Over the previous 100 years, LGBTQ+ People have solid a path via historical past — leaving an indelible mark on our tradition and nation.
With queer lives and tradition underneath menace, Our Queerest Century highlights the contributions of LGBTQ+ folks because the 1924 founding of the nation’s first homosexual rights group.
Pre-order a replica of the sequence in print.
By means of their creativity, aesthetic and penchant for pushing boundaries, they’ve led the best way in an array of fields, from arts and leisure to democracy and the legislation. That they’ve completed so usually at nice peril, within the face of bigotry, makes their contributions all of the extra spectacular — and never so simply erased.
The next is a curated timeline impressed by Our Queerest Century.
1924: Henry Gerber founds the Society for Human Rights, credited because the first homosexual rights group within the U.S., primarily based on comparable organizations in pre-Nazi Germany.
1941: The U.S. enters World Battle II. Enormous numbers of women and men, together with service members dwelling in largely same-sex quarters, are uncovered to queer folks, queer communities and pockets of queer acceptance for the primary time.
American biologist Dr. Alfred Kinsey and his spouse, Clara, in 1955. Kinsey is the writer of “Sexual Habits within the Human Male.”
(Related Press)
1948: Alfred Kinsey releases “Sexual Habits within the Human Male,” altering the nationwide dialogue round intercourse.
1950: The Mattachine Society, an early homosexual rights group, is based in Los Angeles.
Circa 1951 picture of Mattachine Society members at Christmas.
(KCET)
1955: The Daughters of Bilitis, an early lesbian rights group, is based in San Francisco.
1956: Allen Ginsberg publishes “Howl,” and together with different queer Beat writers helps change how a technology of younger People views the world.
1958: The U.S. Supreme Courtroom extends free speech protections to the homosexual press within the case One, Inc. vs. Olesen, sparked by One Journal’s problem to authorities censorship.
1963: Bayard Rustin helps the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. manage the March on Washington, which culminated with King’s “I Have a Dream” speech and spurred landmark civil rights laws — together with the Civil Rights Act of 1964.
1963 picture of Bayard Rustin, chief of the March on Washington, in New York.
(Eddie Adams / Related Press)
1965: Ernestine Eckstein joins different queer activists at a White Home protest, holding an indication studying, “Denial of Equality of Alternative is Immoral.” Eckstein, a Black lesbian, isn’t well-known in the present day however was what one LGBTQ+ scholar known as “a prophet of the motion.”
1966: Transgender ladies and different queer patrons of Compton’s Cafeteria in San Francisco’s Tenderloin resolve to battle again towards police harassment. Others within the neighborhood — together with folks with the queer youth group Vanguard and at Glide Memorial United Methodist Church — additionally work to empower native queer residents.
1968: The heinous homicide of Ramon Novarro, one among Hollywood’s nice romantic idols, revealed he was homosexual and shined a lightweight on the secrecy and struggles of homosexual actors in Hollywood.
The physique of silent display screen actor Ramon Novarro is wheeled from his Laurel Canyon house on Oct. 31, 1968.
(David F. Smith / Related Press)
1969: Queer patrons of the Stonewall Inn in New York draw nationwide consideration for equally resisting police harassment, a seminal second within the LGBTQ+ rights battle.
1970: The first homosexual satisfaction marches are held in cities throughout the nation.
1973: The American Psychiatric Assn. points a decision eradicating homosexuality as a psychological sickness or illness from its diagnostic handbook, altering a place it had held for practically a century.
1977: Harvey Milk is elected to the San Francisco Board of Supervisors, turning into one of many first homosexual elected officers within the U.S. Within the face of Anita Bryant’s profitable marketing campaign to repeal a homosexual rights ordinance in Florida, San Francisco hosts a Delight occasion that pulls a whole lot of 1000’s of individuals.
San Francisco Supervisor Harvey Milk, left, and Mayor George Moscone within the mayor’s workplace in April 1977 through the signing of town’s homosexual rights invoice.
(Related Press)
1978: The Briggs Initiative, a statewide proposition in California that may have barred homosexual and lesbian folks from working as academics within the state’s public colleges, fails. Supervisor Milk is assassinated, together with Mayor George Moscone, at San Francisco Metropolis Corridor.
1981: Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome, or AIDS, is first acknowledged. Registered nurse Bobbi Campbell takes footage of his Kaposi sarcoma lesions and posts them within the coronary heart of San Francisco’s Castro District.
1982: The primary Homosexual Video games are held in San Francisco, based by Olympic athlete and activist Dr. Tom Waddell, heralding extra out queer participation in sports activities.
1985: The Occasions runs a groundbreaking ballot on folks’s perceptions of lesbian and homosexual folks, wherein 72% of respondents stated same-sex relationships had been all the time or virtually all the time flawed.
1987: The AIDS Coalition to Unleash Energy, or ACT UP, is based to assist battle AIDS via defiance, direct motion, analysis and advocacy within the face of an insufficient authorities response.
ACT UP demonstrates in entrance of the White Home demanding extra money for AIDS analysis.
(Getty Photos)
1993: Congress passes “Don’t Ask, Don’t Inform,” a coverage that permits homosexual and lesbian folks to serve within the U.S. navy so long as they preserve their sexual orientation personal.
2000: Vermont turns into the primary U.S. state to legalize same-sex civil unions.
2003: The U.S. Supreme Courtroom guidelines in Lawrence vs. Texas that legal guidelines criminalizing personal, consensual intercourse between adults are unconstitutional.
2004: Massachusetts turns into the primary U.S. state to legalize same-sex marriage.
2010: Congress repeals “Don’t Ask, Don’t Inform,” permitting homosexual and lesbian folks to serve overtly within the U.S. navy.
Senators take heed to Maj. Mike Almy talk about a invoice to repeal the “Don’t ask, Don’t inform” coverage on gays within the navy in 2010.
(Harry Hamburg / Related Press)
2012: Then-Vice President Joe Biden backs same-sex marriage earlier than President Obama or his administration did so, citing the affect of the tv sitcom “Will & Grace.” The American Psychiatric Assn. says it would take away “gender identification dysfunction” from its forthcoming diagnostic handbook, serving to to dispel the stigma that transgender individuals are mentally in poor health. The handbook as a substitute lists “gender dysphoria,” a situation the place sufferers expertise emotional misery associated to their gender.
Xu Na, left, and Xue Mengyao stroll towards the stage to be married by West Hollywood Mayor Lindsey Horvath on June 9, 2015.
(Christina Home / Los Angeles Occasions)
2015: The U.S. Supreme Courtroom guidelines in Obergefell vs. Hodges that same-sex {couples} have a basic proper to marry.
2017: Paul Mpagi Sepuya produces “Darkroom Mirror _2070386,” a part of a protracted historical past of queer photographers turning the lens on themselves and their communities.
2020: The U.S. Supreme Courtroom guidelines in Bostock vs. Clayton County that the Civil Rights Act of 1964 protects LGBTQ+ folks from office discrimination nationwide.
2023: Gallup surveys of greater than 12,000 People discover that greater than 1 in 5 Gen Z adults, ages 18 to 26, and 1 in 10 millennials, ages 27 to 42, determine as LGBTQ+.
2024: Anti-LGBTQ+ laws, and particularly anti-transgender laws, is launched throughout the nation as a backlash to a long time of progress for the LGBTQ+ group. A brand new Occasions ballot finds widespread assist for LGBTQ+ folks, however barely much less for transgender and nonbinary folks.
