History of gay men in the United States
Roger Austen notes "In the nineteenth century Bayard Taylor had written that the reader who did not feel 'cryptic forces' at play in Joseph and His Friend: A Story of Pennsylvania would hardly be interested in the external movement of his novel.
"[15] Another such work is Imre: A Memorandum, written in Europe by the expatriate American-born author, Edward Irenaeus Prime-Stevenson, who originally published it under the pseudonym of Xavier Mayne in a limited-edition imprint of 500 copies in Naples, Italy, in 1906.
After a campaign of harassment from the U.S. Post Office Department and the Federal Bureau of Investigation, the Postmaster of Los Angeles declared the October, 1954 issue obscene and therefore unmailable under the Comstock laws.
[24][25] McCarthy hired Roy Cohn — who many allege was a closeted gay man — as chief counsel of his Congressional subcommittee, which among other things investigated homosexuality in government employees.
[note 2] A few years later the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) took its first major case in opposition to these laws, Enslin v. Walford, which was denied certiorari by the Supreme Court.
[citation needed] Craig Rodwell, who had conceived of the Annual Reminder (which was led by Frank Kameny and Barbara Gittings) went on to begin the pro-gay group Homophile Youth Movement in Neighborhoods (HYMN) in 1967.
In 1968, after a suicide attempt following a failed love affair and witnessing a close friend being arrested by the police at the Black Cat Tavern (see below), Perry founded the Metropolitan Community Church.
[43] Lesbian Martha Shelley was in Greenwich Village the night of the Stonewall Riot; she proposed a protest march and as a result the Mattachine Society and Daughters of Bilitis sponsored a demonstration.
[44][45][46] Later that year, on November 2, 1969, Craig Rodwell, his partner Fred Sargeant, Ellen Broidy, and Linda Rhodes proposed the first gay pride parade to be held in New York City by way of a resolution at the Eastern Regional Conference of Homophile Organizations (ERCHO) meeting in Philadelphia.
[48] Members of the Gay Liberation Front (GLF) attended the meeting and were seated as guests of Rodwell's group, Homophile Youth Movement in Neighborhoods (HYMN).
Craig Rodwell and his partner Fred Sargeant, Michael Brown, Marty Nixon, Foster Gunnison Jr. of Mattachine, and Ellen Broidy made up the core group of the CSLD Umbrella Committee (CSLDUC).
The crowd marched from Greenwich Village into uptown Manhattan and Central Park, holding gay pride signs and banners, chanting "Say it clear, say it loud.
[69] The 1971 marriage of James Michael McConnell[70] and Richard John "Jack" Baker[71][72] meant they were the first legally married same-sex couple in United States history.
[76] Because the case came to the Supreme Court through mandatory appellate review (not certiorari), the dismissal constituted a decision on the merits and established Baker v. Nelson as precedent,[77] though the extent of its precedential effect has been subject to debate.
[86] The UpStairs Lounge arson attack took place on June 24, 1973, at a gay bar located on the second floor of the three-story building at 141 Chartres Street in the French Quarter of New Orleans, Louisiana.
[90] When Gilbert Baker raised the first Gay Pride flag at San Francisco Pride on June 25, 1978, it had eight colors, each with a symbolic meaning: First appearing around 1971 in San Francisco, visual codes signifying availability and preferences during cruising activities also started to spread within the gay subculture in the 1970s, expanding on the existing handkerchief code by assigning meanings to more colors beyond the traditional red and blue.
[95] In the early 1980s, reports began surfacing in San Francisco and New York City that a rare form of cancer called Kaposi's Sarcoma was affecting young gay men.
"[106] Organizers of the Hollywood AIDS benefit Commitment to Life reported after Hudson's announcement he was suffering from the disease, it was necessary to move the event to a larger venue to accommodate the increased attendance.
[108] In March 1987, Larry Kramer was asked to speak at the Lesbian and Gay Community Services Center in New York City as part of a rotating speaker series, and his well-attended speech focused on action to fight AIDS.
[111] Its stated mission, in part, is to "[amplify] the voice of the LGBT community by empowering real people to share their stories, holding the media accountable for the words and images they present, and helping grassroots organizations communicate effectively".
The founding group included film scholar Vito Russo; Gregory Kolovakos, then on the staff of the NYS Arts Council and who later became the first executive director; Darryl Yates Rist; Allen Barnett;[113] and Jewelle Gomez, the organization's first treasurer.
[122] The New York Court of Appeals found that a "more realistic, and certainly equally valid, view of a family includes two adult lifetime partners whose relationship is long term and characterized by an emotional and financial commitment and interdependence".
[126] On March 20, 1990, sixty LGBTQ people gathered at the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender Community Services Center in New York's Greenwich Village to create a direct action organization.
Group's breakthrough was at New York's Gay Pride parade when militant AIDS activists passed out to the assembled crowd an inflammatory manifesto, bearing the titles "I Hate Straights!"
Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that school officials violated the rights of an openly gay teenager, Jamie Nabozny, when they allowed others to harass him for his sexual orientation.
The court thus overturned its previous ruling on the same issue in the 1986 case Bowers v. Hardwick, where it had upheld a challenged Georgia statute and did not find a constitutional protection of sexual privacy.
[202] Colorado's Supreme Court ordered the Denver county clerk to stop issuing marriage licenses to gay couples while the state's ban against the unions was in place.
[242] Also, in 2014, President Obama signed Executive Order 13672, adding both "sexual orientation" and "gender identity" to the categories protected against discrimination in employment and hiring on the part of federal government contractors and sub-contractors.
[254] Later that month Sarah Goodfriend and Suzanne Bryant became the first same-sex couple married in Texas, after their marriage license was issued in response to a district judge's order in Travis County because one of the women had been diagnosed with ovarian cancer.
[283][284] The FBI identified the deceased gunman as Omar Mir Seddique Mateen, a 29-year-old American citizen born in New York City to Afghani parents, and living in Port St. Lucie, Florida.
