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European explorers were scandalized by Native American beliefs about sexuality and nudity. Cross-dressing women and men in some Native American
cultures are revered as healers and shamans. These Two Spirit people performed the duties of the other sex, mated with their own sex and were held in
high esteem and often adopted non-traditional gender expression. Two Spirit
people were accepted in over 135 North American Indian nations.
1594: Balboa saw cross-dressed Native Americans and called them Sodomites. He
threw their King and 40 men to his dogs to be eaten. This was considered an
honorable action by a good Catholic Spaniard.
Sex between men or between women was referred to as buggery, the
unspeakable sin against God, sodomy, wickedness not to be named among
Christians.
18001860 CE: United States and Western Europe: Liberalizing of attitudes about sodomy in France, U.S., Germany, and England. Homosexuality was still a crime,
but not punished by death. Thomas Jefferson recommended that in Virginia
sex between men be punished by castration and sex between females be punished by having a hole 1 1/2 inches in diameter bored into the nose cartilage of
the offending women.
Most European and U.S. cities enforced civil statutes prohibiting public
cross dressing. Many of these laws were still on the book well into the midtwentieth century.
1810: Napoleonic Code removed all penalties for any sexual activity between consenting adults in France.
1861: England removed death penalty for sodomy.
1869: Hungarian doctor, Karoly Benkert, coined Homosexuality to describe
same-sex acts.
Over 400 Civil War soldiers were cross-dressed females.
1870 CE1910: Western Europe and United States: Rise of the medical professions
influence. Sodomy was now called homosexuality, a suitable topic for scientific study. Doctors developed a typology for a Homosexual Personality
which included physical characteristics, mannerisms, hobbies, and sexual
attractions and behavior. Homosexuality was considered a congenital medical condition. Homosexuals are called inverts, and the third sex, and men
trapped in womens bodies. Biological explanation for two separate genders with distinct, non-overlapping gender expressions dominated Western
medicine.
Many medical experts called for decriminalization of homosexuality
because the poor creatures were sick, not criminals. This construction of
homosexual identity made it possible for homosexuals to identify as a kind
of person for the first time. Terms homosexuals used to refer to themselves
included the third sex and uranians.
1871: Paragraph 175 of the German Penal Code reiterated that homosexual acts
between men was a crime (This law laid the foundation for Nazi persecution of
homosexuals during World War II).
1890s: Heterosexual was first used in medical texts to refer to people inclined toward
sex with both men and women. By mid 1890s, heterosexual was used exclusively to refer to people who were inclined toward sex with the other gender.
1895: In England, famed writer Oscar Wilde, at the height of his popularity, was
arrested, tried, and imprisoned for homosexuality.
Teaching for Diversity and Social Justice, Second Edition, Routledge, 2007
1897:
1950: The U.S. Senate authorized a formal investigation of homosexuals and other
moral perverts in government. This ushered in a decade of active police and
government harassment of homosexual men and women. Laws in many cities
in the U.S. required that people must wear at least three articles of clothing
appropriate to their sex. This law was used to harass people at gay bars during
police raids.
1951: Mattachine Society was founded by Henry Hay (homosexual mens
organization).
1952: Kinsey publishes a study of homosexual behavior among females.
President Eisenhower signed an Executive Order barring homosexuals
from government service.
Christine Jorgenson, a male to female transsexual, became an object of
national curiosity and ridicule as the first transsexual person to receive widespread national attention.
1955: Daughters of Bilitis was founded by Del Martin and Phyllis Lyon (homosexual
womens organization). The goals of lesbian and gay organizations were acceptance and assimilation. They worked to convince medical doctors that they
were not sick.
1956: Dr. Evelyn Hooker, a psychologist, released her historic study The Adjustment
of the Male Overt Homosexual which asserted that gay men were as well
adjusted as heterosexual men. The first time homosexuality was not linked to
mental disorder.
19601968: Time of social change and breakdown of social consensus on many issues,
minority voices speak out: black civil rights, anti-war, counter-culture, women.
Homosexual acts were still illegal in all 50 states. The homophile organizations
of the 1950s started to give way to groups that focused on civil rights advocacy
for lesbian and gay people.
1960s: American surgeons began performing sex reassignment surgery. Support and
advocacy groups for transsexuals began to emerge. Medical teams were available in most American hospitals to intervene when intersex babies were born
to assign these babies to either male or female categories, through surgical
procedures.
1961: U.S. Motion Picture Code ruled that homosexuality, previously banned from
the screen, could be depicted with discretion, care, and restraint.
1962: Life magazine featured an article on the emerging gay subculture in America.
Illinois became the first state to decriminalize same-sex acts between consenting adults in private.
1963: Bayard Rustin, an African-American gay man and close associate of Martin
Luther King, Jr., led planning for first black civil rights march and rally in
Washington, DC where King gave his I have a dream speech. Some black
civil rights leaders were afraid that Rustins homosexuality would discredit
the Civil Rights Movement. He was forced to step down from his leadership
position.
1964: Johns Hopkins University Doctor John Money established as leader in sex reassignment programs claiming that, despite the biological sex of infants, they
could be raised successfully as the opposite sex if surgical and socialization
intervention was early enough.
1965: Lesbians and gay men picketed the White House to protest government treatment of homosexuals in the military and government employment.
Teaching for Diversity and Social Justice, Second Edition, Routledge, 2007
1966: The Transsexual Phenomenon by Harry Benjamin was published and became
the comprehensive guide for transsexuals, commonly referred to as the transsexual bible.
1967: The first student homophile organization formed at Columbia University in
NY.
The ACLU changed its position on the constitutionality of legal sanctions
against gay people, stating publicly that it supported gay rights laws.
1968: The North American Conference of Homophile organizations adopted Gay Is
Good as a slogan for the movement using the Black is Beautiful model from
the Black Civil Rights Movement.
19691976: Period of enormous growth and visibility of the gay rights movement.
June 27, 1969: Stonewall Rebellion, NYC During a routine police raid of gay bar in
Greenwich Village, transgender people, gay men and lesbians fought back for
first time touching off three days of riots that attracted national media attention. The rioters were primarily working class drag queens, butch lesbians and
People of color. This is marked as the birth of the modern gay/lesbian rights
movement. This event also marked the beginning of a shift in how lesbian,
bisexual and gay people saw themselves increasingly as an oppressed minority group.
1971: The National Organization of Women (NOW) acknowledged that the oppression of lesbians is a legitimate concern of feminism.
Lesbian separatists discouraged by the sexism in the Gay Liberation Movement and the homophobia in the womens movement, developed their own
communities and politics.
1972: George Weinberg coined Homophobia to describe an irrational fear of
homosexuality. This was the first time anti-homosexual feelings are labeled
pathological.
1973: The American Psychiatric Association and the American Psychological Association removed homosexuality from their list of mental disorders. National
Gay Task Force was founded (later Lesbian was added to name).
1974: Rep. Bella Abzug (D-NY) introduced a bill in the U.S. House of Representatives
proposing that the categories of sex, sexual orientation, and marital status
be added to the 1964 Civil Rights Act. This was the first time gay civil rights
legislation was introduced at the federal level.
1975: The first Michigan Womyns Music Festival
19721976: 36 cities and towns adopt gay rights laws, 25 states repeal sodomy laws,
several mainstream religious groups endorse gay rights laws.
19771980: Emerging political conservative and fundamentalist Christian right voiced
organized opposition to gay rights. Politically conservative and right wing
Christian groups coalesced and gained political power. They portrayed lesbians and gay men as a threat to the family and traditional family values and
effectively used the scare tactics to raise funds and mobilize opposition to gay
and lesbian rights legislation.
1977: Dade County, Florida recalled a previous gay rights law. Singer Anita Bryant
became a spokeswoman for anti-gay groups and a symbol of hate among lesbians and gay men. Harvey Milk was the first openly gay man to be elected city
supervisor in San Francisco.
1978: Gay rights laws recalled in Eugene, OR; Wichita, KN; St. Paul, MN.
Teaching for Diversity and Social Justice, Second Edition, Routledge, 2007
The Briggs Initiative introduced and defeated in California (would have prohibited gay teachers in schools and any positive discussion of homosexuality in
schools).
Briggs Initiative look alike passed in Oklahoma. Harvey Milk and Mayor
George Moscone assassinated in San Francisco, November 27.
1979: First national March on Washington for lesbian and gay rights 100,000
participants.
19801991: Increasing swing toward conservatism as Ronald Reagan is elected
President.
1980: The APA added Gender Identity Disorder to the official list of mental disorders. This disorder was used to covertly treat people assumed to be gay or
lesbian since homosexuality was officially taken off the list of mental disorders
in 1973.
1981: First references to AIDS appeared in the media, then called Gay-Related
Immune Disease.
1982: Wisconsin passed the first statewide gay rights law in the U.S. The first Gay
(Olympic) Games held in San Francisco with 1,500 participants (U.S. Olympic
Committee sued organizers and prohibited the use of the word Olympic in
association with the Gay Games.)
1984: Wigstock Annual drag festival held in New York City.
1986: Supreme Court ruled that a Georgia Sodomy law was correctly used to arrest
and convict a gay man for having sex with a man in his own bedroom when a
police officer came to the home to serve a traffic summons and discovered the
two men.
1987: The second national March on Washington for lesbian and gay rights
700,000 participants. Mainstream media ignored the event. Bisexuals became
increasing visible and vocal about being explicitly included in lesbian and gay
events and organizations. President Ronald Reagan addressed AIDS in a public speech for the first time, 5 years after the epidemic began. ACT-UP (AIDS
Coalition to Unleash Power) was founded. This was a direct action group calling national attention to the failure of the government to address AIDS and
price gouging by drug companies. ACT-UP ushered in a new era of militant
activism by lesbians, gay men, bisexual people and transgender people and
heterosexual allies.
1988: Department of Justice released a report on hate crimes in the U.S. in which
lesbians and gay men were cited as the most frequent targets. First annual
National Coming Out Day was celebrated on October 11, 1988
1989: American Bar Association endorsed gay rights legislation. Massachusetts
became the second state to pass a gay rights law. Denmark became the first
country in the world to legalize gay relationships. Department of Health and
Human Services issued a report on teen suicide: Lesbian and gay youth were
reported to be two to three times more likely to kill themselves. This section of
the report was suppressed by conservative Republicans.
1990: Beginning of Queer Nation, a direct action protest group of mostly young lesbian, gay, and bisexual people in cities and towns around the U.S. Outing
became a controversial tactic within the LGB community where well-known,
but closeted lesbian and gay politicians, movie stars, athletes, or other public
figures were publicly named as gay without their consent by other gays.
1990: Gay Games III in Vancouver, B.C. attracted over 7,000 athletes from 26 countries, the largest athletic event in the world at the time. No national media cov Teaching for Diversity and Social Justice, Second Edition, Routledge, 2007
erage. Connecticut and Hawaii became the third and fourth states to enact gay
rights laws
1991: AIDS into the 10th year of the epidemic.
19921996: Diversification of lesbian, gay, bisexual movement, religious right leads
backlash against gay civil rights.
1992: Coalitions of right wing Christian fundamentalists and Republicans targeted
lesbians, bisexuals and gay men as responsible for the breakdown of traditional family values. Anti-gay rhetoric was a prominent part of Republican
National Convention. Oregon and Colorado placed initiatives on the November ballot that would outlaw gay rights legislation. The Colorado initiative won
and became a model for anti-gay initiatives in other states. Right wing anti-gay
groups developed the special rights argument to defeat civil rights initiative
for lesbians, gays, and bisexuals and argued that lesbian and gay people were
not legitimate minority groups deserving civil rights protection.
Massachusetts became first state to designate a Governors Commission on
Lesbian and Gay Youth recommending that all schools address the needs of
LGB youth.
1992: Transgender Nation, an activist group, develops out of Queer Nation.
1993: President Clinton proposed lifting the military ban on homosexuals resulting in Dont Ask, Dont Tell, Dont Pursue policy when right wing religious
groups organized a massive attack on his proposal. Despite the Dont Ask,
Dont Tell policy, lesbian and gay military personnel continued to be discharged in increasing numbers.
1993: The North American Intersex Society is formed as an advocacy and support
group for intersex people. Third National March on Washington for Lesbian,
Gay and Bisexual Rights occurred. First time bisexual was included in march
title. Approximately one million people attended. Transgender activists began
to be more vocal about inclusion in the LGB movement. Lesbians held the first
Dyke March the evening before the larger march to increase lesbian visibility. Lesbian Avengers, a direct action protest group, originated in NYC and
local chapters sprang up all over the country.
1994: Gay Games IV in New York City 11,000 athletes. Larger than the Barcelona
Olympics. Republicans gained control of both the U.S. House of Representatives and Senate marking a swing further toward conservative policies. The 25th anniversary of the Stonewall Riots was celebrated with an
international march in NYC concurrent with Gay Games IV attracting
many thousands of LGB people and allies to NYC. The first acknowledgement and recognition that many of the original Stonewall rebellion participants were transgender men and women of color. Transgender people
protest their exclusion from Stonewall march title. Sweden joined Denmark
and Norway in passing a law recognizing same-sex relationships. GLSTN
(Gay, Lesbian Straight Teachers Network) became one of the first national
organizations to advocate for addressing LGBT issues and discrimination
against LGBT students and teachers in schools. Now called the Gay, Lesbian, Straight Education Network (GLSEN)
1996: Colorado anti-gay rights law ruled unconstitutional by Colorado Supreme
Court, appealed to Supreme Court. The Supreme Court affirmed that legislating against gay civil rights is unconstitutional. Anti-gay civil rights initiatives
on ballots in Idaho and Oregon. Hawaii Supreme Court rules in favor of legalizing marriage between same-sex couples. To prevent this ruling from taking
Teaching for Diversity and Social Justice, Second Edition, Routledge, 2007
November 2003: Massachusetts becomes the first U.S. state to recognize same-sex
marriage. Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court ruled that banning same-sex
marriage is unconstitutional and that same-sex marriages must be recognized
in Massachusetts as of May 17, 2004.
2004: Mayor Gavin Newsome of San Francisco authorized same-sex marriages in the
city. Thousands marry over 6 weeks before the California Supreme Court ruled
that the marriages must stop. The U.S. Congress defeated a proposed amendment to the U.S. Constitution defining marriage as between one man and one
woman.
May 17, 2004: Same-sex couples begin getting married in Massachusetts. Same-sex
marriage ban referenda were put on the ballot in 11 states for the November
election and all passed. Several of these amendments also eliminate all legal
recognition and benefits for same-sex couples and their children (health
insurance protections, hospital visitation rights, inheritance rights, pension
benefits, etc.) Same-sex marriage became an issue in the presidential election
and a major component of the culture wars.
2005: Over 6,000 same-sex couples married in Massachusetts. Connecticut passed
a Civil Union law for same-sex couples conferring many of the benefits of
marriage
2006: Lesbian, gay and bisexual issues were visible as never before in the media,
entertainment, politics, education and most all other major institutions. The
cultural divide over the rights of LGBT people and their families were at the
forefront of social justice movements in the U.S.
Sources
Information in this timeline was compiled by P. Griffin from the following sources:
S. Cavin (1985), Lesbian Origins, San Francisco: Ism Press.
J. DEmilio (1983), Sexual Politics, Sexual Communities: The Making of a Homosexual
Minority in the United States, 1940-1970, Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
J. DEmilio & E. Freedman (1988), Intimate Matters: A History of Sexuality in America,
New York: Harper & Row.
M. Duberman, M. Vicinus & G. Chauncey (Eds.) (1989), Hidden from History: Reclaiming the Gay and Lesbian Past, New York: New American Library.
R. Eisler (1987), The Chalice and the Blade: Our Past, Our Future, San Francisco: Harper
& Row.
A. Evans (1978), Witchcraft and the Gay Counterculture, Boston: Fag Rag Books.
L. Faderman (1991), Odd Girls and Twilight Lovers: A History of Lesbian Life in the Twentietch Century, New York: Columbia University Press.
L. Feinberg (1996), Transgender Warriors: Making History from Joan of Arc to RuPaul,
Boston: Beacon.
J. Grahn (1984), Another Mother Tongue, Boston: Beacon.
J. Katz (1983), Gay/Lesbian Almanac, New York: Harper & Row.
J. Katz (1995), The Invention of Heterosexuality, New York: Dutton Books.
E. Marcus (1992), Making History: The Struggle for Gay and Lesbian Rights, 1945-1990,
New York: HarperPerennial.
R. Plant (1986), The Pink Triangle: The Nazi War against Homosexuals, New York: Henry
Holt & Co.
U. Vaid (1995), Virtual Equality: The Mainstreaming of Gay and Lesbian Liberation, New
York: Doubleday.
Teaching for Diversity and Social Justice, Second Edition, Routledge, 2007
A. Weiss & G. Schiller (1988), Before Stonewall in The Making of a Gay and Lesbian
Community, Tallahassee, FL: Naiad Press.
Teaching for Diversity and Social Justice, Second Edition, Routledge, 2007