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Henry Gerber
Henry Gerber is a German immigrant that founded, in Chicago, the Society for Human Rights. The Society for Human Rights was the first documented gay rights organization in the United States. -
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Society for Human Rights
In 1925, police raids caused the group to disband. However, 90 years later, the United States government designated Gerber's Chicago home a National Historic Landmark. -
The Pink Triangle
Radclyffe Hall was an Englsih poet and author that published a lesbian themed novel, "The Well of Lonliness." -
World War II
Nazis held homosexual men in concentration camps and branded them with a pink triangle badge that was also given to sexual predators. -
Alfred Kinsey
The author of the book, "Sexual Behavior in the Human Male." This book proposed that male significant others lies on a continuum between exclusively homosexual to exclusively heterosexual. -
Harry Hay
Founder of the Mattachine Foundation, one of the nations first gay rights groups. A Los Angeles organization coined the term "homophile," which was considered less clinical and focused on sexual activity than "homosexual." -
Dale Jennings
A founding member of the Mattachine Foundation, who was arrested for solicitation and then later set free due to a deadlocked jury. -
Mental Disorder
The American Psychiatric Association listed homosexuality as a form of mental disorder in 1952. -
The Homophile Years
Harry Hay and Dale Jennings were kicked out of the Mattachine Foundation for their communism. -
President Eisenhower
President Dwight D. Eisenhower signed an executive order that banned gay people—or, more specifically, people guilty of “sexual perversion”—from federal jobs. -
The Mattachine Society
Four lesbian couples in San Francisco founded an organization called the Daughters of Bilitis. It soon began publishing a newsletter called The Ladder, the first lesbian publication of any kind. -
The Rejected
In 1961, Illinois became the first state to do away with its anti-sodomy laws, effectively decriminalizing homosexuality, and a local TV station in California aired the first documentary about homosexuality, called The Rejected. -
Transgender
Dr. John Oliven, in his book Sexual Hygiene and Pathology, coined the term “transgender” to describe someone who was born in the body of the incorrect sex. -
Christine Jorgenson
But more than 10 years earlier, transgendered individuals entered the American consciousness when George William Jorgensen, Jr., underwent sex-reassignment surgery in Denmark to become Christine Jorgensen. -
"Sip Ins"
Members of the Mattachine Society in New York City staged a “sip-in”—a twist on the “sit-in” protests of the 1960s—in which they visited taverns, declared themselves gay, and waited to be turned away so they could sue. They were denied service at the Greenwich Village tavern Julius, resulting in much publicity and the quick reversal of the anti-gay liquor laws. -
Stonewall Inn
New York City police raided the Stonewall Inn. Fed up with years of police harassment, patrons and neighborhood residents began throwing objects at police as they loaded the arrested into “paddy wagons.” The scene eventually exploded into a full-blown riot, with subsequent protests that lasted for five more days. -
Gay Liberation Front
At the one-year anniversary of the Stonewall Riots, New York City community members marched through local streets in commemoration of the event. Named the Christopher Street Liberation Day, the march is now considered the country’s first gay pride parade. Activists also turned the once-disreputable Pink Triangle into a symbol of gay pride. -
Kathy Kozachenko
Won a seat to the Ann Harbor, Michigan, City Council in 1974, becoming the first out American to be elected to public office. -
Renée Richards
The New York Supreme Court ruled that transgender woman, Renée Richards, could play at the United States Open tennis tournament as a woman. -
Gilbert Baker
Baker designed and stitched together the first rainbow flag, which he unveiled at a pride parade. -
Harvey Milk
Harvey Milk, who campaigned on a pro-gay rights platform, became the San Francisco city supervisor, becoming the first openly gay man elected to a political office in California. -
March on Washington
More than 100,000 people took part in the first National March on Washington for Lesbian and Gay Rights. -
The Beginning of AIDS
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention published a report about five previously healthy homosexual men becoming infected with a rare type of pneumonia. -
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AIDS and HIV
Researchers had identified the cause of AIDS—the human immunodeficiency virus, or HIV—and the Food and Drug Administration licensed the first commercial blood test for HIV in 1985. -
Second March on Washington
Gay rights proponents held the second National March on Washington for Lesbian and Gay Rights. The occasion marked the first national coverage of ACT UP (AIDS Coalition To Unleash Power), an advocacy group seeking to improve the lives of AIDS victims. -
World AIDS Day
The World Health Organization declared December 1 to be World AIDS Day. By the end of the decade, there were at least 100,000 reported cases of AIDS in the United States. -
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Don't Ask Don't Tell
The District of Columbia passed a law that allowed gay and lesbian couples to register as domestic partners, granting them some of the rights of marriage (the city of San Francisco passed a similar ordinance three years prior and California would later extend those rights to the entire state in 1999). -
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Don't Ask Don't Tell Part II
Also in 1992, Bill Clinton, during his campaign to become president, promised he would lift the ban against gays in the military. But after failing to garner enough support for such an open policy, President Clinton in 1993 passed the “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” (DADT) policy, which allowed gay men and women to serve in the military as long as they kept their sexuality a secret. -
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Hawaii Gay Marriage
The highest court in Hawaii ruled that a ban on gay marriage may go against the state’s constitution. State voters disagreed, however, and in 1998 passed a law banning same-sex marriage. -
Defense of Marriage Act
Federal lawmakers also disagreed, and Congress passed the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA), which Clinton signed into law. The law prevented the government from granting federal marriage benefits to same-sex couples, and allowed states to refuse to recognize same-sex marriage certificates from other states. -
Lawrence v. Texas
Gay rights proponents had another bit of happy news: the U.S. Supreme Court, in Lawrence v. Texas, struck down the state’s anti-sodomy law. The landmark ruling effectively decriminalized homosexual relations nationwide. -
Matthew Shepard Act
President Barack Obama signed into law a new hate crime act. Commonly known as the Matthew Shepard Act, the new law extended the reach of the 1994 hate crime law. The act was a response to the 1998 murder of 21-year-old Matthew Shepard, who was pistol-whipped, tortured, tied to a fence, and left to die. The murder was thought to be driven by Shepard’s perceived homosexuality. -
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Don't Ask Don't Tell Part III
President Obama fulfilled a campaign promise to repeal DADT; by that time, more than 12,000 officers had been discharged from the military for refusing to hide their sexuality. A couple of years later, the Supreme Court ruled against Section 3 of DOMA, which allowed the government to deny federal benefits to married same-sex couples. DOMA soon become powerless, in 2015 the Supreme Court ruled that states cannot ban same-sex marriage, making gay marriage legal throughout the country. -
Eric Fanning
The U.S. military lifted its ban on transgender people serving openly, a month after Eric Fanning became secretary of the Army and the first openly gay secretary of a U.S. military branch.
