 533-1861 ] [ 1862-1968 ] [ 1969-1980 ] [ 1981-1995 ] [ 1996-2006 ] [ Notes ]     1969-1980 STONEWALL AND THE BIRTH OF THE GLBT CIVIL RIGHTS MOVEMENT At the end of the 1960s, consensual homosexual sex was illegal in every U.S. state but Illinois. "Light" penalties for such activity were typically five to ten years in jail. Not one law anywhere in the country, at the federal, state or local level, protected gay men or lesbians from being fired or denied housing. Indeed, laws in the U.S. were harsher on homosexuals than those in Cuba, Russia or East Germany, countries that the United States criticized for their despotic ways. There were no openly homosexual politicians, policemen, public school teachers, doctors or lawyers. In almost every state, homosexuality was considered a basis for the denial or revocation of a professional license. No political party had a gay caucus. No television shows had any identifiable gay characters. When a Hollywood film featured a major homosexual character, the character was inevitably killed (or killed himself) by the film's end. Although a consensus was quietly beginning to form within the medical community that homosexuality wasn't a disease, relatively few doctors or psychologists openly promoted the idea for fear of professional or public reprisals, and the popular conception hadn't changed at all. Charitable folk considered homosexuality a disease, the "victims" of which ought to be pitied and cured; other folk saw it as a deliberately-chosen perversion. Gays had few gathering places other than seedy bars, often owned by the Mafia. In many jurisdictions, liquor licenses could be suspended or revoked if an establishment knowingly served gays, and even where gay bars weren't illegal, police raids were common. Homosexual men were frequent victims of entrapment by police or blackmail by organized crime, and stood to lose everything from insurance coverage and security clearances to basic employment if they were found out. Homosexuals were condemned by the law as criminals, by the medical profession as mentally ill, and by mainstream religion as sinners. Few were willing to publicly defend themselves and fight for homosexual rights, and those who did were hampered by the fact that the leaders of the "homophile" movement had consistently resisted the sort of militancy that characterized the civil rights and antiwar movements. But in June of 1969, everything changed. Shortly after midnight on the morning of Saturday, June 28, police raided the Stonewall Inn, a gay bar in New York City's Greenwich Village favored by younger homosexuals. The bar had been raided many times before, as had every other gay bar in the city, and police were anticipating nothing out of the ordinary. And initially, everything seemed to go as expected. But for reasons which remain the subject of endless debate, on that particular morning, the crowd of patrons released by the police didn't disperse. And when police began loading other patrons and employees into paddy wagons, the crowd turned violent. People on the street, including transvestites, butch lesbians and gay teenagers, joined the fray, and the police were forced to take shelter inside the bar until reinforcements arrived. Later, things became even more chaotic, as "chorus lines" of queens taunted riot police and as officers tried in vain to clear the streets. Things quieted down during the day, but on Saturday night, the protesting crowd was even larger, as several thousand curious folk who had heard about the morning's incident, both queer and straight, joined in. The presence of an increased number of police, intended to prevent a second night of rioting, had the opposite effect, and the chaos of the early morning hours was repeated. The New York Times on Sunday, in an article headlined "4 Policemen Hurt in 'Village' Raid," dismissed the events of the previous day as a "rampage," a 45-minute "melee." On Monday, in an article headlined "Police Again Rout 'Village' Youths," the paper called the ongoing events a "near-riot," but still dismissed them as of relatively little importance. The Village Voice was the only straight paper at the time to take the events seriously, and that paper's editors really had no choice, as their offices were located only half a block from the Stonewall Inn. Sunday, Monday and Tuesday were relatively calm, but violence flared again briefly on Wednesday night after a pair of unflattering articles appeared in The Village Voice. (The paper was dated Thursday, July 3, but had appeared on newsstands a day earlier.) Miraculously, despite the violence of both the police and the protesters, while there were many injuries, only a single death seems to have resulted from the riots. A taxi driver reportedly suffered a fatal heart attack after his cab was accosted by protesters. (The driver had turned onto Christopher Street, the street on which the Stonewall Inn was located, on Saturday evening, apparently unaware of what was happening. Protesters, assuming he was there to gawk or to assist police, had immediately encircled his cab, beating and jumping on it. Once they realized that he seemed to be in medical distress, they had cleared the way to allow him to leave, but heard later that he had died.) The "Stonewall riots" were the first large, spontaneous protests of oppression and harassment of homosexuals, and are generally credited with "kicking off" the modern GLBT civil rights movement. Within weeks, the Gay Liberation Front (GLF) was founded in New York by participants in the riots and others in the gay community. It took its name from the National Liberation Front in Vietnam, and was conceived as an ongoing militant political action group. The first meeting was advertised with a leaflet which read, "Do You Think Homosexuals Are Revolting? You Bet Your Sweet Ass We Are." About 50 people attended. The GLF was very active, very visible, and very successful. In less than a year, the first legislative hearings on gay rights in the U.S. were convened in New York City, in direct response to actions by the GLF and the Gay Activists Alliance (GAA), a group which had split from it. The Stonewall riots weren't, in a literal sense, the beginning of anything. The world's first homosexual rights organization, after all, had been founded over 70 years earlier, and there had been individuals arguing for change even before that. The first successful homosexual rights organization in the United States, the Mattachine Society, had been founded in 1950. But the riots were undeniably an important turning point. They marked the moment when the gay rights movement finally found its voice. The militancy of the civil rights and antiwar protesters, which had previously been shunned by members of the Mattachine Society and others leading the fight for homosexual rights, was finally embraced by the gay community. Before Stonewall, no one, least of all homosexuals themselves, took the idea of "Gay Power" seriously, but in the riots' wake, no one could deny that power's reality. 1969 In June, patrons of the Stonewall Inn, a gay bar in Greenwich Village in New York City, fought back during what was supposed to be a routine police raid. The "Stonewall riots" are generally credited with "kicking off" the modern GLBT civil rights movement. In July, the Gay Liberation Front (GLF) was founded in New York by participants in the Stonewall riots and others in the gay community. On July 20, Neil Armstrong became the first man to walk on the moon. In August, Sylvia Rivera and Marsha P. Johnson, a pair of transsexual "street queens" who had been involved in the Stonewall riots, founded the Street Transvestite Action Revolutionaries (STAR). In August, half a million rock music fans gathered in New York for "three days of peace and music" at the Woodstock Music and Art Fair. The famous "Hooker Report" on homosexuality was issued from a National Institute of Mental Health study commissioned by President Lyndon Johnson. UCLA psychologist Evelyn Hooker, who had been researching and testing gays since the early 1950s, chaired the 14-member blue-ribbon task force, which concluded that homosexuality was not a psychological disorder and urged the decriminalization of private sex acts between consenting adults. "The extreme opprobrium that our society has attached to homosexual behavior," the study noted, "has done more social harm than good." The Hooker Report became a springboard for the discussion of homosexuality in venues like Modern Medicine, in which a poll of 27,700 doctors revealed that the overwhelming majority were in favor of legalizing private homosexual behavior. In Berkeley, a police officer fatally shot a gay man, Frank Bartley. The death was ruled accidental. Gay organizations in California attempted to call attention to the unusually high number of gay men "accidentally" shot or beaten to death by police. In October, Time magazine's "The Homosexual: Newly Visible, Newly Understood" became the first cover story on gay rights to appear in any national magazine. The 10-page article mentioned the Stonewall riots, and included discussions by theologians, psychiatrists and sex researchers on such topics as "Are Homosexuals Sick?" and "Changing Sexual Roles." Though it was more objective in tone than earlier articles, it still prompted protests by the GLF and the Daughters of Bilitis. An article in Esquire magazine announced the birth of "The New Homosexual" in the wake of the Stonewall riots. Amendments to the Canadian criminal code legalized private sexual acts between consenting adults. The American Sociological Association became the first national professional organization in the United States to issue a statement supporting gay and lesbian civil rights. "Midnight Cowboy," starring Dustin Hoffman and newcomer Jon Voight, premiered. The movie, which was described by John Wayne in a Playboy interview as "a love story between two fags," was given an "X" rating due to its homosexual subtext, and became the only X-rated film ever to win the Academy Award for Best Picture. In 1971, in anticipation of a re-release, the film was resubmitted to the MPAA ratings board with no alterations whatsoever, and was granted an "R" rating. 1970 The Gay Activists Alliance (GAA) was founded in New York by Jim Owles and Marty Robinson, who had broken from the GLF because they believed it was too focused on causes unrelated to gay liberation as a result of its insistence on aligning itself with other oppressed groups. (The members of the GLF, in the words of a local street figure at the time, were "a bunch of stoned-out faggots" who believed that their struggle must necessarily be joined to the struggle of blacks, women, antiwar protesters, and everyone else "working for the Revolution." The members of the GAA, on the other hand, were dedicated solely to achieving civil rights for gays. They included professional, middle-class homosexuals, who understood government, business and media, and who had connections throughout the "establishment" world.) In March, the Snake Pit, a gay bar in Greenwich Village, was raided by police, and over 150 patrons were arrested. One of those arrested was Argentinean national Alfredo Diego Vinales, who was living in New Jersey with an expired visa. His fear of being discovered and deported was so great that he jumped out of a window at the police station in order to avoid being booked. Miraculously, though he was impaled on the spikes of a wrought iron fence, he survived. The accident enraged the gay community and energized the gay liberation movement. Charges against the patrons were dropped after a journalist wrote a scathing article about the raid, noting that it is not a crime to be a patron in a place where liquor is being served illegally. U.S. Representative Edward Koch wrote to police commissioner Howard Leary in response to the arrests, stating that the incident and four others like it in the previous 12 months clearly suggested an attempt by police to harass homosexuals, and reminding him that it is not illegal to be homosexual and that the law should not be used as a tool of harassment. The National Organization for Women (NOW) purged several prominent lesbian members from its ranks. Just a year later, however, the organization acknowledged oppression of lesbians as a "legitimate" concern. A group of New York lesbians, equally disgusted by the misogyny and arrogance of gay men and with the homophobia of heterosexual feminists, wrote and distributed a passionate manifesto, "The Woman-Identified Woman," at the Second Congress to Unite Women. The manifesto defined lesbians as "the rage of all women condensed to the point of explosion." The women, calling themselves the Lavender Menace in a barbed response to Betty Friedan's characterization of lesbians as a "lavender menace" that could derail the blossoming feminist movement, called on feminists to cut their ties with men and male culture, and to redefine their own roles in society by bonding with other women, ideally lesbians, who best understood the oppression women suffered in a male-dominated society. This marked the beginning of lesbian feminism as distinct from mainstream feminism. The participants in the Lavender Menace action soon broke away from the GLF and NOW and formed Radicalesbians, the first radical lesbian feminist organization. The first lesbian feminist bookstore in the U.S., Amazon Bookstore in Minneapolis, opened for business. Soon after, A Woman's Place bookstore opened in Oakland, California. Hans Knight of The Philadelphia Sunday Bulletin wrote an editorial which began, "Homosexuals are sick. Very sick. They're sick of wearing masks. They're sick of being snickered and sneered at. They're sick of being feared. They're sick of being called queers, faggots, and fairies. They're sick of being punished for being honest, of being labeled criminals by the letter of the law. They're sick of being barred from federal jobs and the armed forces. They're sick of being insulted on one hand, pitied on the other. Most of all they're sick of being told they're sick." The first legislative hearings on gay rights in the U.S. were convened in New York City by three members of the New York State Assembly, in direct response to GLF and GAA actions. On May 4, at Kent State University in Kent, Ohio, four students were killed and nine were wounded when National Guardsmen opened fire on a group of antiwar protestors. On June 12, the first marriage in the United States specifically intended to legally bind two persons of the same sex was performed at Metropolitan Community Church in Los Angeles. Neva Joy Heckman and Judith Ann Belew were united in holy matrimony by Rev. Troy Perry. Under California law, a couple who has lived together at least two years can be legally joined without a license by having a church ceremony and being issued a church certificate. Neva and Judith had been together just over two years. In June, on the first anniversary of the Stonewall riots, more than 5,000 people took part in a "Christopher Street Liberation Day March" in New York City, chanting slogans such as, "Out of the closets and into the streets!" Similar "Freedom Marches" were held in Chicago, Los Angeles and San Francisco. Prior to Stonewall, demonstrations by gay people even in the largest cities had seldom attracted more than a few dozen hard-core activists, so the turnouts were truly remarkable. These were the first Pride Parades, and the concept quickly spread. Within a few years, Pride Parades and celebrations were being held in cities throughout the country, and later around the world, drawing millions of participants. "The Boys in the Band," the cinematic version of an off-broadway play by Mark Crowley, was the first Hollywood movie to attempt to depict gay characters honestly. The story revolved around a group of gay friends in Manhattan who gathered for an eventful birthday party. Though director William Friedkin (who also directed "The French Connection") was not entirely successful in avoiding stereotypes, and the depictions of the characters weren't especially positive, the film is still widely considered a landmark movie. New York City's first gay community center opened in Greenwich Village. The University of Nebraska approved a course in homophile studies. A team of doctors in Frankfurt, Germany, announced "success" in treating homosexuals with brain surgery. They used electrical shocks to disintegrate parts of the brain which regulate sexual arousal. Side effects included amnesia, potentially dangerous hormone imbalances, and total loss of libido. Rita Hauser, Republican U.S. representative to the United Nations, spoke to the American Bar Association in favor of legalizing same-sex marriage, saying laws against it were based on the mistaken notion that the purpose of marriage must be procreation. Forty members of the GAA invaded the offices of Harper magazine to protest an article which had presented homosexuality as a mental illness. GAA president Arthur Evans verbally attacked editor Midge Decter for publishing an article which would add to the suffering of homosexuals. The protest led to a three-part television news series on gay liberation. The New York Times published "What It Means To Be Homosexual," an article written by Merle Miller, in which he described the challenges he had faced throughout his life as a gay man. The article was the first to be published in a mainstream newspaper written by an out gay man about his experiences. The Times received almost 5,000 letters in response to the article, 95% of them from gay men. In response to a letter asking if she considered homosexuality a disease, advice columnist Abigail Van Buren ("Dear Abby") responded, "No! It is the inability to love at all which I consider an emotional illness." THE LAMBDA SYMBOL The Greek letter, lambda, was emblazoned on the shields of ancient Spartan warriors. While the city-state is famous for its legendary battle prowess, it is also notable for its practice of pairing experienced soldiers with young recruits for both training and sex. The ancient Greek Spartans regarded the lambda to mean unity, while the Romans considered it "the light of knowledge shed into the darkness of ignorance." In physics, the symbol is used to denote energy or wavelength. It was adopted in 1970 by the GAA, and became the symbol of their growing movement of gay liberation. In 1974, the symbol was adopted by the International Gay Rights Congress held in Edinburgh, Scotland; as their symbol for lesbian and gay rights, the lambda became internationally popular. While its usage has declined in subsequent decades, it is still sometimes favored by collegiate gay men as a wry commentary on Greek fraternity traditions. 1971 The term "homophobia," coined by clinical psychologist George Weinberg and first used in print in Time magazine in 1969, was popularized by his book, Society and the Healthy Homosexual. Although the term is still widely used, it remains a subject of controversy, as many object to its connotation of irrational fear. The term "heterosexism" has been suggested as a more neutral alternative. The American Library Association began awarding an annual Gay Book Award. The first went to Isabel Miller for her novel Patience and Sarah. A full 10 years after Illinois, Connecticut became the second state to repeal its "anti-sodomy" law and decriminalize consensual homosexual sex. The first gay community services center opened in Los Angeles, and soon became the largest gay social services agency in the United States. The first public gay demonstration in Canada took place. The French newspaper Tout called for sexual liberation in France, and defended the rights of homosexuals. The newspaper was seized for being offensive to public morals. Metropolitan Community Church in Los Angeles held its first service at its own building, the first property in America owned by an organization serving the gay community. In the first U.S. court ruling on the subject of same-sex marriage, the Minnesota Supreme Court ruled against the contention of plaintiffs Jack Baker and Mike McConnell that the absence of a specific prohibition against same-sex marriages signified a legislative intent to recognize them. The court found that "the institution of marriage as a union of man and woman, uniquely involving the procreation and rearing of children within a family, is as old as the book of Genesis." This decision was summarily affimed by the U.S. Supreme Court in 1972, and thus remains the paramount case on the issue. Frank Kameny announced his candidacy for Washington, DC's first congressional seat, becoming the first openly gay person to run for a seat in the U.S. Congress. He came in fourth out of six. He was later instrumental in the legal battle which brought an end to the U.S. government's ban on employment of homosexuals. San Francisco bar Toad Hall opened on Castro Street. It was credited as a significant influence in the development of the Castro Street area as a gay neighborhood. In the film "Sunday, Bloody Sunday," openly-gay director John Schlesinger, the director of "Midnight Cowboy," took a very matter-of-fact approach to the romantic triangle of a man (Peter Finch) and a woman (Glenda Jackson) in love with the same younger man (Murray Head). The movie was one of the first heavily Oscar-nominated films to feature a kiss between two men. 1972 The U.S. Senate approved the Equal Rights Amendment, which would have amended the U.S. Constitution to prohibit discrimination on the basis of gender. The ERA was never ratified by most state assemblies, though, and was finally defeated in 1982. The U.S. Supreme Court effectively upheld the right to refuse employment on the grounds of homosexuality by refusing to review the case of a man who was refused a job by the Minnesota University library because he was openly gay. A U.S. District Judge ruled that the Civil Service Commission could not discriminate against gay employees unless it could prove that being gay would interfere with their jobs. The first gay synagogue in the U.S., Beth Chayim Chadashim in Los Angeles, was founded. Two years later, it received its charter from the Union of American Hebrew Congregations, making it the first officially-recognized gay synagogue. East Lansing, Michigan, became the first city in the U.S. to ban sexual-orientation discrimination in city hiring. Kathy Kozachenko, elected to the Ann Arbor, Michigan, city council, became the first openly lesbian woman to hold any elected office in the U.S. Ann Arbor, Michigan, passed a broad gay rights law, one of the first cities in the United States to do so. The New York City Council voted for the first time on a gay rights law. The law failed. Such a law was finally passed, after 15 attempts, in 1986. William Johnson became the first openly gay man to be ordained as a minister by a major religious denomination, the United Church of Christ, in California. Jeanne Manford marched with her son, Mortie, in New York City's Gay Pride Parade. Enraged that her son had been beaten at a gay rights protest two months before while police did nothing, she carried a sign at the march that said, "Parents of Gays: Unite in Support of Our Children." After many participants ran up to her during the parade and begged her to talk to their parents, she decided to begin a support group. Today, Parents, Families and Friends of Lesbians and Gays (PFLAG), the organization that grew from her efforts, includes more than 500 chapters nationwide, with over 200,000 members, supporters and affiliates, and is the largest chapter network in the struggle for GLBT rights. The sixth annual convention of the Association for the Advancement of Behavioral Therapy was greeted by approximately 100 demonstrators protesting the continued use of aversion therapy in attempts to alter sexual orientation. FBI director J. Edgar Hoover testified before Congress that there were no homosexuals in the Bureau. (Hoover himself was a crossdresser, though probably not a homosexual.) Camille Mitchell of San Jose, California, became the first open lesbian to win custody of her children in a disputed divorce case. The judge restricted Mitchell, however, from living with her lover, or from seeing her lover when her children were present. John Waters released the film "Pink Flamingos," which he himself called "an exercise in poor taste." It made an underground star of the flamboyant and obese drag queen Divine (Harris Glenn Milstead), who went on to work with Waters in such films as "Female Trouble," "Polyester" and "Hairspray." David Bowie, in an interview with Melody Maker magazine, stated that he was and always had been gay, and thus became the first popular entertainer to be specifically "marketed" as a homosexual. (In 1976, in a Playboy interview, Bowie claimed that he was actually bisexual, and that his previous statement had been made at the suggestion of his manager, Tom Defries, who thought that it would increase the fascination with his act and thus spur album sales. He called the earlier interview the worst mistake of his life. Still later, in an interview in Rolling Stone, Bowie claimed that he actually was and always had been straight.) 1973 The National Gay Task Force, later the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force (NGLTF), the first national GLBT civil rights organization, was founded in New York. Lambda Legal Defense and Education Fund, the first national legal organization dedicated to achieving full equality for gay and lesbian people, was formed as an offshoot of the GAA, after nearly two years of legal battles. The original application for nonprofit status had been denied unanimously by New York judges who found the organization's stated mission to be "neither benevolent nor charitable." Naiad Press was started in Florida by Barbara Grier and Donna McBride. Naiad remained a leader in lesbian publishing until 2004, when Grier and McBride finally decided to retire. Olivia Records, for two decades a leader in women's music, was founded. The company cut its first single a year later, with a Meg Christian song on one side and a Cris Williamson song on the other. The Lesbian Herstory Archives was started in New York City, housed in the apartment of founders Joan Nestle and Deborah Edel, with the mission of preserving the lives and works of all lesbians. Maryland became the first state to ban same-sex marriages, by enacting a state law explicitly defining marriage as the union of a man and a woman. The law was declared unconstitutional in 2006. In June, at the annual march and rally in New York City commemorating the Stonewall riots, growing tensions between middle-class gays and lesbians and "street queens" finally exploded. Sylvia Rivera, a flamboyant transsexual who had been active in the GLF and the GAA since their foundings, took the stage and began to harangue the crowd about its lack of support. Jean O'Leary, a lesbian feminist, had her forcibly removed from the stage, and then read a prepared statement denouncing transvestites as "men who impersonate women for entertainment and profit." Rivera and other male-bodied persons who wore makeup and women's clothing, she said, were not engaging in revolutionary acts, but were instead merely insulting women. The argument reflected a growing schism within the gay rights movement. Gay and lesbian leaders were beginning to publicly distance themselves from crossdressers, drag queens and transsexuals, and the lesbian feminists' vocal hatred of men who "masqueraded" as women made it that much easier to do. It was viewed by most within the movement as a pragmatic move, as it was assumed that gay rights laws referencing "gender identity" and applying to transsexuals would face greater opposition than those applying only to gays and lesbians. But the transgender folk who were being excluded understandably viewed the move instead as a "sell out," especially given the important role the transvestite and transsexual "street queens" had played in the Stonewall riots themselves. In deciding on Roe v. Wade, the U.S. Supreme Court overturned state laws outlawing abortion. Twenty years later, Norma McCorvey, a lesbian, revealed that she had been "Jane Roe." The U.S. Supreme Court, in two separate rulings, also restricted the availability of sexually explicit material, allowing local communities to define obscenity and eliminating a national standard. The Ninth Circuit Court decided the case of Society for Individual Rights and Hickerson v. Hampton, a class action suit brought by a San Francisco gay organization against the U.S. Civil Service Commission. The Court not only overturned the Commission's anti-gay exclusionary policy, but issued an injunction (still in effect to this day) against its further implementation. Proceedings were then held to determine under what, if any, circumstances sexual orientation could be considered in determining whether a person was suitable for employment in the U.S. government. On July 3, 1975 -- by no coincidence the beginning of the long Fourth of July holiday, when few people would be paying attention to news out of Washington -- the Commission officially "threw in the towel" and adopted new suitability regulations devoid of the previous language about "immoral conduct" and "sexual perversion." After more than a decade, having suffered massive civilian and military casualties, the United States pulled out of Vietnam. The Los Angeles Metropolitan Community Church was destroyed by arson. The building had been the first property in America owned by an organization whose primary outreach was to gays and lesbians. Richard O'Brien's "The Rocky Horror Show," a rock-and-roll musical homage to bad science fiction movies which told the story of a "square" couple who got a flat tire in a storm and found themselves in the castle of a mad transvestite scientist, premiered in London, beginning a seven-year run. "The Rocky Horror Picture Show," the film version of the play starring Tim Curry, premiered in both England and the U.S. in 1975, to very poor reviews. But when midnight showings began in New York City in 1976 and audience participation was added, a worldwide cult phenomenon was born. The Minnesota State House of Representatives voted 69-46 to retain the state's "anti-sodomy" laws. Montana revised its "anti-sodomy" law. The new law governed "Deviate Sexual Conduct," applied only to same-sex activity, and specified a penalty of up to 10 years in prison. The American Bar Association passed a resolution recommending the repeal of all state "anti-sodomy" laws. In December, the American Psychiatric Association voted to remove homosexuality from the list of illnesses in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM), declaring that homosexuality did not meet the criteria of a mental illness. (Although the change became effective immediately for diagnostic purposes, it was not actually reflected in the manual itself until the publication of its third edition, DSM-III, in 1980.) The change ended a century of officially-sanctioned efforts by psychiatrists to "cure" gays. John Evans and Rev. Kent Philpott founded Love in Action, the first "ex-gay" ministry, devoted to "helping" people change their sexual orientation from gay to straight. Twenty years later, after a long-time friend committed suicide, Evans left the movement, stating publicly that for most people, sexual orientation was not something that can be changed, and that Love in Action was "destroying people's lives." THE "EX-GAY" MOVEMENT The fundamental belief of supporters of so-called reparative (or conversion) therapy, as advocated by "ex-gay" and related organizations such as Exodus International, Love in Action, the National Association for Research and Therapy of Homosexuality (NARTH), and Parents and Friends of Ex-Gays (PFOX), is that GLBT people can become heterosexual, or at least "leave homosexuality behind." This belief has been rejected by every major organization of health care professionals in the U.S. (and in most other countries), as well as by various educational and other professional organizations. The American Academy of Pediatrics, the American Association of School Administrators, the American Counseling Association, the American Federation of Teachers, the American Medical Association, the American Psychiatric Association, the American Psychological Association, the American School Health Association, the American Sociological Association, the Interfaith Alliance Foundation, the National Association of School Psychologists, the National Association of Social Workers and the National Education Association have all officially recognized that homosexuality is not a mental disorder, and that a "cure" is therefore unnecessary. These organizations do not support efforts to change a person's sexual orientation through reparative therapy, and have raised concerns about the potential of such therapy to do serious harm. Despite the claim that reparative therapy is based on science rather than on religious belief, most "ex-gay" organizations are closely tied to fundamentalist protestant Christian organizations, and their programs often include intense religious indoctrination. As well, the handful of studies that proponents of reparative therapy point to in their effort to "prove" that sexual orientation can be changed all suffer from serious methodological or other flaws. (An oft-cited study by Robert Spitzer, for example, relied heavily upon self-reporting by subjects who had a clear vested interest in claiming to have been successfully converted.) "Ex-gay" organizations prey upon those who have been falsely led to believe that there is something wrong with who they are. Instead of helping them to learn to accept themselves, these organizations offer a "cure" that, at best, simply doesn't work. In the process, they often make bad situations even worse, intensifying the self-hatred and depression from which their victims are already suffering. 1974 The first bill to prohibit discrimination against gays and lesbians, HR-14752, was introduced to the U.S. House of Representatives by Bella Abzug and Ed Koch. The bill sought to add explicit protections for gays and lesbians to the 1964 Civil Rights Act. It did not pass. Lesbian Connection, now the largest circulating lesbian periodical in the U.S., began publishing in East Lansing, Michigan. In April, influential television news anchor Walter Cronkite featured a major segment on gay rights after speaking with Mark Segal, a gay youth activist who had interrupted his live broadcast five months earlier. The fifth annual Christopher Street Liberation Day Parade in New York City was attended by more than 40,000 people, more than double the number from the previous year. Two men were arrested by vice officers in a club in Denver and charged with lewd fondling in public because one kissed the other on the cheek as they left the dance floor. After a mere 10 minutes of deliberation a jury found the men not guilty, and condemned the police for blatant harassment. Elaine Noble was elected to the Massachusetts State House of Representatives, becoming the first openly lesbian woman elected to a state office. Conservative columnist William Safire wrote that while he believed homosexuality was abnormal and immoral, when homosexuals are denied equal protection under law, "it is the law that is queer." Playgirl magazine's editors admitted that 20% of the magazine's readers were male. Two ministers in New Milford, Connecticut, threatened to sue the city's school board for requiring sixth grade boys to take home economics, claiming that the class would turn them into homosexuals. The American Psychological Association, following the American Psychiatric Association, voted to no longer consider homosexuality a mental disorder. The first International Gay Rights Congress was held in Scotland. It led to the formation of the International Lesbian and Gay Association in 1978. In August, as a result of the Watergate scandal, President Richard Nixon became the first (and so far only) U.S. President ever to resign from office. 1975 In Arizona in January, two men from Phoenix were granted a marriage license by a county clerk. The Arizona Supreme Court, citing the Bible, voided the marriage. The men were forced to move due to constant harassment and death threats after a local newspaper published their address. In response to the incident, the Arizona state legislature passed a bill 37-3 specifically defining marriage as being between a man and a woman. Clela Rorex, the county clerk of Boulder County, Colorado, allowed six same-sex couples to wed, after receiving an advisory opinion from the district attorney's office indicating that the state's laws did not explicitly prohibit it. Colorado Attorney General J.D. MacFarlane said later that he didn't consider the licenses valid, but chose not to challenge them in court. Rorex stopped issuing same-sex marriage licenses after she realized that they might mislead couples into thinking that they had rights that the state would not recognize. Though she only issued six such licenses, her actions created a national furor. "I got volumes of hate mail," she said later. "I got mail from entire church congregations... saying I was creating a Sodom and Gomorrah." One outraged man came into town with his mare, Dolly, and asked Rorex to marry them. Her answer was no, since at 8, the horse, she joked, was underage. New Hampshire state legislators repealed their state's "anti-sodomy" law, but only accidentally, thanks to ambiguous wording in a rape penalties bill. They didn't realize they had done it until gay publications pointed it out, but they allowed the repeal to stand. David Kopay, a former Washington Redskins linebacker, was featured in a series of articles on homosexuality and sports run in The Washington Star, becoming the first major professional athlete to come out voluntarily. The American Medical Association passed a resolution urging all states to repeal laws criminalizing homosexual acts between consenting adults. Thanks in large part to the efforts of Frank Kameny, in response to the 1973 court decision in Society for Individual Rights and Hickerson v. Hampton, the anti-gay policies of the U.S. Civil Service Commission were reversed. The new hiring regulations made no mention of "immoral conduct" or "sexual perversion." Santa Cruz County, California, became the first U.S. county to ban anti-gay discrimination. Feminist Jill Johnston wrote an essay "Are Lesbians Gay?" in which she explained why she believed it was absurd for lesbians to align themselves with the gay movement. Randy Shilts made his debut in The Advocate with a story titled "Candy Jar Politics: The Oregon Gay Rights Story." He continued to work as a journalist for both The Advocate and The San Francisco Chronicle until his death from AIDS in 1994. He was also the author of The Mayor of Castro Street (1982), a biography of Harvey Milk, And the Band Played On: Politics, People and the AIDS Epidemic (1987) and Conduct Unbecoming: Gays and Lesbians in the U.S. Military (1994). A front-page article about the success of the gay newsmagazine The Advocate appeared in The Wall Street Journal. 1976 Montreal police launched a series of raids on gay bars, intending to "clean up" the city before the opening of the Summer Olympics. The largest gay demonstration to date was held to protest the raids. Michael Bennett's "A Chorus Line," a Broadway musical with a sympathetic treatment of gay characters, won nine Tony Awards, as well as the Pulitzer Prize for drama. In Rose v. Locke, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that cunnilingus was covered by Tennessee's "crimes against nature" statute, even though it wasn't expressly mentioned. Mayor George Sullivan of Anchorage, Alaska, vetoed a gay rights bill, explaining that the people of Anchorage should not be forced to associate with sexual deviants. Armistead Maupin began serializing his Tales of the City in the San Francisco Chronicle. A UCLA study was released which showed that being raised by a lesbian mother has no effect on the mental health or sexual orientation of a child. Exodus International, the largest "ex-gay" organization, was founded. In Florida, Willard Allen was released from a mental hospital 26 years after being ordered by a judge to be held there for having had sex with another man. His doctors had been recommending his release for almost 20 years. The convictions of two California men arrested for lewd conduct for kissing in public were upheld. They were forced to register as sex offenders under California law. 1977 Miami passed a gay rights ordinance, making it the first major southern U.S. city to do so. Florida Governer Askew asked Miami voters to rescind the ordinance, saying, "I would not want a known homosexual teaching my children." In an interview with Newsweek magazine, Rev. Jerry Falwell criticized the gay rights ordinance in Miami, saying, "So-called gay folks would just as soon kill you as look at you." Fundamentalist Anita Bryant (a singer, orange juice industry spokesperson and former Miss America contestant), with the assistance of Florida Governor Askew, led a successful campaign to repeal the gay rights legislation recently passed in Miami, Florida. "Homosexuality is nothing new," she wrote in a full-page ad taken out in The Miami Herald. "Cultures throughout history have dealt with homosexuals almost universally with disdain, abhorrence, disgust -- even death. The recruitment of our children is absolutely necessary for the survival and growth of homosexuality. Since homosexuals cannot reproduce, they must recruit, must freshen their ranks. And who better qualifies as a likely recruit than a teenage boy or girl who is surging with sexual awareness." Her fear that homosexuals "recruited" youths inspired the name of her political organization, "Save Our Children." After the Miami ordinance was repealed, she stated, "In victory, we shall not be vindictive. We shall continue to seek help and change for homosexuals, whose sick and sad values belie the word 'gay' which they pathetically use to cover their unhappy lives." When Bryant later complained to the press that she had lost her television job due to her crusade against gay rights, GLBT activists were quick to point out the hypocrisy of someone so anxious to insure that others had no recourse when they lost a job complaining about having no recourse when she lost one herself. Following the repeal of Miami's gay rights ordinance, Florida governor Reubin Askew signed into law a bill forbidding same-sex marriage and the adoption of children by homosexuals. Wyoming repealed its "anti-sodomy" law. A "60 Minutes" segment on child pornography blamed the problem on homosexuals. Spencer Kimball, president of the Mormon Church, blamed all of the problems of the United States on homosexuals. Officers from the National Gay Task Force met with White House aide Midge Costanza to discuss how the Carter administration could help advance gay rights. It was the first time White House officials had met with representatives from the gay community. The Canadian province of Quebec amended its provincial Charter of Human Rights, adding lesbians and gay men to the list of those protected, thus banning anti-gay discrimination in employment, housing and public accommodations. A gay pride march in Barcelona was broken up by police who fired into the crowd. Dozens of people were seriously injured. Denis Lemon, editor of The Gay News, was tried under the UK's blasphemy libel law and convicted for publishing a poem by James Kirkup. The poem, "The Love That Dares to Speak Its Name," was about Jesus and a Roman centurion having sex. A bill to repeal Nebraska's "anti-sodomy" law was vetoed by Governor James Exon. The state's legislature overrode the veto, however, and the law was repealed. The Nevada State Senate not only voted to retain its "anti-sodomy" law, but added a new amendment which prohibited parole for anyone found guilty of consensual homosexual acts. (This amendment did not apply to non-consensual acts, whether homosexual or heterosexual.) The comedy "Soap" premiered on ABC. It featured Billy Crystal as Jodie Dallas, one of the first openly gay characters in any television series. The U.S. State Department lifted its ban on the employment of homosexuals. Harvey Milk, the so-called "Mayor of Castro Street," was elected to the San Francisco city council, becoming the first openly gay elected official in the U.S. In Manhattan, Ellen Marie Barrett became the first openly lesbian ordained minister in the Episcopal Church. The Santa Barbara, California, board of education voted to ban discrimination against gay and lesbian students, making it the first school board in the country to do so. 1978 In Zablocki v. Redhail, the U.S. Supreme Court declared marriage to be "of fundamental importance to all individuals," describing it as "one of the 'basic civil rights of man'" and "the most important relation in life." The court also noted that "the right to marry is part of the fundamental 'right to privacy'" in the U.S. Constitution. The U.S. Supreme Court, in FCC v. Pacifica Foundation, approved restrictions on broadcast material that was "indecent" but not "obscene." The ruling was used to block broadcast of gay-themed programs. An hour-long radio program, "Gay News and Views," began airing on an Ontario radio station. It was the first regularly-scheduled gay-themed radio program in Canada. Mayor Ed Koch of New York City issued an executive order banning discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation in municipal government. The order was struck down by the courts. Inspired by the repeal of Miami's gay rights ordinance, voters in St. Paul, Minnesota, voted to repeal their four year-old gay rights law by a two-to-one margin. An application to register the name of Gayweek magazine was denied by the U.S. Patent office, on the grounds that it was "immoral." The Oklahoma State House of Representatives passed a law allowing the school board to fire homosexual teachers and teachers supportive of gay rights. State Representative John Monks announced that it would cover "both queers and lesbians." The Briggs Initiative, which would have barred lesbians and gay men (and anyone who supported their struggle for civil rights) from teaching in California's public schools, was defeated. Surprisingly, strong opposition to the initiative came from Ronald Reagan, the conservative former governer of the state and future President of the United States. Conservative gays and lesbians in California founded the Log Cabin Republicans, specifically to fight the Briggs Initiative, but more generally, to try to work toward GLBT civil rights from within the Republican party. The organization was not officially recognized by the Los Angeles Republican Party until 1985. Though it now has thousands of members in chapters throughout the United States, the organization remains a bit of an "odd man out," viewed with suspicion both by Republicans, many of whom see the organization as being at odds with their "core values," and by members of the GLBT community, many of whom view its members as "traitors" or "Aunt Marys" (a gay equivalent of "Uncle Toms"). Some 15,000 people attended "Gay Night" at Disneyland, a fundraiser for the Los Angeles Gay Community Services Center. It was the largest private party Disneyland had ever hosted. A full page ad was taken out in Time magazine by 29 international celebrities including Jean-Paul Sartre and Sir John Gielgud, protesting political opposition to gay rights in the U.S. and condemning those who lacked the courage to oppose bigotry. The North American Man-Boy Love Association (NAMBLA) was founded in Boston. Initially, the group was welcomed as part of the gay community, for a number of other gay rights organizations also urged reform of age-of-consent laws, perceiving them as governmental tools to suppress homosexual behavior rather than as safeguards against the sexual abuse of young children. (In states that didn't explicitly criminalize homosexual behavior, the legal age of consent for heterosexual couples was typically significantly lower than that for homosexual couples.) However, few organizations shared NAMBLA's desire to do away with such laws entirely and to legalize pederasty. Rhetoric by opponents of gay rights about homosexuals' supposed "recruitment" of children, coupled with the GLBT community's own very real disgust with those who effectively advocated child molestation, led to a marginalization of the group. By the mid-1980s, NAMBLA was virtually alone in its views, and had become politically isolated. Almost all other gay rights groups had publicly disavowed any ties to NAMBLA and had voiced disapproval of its objectives. During the 1990s, it was investigated by the federal government, but while a number of the organization's members were arrested for possession of child pornography, the allegations that NAMBLA was itself fronting an organized child pornography ring were never proven. Today, the group exists as little more than a Web site maintained by a handful of fanatics. The rainbow flag, designed by Gilbert Baker, flew for the first time at the San Francisco Gay and Lesbian Freedom Day Parade. On November 27, Harvey Milk and San Francisco Mayor George Moscone were assassinated by Dan White, who had recently learned that he would not be reappointed to the seat on the San Francisco Board of Supervisors which he had voluntarily resigned. White, who utilized the now-infamous "twinkie defense" at his trial, was convicted of voluntary manslaughter on the grounds of diminished responsibility, and spent just six years in prison. (Contrary to popular belief, White's lawyers never actually claimed that eating twinkies had, even indirectly, caused him to shoot Milk. Rather, the defense introduced the consumption of "junk" food, which was uncharacteristic for the normally health-conscious White, as evidence of depression and mental instability.) He later committed suicide while on parole. THE RAINBOW FLAG The rainbow flag was designed by Gilbert Baker, a San Francisco artist, who created the flag in response to a local activist's call for a community symbol to offer an optimistic alternative to the pink triangle. Borrowing symbolism from the hippie movement and black civil rights groups, Baker designed a flag with eight stripes, pink, red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo and violet, representing, respectively, sexuality, life, healing, sun, nature, art, harmony and spirit. Baker hand-dyed and sewed the material for the first flags himself, and they flew at the 1978 San Francisco Gay and Lesbian Freedom Day Parade. Baker then approached San Francisco's Paramount Flag Company about mass producing and selling his "gay flag" for the next year's parade. Unfortunately, the color "hot pink" was not commercially available, and mass production of his eight-striped version was impossible. The flag was thus reduced to seven stripes. In November of 1978, San Francisco's gay community was stunned when Harvey Milk was assassinated. Wishing to demonstrate the gay community's strength and solidarity in the aftermath of this tragedy, the 1979 Pride Parade Committee decided to use Baker's flag. The committee eliminated the indigo stripe, though, so they could divide the colors evenly along the parade route, with three colors on one side of the street and three on the other. The six colors were incorporated into a six-striped version that became popularized and that, today, is recognized by the International Congress of Flag Makers. The rainbow flag (or pride flag) is now the most popular and widely-recognized of all GLBT symbols. 1979 Dan White, on trial for the murder of San Francisco mayor George Moscone and gay City Supervisor Harvey Milk, was found guilty of manslaughter, rather than first-degree murder. Gays and lesbians gathered outside city hall to protest, where their anger boiled over in what became known as the White Night Riots. Twelve police cars were destroyed, and total damages were estimated at over $1 million. The only serious injuries occurred in the Castro neighborhood, where police burst into the Elephant Walk bar, trashing it and putting several patrons in the hospital. (San Francisco police officers had contributed a significant amount to the defense fund for the homophobic White, who was himself a former officer. Many police officers who were off-duty at the time of the rioting were at a local hotel, celebrating White's light sentence.) The Gay Fathers Coalition was formed. This group became The Gay and Lesbian Parents Coalition International in 1986, and The Family Pride Coalition in 1998, in the process spawning both Children of Lesbians and Gays Everywhere (COLAGE) and The Straight Spouse Network. The "ex-gay" movement suffered its first very public failure when Michael Bussee, one of the co-founding members who had helped organize the conference that led to Exodus International's inception, left the group to be with Gary Cooper, also a co-organizer of that conference and a staff member at the local Exodus ministry where they both worked. The two later held a life commitment ceremony, and became prominent opponents of "ex-gay" ministries. The U.S. Mint issued the Susan B. Anthony dollar, featuring an image of the noted feminist and probable lesbian. The coin was unpopular because it was too easily confused with a quarter. The Supreme Court of Canada decided that a daily newspaper, The Vancouver Sun, was justified in refusing to print a classified ad for a gay group, ruling that the Sun had "reasonable cause" to control the content of advertising it accepted. It was the first gay rights case on which the Canadian court had ever ruled. A group of 40 people in Cincinnati, Ohio, who had reserved a city park pool for a gay pride party were outnumbered and attacked by local residents who threw rocks and bottles at them. Police arrived, watched for a while, then drove away. One man had to be rescued by a television news crew. Police refused to return, even after several calls reporting a riot. "ABC News Close-Up" featured a documentary on homosexuals. Fifteen affiliates refused to air it, and the network was not able to find a single commercial sponsor. It covered topics such as promiscuity, and implied that gays could not form stable relationships. Fundamentalist minister Jerry Falwell founded the Moral Majority in Lynchburg, Virginia. The organization listed among its goals opposition to abortion, feminism, pornography, communism and gay rights. The Gender Identity Clinic at Johns Hopkins Hospital was closed by Paul McHugh, an opponent of sex-reassignment surgery who had been appointed chair of the hospital's department of psychiatry in 1975. It was replaced by the Sexual Behaviors Consultation Unit, which continued to study transsexualism and related issues, but which did not perform, and in fact actively discouraged patients from seeking, sex-reassignment surgery. Other U.S. hospitals which had opened up clinics similar to the GIC over the previous decade soon followed suit. The hostility of lesbian feminism toward transsexuals was given its most extreme voice in Janice Raymond's The Transsexual Empire. Charging that transsexual women were the patriarchy's "shock troops," medically-constructed pseudo-females created to infiltrate the lesbian community and destroy it, Raymond characterized sex-reassignment surgery as a new kind of rape. "All transsexuals rape women's bodies by reducing the real female form to an artifact, appropriating this body for themselves," she wrote. "However, the transsexually constructed lesbian feminist violates women's sexuality and spirit as well." Like Paul McHugh, the psychiatrist who closed Johns Hopkins' Gender Identity Clinic, Raymond rejected biological explanations for transsexuality, and viewed it purely as a social phenomenon. She accused male-to-female transsexuals of being willing collaborators in the patriarchy's attempt to enforce defined gender roles, maintaining women as second-class citizens. (She viewed female-to-male transsexuals as mere "tokens.") Although The Transsexual Empire, despite its harsh rhetoric, did provide some compelling critiques of gender roles, it deteriorated into outright paranoia near its close, with Raymond stating that one of the ultimate goals of "transsexual laboratories" was the creation of a "new breed" of more compliant females. The Harry Benjamin International Gender Dysphoria Association (HBIGDA) was founded to carry on the work that the Erickson Educational Foundation (EEF) had been doing for well over a decade, funding and organizing research into transsexuality. One of its first acts was to formalize a treatment protocol for transsexual people, which became known as the Benjamin Standards of Care. This protocol served both to protect transsexuals from unscrupulous practitioners and to allow a measure of medical control to be exerted over the process of sex reassignment. It was (and still is) protested by many transsexuals, who rejected the continuing efforts to "pathologize" transsexuality, and who felt they should have access to surgery and/or homones on demand. Stephen Lachs, reappointed to the Superior Court of Los Angeles by Governor Jerry Brown, became the first openly gay judge in the United States. On October 14, the first March on Washington for Gay and Lesbian Rights drew between 100,000 and 200,000 marchers. 1980 Ronald Reagan, embracing support from the Moral Majority, pledged in his campaign for the presidency to "resist the efforts... to obtain government endorsement of homosexuality." Mel Boozer, an African American gay man and a former president of the GAA, became the first openly gay person to have his name placed in nomination as a candidate at the Democratic National Convention. As a vice-presidential nominee, he addressed the convention. "I know what it's like to be called nigger, and I know what it's like to be called faggot," he said. "I can sum up the difference in one word: 'none.'" A federal judge ordered the U.S. Air Force to reinstate Sergeant Leonard Matlovich, who had been discharged in 1975 due to his homosexuality. The Air Force offered a settlement of $160,000 to avoid reinstating him. Matlovich accepted the offer in order to pay the legal bills accumulated during his five-year fight. "CBS Reports" aired a segment called "Gay Power, Gay Politics," hosted by Harry Reasoner. In response to it, San Francisco mayor Diane Feinstein wrote a scathing letter stating that it was unfair to present "glory holes," bathhouses, S&M, and sex in parks and toilets as typical of the gay experience. (The show had presented S&M as an extremely dangerous activity in which nearly all gays participated. Ironically, the torture chamber featured in the show was actually the Chateau, which served an exclusively heterosexual clientele.) Openly gay reporter Randy Alfred presented a 9,000-word complaint to the National News Council, accusing CBS of deceitful, biased and potentially harmful journalism. The Council convened a panel to investigate the claims, which voted 9-2 in agreement with the complaint. CBS was forced to publicly apologize. The third edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-III) was published. Homosexuality was no longer listed as a disorder. An alternative diagnosis of "Ego-Dystonic Homosexuality" was added, describing individuals unhappy with their own homosexuality, but it was removed in the 1987 revision (DSM-III-TR). DSM-III was also the first edition of the manual to list "Transsexualism" as a diagnostic category distinct from "Transvestic Fetishism" (crossdressing for the purpose of sexual excitement). Alyson Publications, the largest gay press in the United States, was founded in Boston by gay activist Sasha Alyson. The Human Rights Campaign (HRC) was founded. Enso Francone, a 32 year-old Italian in Moscow for the summer Olympics, chained himself to a fence in Red Square to protest Soviet persecution of homosexuals. He was dragged away by KGB officers. The American Journal of Psychiatry published an article recommending religion as a cure for homosexuality. The Canadian Union of Postal Workers ratified a contract that included a nondiscrimination clause protecting gay workers. This was the first time that gay employees of a federal government anywhere in the world were awarded such protection. Aaron Fricke went to court to sue his Rhode Island high school, in order to get permission to take his male date to the prom.     [ Ancient ] [ 533-1861 ] [ 1862-1968 ] [ 1969-1980 ] [ 1981-1995 ] [ 1996-2006 ] [ Notes ]     1981-1995 SUMMARY: THE AIDS EPIDEMIC As the 1980s dawned, the general attitude within the GLBT community was one of cautious optimism. The decade following the Stonewall riots had been a time of slow but steady progress. A number of prominent national medical organizations had come forward and officially declared that homosexuality was not a disease or a mental illness. Several states had repealed their "anti-sodomy" laws, decriminalizing consensual homosexual sex. And while no state had yet enacted state-wide civil rights protections for gays and lesbians -- Wisconsin would become the first to do so in 1982 -- many cities and municipalities had enacted gay rights ordinances, and many others were considering them. Certainly, there had been setbacks, prominent among them Anita Bryant's successful campaign to repeal Miami's gay rights ordinance in 1977 and the assassination of San Francisco city councilman Harvey Milk, the first openly gay elected official in the United States, in 1978. And there had been, as well, an unfortunate amount of infighting within the ranks of those advocating gay rights, most notably between transsexuals and lesbian feminists. But still, there was a sense that things were moving generally in the right direction. There was a great deal of work that still needed to be done, but much of the necessary groundwork had already been laid. Then, in 1981, everything changed. The fight for rights became, quite literally, a fight for survival. That summer, the CDC reported that a number of cases of rare cancers or pneumonias seen within the previous three years among gay men had been linked to an immune deficiency of unknown origin. Initially designated Gay-Related Immune Deficiency (GRID), the disease was later renamed Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome (AIDS). Although it was obvious almost immediately within the medical community that this disease was communicable and presented a potentially serious health threat to the general population, the fact that it appeared initially among gay men resulted in delayed action from many quarters, especially within the federal government. It was over a year after the CDC's announcement before the first official mention of AIDS was made from the White House, and President Reagan himself did not publicly discuss the federal government's role in fighting the disease until late in 1985, after another three years had passed. Research into the disease was chronically underfunded through most of Reagan's term in office. In 1984, the HIV retrovirus was identified as the agent responsible for AIDS. By that time, the public health risk posed by the disease had begun to receive national media attention. Though it was still widely regarded as a "gay" disease, it spread inexorably into the general population. By 1992, AIDS had become the number one cause of death in the United States for men aged 25-44; two years later, it was the leading cause of death for all Americans in that age range. By the early 1990s, funding for AIDS research was finally reaching the levels that the CDC and the National Institutes of Health had been requesting for years. Education and prevention programs had become widespread. But the cost of the government's early delays was enormous. AIDS had by then already killed tens of thousands in the United States, and several million worldwide. At least ten million more were already infected with the HIV retrovirus. Earlier action and better funding might not have brought a cure any closer, but they certainly could have saved many lives. If the early spread of the disease had been slowed, its later impact could have been much reduced. 1981 The U.S. Department of Defense again revised its policy on lesbians and gays in the military. The new policy not only barred GLBT individuals from serving, but required that questions about sexual orientation be asked of all recruits. Toronto police undertook a massive raid on four gay bathhouses, and arrested over 300 men. It was the largest civilian mass arrest in Canadian history, and the largest mass arrest of gay men anywhere in North America. The arrests generated a riot that has been called the Canadian Stonewall. The Reagan administration canceled the White House subscription to The Advocate. A Maryland court upheld the state's "anti-sodomy" law, which included prohibitions against heterosexual sodomy. The written decision included quotes from Exodus, Leviticus and Deuteronomy. Adele Starr and her husband in Los Angeles founded a national organization to unite the support groups for parents with gay and lesbian children which had been formed in various U.S. cities over the previous decade. That organization is now known as Parents, Families and Friends of Lesbians and Gays (PFLAG). A study from the Kinsey Institute reported that neither parental nor societal influences have much effect on a person's sexual orientation. U.S. Senator Roger Jepsen, a Republican from Iowa, introduced the Family Protection Act. It specified that anyone who was homosexual or openly supportive of homosexuals could not receive student aid, Social Security or veterans benefits, and regulated what public school text books could say about human sexuality. The Act never passed, and Jepsen himself lost his bid for re-election in 1984 after it was revealed that he had a membership at a brothel. The Moral Majority announced plans for a $3 million campaign to strike out homosexuality and gay rights in San Francisco. A spokesman announced that homosexual conduct should be a capital crime, as it was as serious an offense as murder. Republican Barry Goldwater expressed disgust with the intolerance of the right wing, and stated that every good Christian should "kick Jerry Falwell in the ass." The CDC reported that within the previous three years, over two dozen cases of Kaposi's sarcoma, a rare form of skin cancer, had been seen in gay men, and that over half of the patients had died within 24 months of diagnosis. A number of cases of Pneumocystis carinnii, a rare form of pneumonia, had also been seen among gay men in the Los Angeles area. These and similar cases had been linked to an immune deficiency of unknown origin, referred to as Gay-Related Immune Deficiency (GRID). The fact that GRID, later renamed Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome (AIDS), appeared initially among gay men resulted in delayed action from many quarters, especially within the federal government. On July 2, The New York Times published a story titled "Rare Cancer Seen in Homosexuals." It was the first story the paper ever ran about the mysterious disease that would later be named AIDS. Montana amended its "anti-sodomy" law, adding a fine of up to $50,000. The sentence of up to 10 years was not changed. California Governor Jerry Brown appointed the first openly lesbian judge, Mary Morgan, to the San Francisco Municipal Court. Marilyn Barnett filed a "galimony" suit against her former employer and lover, tennis champion Billie Jean King. King claimed to be straight, but didn't deny the affair. The New York City Gay Men's Chorus became the first gay musical group to perform at Carnegie Hall. A year later, Meg Christian and Cris Williamson became the first open lesbians to play there. Nancy Reagan, the First Lady of the United States, told The Globe that gay pride parades were appalling, because gays had nothing to be proud of. U.S. Representative Henry Waxman organized the first congressional hearings on AIDS (then still called GRID) and criticized the government for its lack of action in fighting the disease. PFLAG-Lincoln, the first PFLAG chapter in Nebraska, was founded. 1982 Wisconsin became the first state to pass a state-wide gay civil rights law, banning employment discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation. The bill was signed into law by Republican Governor Lee S. Dreyfus. Quebec became the first Canadian province to pass legislation recognizing gay and lesbian relationships, and granting to same-sex couples eligibility for employee benefits and other privileges enjoyed by married heterosexual couples. Wladziu Valentino Liberace's live-in boyfriend of some five years, Scott Thorson, filed a palimony suit against the entertainer. Most of his claim was eventually dismissed; he settled for $95,000 and a Rolls-Royce. Liberace denied being gay, and in fact continued to deny it until his death from AIDS in 1987. (In a bizarre outing, his body was exhumed in 1988 so that tests could be performed confirming the cause of death.) His sexual orientation was perhaps one of the worst-kept secrets in entertainment history. During a police raid on a New York City gay bar, 12 people were injured and $30,000 worth of damage was done. The police entered the bar with their guns drawn, and ordered all the patrons (who they referred to as "faggots") to get to the back of the bar. They destroyed liquor bottles and took the money out of the cash register. The raid resulted in a protest march and in an official reprimand by Mayor Ed Koch. Police never explained the reason for raiding the bar. The first Gay Games was held in San Francisco, with over a thousand participants from a dozen countries. A popular sporting and cultural event hosted by the gay and lesbian community every four years, it was the brainchild of Tom Waddell, whose goals were to promote the spirit of inclusion and participation and the pursuit of personal best into a sporting event. It was originally known as the Gay Olympics, but a lawsuit by the International Olympic Committee forced the name change. The IOC has allowed other groups to use the name "Olympics," though, and so some GLBT advocates have accused it of discrimination. Byton High in Philadelphia, the first gay high school in the United States, was started as an alternative to the public school system. The CDC reported that cases of AIDS were now being seen among IV drug users, hemophiliacs and Haitians. The first case of AIDS was reported in Africa. The Gay Men's Health Crisis, the first community-based AIDS service provider in the U.S., was established in New York City. "Tootsie," starring Dustin Hoffman, and Blake Edwards' "Victor/Victoria," starring Julie Andrews, opened in theaters. In both films, the lead characters crossdressed. Hoffman's character was an actor pretending to be a woman in order to get a job on a soap opera, and Andrew's character was a struggling singer pretending to be a man in order to get a job as a female impersonator in 1930s Paris. "Victor/Victoria," especially, touched on serious themes of gender identity and gay tolerance. It was based on a 1933 German film, "Viktor und Viktoria." The first official mention of AIDS in the White House occurred on October 15, when Reagan's press secretary, Larry Speakes, in response to a reporter's inquiry about "the gay plague," said, to general laughter, "I don't have it. Do you?" (The name "AIDS" had been coined by that time, but was not yet widely known; hence the reporter calling it "the gay plague" instead.) President Reagan himself did not publicly discuss the federal government's role in fighting the disease until 1985, after his good friend, Rock Hudson, admitted publicly to having the disease. President Ronald Reagan nominated radio evangelist Sam Hart to the U.S. Civil Rights Commission. Hart was known for his opposition to the Equal Rights Amendment, school integration and gay rights. His nomination was widely opposed, but when he was forced to withdraw, he blamed "militant homosexuals." Voters in Lincoln, Nebraska, overwhelmingly rejected a gay rights ordinance. Paul Cameron, a Nebraska psychologist, led the fight against the measure, spreading lies and warped research. In 1983, he was expelled from the American Psychological Association and barred from practicing for unethical conduct. 1983 "20/20" did its first show on AIDS. It had been a forbidden topic until executives learned that innocent children were getting the disease. The New York Times published its first front-page story on AIDS. In Lynchburg, Virginia, Rev. Jerry Falwell told his followers that AIDS is a punishment from God, and that no medication could halt the judgement of God. Episcopal bishop Paul Moore of New York (and many others) criticized Falwell for using an epidemic as a political weapon. Several cities in the United States held "Fighting for our Lives" marches. It was the first nationwide demand for government action in the AIDS epidemic. Legislators in Texas attempted to recriminalize homosexual acts because of the threat of AIDS, and also tried to ban gays and gay rights supporters from jobs in education, food handling and law enforcement, and from positions of public leadership or responsibility. Byton High in Philadelphia, the first high school in America founded specifically for GLBT teens, graduated its first class of five students. Representative Gerry Studds, a congressman from Massachusetts since 1973 (who continued to serve in the U.S. Congress until 1996), became the first openly homosexual member of the U.S. Congress (and more generally, the first openly gay national politician in the U.S.), when he was outed on July 13, 1983, in the course of an investigation of a Congressional sex scandal. U.S. Senator John Glenn told the National Gay Task Force that he did not support gay rights legislation and would not do anything which might be considered advocacy or promotion of homosexuality. He later added that he believed gays and lesbians should not be allowed to teach or to join the military. President Reagan fired three members of the U.S. Civil Rights Commission, replacing them with individuals who had a history of opposing gay rights. U.S. Representative Larry McDonald proposed that a "user-tax" be imposed on people with AIDS to finance research, reasoning that since they "caused" the epidemic, they shouldn't expect others to pay for the research necessary to find treatments. Reagan administration officials refused to allow access to federal files on AIDS to congressional investigators who were preparing for a hearing on the federal government's response to the disease. The hearings, held by the U.S. House of Representatives, concluded that the Reagan administration had been negligent and that funding was inadequate. The ISIS Survey, which characterized homosexuals as criminals, killers, deviants and perverts, was published by Paul Cameron, a Nebraska psychologist whose homophobic antics had already gained national attention. The American Psychological Association expelled him shortly thereafter for violating the Association's ethical principles, and in 1985 and 1986, the American Sociological Association adopted resolutions stating that Cameron had consistently misrepresented sociological research. He was barred from practicing in Nebraska, the only state in which he was ever licensed. Though his studies are seriously flawed and his conclusions are not accepted by any reputable medical or psychological organization, they still enjoy wide circulation, primarily through the Family Research Institute of Colorado Springs, Colorado, of which Cameron is now chairman. 1984 In January, after it was banned by the BBC, the song "Relax" by Frankie Goes to Hollywood became a number one hit in England in spite of its suggestively homoerotic lyrics. The following year, it reached the top 10 in the U.S. The HIV retrovirus (then known as HTLV-III) was identified as the agent responsible for AIDS. Robert Gallo of the NIH originally claimed credit for the discovery, but the United States officially acknowledged in 1995 that it was actually Luc Montagnier at the Institut Pasteur in France who was responsible. San Francisco Health Department head Mervyn Silverman, attempting to curb the spread of AIDS, closed 14 gay bathhouses after investigators uncovered high-risk sexual behavior in them. The Unitarian Church voted to recognize gay and lesbian unions. Rev. Jerry Falwell appeared on television and denied that he had ever referred to Metropolitan Community Church as vile and satanic, and to its members as "brute beasts," on his "Old Time Gospel Hour." He offered $5,000 to anyone who could prove that he had. Rev. Jerry Sloan of MCC called Falwell's toll-free number and purchased a copy of the tape of the relevant show. He then presented it as proof, and demanded payment of the $5,000. When Falwell refused to pay, Sloan sued and won. Jimmy Swaggart, Phyllis Schlafley, and Jerry Falwell spoke to a Republican party committee, urging a platform opposing gay rights. After discovering that Seattle police were circulating lists of people suspected of having AIDS and that a Seattle fireman had refused to assist a gay couple, Mayor Charles Royer signed an executive order prohibiting discrimination against sexual minorities by city agencies and employees. An article by Peter Sullivan in The Journal of the Canadian Medical Association claimed to offer evidence that homosexuality is an addiction. The Wall Street Journal gave writers permission to start using the word "gay" instead of "homosexual." U.S. News and World Report announced that gays and lesbians make up the seventh-largest voting block in the United States. Berkeley, California, became the first city in the United States to provide domestic partner benefits to city employees. West Hollywood incorporated as a municipality and immediately elected a largely gay city council and a lesbian mayor. Less than a month later, a gay rights ordinance was approved. California Governor George Deukmejian vetoed a gay rights bill, saying it was "unnecessary." A National Gay Task Force survey showed that approximately 10% of lesbians and 25% of gay men had been physically assaulted because of their sexual orientation. Chris Smith came out, becoming the first openly gay member of the British Parliament. 1985 The first test for HIV antibodies was licensed by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, allowing testing both of individuals and of the existing blood supply. The first case of HIV was reported in China. An interfaith forum of New York religious leaders declared that AIDS is not a punishment from God, and criticized televangelists who were adding fuel to the fire of AIDS hysteria and anti-gay prejudice for their own profit. Margaret Heckler, U.S. Secretary of Health and Human Services, announced, "We must conquer AIDS before it afflicts the heterosexual population." Los Angeles banned discrimination against people with AIDS in employment, housing, education and health care. It was the first U.S. city to do so. The first classes were held at the Harvey Milk School at Washington Square United Methodist Church in New York City. The alternative school was for students who had been harassed at their regular schools because of their sexual orientation. The first Gay Erotic Film Awards ceremony was held in Los Angeles. On June 29, the Imperial Court of Nebraska (ICON) sponsored the first Candlelight Pride Walk in Omaha, Nebraska. Some 60 participants marched, to remember those who had been lost to AIDS. In July, after repeated denials, movie and television actor Rock Hudson finally issued a public statement confirming that he had AIDS. He died three months later. He was the first public figure to die from the disease. On September 17, President Ronald Reagan finally mentioned AIDS in public for the first time, in response to a reporter's question at a press conference. He briefly defended the amount that the government was then expending to fight the disease -- just $100 million in 1985, with $126 million budgeted for 1986 -- in the face of accusations from prominent AIDS researchers that the amount was "not nearly enough." (During the Reagan presidency, when doctors at the Centers for Disease Control and the National Institutes of Health asked for more funding for their work on AIDS, they were routinely denied it.) The Democratic Party voted to drop official recognition of several caucuses, including the Gay and Lesbian Caucus. Ryan White, an Indiana boy with hemophilia and AIDS, was barred from attending public school. When a court decision allowed him to return, he was forced to use a separate restroom and eat with disposable utensils. His family was eventually forced to move because of threats and violent acts directed toward them. Ryan died in 1990. After a two-year legal battle, a Minnesota judge granted guardianship of Sharon Kowalski, a lesbian who had been severely injured in a 1983 car crash, to her father rather than to her lover, Karen Thompson. At the time of the accident, Kowalski and Thompson had been together for four years, and had had a commitment ceremony; nonetheless, after the accident, Kowalski's anti-gay father had put her in a nursing home and had forbidden visits by Thompson, despite Kowalski's clear desire to be with her. Thompson continued to fight, but it was not until 1989 that she finally saw Kowalski again. Two years later, the Minnesota Court of Appeals awarded Thompson guardianship. The First International AIDS Conference was held in Atlanta, Georgia. It was hosted by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (DHHS) and the World Health Organization (WHO). Researchers estimated that the number of Americans exposed to the AIDS virus was then two million, and predicted that the number of heterosexual cases would soon increase. Angered by the media's poor coverage of the AIDS epidemic, a group of New York activists founded the Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation (GLAAD) to serve as a watchdog on the presentation of lesbians and gay men by Hollywood and the television networks. Delta Airlines announced a new policy banning people with AIDS from flying on their airplanes. Employees were authorized to use force if necessary to remove anyone suspected of having the disease. Under pressure from medical authorities and civil rights groups, the policy was soon reversed. A gay man in Coventry, England, was beaten to death by a man who feared he would contract AIDS because they drank from the same bottle. The murderer was sentenced to three months in prison. A gay Australian man who had been living in the United States with his partner for 11 years was deported by a federal court on the grounds that he was a homosexual. An Immigration and Naturalization Service official argued that a loving relationship cannot exist between "faggots." Fifteen Chicago police officers who had a warrant to arrest a gay bar's bartender stormed into the bar with their guns drawn and ordered all the patrons onto the floor. They detained them for over three hours, searching them, photographing them and interrogated them about their personal lives. One patron was beaten. After the ACLU filed suit, charging unreasonable search and seizure, violation of freedom of association, and illegal obtaining of personal information, the police settled for $226,500, to be divided among the victims. Police also agreed to return all photographs and items confiscated and to expunge the incident and all information collected from their records. U.S. Senators Pete Wilson and Alfonse D'Amato attempted to hold a briefing on AIDS for Republican senators. Not a single senator showed up for it. 1986 In January, the space shuttle Challenger exploded 73 seconds after lift-off. The first Academy Award for Best Actor awarded to an actor in a gay role was presented to William Hurt for his role in "Kiss of the Spider Woman." In California, Becky Smith and Annie Afleck became the first openly lesbian couple to be granted legal joint adoption of a child. In San Francisco, Amity Pierce Buxton, whose own husband had recently come out as gay, spoke for the first time to the Gay Fathers Coalition about the need for support for the straight spouses of gays and lesbians. Her efforts over the next few years with that organization and with PFLAG led to the creation of the Straight Spouse Network. The U.S. Justice Department ended its policy of asking prospective prosecutors about their sexual orientation. Gay Games II was held in San Francisco. After 15 attempts, the first in 1972, the New York City Council finally passed a gay rights law. The first HIV cases were reported in Russia and India. Californians rejected an initiative that called for the quarantine of people with AIDS. The National Academy of Science issued a report critical of the U.S. response to the "national health crisis" of AIDS/HIV, and called for a $2 billion investment. At the centenary rededication of the Statue of Liberty, U.S. President Ronald Reagan and his wife, Nancy, sat next to French President Francois Mitterand and his wife, Danielle. Bob Hope, on stage, quipped, "I just heard that the Statue of Liberty has AIDS, but she doesn't know if she got it from the mouth of the Hudson or the Staten Island Fairy." Most of the audience responded with stunned silence, and the Mitterands looked appalled, but the Reagans laughed. Hope later apologized for the remark. Ricky Ray, a nine year-old hemophiliac with HIV in Florida, was barred from attending school. His family's home was burned by arsonists the following year. Ricky died in 1991. The U.S. Supreme Court's ruling in Bowers v. Hardwick upheld the constitutionality of a Georgia "anti-sodomy" law that criminalized oral and anal sex in private between consenting adults. This ruling was directly overturned 17 years later when the court ruled on Lawrence v. Texas in 2003. A National Institutes of Mental Health paper on youth suicide was presented at the National Conference on Prevention and Intervention in Youth Suicide in Oakland, California. It showed that gay youths were up to six times more likely to commit suicide than heterosexual youths. Thomas Daszkiewicz and his lover were attacked by a Philadelphia cab driver. When police arrived on the scene, instead of dealing with the driver, officer Juan Perez himself attacked Daszkiewicz, pushing his baton into his neck and making abusive, anti-gay remarks. 1987 The first antiretroviral drug, Zidovudine (AZT), was approved by the U.S. FDA for treatment of AIDS patients. In Washington, DC, 600 people were arrested in an act of civil disobedience at the U.S. Supreme Court, where they were protesting the Bowers v. Hardwick decision which upheld the constitutionality of Georgia's "anti-sodomy" law. It was the largest number to participate in an act of civil disobedience since the Vietnam War. (Federal law prohibits protesting on the steps of the U.S. Supreme Court.) On April 2, President Reagan appeared before the College of Physicians in Philadelphia to deliver his first "major speech" on AIDS, calling it "public enemy number one." Federal funding for AIDS research, however, remained low. Although virtually all medical experts opposed it on the grounds that it would drive those at risk away from seeking medical treatment, Vice President George Bush called for mandatory HIV testing. President Reagan was silent on the subject. During a speech at Northeastern University in Boston, Rev. Jesse Jackson criticized the Reagan administration's response to AIDS and opposed mandatory HIV testing. Former USAF sergeant Leonard Matlovich, one of the first gay men to challenge the U.S. military's policy against gays and lesbians, announced on the television show "Good Morning, America" that he had AIDS. Representative Barney Frank, who had been elected to the U.S. Congress from Massachusetts in 1980, publicly outed himself in an interview with a reporter from The Boston Globe. Vermont became the first state to distribute condoms to prison inmates in an effort to curb the spread of AIDS. KRON in San Francisco became the first television station to run a condom ad. Sergeant Miriam ben-Shalom won a decade-long battle challenging her discharge from the U.S. Army on grounds of lesbianism, and became the first open lesbian ever re-enlisted. The decision was overturned by the U.S. Supreme Court in 1989, after the military appealed. President Reagan announced the formation of a presidential commission on AIDS. None of the 13 members was an expert on the disease. The commission included Richard DeVos, a political ally of Pat Robertson, homophobic New York Archbishop John Cardinal O'Connor, and Penny Pullen, an associate of Phyllis Schlafley. It was viewed as an embarrassment by medical authorities, a joke by the gay community, and a fiasco by several members of the Reagan administration. The AIDS Coalition to Unleash Power (ACT-UP) was formed in New York City. In its first protest against the slow pace at which the FDA was approving medications for AIDS, 16 members were arrested for blocking traffic. A U.S. State Department policy was implemented which required HIV testing every two years for foreign service employees and applicants, and their spouses and dependents over the age of 12. Any employee who tested positive or whose spouse or dependent tested positive was given restricted duty. If an applicant or his/her spouse or dependent tested positive, that person was denied employment. The policy was successfully challenged by the Lambda Legal Defense and Education Fund and the National Emergency Civil Liberties Committee. The California Supreme Court unanimously rejected an appeal from Gary Coon, a gay San Francisco man who had tried to sue for emotional distress after witnessing a physical assault on his lover. His lover had been assaulted by a bus driver who shouted anti-gay slurs at him. Heterosexual spouses are entitled to sue in similar situations, but the court decided that a gay relationship does not have the same recognition as a marriage, and that therefore the claim of emotional distress was not valid. A "text revision" of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-III-TR) was published. Along with "Transsexualism" and "Transvestic Fetishism," this edition also included "Gender Identity Disorder of Adolescence or Adulthood, Non-Transsexual Type (GIDAANT)." The Vatican published and Pope John Paul II endorsed a letter written by Cardinal Ratzinger (the future Pope Benedict XVI) on the subject of homosexuality. The letter referred to homosexuality as "a strong tendency to behavior which is intrinsically evil." It opposed civil rights for gays and lesbians and barred churches from allowing organizations which do not agree with church teachings on homosexuality from using church facilities. It stated that homosexuals would not enter the kingdom of heaven, and suggested that anti-gay violence should not come as a surprise to society, and that AIDS was a punishment from God. Following the recommendations in the letter, the Vatican decided to evict all chapters of Dignity (a pro-gay Catholic organization) from the churches in which they had been holding services. After the U.S. Congress passed a $20 million appropriation to fund a project to mail information on AIDS to every household in the country, Robert Windom, the Assistant Secretary of Health, announced that instead it would mail the info only to health departments, community organizations and major employers. He said that the decision to withhold the mass mailing had come from White House officials. The U.S. Congress voted in favor of banning federal funding for AIDS education organizations that "promote homosexuality." The action, which had been initiated by Senator Jesse Helms, prompted in response a series of ads by the Human Rights Campaign (HRC). Over 500,000 people attended the second March on Washington for Lesbian and Gay Rights. The NAMES Project's AIDS Memorial Quilt, then with 1,920 panels, was displayed for the first time. Dramatizing the lack of rights for same-sex couples, approximately 2,000 gay and lesbian couples were married in a mass wedding on the steps of the IRS building. The phrase "coming out" was also popularized at the event, when a speaker theorized that the best weapon for fighting local prejudice is openness, and urged those who had come out to be activists in Washington to also "come out" in their hometowns by admitting their sexual orientation. Randy Shilts published And the Band Played On: Politics, People and the AIDS Epidemic, a history of the early years of the HIV/AIDS crisis. Peter Duesberg, a professor of molecular and cell biology at the University of California, Berkeley, published in Cancer Research his first major scientific paper questioning the idea that HIV causes AIDS. He has since become the best-known member of the small "dissident movement" challenging the assumptions and conclusions of most AIDS researchers, and his arguments have been popularized by science fiction writer James P. Hogan. Those arguments, however, have all been answered by other AIDS researchers. The overwhelming consensus in the medical community is that the role of HIV infection as the cause of AIDS has been established beyond any reasonable doubt. In Turner v. Safley, the U.S. Supreme Court considered the claim of a group of Americans about restrictions on their right to marry. The Court articulated four attributes of marriage common to this group and to all other Americans: (1) expression of emotional support and public commitment; (2) spiritual significance, and for some the exercise of a religious faith; (3) the expectation that for most, the marriage will be consummated; and (4) the receipt of tangible benefits, including government benefits and property rights. Looking at these attributes of marriage, the Court decided that this group of Americans -- incarcerated prisoners -- shared with other Americans the freedom to marry. Because prisoners, too, can enter into a marriage with these characteristics, the Court invalidated Missouri's virtually complete ban on marriages of prison inmates. A U.S. Justice Department report showed that the most frequent victims of hate crimes are gays, lesbians and bisexuals. The 21st Street Baths, the last gay bathhouse in San Francisco, closed. 1988 The first country to do so, Sweden legislated protection for gays and lesbians regarding taxes, inheritances and social services. The National Education Association adopted a resolution calling for every school district to provide counseling for students struggling with their sexual orientation. The National Center for Health Statistics announced that in 1987, AIDS had been the 15th leading cause of death in America. Two female marines were relieved of duty for having a "lenient attitude toward homosexuality." They had testified as character witnesses on behalf of a woman being court-martialed for lesbianism. President Reagan's newly-founded National AIDS Commission released a report with over 500 recommendations for addressing the epidemic. A presidential advisor reduced the list to 10 items. The U.S. Surgeon General and the CDC mailed a brochure, "Understanding AIDS," to all U.S. households. It was the first and only national mailing of its kind. Massachusetts Governor Michael Dukakis signed into law an amendment which barred homosexuals from becoming foster parents unless there were no heterosexual couples available. The law was repealed the next year. Oregon voters repealed an executive order which prohibited discrimination based on sexual orientation among state government employees. The Fort Collins, Colorado, city council decided to allow voters to determine if sexual orientation should be added to the city's anti-discrimination code. The voters chose not to do so. Opponents of the proposal included Rev. Pete Peters, who advocates capital punishment for homosexuals. Democrat Svend Robinson became the first member of the Canadian Parliament to come out as gay. On October 11, lesbians and gay men celebrated the first annual National Coming Out Day, celebrating the previous year's March on Washington. December 1 was the first World AIDS Day, sponsored by the World Health Organization. The first comprehensive needle exchange program (NEP) in North America was established in Tacoma, Washington. New York City created the first government-funded NEP, and San Francisco established what became the largest NEP in the nation. These programs were intended to help curb the spread of HIV infection among drug users through shared needles. 1989 Two separate studies by the U.S. Department of Defense concluded that there is no reason to ban gays and lesbians from military service. The first openly gay black official was elected to public office in the U.S. in Albany, New York. In June, Denmark became the first nation to allow civil unions, providing same-sex couples with almost all of the legal and fiscal rights and obligations granted to married couples. Axil and Eigil Axgil were the first gay couple to be united under the new law. They had been together for 40 years, 32 of them under a common last name. Seven years after Wisconsin, Massachusetts became the second state to pass a state-wide gay civil rights law. The Corcoran Art Gallery in Washington, DC, canceled a retrospective of Robert Mapplethorpe's photographs after the exhibit was attacked by Senator Jesse Helms and others for its homoerotic content. The director of the gallery resigned, and in the ensuing brouhaha, Mapplethorpe's name became a household word, and Helms' became inseparably linked with artistic censorship. The U.S. Postal Service issued a lesbian and gay pride postmark, commemorating the twentieth anniversary of the Stonewall riots, featuring the artwork of gay artist Keith Harving. Hungarian-born actress Zsa Zsa Gabor was sentenced to three days in jail (along with 120 hours of community service and a $13,000 fine) for driving with a suspended license and slapping a police officer. On the eve of reporting to serve the jail sentence, she expressed her concern about forced conversion to lesbianism. "In prisons," she said, "they have ways of making you want to be a lesbian whether you want to be or not." The comment understandably elicited much laughter. David Letterman responded, "Don't worry, Zsa Zsa, because even in prison lesbians have standards." Johnny Carson noted, "With her acting career, she should worry more about meeting thespians in prison." Jay Leno, though, ignored the lesbian issue completely and got to the real heart of the matter. "When Zsa Zsa Gabor went to jail for slapping a cop," he quipped, "the warden put her cellmate on a 24-hour suicide watch." A federal court ruled that Perry Watkins, a gay African American female impersonator who had served in the U.S. Army as a clerk and a personnel records supervisor for 15 years before being dishonorably discharged in 1984 due to his homosexuality, should be allowed back in because the Army had previously allowed him to re-enlist several times with full knowledge that he was gay. President George H.W. Bush attempted to pursue the matter further, but the U.S. Supreme Court refused to hear the case, and so the lower court's ruling stood. Watkins was reinstated, and eventually retired from the Army with the rank of sergeant first class, having received retroactive pay, full retirement benefits and an honorable discharge. Over 5,000 ACT-UP activists staged a massive protest in front of and inside New York's St. Patrick's Cathedral, rallying against the Catholic Church's negative policies on homosexuality and AIDS. In reaction to a small, peaceful protest against federal neglect of people with AIDS, about 200 San Francisco police officers rioted in the Castro neighborhood, beating protesters and passersby, sweeping seven city blocks of all pedestrians, and placing thousands in homes and business under house arrest for the duration. The U.S. Congress created the National Commission on AIDS. Oncologist William Babcock at Baptist Medical Center in Columbia, South Carolina, received an unsigned letter in which the writer claimed to be a hospital employee who was HIV-positive and who had injected 70 patients with his blood. As a result, law enforcement officers harassed and humiliated as many gay employees as they could find. As suspected by hospital officials, the letter proved to be a hoax. Questions asked in the attempt to find the letter writer included, "How could you possibly get anything out of kissing a man?" and "Why would anyone want to be a fag?" The Advocate ran a cover story titled "Married with Boyfriend," which claimed that bisexuals don't exist, and that all such relationships are sick. In a separate issue, The Advocate reported that nearly eight out of ten victims of anti-gay hate crimes do not report them to the police. Reasons included fear of job loss if employers learned of the reason for the attack and fear of abuse from the police. The article included a report from a Philadelphia man who said that after a police officer interrupted an attack, the officer had allowed the attacker to leave, and then had refused to take the victim to the hospital, asking him, "Are you a faggot?" ABC lost $1.5 million when advertisers pulled ads from an episode of the television show "thirtysomething" which showed two men in bed together. Columbus, Ohio, Mayor Dana Rinehart signed a hate crimes bill which included the term "sexual orientation." However, she asked the city council to remove the term from the bill, claiming that it was vague and that it did not belong in the ordinance. The council refused. Maud's in San Francisco, described as the world's oldest lesbian bar, closed after 23 years. 1990 In a public service announcement for the Pediatric AIDS Foundation, former president Ronald Reagan said, "We can all grow and learn in our lives, and I've learned all kinds of people can get AIDS, even children." Insiders said the PSA amounted to an apology for Reagan's neglect of the epidemic while in the White House. The Sixth International AIDS Conference in San Francisco was boycotted by domestic and international non-governmental groups protesting U.S. immigration policy. Columnist Mona Charen wrote a nationally syndicated editorial blaming AIDS on "the indifference of promiscuous homosexuals," calling for a halt to AIDS spending, and accusing the NAMES Project's AIDS Memorial Quilt of attempting to instill guilt. On "The 700 Club," televangelist Pat Robertson told viewers that homosexuality is the very worst sin in the Bible. During a campaign speech, U.S. Congressman Jesse Helms referred to gays and lesbians as "disgusting people marching in the streets demanding all sorts of things, including the right to marry each other." "Longtime Companion," the first major studio release to deal with AIDS, opened in New York City. Andy Lippincott, a character in the "Doonesbury" comic strip, died of AIDS. The Ryan White Comprehensive AIDS Resources Emergency (CARE) Act was enacted by the U.S. Congress to provide federal funds for community-based care and treatment services. In its first year, it was funded at $220.5 million. The Americans with Disabilities Act, which included in its prohibitions discrimination against those with AIDS, was signed into law. Thirty-two students were transferred out of their dormitory at Ohio State University because they harassed two gay students. One of the transferred students claimed he was really the victim, and accused the gay students of blowing things out of proportion. The harassment had included death threats, physical attacks, harassing phone calls, and the writing of comments such as "DIE FAGS" on the gay students' doors. Gay Games III was held in Vancouver, British Columbia. Queer Nation was founded in New York. Although the organization enjoyed some initial success, mostly tied to working with ACT-UP, many in the GLBT community disliked its Marxist ideology and militant protest style. As well, it was linked to several controversial incidents in which closeted public figures were outed as gays or lesbians. While the organization was never officially disbanded, it is generally agreed that Queer Nation no longer exists. In Massachusetts, the state human services department announced that it had dropped a policy that automatically gave preference to heterosexuals in the placement of foster children. General Motors issued an apology for referring to trucks made by non-American companies as "little faggot trucks." Polk County Jail in Florida discontinued the practice of forcing gay inmates to wear pink bracelets to distinguish them from the rest of the prisoners. The magazine Newsweek ran a cover story on "The Future of Gay America." A flurry of letters were received in response to the article, 60% of which were anti-gay. Twelve U.S. marines attacked three gay men outside a gay bar, leaving two of them unconscious. Two of the marines were fined $400 and confined to their barracks for 30 days. Despite witness accounts that several of the marines were chanting, "Kill the fags," during the attack, marine officials ruled that the incident was not a gay bashing, but a bar brawl. Two men in Adrian, Michigan, were sentenced to five years in prison for having sex in a park. The judge who sentenced them had previously given a lenient sentence to a gay-basher, sympathizing with the man about how awful it must have been for him to have a gay man make a pass at him. During Lesbian and Gay Pride Weekend in June, the top of the Empire State Building was lit up in lavender for the first time. Mayor P.J. Morgan of Omaha, Nebraska, declared the week of June 17 as "Understanding Our Differences, Respect All People Week." Though the week coincided with Gay Pride Week, he did not mention gays or lesbians in the proclamation. In an unprecedented move, National Endowment for the Arts Chair John Frohnmayer revoked grants already awarded by a peer panel to four solo theater artists. His official rationale was "political realities," but the artists claimed it was censorship. Their "defunding" became a cause celebre in the lesbian and gay arts community. The ACLU announced that it would seek to legalize same-sex marriage. Pitzer College in Claremont, California, banned ROTC scholarships due to the U.S. military's anti-gay policies. It was the first college to do so. Philip Morris, and particularly its products, Miller Beer and Marlboro Cigarettes, became the object of a national gay boycott to protest the company's alleged funding of the campaign of virulently anti-gay senator Jesse Helms. President Bush signed into law the Hate Crime Statistics Act, the first federal law to include the term "sexual orientation." Representatives from NGLTF and HRC attended the signing. Unfortunately, the act, which ordered a study on hate crimes and the compiling of statistics, did little good, because the U.S. Justice Department refused to keep a record of anti-gay violence reported to the Hate Crimes Hotline. (During Senate debate on the bill, Senator Jesse Helms had called it a conspiracy of radical homosexuals and a threat to the survival of the American Family.) The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services released a report showing that the already high suicide rates among GLBT youth were skyrocketing. The report infuriated Representative William Dannemeyer of California, who claimed that recommendations of tolerance and anti-discrimination programs in schools would undermine family values. Louis Sullivan, the Secretary of Health and Human Services, wrote to Dannemeyer, to assure him that the report woudl not be reprinted. However, attempts to bury the report failed. The Gay and Lesbian Independent School Teachers Network (GLSTN) -- later the Gay, Lesbian, Straight Education Network (GLSEN) -- was founded as a local volunteer group. At the time, there were two GSAs (Gay-Straight Alliances) in the nation; today, there are over 3,000. Children of Lesbians and Gays Everywhere (COLAGE) was founded as an offshoot of the Family Pride Coalition (then called the Gay and Lesbian Parents Coalition International). THE "GAY LIFESTYLE" Much has been made by opponents of GLBT rights of the supposedly self-destructive "gay lifestyle." But as has become increasingly obvious as more and more gays and lesbians have come out, and as more attention has been drawn to the issues of gay families and gay youth, there is no more a single "gay lifestyle" than there is a single "straight lifestyle." Not all gay men hang out in bars, engage in anonymous, promiscuous sex, and abuse drugs, and inasmuch as that stereotype was ever true, it had much more to do with the life into which homosexuals were forced by society's rejection than it did with any life most of them would have chosen. GLBT folk, like straight folk, have a wide range of personalities, tastes, interests and religious and spiritual viewpoints, and as society becomes more accepting, the endless variety of GLBT "lifestyles" that actually exist will only become more evident. 1991 After U.N. sanctions failed, the United States led a coalition force of 34 nations to drive Iraq out of Kuwait. The operation was quickly successful, though the reasons for the involvement of the U.S. in this, the first Gulf War, remain controversial. NBA legend Earvin "Magic" Johnson announced that he was HIV-positive, and retired from basketball. AIDS activists interrupted a nationally-televised CBS newscast to protest the U.S. government's spending of $1 billion a day on the Persian Gulf war and only $5 billion over a ten-year period on AIDS research and services. Fifteen New York City police officers attacked ACT-UP members protesting the arrest of three ACT-UP members the week before. Demonstrator Chris Hennelly suffered such severe head injuries that he was hospitalized for six days. Following the infection of a Florida women by her dentist, the CDC recommended restrictions on the practice of HIV-positive health care workers. The U.S. Congress enacted legislation requiring states to establish such restrictions. The red ribbon was introduced as the international symbol of AIDS awareness at the Tony Awards. The Centers for Disease Control announced that AIDS had become the second leading cause of death in men aged 25-44, second only to accidents. Patricia Ireland, executive director of the National Organization for Women (NOW), admitted to having a female lover as well as a husband. The Minnesota Court of Appeals awarded Karen Thompson guardianship of Sharon Kowalski, her lover, who had been severely injured in a 1983 car crash. This ruling, which ended eight years of legal battles between Thompson and Kowalski's father, was one of the first major U.S. court decisions to affirm that gay and lesbian couples ought to have at least some of the same rights granted to married heterosexual couples. The Montana State House of Representatives rejected a bill which would have repealed the state's "anti-sodomy" law, one of the harshest such laws in the United States. For the first time, a major U.S. publicly-held company, Lotus, extended domestic partner benefits to its employees. Simon LeVay released a controversial study suggesting a biological influence on sexual orientation, widely referred to as "the gay brain." "Tongues Untied," Marlon Rigg's documentary about African American gay men, aired on PBS, drawing complaints to the FCC from some viewers. The Minneapolis Star Tribune became the first major newspaper to print same-sex union announcements. The first Black Gay and Lesbian Pride March was held in Washington, DC. The first romantic kiss between two women on American television occurred on "L.A. Law." Officials at the College of William and Mary in Williamsburg, Virginia, began an investigation of sociology professor Vernon Edmonds, who had been accused of telling sexist, racist and anti-gay jokes in class. While he denied the other charges, he freely admitted to having told anti-gay jokes. The Advocate ran a story, "Activism = Arrests," which showed that in 1990, at least 150 GLBT people had been arrested under laws used specifically against homosexuals. 1992 Col. Margarethe Cammermeyer became the highest-ranking person ever discharged from the U.S. military for homosexuality. During a routine security check in 1989, Col. Cammermeyer had acknowledged to DIS Agent Brent Troutman that she was a lesbian. She had subsequently been informed by a military board that she was a great American, a great asset and a superb leader, that her many outstanding accomplishments had been admirable, that her 27 years of service had been of great value, and that she would be dishonorably discharged. Aileen Wuornos, the first lesbian serial killer convicted in the U.S., was sentenced to death in Florida. She was executed in 2002. Canadian country and pop star k.d. lang became the first major female recording artist to come out as a lesbian. The first U.S. governor to do so, William Weld of Massachusetts signed an executive order granting lesbians and gay state workers the same bereavement and family leave rights as heterosexual workers. The Kentucky Supreme Court overturned the state's "anti-sodomy" law. In the majority decision, Justice Charles Leibson wrote, "We need not sympathize, agree with, or even understand the sexual preference of homosexuals in order to recognize their right to equal treatment." Dissenting judges claimed that the ruling would increase homosexuality, incest and prostitution. Northstar, a character in Marvel Comics' "Alpha Flight" series, became the first major comic book character to out himself as gay. Bill Clinton became the first candidate for president to mention gays and lesbians, in a speech accepting the Democratic nomination for president. Deb Price began writing for The Detroit News, solely on gay and lesbian topics. Her column has since become syndicated in over 100 newspapers, making it the first nationally-syndicated column of its kind in the mainstream press. Colorado passed an initiative prohibiting local entities from enacting civil rights protections for lesbians and gays. In 1996, the U.S. Supreme Court upheld a district court's decision annulling it, declaring that "a State cannot so deem a class of persons a stranger to its laws." A similar, but more harshly-worded, initiative in Oregon was defeated. New Jersey, Vermont and California enacted state-wide bans on anti-gay discrimination. Louisiana Governor Edwin Edwards issued an executive order banning anti-gay discrimination in state agencies, making his the first state in the southeast to do so. Canada lifted its ban on lesbians and gays in the military. A U.S. District Court ruled in favor of a group of artists who challenged the constitutionality of the National Endowment for the Arts' "decency" clause. The artists' grants had been denied because they worked with homoerotic subject matter. California Governor Pete Wilson signed a ban on discrimination based on sexual orientation in employment. Eighty United Methodist ministers in Michigan signed an open letter supporting pastors who wish to bless same-sex relationships. In an interview published in The San Francisco Examiner, attorney John Schlafly, the son of conservative activist Phyllis Schlafly, said that even though he was gay, he supported his mother's right-wing politics. He also said that it was not hypocritical of her to fight against equality for gays and lesbians even when she herself had a gay son. Portland, Oregon, police chief Tom Potter testified before a state senate committee that many victims of anti-gay assaults do not report the crimes because of fear that their identities will be made public. The U.S. House of Representatives passed a resolution 235-173 to allow a Washington, DC, ordinance which extended spousal health insurance benefits to same-sex partners of district employees to remain on the books. However, they prohibited any money from being spent on its enforcement. AIDS became the number one cause of death for U.S. men aged 25-44. 1993 Minnesota became the first state to protect transgender individuals state-wide, banning discrimination based on gender identity and expression. Massachusetts became the first state to ban discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation against public school students. Defense Secretary Les Aspin released a study which echoed various previous Pentagon studies, stating that the ban on lesbians and gays in the military ought to be lifted, and could in fact be lifted without damaging order or discipline. The study was cost $1.3 million. Rev. Jerry Falwell appeared on nationwide television to urge opposition to the inclusion of gays in the U.S. military. President Clinton's promise to lift the ban on gays serving in the military met with such opposition from Congress and from within the military establishment that he instead signed the so-called "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" compromise, which effectively just put things back the way they'd been before 1981, by prohibiting recruiters and other military officials from specifically asking about sexual orientation, but still allowing the military to discharge anyone found to be lesbian or gay. The Hawaii Supreme Court ruled that prohibiting same-sex couples from marrying would violate the state constitution's "equal protection" clause, and could only be upheld if the prohibition was justified by a compelling reason. The resultant fear that Hawaii might legalize same-sex marriage, and that other states would then be obligated to recognize such marriages, was the motivating force behind the 1996 Defense of Marriage Act. The point became moot, however, in 1998, when Hawaii's voters amended the state's constitution to explicitly allow the state legislature to restrict marriage to mixed-sex couples only. National Public Radio announced it would offer domestic partner medical and dental benefits to employees in same-sex relationships. The policy also included unmarried heterosexual couples. The third March on Washington for Gay, Lesbian and Bi Equal Rights attracted between 750,000 and a million people. Organized by the Lesbian Avengers (a group which had been founded the previous year), the first International Dyke March was held the night before the March on Washington. After a bitter debate in which Senator Jesse Helms had called her a "damned lesbian" and accused her of "outrageous" behavior (such as kissing her partner at a gay pride parade), Roberta Achtenberg was approved by the U.S. Senate as assistant housing secretary, making her the highest-ranking open lesbian in the U.S. government, and the first openly homosexual politician in the United States whose appointment to a federal position was confirmed by the U.S. Senate. Voters in Cincinnati, Ohio, Portsmouth, New Hampshire and Lewiston, Maine, approved anti-gay ballot measures. The commission of Cobb County, Georgia, voted unanimously to cease its arts-related funding for fear that it might be subsidizing lesbian and gay art and artists. A 29-cent stamp depicting a red ribbon with the words "AIDS Awareness" was issued by the U.S. Postal Service. "Angels in America," Tony Kushner's play about AIDS, won the Tony Award and the Pulitzer Prize. Thirty-three year-old Giuseppe Mandanici of Sicily was shot three times, but survived the attack. Police believed it to be an act of random violence until they discovered that his father had paid a hit man $1 million lire (approximately $700 U.S.) to kill his son, because he could not come to terms with his son's homosexuality. A protest, complete with a book burning, was held to object to a donation of two gay-themed books, Annie on My Mind and All-American Boys, to 42 Kansas City, Missouri, high schools. A Romanian senator proposed that male homosexuals be put in women's prisons, and lesbians in men's prisons, so that they could be forcibly taught the joy of intercourse with the opposite sex. The Intersex Society of North America (ISNA) was founded. Brandon Teena, a 21 year-old transgender man, was murdered on December 31 along with two friends in Falls City, Nebraska, by a pair of acquaintances who had raped him on Christmas Day after learning he was biologically female. Brandon had reported the rape to the local sheriff, Charles Laux, but his report had been ignored. (Laux's attitude toward Brandon was itself a subject of criticism during the trial; at one point, Laux referred to Brandon as "it.") John Lotter, one of the attackers, is currently on death row. Thomas Nissen, the other, is serving a life sentence. The case brought the issue of transgender to national attention, and inspired an Academy Award-winning 1999 film, "Boys Don't Cry," which was itself based on a documentary, "The Brandon Teena Story." 1994 AIDS became the number one cause of death for all Americans aged 25-44, and remained so through 1995. In Boston, organizers of the St. Patrick's Day Parade chose to cancel the event rather than to comply with a court order allowing an Irish-American GLBT group to participate. Tom Hanks, who is straight, won an Academy Award for his portrayal of a gay man with AIDS in the movie "Philadelphia." The United Nations revoked the non-governmental organization representative status granted in 1993 to the International Lesbian and Gay Association, after a campaign led by U.S. Senator Jesse Helms led to accusations that some of its members were affiliated with pedophile groups, most notably NAMBLA. A hearing on discrimination against transgender people took place in San Francisco before the San Francisco Human Rights Commission. It resulted in a paper on transsexual discrimination and unanimous passage by the San Francisco Board of Supervisors of an amendment to add gender identity to the list of those protected from discrimination. Gay Games IV attracted over 10,000 participants to New York City. Stonewall 25, held in conjunction with the Gay Games, drew over a million marchers in New York City, for the silver anniversary of the Stonewall riots. The most visible feature of the march was the world's longest rainbow flag. ACT-UP held an alternative march on the same day. Pete Wilson, governor of California, vetoed a bill which would have allowed limited recognition of relationships between same-sex partners and unmarried heterosexuals. He said it would undermine heterosexual marriage. Furniture chain IKEA became the first company to air a television commercial in the U.S. which featured a gay male couple. The U.S. Senate confirmed the appointment of Deborah Batts, the first African American openly lesbian U.S. Federal District Court Judge. The first school-sanctioned GLBT prom in the U.S. was held in Los Angeles. Jurists ruled that Lynne Tucker of Salt Lake City, Utah, could not be declared an unfit parent solely on the basis that she lives with her lesbian lover. Kevin Tebedo, executive director of Colorado for Family Values, wrote a letter to the planning department of the city of Manitou Springs, Colorado, objecting to the decision to name the civic works program the Rainbow Vision Plan. He said that the use of the word "rainbow" suggested a pro-homosexual agenda. The American Medical Association officially voiced its opposition to medical treatment to "cure" homosexuality, removing all references to "sexual orientation related disorders" from its official policy statements. The fourth edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-IV) was published. The various diagnoses related to gender identity were combined into a single category, "Gender Identity Disorder of Childhood, Adolescence or Adulthood." The Ontario parliament defeated what would have been the most comprehensive domestic partnership law in North America due to the issue of gay and lesbian adoption. 1995 Following the 1994 elections, Republicans gained control of both the House and the Senate for the first time since 1955, and gained gubernatorial control of several large states. British actor Nigel Hawthorne became the first openly gay Best Actor nominee in the history of the Academy Awards. In what he claimed was an honest "slip," Rep. Dick Armey referred to openly gay Congressman Barney Frank as "Barney Fag." Armey was not reprimanded, denied responsibility, and never acknowledged that using the epithet "fag" was injurious to gay people. Tyra Hunter, a pre-operative transsexual, died in Washington, DC, of injuries sustained in a car accident. Emergency medical technicians at the scene were abusive and withheld treatment after discovering that she was biologically male, and a doctor at DC General Hospital failed to follow nationally accepted standards of care. Her mother was awarded $2.8 million in a wrongful death lawsuit against the city in 1998. Rhode Island became the ninth state to pass a state-wide gay rights bill protecting lesbians and gay men in housing, public employment, credit and public accomodations. Coors Brewing Company and the Walt Disney Company began offering health benefits to the domestic partners of their gay and lesbian employees. A directive was issued by the Canadian government allowing workers in same-sex relationships to take time off in the event of a partner's illness or death. Representatives of PFLAG approached television stations in four U.S. cities to buy advertising time for two ads, one on the prevention of suicide among gay and lesbian youth and one about gay bashing. All four stations refused to air the suicide ad, and only two cable stations and one network affiliate station would air the gay-bashing ad. It was claimed that the ads offended community standards. Roxanne Ellis and Michelle Abdill of Medford Oregon were shot to death in the back of a pickup truck. When Robert Acrement was arrested eight days later, he confessed to the murders. He said that while he didn't murder the women because they were lesbians, knowing that they were had made his actions easier. The Advocate published an interview with Barney Frank, Gerry Studds and Steve Gunderson, the three openly gay members of Congress. The First National HIV Testing Day was organized by the National Association of People with AIDS. Wearing a red AIDS ribbon, Cherry Jones became the first out lesbian to win a Tony Award for Best Leading Actress in a Play, for her role in "The Heiress." October was celebrated for the first time as GLBT History Month.     [ Ancient ] [ 533-1861 ] [ 1862-1968 ] [ 1969-1980 ] [ 1981-1995 ] [ 1996-2006 ] [ Notes ]     1996-2006 SUMMARY: THE FIGHT FOR FULL EQUALITY As the GLBT civil rights movement and its members matured in the last years of the twentieth century, its focus began to broaden. Though the fight for individual civil rights and the fight against AIDS remained important, an increasing attention was paid as well to issues relating to family rights. The safety of GLBT youth, for example, became an important concern, as did adoption rights and partner benefits. And then came the very public battle over "gay marriage." There was nothing new about gay and lesbian couples wanting to get married, of course, and neither was opposition to that desire new. The first U.S. court rulings on the question of same-sex marriage had been issued in the early 1970s, and in 1973, Maryland had become the first state to explicitly ban such marriages. But the question suddenly gained national attention in 1993, when Hawaii's Supreme Court ruled that prohibiting same-sex couples from marrying would violate the state constitution's "equal protection" clause. In response to the public uproar following this decision, the federal government in 1996 passed the so-called "Defense of Marriage Act," which ensured that no state would be required to recognize same-sex marriages granted in another state. Though the immediate point became moot in 1998, when Hawaii's voters amended their state constitution to explicitly allow their state legislature to restrict marriage to mixed-sex couples only, the issue of same-sex marriage had by then taken on a political import unmatched by any other fight in GLBT history, both nationally and internationally. Denmark had become the first nation to allow civil unions, providing same-sex couples with almost all of the legal and fiscal rights and obligations granted to married couples, in 1989, and in the following years, several other nations had done the same. In 2000, Vermont became the first state in the U.S. to legalize civil unions. In 2001, the Netherlands became the first country to legalize same-sex marriages, and in 2004, Massachusetts became the first state in the U.S. to legalize them. However, other countries and U.S. states, in examining the question, chose to go the other direction, making same-sex marriages or civil unions illegal. Especially in the United States, but elsewhere as well, the issue took on tremendous political importance, with many social conservatives seeing it as an easy "hot button" issue with which to motivate their constituencies. Whether GLBT civil rights advocates would have chosen it or not, it became the most visible of their fights. 1996 South Africa became the first nation to update its constitution to prohibit discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation. The revised document declares that "the state may not unfairly discriminate directly or indirectly against anyone on one or more grounds, including race, gender, sex, pregnancy, marital status, ethnic or social origin, colour, sexual orientation, age, disability, religion, conscience, belief, culture, language, and birth." In the first vote on gay and lesbian civil rights in the full Senate, the Employment Non-Discrimination Act (ENDA), which would have banned discrimination in the workplace based on sexual orientation, was defeated in a 50-49 vote. The U.S. Supreme Court ruled in Romer v. Evans against a law that would have prevented any city, town or county in the state of Colorado from taking any legislative, executive or judicial action to protect the rights of homosexuals. District Judge Jeffrey Sherlock struck down Montana's "anti-sodomy" law. A week after a federal court in San Francisco ruled that the "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" policy was unconstitutional, a federal appeals court in Richmond, Virginia, ruled that the policy was appropriate. The Servicemembers Legal Defense Network reported that 722 people had been discharged from the U.S. military during 1995, the highest number in four years, and that reports of "witch hunts" were just as prevalent as before "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" was enacted. Commissioners in Cobb County, Georgia, voted 3-2 to repeal an anti-gay resolution they had passed in 1993, which declared homosexuality incompatible with community standards. The vote was in response to a decision by Olympic officials, who had stated that because of the resolution, the Olympic torch would not pass through Cobb County. After a three-year legal battle, Sharon Bottoms withdrew her petition to regain custody of her five-year-old son, Tyler Doustou. A Virginia judge had ruled that her lesbianism made her an unfit mother. She was granted visitation, but ordered to keep her girlfriend away from her son. California's state senate killed a bill banning same-sex marriage after Democrats attached a provision to establish a domestic partner registry. Colorado governor Roy Romer became the first U.S. governor to veto legislation banning the recognition of same-sex marriage. The Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA) was signed into law by President Clinton. It specifically overrode the "full faith and credit clause" of the U.S. Constitution where same-sex marriages and civil unions are concerned, explicitly stating that no state was obligated to recognize such marriages or unions if sanctioned by another state, and also defined marriage for federal purposes as being only the legal union of a man and a woman. The Joint United Nations Programme on HIV/AIDS (UNAIDS) began operation. It was established to advocate for global action on the epidemic and to coordinate HIV/AIDS efforts across the U.N. system. The number of new AIDS cases diagnosed in the United States declined for the first time in the history of the epidemic, though experience varied by sex and ethnicity. AIDS was no longer the leading cause of death for all Americans aged 25-44, though it remained the leading cause of death for African Americans in that age group. Time magazine named AIDS researcher David Ho as its "Man of the Year." Michigan state senator Doug Carl told two students who were interviewing him for a term paper that AIDS stood for "Anally-Inserted Death Sentence." When the story became public, he accused the two (straight) students of setting him up. Florida circuit court judge Joseph Tarbuck granted custody of an 11-year old girl to her father, John Ward, who had been convicted of killing his first wife during an argument, rather than to her mother, Mary Ward, who was a lesbian. The judge reasoned that if placed with her mother, the child would be unaware that there were other "lifestyle options." Fred Phelps and his Topeka-based Westboro Baptist "Church" put up the "godhatesfags.com" Web site, bringing their rabid homophobia to a worldwide audience. They went on to make national news two years later, when they picketed the funeral of Matthew Shepard. (At the memorial service, Phelps called Shepard's mother, Judy, a whore, and told her she'd "soon be joining Matthew in hell.") Phelps' antics over the years have been so "over the top," that some have suggested that he is in fact an agent provocateur, working with the specific intention of giving the anti-gay movement a bad name. However, this seems exceedingly unlikely. Though he is certainly more vocal than most, the gist of his "message" is unfortunately not unusual, and echoes the teachings of many more mainstream churches. Some 250 students in Elizabethtown, Pennsylvania, walked out of class to protest the school board's passage of a "pro-family" resolution which banned positive discussion of homosexuality. An article in New Scientist by Vittoria D'Alessio reviewed research projects on the "gay gene," and concluded that the existence of a genetic link to homosexuality was almost indisputable. In an interview with BBC Radio, Archbishop Desmond Tutu criticized the Anglican Church for refusing to ordain gay priests. Oregon judge Stephen Gallagher, Jr., ruled that the state must offer benefits to the partners of gay and lesbian state employees. Lon Mabon, director of the anti-gay Oregon Citizens Alliance which challenged the governor's executive order to grant benefits, said that the ruling aided in the systematic destruction of the whole notion of marriage and family. 1997 AIDS-related deaths in the U.S. declined by more than 40% compared to the prior year, largely due to highly active antiretroviral therapy (HAART), which had been in use since the approval of the first protease inhibitor, saquinavir, in 1995. Ellen DeGeneres and her television character, Ellen Morgan, came out publicly. "Ellen" thus became the first prime-time show to feature an openly gay or lesbian lead character. Religious groups called for a boycott of ABC and its "anti-family" parent company, Disney. In "In & Out," Kevin Kline played Howard Brackett, an English literature teacher outed on the eve of his wedding by a former student at the Academy Awards. The revelation of his homosexuality came as just as much of a surprise to Brackett himself as to anyone else in his town, and much mayhem followed. The film was one of Hollywood's few successful attempts at a comedic "gay movie," and was widely noted at the time for its same-sex kiss between Kline and co-star Tom Selleck. The plot was inspired by Tom Hanks' acceptance speech at the 1994 Academy Awards (for his Oscar for "Philadelphia"), in which he outed his high school drama coach and a former classmate. Kline himself, who is straight, took another prominent gay role in 2004, when he starred as famed composer Cole Porter in "De-Lovely." At a rally in Sacramento, California, Alveda Celeste King, a niece of Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr., said, "To equate homosexuality with race is to give a death sentence to civil rights. No one is enslaving homosexuals or making them sit at the back of the bus." Members of the American Psychological Association voted to limit attempts to "cure" homosexuality, and agreed to require the reading of a statement to gay patients affirming that being gay is normal and healthy. Charles Socarides, president of the National Association for Research and Therapy of Homosexuality (NARTH), said it was an attempt to brainwash people, and called homosexuality a "purple menace" which threatens proper gender distinction. (His openly gay son, Richard Socarides, was the White House liaison to the gay community.) In The San Francisco Examiner, Rev. Billy Graham was quoted as saying of gays, "Their lifestyle, I'm going to quote from the Bible, is a sin. But why jump on that sin? There are worse sins." An article by Milton Diamond and Keith Sigmundson in the June issue of The Archives of Pediatrics and Adolescent Medicine cast serious doubt on the theories of John Money and also on his credibility as a researcher. It reported that Money's most famous patient, David Reimer, a twin boy who had been raised as a girl after his penis was accidentally severed during a circumcision, far from living a happy life as a woman as Money had long claimed, had in fact threatened suicide at the age of 14 if not allowed to dress and act as a boy, and was at the time of the article's publication living as a man, with a wife and three adopted children. (Reimer committed suicide in 2004, at the age of 38.) The revelation that Money had knowingly perpetrated a fraud by concealing the fact that his most famous experiment was a failure brought his career to an ignominious end. Walt Whitman Community School, the nation's first private school for gays and lesbians, opened in Dallas, Texas. Rev. Jimmy Creech, senior pastor of the First United Methodist Church of Omaha, Nebraska, performed a covenanting service for a lesbian couple in September. He had conducted many similar union ceremonies over the previous seven years, but this was the first since a 1996 addition to the church's Book of Discipline which specifically banned "ceremonies that celebrate homosexual unions." He was tried within the church in 1998 for "disobedience to the Order and Discipline of the United Methodist Church," but argued successfully that the code of social principles which prohibited union ceremonies contained only guidelines for pastors, and not rules, and was acquitted. In response, the UMC Judicial Council, the highest judicial body in the denomination, declared that the church's social principles were in fact binding rules, thereby overturning the decision of the jury and finding Rev. Creech guilty. In 1999, he was tried a second time, after performing a union ceremony for a gay couple in Chapel Hill, North Carolina. That time, he was found guilty by unanimous decision, and was defrocked. A Superior Court judge in Vermont dismissed a suit by three same-sex couples seeking the right to marry. The reason Judge Linda Levitt gave was that same-sex relationships do not facilitate the raising of children, and therefore are not beneficial to the social construct. Judge John Fruscrante upheld Florida's ban on adoption by same-sex couples. He stated that the research on gay parents, which shows that they are just as capable of being good parents as straight parents, was "inadequate." In December, Regan Wolf, a lesbian in Lancaster, South Carolina, was knocked unconscious by three men who brutally beat her and strung her up from her front porch, on which they spray-painted the message, "Jesus weren't born for you, faggot." Despite the fact that she was able to identify all three men, the sheriff's office took no action. She was attacked again, more severely, five months later. Adding insult to injury (literally), the sheriff's office then accused her of staging the incidents. Many suspected that the accusation was made as a means of shielding the police from criticism of their mishandling of the incidents. Wolf passed a lie detector test, and at least one doctor who examined her after the beatings stated unequivocally that the injuries she sustained could not have been inflicted by her supposed single accomplice. Wolf, who has since left South Carolina, entered what's known as an "Alford plea" on a misdemeanor charge of filing a false police report, and paid a trivial fine. The plea meant that Wolf maintained her innocence, but believed she would have been convicted had the case gone to court. "I think it's best for all concerned because I wouldn't have gotten a fair trial," Wolf said at the time. "This is a political hotbed that got out of everyone's control." 1998 The discriminatory practices of the Boy Scouts of America, an organization which accepts federal and state funds but which refuses to allow homosexuals or atheists in leadership roles, gained national attention when the first of many law suits was filed against them. Rev. Pat Robertson warned the residents of Orlando, Florida, that God would punish the city with natural disasters for allowing the display of rainbow flags during Gay Pride Month. Voters in Maine repealed a gay rights law passed in 1997, becoming the first U.S. state to abandon such a law. The U.S. Supreme Court ruled in Oncale v. Sundowner Offshore Services that federal laws banning on-the-job sexual harassment also apply when both parties are the same sex. Lower courts, however, have reached differing conclusions about whether this ruling applies to harassment motivated by anti-gay animus. The U.S. House of Representatives voted 227-192 to prevent unmarried couples, including same-sex couples, from adopting children in Washington, DC. The Vatican newspaper issued an article attacking countries which had allowed same-sex couples to have the rough legal equivalent of heterosexual marriage, specifically singling out the Dutch for considering allowing same-sex couples to adopt. The article argued against acceptance of non-traditional families, and stated that homosexuals are naturally incapable of providing the environment a child needs to grow up healthy and balanced. A group of 24 Hasidic rabbis gathered at New York City Hall to invoke a biblical curse on New York legislators and Mayor Rudolph Giuliani in response to the passage of a law mandating that same-sex couples be granted rights equal to those enjoyed by married couples. Rabbi William Handler refused to reveal the way in which the curse would materialize, but said it was possible for Russia or China to launch an atomic attack. Roman Catholic Cardinal John O'Connor also condemned Mayor Giuliani, though he didn't threaten nuclear retaliation. A series of full-page ads appeared in The New York Times, claiming that gay men and lesbians could "overcome" their sexual orientation by becoming Christians. The ads were paid for by 15 Christian conservative groups closely aligned with the national Republican leadership. They were opposed by many in the scientific and medical communities, including Dean Hamer of the National Institutes of Health, who said the ads "fly in the face of scientific fact, and are at odds with what we know from biological and psychological sciences." A group of "ex-ex-gays" held a press conference to counter the ads, stating that they were an attempt to falsely present gays and lesbians as anti-Christian and to deny that many are spiritual people. U.S. Representative Barney Frank was quoted in The San Francisco Examiner as asking, "Being Jewish, would I have to go through a 24-step program instead of a 12-step program?" Jay Leno, on "The Tonight Show," stated his opposition to the idea of "ex-gay" programs, as well. "Ever see gay guys?" he asked. "They're slim, they work out, they write poetry. If gay guys start romancing women, straight guys are dead." The Georgia Supreme Court voted 6-1 to overturn the state's "anti-sodomy" law. (This same law had been upheld by the U.S. Supreme Court in 1986.) In the majority opinion, Chief Justice Robert Benham wrote, "We cannot think of any other activity that reasonable persons would rank as more private and more deserving of protection from governmental interference than consensual, private, adult sexual activity." Since the decision was based on the state's constitution rather than the U.S. Constitution, it could not be appealed. Gay Games V brought nearly 15,000 participants to Amsterdam. San Francisco's Bay Area Reporter, a gay and lesbian newspaper, published its first issue in 17 years with no AIDS-related obituaries. Despite earlier optimism, several reports detailed growing signs of treatment failure and side effects in AIDS patients being treated with HAART. U.S. Department of Health and Human Services Secretary Donna Shalala determined that needle exchange programs are effective in curbing the spread of HIV infection and do not encourage the use of illegal drugs, but the Clinton administration didn't lift the ban on use of federal funds for such purposes. The U.S. Supreme Court, in Bragdon v. Abbot, ruled that the Americans with Disabilities Act covers those in early stages of HIV disease, as well as those with AIDS. A report in Pediatrics showed that one-third of all GLBT youths had attempted suicide in the 12 months prior to the survey, and that nearly 32% had been threatened with a weapon. Some 14% had required medical treatment following anti-gay attacks. At a meeting of the American Psychiatric Association in Denver, a resolution was passed rejecting reparative therapy. It stated that attempts to change a person's sexual orientation can cause depression, anxiety and self-destructive behavior. A similar resolution had been passed by the American Psychological Association in 1997. Nada Stotland, head of the association's public affairs committee, told The Denver Post that the very existence of reparative therapy spreads the idea that homosexuality is a disease or evil, and has a dehumanizing effect resulting in an increase in discrimination, harassment and violence against gays, lesbians and bisexuals. Shortly after midnight on the morning of October 7, Matthew Shepard, a student at the University of Wyoming, was robbed, severely beaten, tied to a fence and left to die near Laramie, Wyoming. He was discovered that evening, alive but unconscious; he died from his injuries several days later. His killers, who are both currently serving life sentences in prison, admitted in court that Shepard was attacked because of his homosexuality. The national media coverage received by the case prompted a renewed push for federal anti-gay hate crimes legislation. A play, "The Laramie Project," which was later made into a movie on HBO, was based on transcripts of over 200 interviews of residents of Laramie regarding Shepard's murder. 1999 New Hampshire Governor Jeanne Shaheen repealed a ban on homosexuals becoming adoptive or foster parents, leaving Florida the only state with such a law. The Vermont Supreme Court ruled that same-sex couples are entitled, under the state's constitution, to all of the protections and benefits provided through marriage. In 2000, Vermont thus became the first state in the U.S. to legalize same-sex civil unions. President Bill Clinton proclaimed June "Gay and Lesbian Pride Month." Rev. Jerry Falwell and evangelical Christian supporters met with Rev. Mel White and gay Christians for an anti-violence forum. Also that same year, though, Falwell and other religious conservatives held an event in San Francisco to encourage gay men and lesbians to leave the "homosexual lifestyle," and Falwell claimed that Tinky Winky, one of the "Teletubbies," was a gay role model. An episode of A&E's "Investigative Reports" focused on anti-gay hate crimes. It identified as causes the refusal of schools to act when anti-gay slurs are used as insults or when gay and lesbian students are harassed, and the demonization of homosexuals by religious organizations, which provides Biblical justification for anti-gay attitudes. The Servicemembers Legal Defense Network reported an increase in the number of cases of harassment of gays in the U.S. military. In response to this increase, the Pentagon began requiring mandatory anti-harassment training for all troops. Boeing announced it would begin offering domestic partner benefits to its gay and lesbian employees. The company explained that unmarried opposite-sex couples would not be included because marriage is an option for them, which brought criticism from union leaders. California state senator Pete Knight, who sponsored a ballot initiative banning same-sex marriages in California, was criticized in The Los Angeles Times by his gay son, who questioned his father's defense of family values because his father had rejected him when he came out. A Seattle-area group organized the nation's first gay and lesbian PTA. Donna Brazile, an out lesbian, became Al Gore's campaign manager. She was not only the first lesbian, but also the first African American woman to manage a presidential run. The British television series "Queer as Folk" premiered, shocking many with its explicit depictions of gay sex. (The title was taken from a dialect expression from some parts of northern England, "There's nought so queer as folk," meaning, "There's nothing so strange as people.") Two gay men kissed on live television on NBC's "Today Show." On December 31, millions of people celebrated the dawn of the twenty-first century a year early. And when the calendar moved from 1999 to 2000, the much-discussed Y2K "millenium bug" conspicuously failed to crash computers all over the world and bring civilization as we know it to a screeching halt. 2000 A survey ordered by Defense Secretary William Cohen following the 1998 murder of Pfc. Barry Winchell was released. It revealed that offensive comments about gays were common, and were often tolerated. Some 40% of soldiers reported witnessing harassment of servicemembers believed to be gay. "Ex-gay" spokesman John Paulk, an employee of Focus on the Family and board chair of Exodus North America, was confronted and photographed by activists with the Human Rights Campaign while patronizing Mr. P's, a gay bar in the heavily gay DuPont Circle neighborhood of Washington, DC. He claimed that he did not know it was a gay bar, since there were "both men and women" present, but as a former drag queen himself, his claim not to have recognized that the "women" were actually men wasn't particularly credible. (As well, the bar at the time had a large rainbow flag prominently displayed in its window, clearly marking it as a gay establishment.) He also claimed that he had entered only to use the restroom, though he was there for at least 40 minutes and had been chatting with other patrons at the bar. He was removed from his position as board chair, but was allowed to continue representing Exodus until he voluntarily left the organization in 2003. The Wilton Manors, Florida, city council became the second city council in the United States in which a majority of members were gay or lesbian. (West Hollywood, California, incorporated in 1984, had been the first.) Voters in California approved Proposition 22, which banned recognition of same-sex marriages. A couple from Houston, Texas, made history by obtaining the first marriage license issued in Texas to a pair of lesbians. The union was considered to be legal under state law because one of them used to be a man. (Some states consider sex changes to be legally valid, but others, like Texas, don't.) In June, in its ruling in Boy Scouts of America v. James Dale, the U.S. Supreme Court declared that the Boy Scouts were exempt from state laws barring anti-gay discrimination. The 13th International AIDS Conference, held in Durban, South Africa, was the first to be held in a developing nation, and heightened awareness of the global pandemic. The American version of "Queer as Folk" premiered on the Showtime cable network. The first kiss between two men on prime-time American network television occured on NBC's "Will and Grace." After failing for several years to get a "defense of marriage" law passed by Nebraska's state legislature, supporters managed through a petition drive to get the matter included as an initiative to be decided by the public in the general election. Initiative 416 was passed with an overwhelming majority of the vote, attributable in part to a huge disparity of funding on the two sides of the issue, and Nebraska's state constitution was thus amended to include the nation's strictest DOMA, prohibiting the legislature from recognizing any same-sex marriage, civil union or domestic partnership. The amendment, which was declared unconstitutional in 2005 but reinstated in 2006, is considered the nation's first "super" DOMA. A "text revision" of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-IV-TR) was published. The diagnostic criteria for "Gender Identity Disorder" were unchanged. Efforts continue, however, to have the entry removed from the DSM. Opponents argue, first, that the category is so broad that literally any "gender-inappropriate" behavior could be used as the basis for a GID diagnosis, and second, that such behavior is not in fact indicative of a "disorder" at all. While transsexuals seeking to transition obviously require the services of health care providers, there is a great deal of debate about whether transsexualism actually qualifies as a pathology. Many argue that the diagnosis ought to be medical rather than psychiatric. The 2000 U.S. Census put the number of families headed by same-sex couples at just over 600,000, but most authorities believe that to be an undercount. The actual number is likely over a million. The Census also revealed that such households can be found in 99.3% of all counties across the United States. Statistically speaking, that means that there are children from such families in virtually every school in the United States. HOW MANY GAYS AND LESBIANS ARE THERE, ANYWAY? The general consensus among researchers is that between 3% and 10% of the population is exclusively gay or lesbian. That means that there are between 194 and 645 million exclusively gay or lesbian individuals in the world. The more conservative estimate suggests that the global gay and lesbian population is larger than the individual populations of 188 of the 192 nations on Earth. By the higher estimate, that population is larger than the individual populations of 190 of those 192 nations (including the United States, with its population of nearly 300 million). In the U.S. alone, there are between 9 and 30 million exclusively gay or lesbian individuals. The more conservative estimate suggests that the American gay and lesbian population is larger than the individual populations of 42 of the 50 U.S. states, and of 107 of the world's 192 nations. The higher estimate suggests that it's larger than the individual populations of every state except California, and larger than the individual populations of 154 of the 192 nations on Earth. And these numbers don't even include bisexual folk, who some researchers believe form an even larger percentage of the population! "If you think you don't know any gay men or lesbians... you're wrong." 2001 In January, two couples, one gay and the other lesbian, were married in a double ceremony at Toronto's Metropolitan Community Church. The weddings led to the landmark Ontario court ruling that legalized same-sex marriage in Canada in 2005. In April, the Netherlands became the first country to legalize same-sex marriages. A new law took effect in Germany allowing registration of same-sex partnerships, despite conservative opposition. Under the new law, lesbians and gay men who register their relationships have the same inheritance rights as heterosexual couples, and may share a surname. Foreign partners may join German nationals in Germany. The law did not, however, give same-sex couples the tax advantages granted heterosexual married couples or the right to adopt children. In April, seven same-sex couples, after being denied marriage licenses, sued in Suffolk Superior Court in Boston, Massachusetts, to challenge the state's ban on same-sex marriages. Their challenge led to the legalization of same-sex marriage in the state in 2004. The United Nations General Assembly convened the first-ever special session on AIDS, "UNGASS." Rhode Island became the second state in the U.S. to ban discrimination against transsexuals, crossdressers and others who cross gender boundaries. (The first had been Minnesota, in 1993.) The new law, which became effective without the governor's signature, prohibited discrimination based on "gender identity or expression" in housing, employment and credit. GLBT rights advocates noted that the law would ensure that workers cannot be fired for having sex-reassignment surgery. A federal judge ruled that Florida's law banning homosexuals from adopting children is valid, saying that the state has a legitimate interest in only allowing married couples to adopt. The law is considered the nation's toughest ban on gay adoptions, prohibiting adoptions by any gay or lesbian individual or couple. Mississippi and Utah also ban adoptions by same-sex couples. On September 11, terrorists attacked the World Trade Center and the Pentagon by flying hijacked passenger planes into them, destroying the WTC towers and killing several thousand people. An additional plane crashed in a field in Pennsylvania after a group of passengers fought the terrorists. One of those passengers was the openly gay Mark Bingham. The U.S. House of Representatives approved the District of Columbia's Law on Rights of Domestic Partners, ending nine years of blocking the Washington, DC, domestic partners law. The measure was adopted 226-194, despite opposition from most of the Republican leadership. The United States invaded Afghanistan after it was determined that Osama bin Laden, the leader of the al-Qaeda terrorist network based in Afghanistan, was responsible for the September 11 attacks. 2002 The U.S. Department of Homeland Security was created. Sixteen years after passing a law prohibiting discrimination based on sexual orientation (which itself had taken 14 years and 15 tries), New York City in May finally banned discrimination based on gender identity. A Suffolk Superior Court judge in Massachusetts ruled against granting marriage licenses to seven gay couples, saying the legality of same-sex marriage should be decided by the Legislature, not by the courts. Gay Games VI was held in Sydney, Australia. Gay Canadian teenager Marc Hall was granted a court injunction ordering that he be allowed to attend his high school prom with his boyfriend. Nevada voters amended their state's constitution to ban same-sex marriages. In December, Republican Governor George Pataki signed a bill outlawing discrimination against lesbians and gays in New York state, 31 years after advocates began lobbying for it. The law protects people from abuse, harassment and discrimination in employment, housing, education and public services based on their sexual orientation. It made New York the thirteenth state to prohibit anti-gay bias. The Servicemembers Legal Defense Network reported that the U.S. Defense Department discharged 1,250 men and women in 2001 for declaring themselves gay or engaging in homosexual conduct, the highest figure in 14 years, and that number of cases of anti-gay harassment rose to 1,075 from 871 in 2000. It called the statistics an affront to liberty, unity and military readiness. The Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria began operation. The cumulative total of deaths in the United States from AIDS reached half a million. Worldwide, the total was already well over ten million. HIV became the leading cause of death worldwide among those aged 15-59. During this year alone, 23 people in the United States were slain in what appear to have been transgender hate crimes. 2003 President George W. Bush announced PEPFAR, the President's Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief, during his State of the Union Address. PEPFAR is a five-year, $15 billion initiative to address HIV/AIDS, tuberculosis and malaria, primarily in the hardest-hit countries. In February, in a child custody lawsuit, Florida Circuit Court judge Gerard O'Brien awarded custody of the two children that Michael and Linda Kantaras had raised together to Michael. Linda's lawyers had argued that since Michael was a female-to-male transsexual who had never undergone genital surgery, he ought to be legally considered female, and that the marriage itself had thus never been legally valid. Based in large part on medical testimony provided by some of the foremost experts on transsexualism, however, the judge ruled that Michael was legally male and that the marriage had been legally valid. (Michael was the biological uncle of the younger child, and had legally adopted the older child shortly after he and Linda were married.) San Francisco health department officials announced that they had found a link between a recent increase in HIV infections and use of the popular "rave" drug, crystal meth. In June, Belgium became the second country in the world to legalize same-sex marriage. (The Netherlands had been the first, in 2001.) In June, Ontario became the first Canadian province to legalize same-sex marriage. In July, Rev. Troy Perry, founder and moderator of the Universal Fellowship of Metropolitan Community Churches, married his longtime partner in Toronto. Canon Jeffrey John, who would have been the first gay bishop in the Church of England, withdrew his acceptance of the post of the Bishop of Reading after discussions with the church's leaders. The United States invaded Iraq, beginning what has become known as the second Gulf War. The reasons for the invasion and the conduct of the war remain highly contentious issues. The U.S. Supreme Court, ruling on Lawrence v. Texas, stated that "anti-sodomy" laws are unconstitutional, as the government is serving no legitimate interest by regulating private consensual sex between adults. In New York City, the Harvey Milk School, which had existed since 1984 as a two-classroom public school program, became a fully-accredited four-year public high school, the first public high school in the country specifically for GLBT youth. Students are admitted on a voluntary basis, but to be considered for transfer, they must show that they are at risk of dropping out of their old schools because of harassment. While many appreciate the desire to create a safer environment for GLBT students, objections to the school's existence have been raised by those on both sides of the political spectrum. The objections from conservatives tend to concentrate on the use of taxpayer funds, while the objections from liberals tend to question the wisdom of segregation. Many assert that the solution to harassment is a zero tolerance policy against it in all public schools, and not the isolation of GLBT students. Rev. Vicki Gene Robinson of New Hampshire became the first openly non-celibate gay bishop in the Episcopal Church. His confirmation was the subject of great controversy, which has not yet subsided; many conservative bishops have warned that the result may be a schism between the U.S. Episcopal Church and the greater Anglican Communion. California Governor Gray Davis signed legislation giving same-sex couples in the state most of the rights of married couples. The Vatican, in October, issued a directive to African Catholics not to use condoms to prevent the spread of HIV/AIDS, claiming that they wouldn't stop the disease. The New Hampshire Supreme Court ruled on November 7 that sex between people of the same gender, one of whom is married, does not constitute adultery under New Hampshire law. The Massachusetts Supreme Court ruled on November 18 that the state's ban on same-sex marriage was unconstitutional, and gave the state legislature 180 days to change the law. The court found that Massachusetts could not "deny the protections, benefits and obligations conferred by civil marriage to two individuals of the same sex who wish to marry" because of a clause in the state's constitution that forbids "the creation of second-class citizens." Pope John Paul II called for greater defense of the institution of marriage between a man and a woman, claiming that a "misunderstood sense of rights" was altering it. 2004 In January, in his State of the Union address, President George W. Bush said, "Our nation must defend the sanctity of marriage." Though he didn't specifically mention same-sex marriages, the message was clear. In February, 300 same-sex couples exchanged vows in Melbourne, Australia, in what organizers said was the world's largest mass gay commitment ceremony. Later in 2004, the Australian government passed a law banning gay marriage. In San Francisco, California, and Portland, Oregon, officials began issuing marriage licenses to same-sex couples. In both cases, the licenses were later declared void. Tom Murphy, an alderman in Rapid City, South Dakota, became the first openly transsexual politician in the U.S. when he announced that he was preparing to undergo sex reassignment to become a woman. Canada's first openly gay member of Parliament, Sven Robinson, resigned, ending a 25-year political career. He had admitted shoplifting an expensive diamond ring. On May 17, Massachusetts became the first state in the U.S. to allow same-sex marriages. The next day, when marriage licenses officially became available to gay and lesbian couples, more than 1,000 such couples obtained them. The very first license was issued to Marcia Hams and Susan Shepard. In response to events in Massachusetts, U.S. President George W. Bush voiced his support for amending the U.S. Constitution to ban same-sex marriages. Regardless of what happens at the national level, though, the legalization of same-sex marriages in the state will almost certainly be challenged by popular referendum in 2008, when Massachusetts voters will likely be asked by opponents of marriage equality to amend the state's constitution. Lawmakers in Zanzibar, a semiautonomous Muslim archipelago which was the nineteenth-century hub for the slave trade in the Indian Ocean, amended its 70 year-old penal code to make gay sex punishable by up to five years' imprisonment, gay relationships punishable by up to 25 years' imprisonment, and sodomizing a minor punishable by life imprisonment. In July, the South African Supreme Court of Appeal ruled that bans on same-sex marriage were unconstitutional. Technically, this decision legalized same-sex marriage, but the government appealed the case again, and it was heard in 2005 by the Constitutional Court, the highest court in South Africa. In August, Missouri voters passed a constitutional amendment banning same-sex marriage. It was the first such ban passed since gay couples became eligible to marry in Massachusetts. After a decade of resisting efforts to include transgender individuals in the proposed national Employment Non-Discrimination Act (ENDA), the Human Rights Campaign (HRC) finally announced that it would support an ENDA bill that included gender identity. In August, New Jersey Governor James McGreevey came out publicly as a gay man, with his wife on the podium beside him, briefly bringing the issue of "mixed-orientation marriages" into the national spotlight. The first gay divorce in North America was granted by a Toronto judge in September to a same-sex couple married the year before in Ontario. In his speech accepting his party's nomination to run for a second term, George W. Bush told Republicans that traditional marriage must be protected from "activist judges." In September, voters in Louisiana passed a "super" DOMA ("Defense of Marriage Act") modeled on Nebraska's, banning not only same-sex marriages, but also domestic partnerships and civil unions. In November, voters in Arkansas, Georgia, Kentucky, Michigan, Mississippi, Montana, North Dakota, Ohio, Oklahoma, Oregon, and Utah approved amendments to their state constitions banning same-sex marriages. All were "super" DOMAs except for Mississippi's, Montana's and Oregon's. 2005 In January, a landmark domestic partner law went into effect in California, giving same-sex couples nearly identical state legal rights and responsibilities as married spouses. Education Secretary Margaret Spellings issued a scathing attack on the PBS kids' series, "Postcards From Buster," for including in one episode the child of a lesbian couple and thus "promoting" homosexuality. The episode aired, anyway. Chris Smith, who had become Britain's first openly gay cabinet minister in 1984, announced that he was HIV positive. Barbara Baier was elected to the Public School Board of the city of Lincoln, becoming the first openly gay or lesbian elected official in Nebraska. In April, Connecticut became the first state to legalize same-sex civil unions without a court order. Kansas voters passed their own version of a "super" DOMA, banning both same-sex marriages and domestic partnerships. In May, Nebraska's constitutional amendment banning same-sex marriages was overturned by U.S. District Judge Joseph Bataillon as a violation of the U.S. Constitution's "equal protection" clause. Just over a year later, it was reinstated by a federal appeals panel. The case will most likely make its way to the U.S. Supreme Court, and the final outcome will affect not only Nebraska, but also many other states which have adopted "super" DOMA laws modeled on Nebraska's. In May, Zach Stark, a 16 year-old boy from Tennessee, posted to his blog that after discovering he was gay, his parents had decided to enroll him against his will in "Refuge," a camp run by Love in Action, an "ex-gay" organization. His posts, which included extensive details of the camp's oppressive rules and procedures as well as heart-wrenching expressions of his own anguish and desperation, drew local media attention and international interest. His subsequent stay at the camp, which was originally supposed to be just two weeks, was extended to almost two months. On August 1, after finally being released, Zach deleted his old posts and began a new blog, in which he claimed that his earlier comments had been "taken out of perspective and context," and that Love in Action had been "misrepresented" by "people who are only focused on their one-sided (biased) agendas." Two weeks later, he posted for the final time, stating that his father had asked him to stop blogging. An investigation of the camp had by that time been dropped, with Tenessee officials citing a lack of evidence of child abuse at the facilities. A separate investigation of Love in Action by the Tennessee Department of Health determined that the group had been illegally accepting mentally ill patients and dispensing medications without a license, but the matter was closed early in 2006 without any legal action having been taken, after the organization simply agreed to change its practices. In Madrid in June, several hundred thousand people, not all of them from Spain, led by Roman Catholic bishops and members of the conservative opposition party, took to the streets to protest against government moves to legalize marriage for same-sex couples. Opinion polls consistently showed that a majority of Spaniards supported the same-sex marriage and adoption bill, though, and on July 3, it became law, making Spain the third country to legalize same-sex marriage. On July 19, two teenaged boys, Mahmoud Asgari, 16, and Ayaz Marhoni, 18, were executed for homosexuality in Mashhad, the second largest city in Iran. After being lashed 228 times, they were hanged publicly in the city square. They had admitted to gay sex after being extensively tortured by Islamic authorities during 14 months in custody. The exiled Iranian gay rights group, Homan, claims that the Iranian government has executed at least 4,000 gay men since 1979. On July 20, Canada became the first non-European country (and the fourth country in the world) to legalize same-sex marriages. The landmark Showtime television series "Queer as Folk" aired its final episode. Fred Phelps of "God Hates Fags" fame gained national attention once again, as he and the members of his Topeka-based Westboro Baptist "Church" began picketing at the funerals of American soldiers killed in Iraq. Phelps claimed that God had "allowed" the soldiers to die as punishment for serving a country that harbors homosexuals. (He also claimed that Hurricane Katrina, which devastated New Orleans in August, was divine punishment for that city's tolerance of homosexuality.) The new round of picketing prompted numerous states and municipalities to consider banning such activity at funerals. The sudden interest in legislation, in turn, prompted many in the GLBT community to wonder why, if it wasn't acceptable for Phelps to picket at the funerals of soldiers, it had apparently been all right for him to picket for years at the funerals of gay men. The Kansas Supreme Court ruled that illegal underage sex cannot be punished more severely simply because it involves homosexual conduct. In the case being reviewed, an 18 year-old man had been convicted in 2000 of having sex with a 14 year-old boy, and had been sentenced to 17 years in prison. Had the 14 year-old been a girl, instead, the maximum sentence allowed under Kansas law would have been just 15 months. In September, the California State Legislature became the first state legislative body to approve a same-sex marriage bill. The legislation passed after an earlier defeat in the State Assembly in June. The legislation was, however, vetoed by Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger. A veterans' group held protests in October at Montgomery County, Texas, libraries in an effort to remove abot 70 children's books that the group claimed contain pornographic pictures or "promote homosexuality." In November, Texas voters overwhelming approved a constitutional ban on same-sex marriage and "institutions similar or identical to marriage." This "super" DOMA was passed in spite of the fact that Texas state law already prohibited same-sex marriage, because its supporters feared that the law could be found unconstitutional and overturned by a court, as happened in Massachusetts. A document released by the Vatican in November declared that gay men and those who support "gay culture" are unwelcome in the priesthood. (By some estimates, nearly half of the Catholic priests in the United States are gay.) The document said that in cases where "homosexual tendencies" were merely "the expression of a transitory problem," ordination was possible, but only if those tendencies had been "clearly overcome" for at least three years. The document's content was not surprising, as Pope Benedict XVI (the former Cardinal Ratzinger) has a long history of virulently anti-gay statements. A related article published in the Vatican newspaper said that homosexuality had no social or moral value and risked "destabilizing" people and society, and that homosexual relationships could never match the importance of relationships between men and women. Many observers see the Vatican's renewed emphasis on anti-homosexual teachings at least in part as an attempt to use gay priests as "scapegoats" in the wake of widespread clergy sex scandals, to hide the fact that nothing is being done to address the real problem of "wolves in shepherds' clothing" in the priestly ranks. (Though Church leaders almost invariably attempt to link the sex scandals to the "problem" of gay priests, experts on sex offenders have repeatedly emphasized that homosexuals are no more likely to molest children than are heterosexuals, and that such abuse is typically driven by a need for power rather than by sexual attraction.) On December 1, the Constitutional Court of South Africa ruled that the exclusion of same-sex marriages in South African law "represented a harsh if oblique statement by the law that same-sex couples are outsiders, and that their need for affirmation and protection of their intimate relations as human beings is somehow less than that of heterosexual couples." It accordingly held that the common law definition of marriage was unconstitutional, and gave the legislature one year to make changes. Those changes will face substantial opposition both from the public and from the country's legislature. Ford Motor Company, in the face of a boycott by the conservative American Family Association, announced that it would stop advertising in gay-themed publications. However, after meeting in late December with representatives of several prominent gay rights groups, the company issued a letter stating that Ford would continue to financially support GLBT events and causes, and that the decision to pull advertising from gay publications, a decision it claimed had been based solely on budgetary considerations, had been reversed. 2006 In January, a Baltimore judge struck down Maryland's 33 year-old state law banning same-sex marriages, the first such law passed anywhere in the United States. She declared that it violated the state constitution's guarantee of equal rights. An appeal is pending. Three different GLBT-themed dramas gained prominent attention at the Academy Awards. In "Transamerica," which earned two Oscar nominations, Felicity Huffman played a transsexual parent in the process of transitioning from male to female. In "Capote," which earned five nominations, Philip Seymour Hoffman (who won the "Best Actor" award) played famed gay writer Truman Capote. And in "Brokeback Mountain," which earned eight nominations, Heath Ledger and Jake Gyllenhaal played "gay cowboys" forced to hide their relationship over the course of two decades. Both "Brokeback" and "Capote" were nominated for the "Best Picture" award. Though "Brokeback" was heavily favored to win that top award, it did not; however, it did take three other Oscars, "Best Director" (Ang Lee), "Best Adapted Screenplay" (from the story by Annie Proulx) and "Best Original Score." More importantly, in theaters across the country, it won both critical and popular acclaim, defying early predictions that its story and message would be rejected by mainstream audiences. The California Supreme Court ruled in March that the city of Berkeley had the right to deny free access to its marina to the Sea Scouts, an affiliate of the Boy Scouts of America. The Boy Scouts in 2000 had won from the U.S. Supreme Court the right to ignore state anti-discrimination laws, even while asking for and accepting funds and other assistance from state and city governments. (The organization refuses to allow participation by open gays or atheists.) The California ruling was the first state-level ruling regarding the Boy Scouts' continued expectation of public funding since that 2000 Supreme Court decision; other cases are pending in California and elsewhere. Catholic Charities announced that it would shut down its entire adoption assistance program in Massachusetts rather than amend its programs in accordance with state law to assist gay and lesbian couples with adopting. Oklahoma legislators voted to withhold state funding from local libraries unless they segregate reading materials with gay themes from reading areas for children and young adults. In March, Ruth Malhotra, a senior at the Georgia Institute of Technology who had on several occasions been reprimanded for abusive speech directed against GLBT students, filed a federal civil rights lawsuit against the university. The suit was based in part on the claim that Georgia Tech's tolerance policies, by preventing her from verbally harassing GLBT students, infringed upon her freedom of religious expression. (The suit also challenged the school's policy of not funding religious activities through student activity fees.) Though the argument was clearly ridiculous -- common sense dictates that freedom of expression does not extend to verbal or physical harassment or abuse -- her lawsuit was actually representative of a growing movement among conservative Christians, who are seeking to present themselves as victims by claiming that Christianity in America is "under attack." Rather hypocritically, but not surprisingly, even as Ms. Malhotra sought the right to verbally abuse others, she complained about the verbal abuse directed at her as her suit gained national attention. A federal judge in Massachusetts ruled in April against 12 gay and lesbian veterans who had challenged the constitutionality of the military's "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" ban on openly gay personnel. The case was the first major attack on the ban since the U.S. Supreme Court's Lawrence v. Texas ruling in 2003. The plaintiffs had hoped that the ruling, which struck down "anti-sodomy" laws and upheld gays' privacy rights, would help their cause. In May, a Superior Court judge struck down Georgia's constitutional ban on same-sex marriage. Gay marriage and civil unions were already illegal in Georgia before the amendment was approved by voters in 2004, but supporters had argued that adding the language to the state constitution would better protect the state from future court challenges. Opponents claimed -- and the judge agreed -- that the amendment's passage had itself been unconstitutional, since language on the ballot had only dealt with same-sex marriage, while the actual amendment also addressed civil unions. In July, however, the Georgia Supreme Court reversed the decision, saying that the amendment and its passage were, indeed, constitutional. First Lady Laura Bush, in an interview on "Fox News Sunday," said that the issue of a constitutional amendment banning same-sex marriage deserved serious, sensitive debate, and that it should not be used as a campaign tool. However, her comments didn't stop many Republican leaders, her husband among them, from using the issue to try to mobilize conservative voters for the midterm elections. The U.S. Senate voted in June on the Federal Marriage Amendment, which would amend the U.S. Constitution to prohibit same-sex marriages. As it had in 2004, the Senate failed to approve the amendment. (In order to become part of the Constitution, the amendment would first have to be approved by two-thirds majorities in both the Senate and the House of Representatives, and then be ratified by at least three-fourths of U.S. state legislatures.) In Brazil, an estimated 2.4 million people took part in Sao Paulo's tenth annual Gay Pride Parade. According to the event's organizers, it was the largest crowd ever to attend a GLBT event anywhere in the world. The Episcopal General Convention debated whether the church should temporarily bar gays from becoming bishops, in order to preserve Anglican unity. (Anglican leaders outside the United States remain angry over the 2003 consecration of Gene Robinson of New Hampshire.) The final decision was to recommend, but not insist, that gays not be consecrated. New York state's highest court, the Court of Appeals, ruled in July that New York's marriage law is constitional, and that it clearly limits marriage to between a man and a woman. Any change to the law, Judge Robert Smith said, would have to come from the state's legislature. On July 14, a three-judge federal appeals panel in St. Louis, Missouri, reinstated Nebraska's ban on same-sex marriages. A federal judge had overturned the ban a year earlier, saying that it deprived gays and lesbians of basic civil rights, and that it was motivated largely by "animus" toward homosexuals. (Nebraska's ban, passed in 2000, was the nation's first "super" DOMA, banning not only same-sex marriages but also any sort of civil union or domestic partnership.) The members of the appeals panel, however, seem largely to have ignored those arguments, and looked instead at issues only vaguely related to the case actually brought to court by the ban's opponents. They said that the state had a legitimate interest in promoting "responsible procreation," and ruled that the state's argument that so-called "traditional" marriage was the "optimal partnership for raising children" was a rational justification for the ban. The case is almost certain to make its way to the U.S. Supreme Court. Gay Games VII was held in Chicago. WHERE WE STAND (AUGUST, 2006) Amazing progress has been made in the 37 years since the Stonewall riots. Indeed, it is often noted that the American GLBT civil rights movement has accomplished more in less time than any other such movement in history, a fact which is all the more amazing given the vitriolic infighting that so long characterized the relationships between some of its factions. Gays and lesbians today are visible everywhere, in politics, religion and every other walk of life, as well as on television and in movies. U.S. citizens in general, and especially younger Americans, have become much more open to GLBT concerns. But much remains to be done. For all their visibility, open gays and lesbians account for less than one-tenth of one percent of public officeholders in the United States. And GLBT folk have been able to secure their rights in only a relative handful of municipalities. No federal laws currently prohibit employment or other discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation or gender identity, and only a few states offer such protections. In more than 30 states, gay men and lesbians can still be fired from their jobs, refused apartments or houses, or denied service at restaurants, shops, hotels, hospitals and other public accommodations just for being who they are. Transgender individuals are still subject to such legal discrimination in almost every state. Gays and lesbians are still not allowed to serve openly in the U.S. military. (The United States is the only founding member of NATO in which such a ban still exists.) Many employers still refuse to offer partner benefits to gay or lesbian employees. Efforts are underway in more than a dozen states to limit the ability of gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender individuals and same-sex couples to adopt children. Only the state of Massachusetts allows gay and lesbian couples to marry, and only six other states (California, Connecticut, Hawaii, Maine, New Jersey and Vermont) and the District of Columbia currently allow such couples to be united in domestic partnerships or civil unions which grant at least some of the rights and protections enjoyed by married couples. Many other states have enacted laws or even amended their constitutions to keep same-sex couples from marrying and to prevent their relationships from being legally recognized. The federal government does not recognize those relationships in any way. (Internationally, same-sex marriage is now legal in Belgium, Canada, the Netherlands and Spain. Courts have ruled it legal in South Africa, but the legislature has not yet modified the country's laws accordingly. Civil unions are available in Andorra, Croatia, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Greenland, Hungary, Iceland, Israel, Luxembourg, New Zealand, Norway, Portugal, Slovenia, Sweden, Switzerland, and the United Kingdom, and in some regions of Argentina, Australia, Brazil and Italy. Unfortunately, for every country willing to acknowledge the validity of gay and lesbian relationships, there are others in which GLBT individuals are still routinely imprisoned, tortured or even executed.) While an increasing number of churches of all Christian denominations are becoming more accepting, the majority continue to preach the old message that homosexuality is sin. Schools in the U.S. remain less safe for GLBT youths than for others, and dropout and suicide rates among GLBT teens are still significantly higher than among other teens. Only eight states have laws banning discrimination in education, and only two states have laws banning harassment and bullying in education. AIDS remains a major health concern both within the GLBT community and in the wider population, and no cure has yet been found. The global AIDS epidemic has already killed 25 million people, and over 40 million more are HIV-positive. It is estimated that in 2006, some 3 million people -- 8,000 per day -- will die from the disease. The death toll is especially high in Africa, but even in the U.S. and Australia, epidemics that were once under control are starting to surge again, because of complacency and a reduction in resources. Yes, much progress has been made, but clearly, much more work remains. Those who support true equality under law for all Americans cannot afford to become complacent, especially now that President Bush has succeeded in moving the U.S. Supreme Court toward a more conservative stance. Even what's already been gained could all too easily be lost.     [ Ancient ] [ 533-1861 ] [ 1862-1968 ] [ 1969-1980 ] [ 1981-1995 ] [ 1996-2006 ] [ Notes ]     Notes and Acknowledgements First, I should point out that I am not an historian, or in fact a professional of any sort. While I knew from the beginning that I'd eventually make this chronology available for others to peruse, my primary purpose in constructing it was to educate myself. But education is never complete, and my work is far from perfect. There may be errors, and there are certainly many omissions. So constructive criticism and suggestions for improvement are always welcome! Despite appearances, I have not endeavored here to present anything "comprehensive." I've only tried to list some of the most important and/or interesting events from GLBT history, and to provide just enough background information to give a sense of the context in which those events fit. How well I've accomplished that goal will of course be determined by any given reader based on the extent to which that reader agrees with my assessments of what's interesting and/or important. As well, I've focused, especially in the post-Stonewall period, on the history of the GLBT civil rights struggle here in the United States. I certainly don't mean to belittle the efforts of those in other countries, but at the same time, I had to do something to try to keep this chronology from becoming completely unwieldy, and I don't see a need to apologize for limiting my work to the history with which I'm most familiar and which has the greatest relevance to me. (And in that regard, I've even included a few Nebraska-specific historical notes.) Most of my research was been conducted online, but no, I didn't think to record all of the Web sites I referenced. (My original concept was nothing anywhere near as large as this chronology eventually became.) The official sites of various GLBT advocacy organizations provided useful tidbits, as did a number of private Web sites. Of course, as will come as no surprise to anyone else who's ever researched anything online, Wikipedia was of tremendous use. The Gay Library and GLBTQ Encyclopedia Web sites also provided valuable information. A few hardcopy books were of particular worth, as well. Stonewall: The Riots that Sparked the Gay Revolution by David Carter, Witness to Revolution: The Advocate Reports on Gay and Lesbian Politics, 1967-1999, edited by Chris Bull, The Riddle of Gender by Deborah Rudacille, and, on a lighter note, How the Homosexuals Saved Civilization: The True and Heroic Story of How Gay Men Shaped the Modern World by Cathy Crimmins are all worth reading. As well, Homosexuality and Civilization by Louis Crompton and Same-Sex Unions in Premodern Europe by John Boswell are both highly-regarded scholarly looks at homosexuality in history, though of course Boswell's conclusions remain controversial. (Yes, I know there are many more volumes available. Those just happen to be the ones I've personally consulted.) I've had fun and learned quite a bit about GLBT history while composing this chronology. I hope that others will be able to learn something from it, as well. -- Darryl C. Burgdorf (dburgdorf@cox.net)