Alison Bechdel, Writer and Cartoonist
Jane Addams, Social Justice Activist
Sylvester, Singer and Performer
Edward Carpenter, Writer and Activist
Christopher Isherwood, Writer
The Wolfenden Report is released in Great Britain. Named after Sir John Wolfenden, who chaired the committee appointed by the British Home Secretary, the Report recommended that laws criminalizing consensual sex in private between adults be…
In the wake of the national March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom, the first conference of East Coast Homophile Organizations opens in Philadelphia. The conference, whose theme was “Homosexuality—Time for Reappraisal,” brought together gay and…
The March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom brings more than 200,000 people to Washington DC in support of racial equality and justice. Larger than any other protest demonstration since the 1930s, it pushed the civil rights movement into the center…
Mart Crowley, Writer
Perry Watkins, Army Veteran and Activist
Alix Dobkin, Musician, Singer, and Songwriter
Alfred Kinsey’s study, Sexual Behavior in the Human Female, is released. Based on interviews with thousands of women, it sharply challenged conventional beliefs about sexual behavior in the U.S., and revealed that sex outside marriage was far more…
Congress enacts the Ryan White Care Act. After a decade in which Congress and the President largely ignored the AIDS epidemic, the Ryan White Care Act finally provided significant financial resources for HIV/AIDS prevention, care, and treatment.
Virginia Apuzzo and Bill Kraus, delegates to the Democratic National Convention in New York City, placed in nomination the name of Mel Boozer for Vice President of the United States. Boozer, an African American gay man who was then president of the…
Strom Thurmond, a white supremacist Senator from South Carolina, verbally attacks Bayard Rustin on the floor of the U.S. Senate and labels him a sexual pervert in an effort to discredit the upcoming March on Washington, for which Rustin is the chief…
Martin Duberman, Historian, Writer, and Activist
A group of thirty gay men from 14 different countries met in Coventry, England and founded the International Gay Association. Eight years later, at a conference in Copenhagen, the organization changed its name to the International Lesbian and Gay…
This chronology surveys the history of the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation's surveillance of homosexuals and alleged homosexuals. It includes references to what was considered gender and sexual deviance. It also includes surveillance of the…
The first AIDS Walk is held in Los Angeles, California, organized by AIDS Project Los Angeles. Over the next decades, AIDS walks and runs would become a major fundraising tool for AIDS service organizations and an important means of raising public…
Barbara Gittings, Activist