The history of LGBT residents in South Dakota spans back to precolonial Native American times, but has become much more visible in the 21st century.
[1] In 1862, Dakota Territory enacted laws against sodomy in regards to both heterosexual and homosexual acts, with a minimum punishment of one year of incarceration and a maximum of life in prison.
[2] In 1910, after the State v. Whitmarsh court case, South Dakota's definition of sodomy was expanded to include fellatio.
[2] In Sioux Falls in 1979, Randy Rohl and Grady Quinn, then 17 and 20 respectively, became the first two openly gay people to attend a prom together in the United States.
In the summer of 2006, Equality South Dakota a statewide 501(c)(4) non-profit organization, was founded with support from the Gill Foundation.
[8][9] On January 12, 2016, South Dakota came into the public eye[10] when Congress introduced House Bill 1008, which would have restricted bathroom and locker room use by transgender students to the ones that correlated with their sex assigned at birth, not their gender identity.