The Uranian Union was an organization initiated by Karl Heinrich Ulrichs in 1865 with which he urged for the repeal of anti homosexual laws.
[1][2] The Scientific-Humanitarian Committee (Wissenschaftlich-humanitäres Komitee, WhK) was founded in 1897 by Magnus Hirschfeld, the first outspoken advocacy group for LGBT and women's rights in Germany.
[4] Taking place from the 1940s into the 1960s, the "lavender scare" was a societal panic about the notion that gay men and lesbians were communist sympathizers.
The Society for Human Rights was founded in 1924 in Chicago, Illinois, by Henry Gerber, who was inspired by Hirschfeld's work in Germany and produced the first gay-rights-oriented publication in the US, Friendship and Freedom.
The Daughters of Bilitis was founded in San Francisco, California, by activist couple Del Martin and Phyllis Lyon.
The Alice B. Toklas LGBTQ Democratic Club was founded in 1971 by Martin & Lyon, as well as activists Beth Elliot and Ben Foster.
[9] In 1981, American doctors began using gay-related immune deficiency (GRID) as a term for what would later be called acquired immunodeficiency syndrome (AIDS).
The Human Rights Campaign has recently elected its first Black and Queer president (University of Missouri alumnae), Kelley Robinson.