Mart Crowley

Mart Crowley, Writer

Perry Watkins

Perry Watkins, Army Veteran and Activist

Alix Dobkin

Alix Dobkin, Musician, Singer, and Songwriter

Kinsey study of female sexuality published

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…

Ryan White Care Act passed by U.S. Congress

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.

African American gay man nominated for Vice President

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…

Bayard Rustin attacked as sexual pervert by white supremacist U.S. Senator.

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

Martin Duberman, Historian, Writer, and Activist

International Gay Association founded

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…

Timeline: FBI and Homosexuality, 1908-2015

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…

First AIDS Walk

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

Barbara Gittings, Activist

James Baldwin

James Baldwin, Writer

Barbara Deming

Barbara Deming, Writer and Activist

Samuel Steward

Samuel Steward, Writer and Tattoo Artist

Gay Liberation Front protest in Bloomington Indiana

Members of the Gay Liberation Front of Bloomington Indiana picket and distribute flyers outside a popular bar and restaurant, Nick’s English Hut, that was near the Indiana University campus. GLF was protesting a sign that the owner had posted in the…

Frank Kameny speech in New York City

Militant activist Franklin Kameny delivers the 100th monthly lecture to the New York Mattachine Society and urges the audience to take a firm stand against the claim that homosexuality is an illness. It is “neither a sickness, a defect, a…

Japanese internment camp poster

Martina Navratilova becomes a U.S. citizen

Czechoslovakian-born tennis champion Martina Navratilova is granted U.S. citizenship. A few days later, the New York Daily News reports that she is a lesbian.

Gerry Studds censured by U.S. House of Representatives

Gerry Studds, a Democrat from Massachusetts, is censured by the House of Representatives because of a consensual sexual relationship with a House page. Studds, who was the first member of Congress to openly acknowledge being gay, was re-elected by…