Blast from the past, a look at queer history

May 17, 5:42 AMGrassroots Equality ExaminerBrandon Santo

Previous Next

Comment Print Email RSS Subscribe

Subscribe

Get alerts when there is a new article from the Grassroots Equality Examiner. Read Examiner.com's terms of use.

Email Address   Include other special offers from Examiner.com Terms of Use

Harvey Milk, Gay Rights Martyr and Icon

Over the past six months there has been some major gains in the fight for equality, but even with all of these wins, most people still don’t know where the fight started from. Below are some major events that have taken place in the fight for equality.

May 17^th

• 1971- New York City Mayor John Lindsay announces his support for a gay rights bill.
• 1976- The Toronto Board of Education decides to rehires gay swimming instructor John Argue, who had been fired a month earlier, overruling the principal of school.
• 1987- Six men, one of them a Philadelphia police officer, severely beat 23-year-old Carl Vetter after shouting anti-gay slurs at him from their car. They were arrested when they tried to get back in the car to flee.
• 1990- The general assembly of the World Health Organization (WHO) removes homosexuality from its list of mental disorders.
• 2004- Massachusetts begins gay marriages, making the US the fourth country in the world (after the Netherlands, Belgium, and Canada) to legalize gay weddings. In response US president George Bush, running for re-election, again calls for a constitutional amendment to ban gay marriage, and most other US states rush to pass laws prohibiting same-sex marriage.
  

May 18^th

• 1730- In Amsterdam, Dirk Cuyleman became the first of many men arrested for sodomy during a crackdown on sodomites.
• 1970- Jack Baker and James McConnell attempted to get a marriage license in Minneapolis, Minnesota. After their request was denied they filed suit, and the state supreme court upheld the denial of the license.
• 1998- US Senator James Inhofe of Oklahoma accused James Hormel, nominee for US ambassador to Luxembourg, of being more interested in promoting the gay agenda than representing the US and compared Hormel to a Ku Klux Klan leader.
• 2004- The International Olympic Committee changes the rules and agrees to allow transsexual athletes to compete in their new gender at the 2004 Olympics in Greece. The IOC executive board said that athletes who have undergone reassignment surgery will now be eligible for the Olympics if their new gender has been legally recognized in their home country and if they have gone through a minimum two-year period of postoperative hormone therapy.

May 19^th 

• 1950- The US Senate authorizes an investigation into the employment of homosexuals by the federal government.
• 1983- The US television show 20/20 does its first show on AIDS. It had been a forbidden topic until network TV executives learned that innocent children were getting the disease.
• 1987- Former US air force Sgt. Leonard Matlovich, among the earliest gay men to challenge the US military's policy against gays and lesbians, announced on the US TV show Good Morning America that he has AIDS.
• 1992- Springfield, Oregon, voters pass a law prohibiting the passing of any law protecting homosexuals from discrimination. City agencies were given the okay to deny services to gay organizations and any organization supportive of gay rights, public libraries were ordered to remove from their shelves any books which were neutral or positive on the topic of homosexuality, and gay pride events were banned from public property.
  

May 20^th

• 1782- Deborah Sampson joins the American army under the name Robert Shirtliff. She had previously fought in the Continental Army. Her true sex was discovered the following year.
• 1983- First publications of the discovery of the virus that causes AIDS in the journal Science by Luc Montagnier and Robert Gallo individually.
• 1996- The US Supreme Court rules 6-3 in Romer v. Evans against a law which would have prevented any city, town or county in the state of Colorado from taking any legislative, executive, or judicial action to protect the rights of homosexuals.
• 1998- The Rhode Island Senate Judiciary Committee voted 9-2 in favour of repealing the state's sodomy law.
• 1999- In a landmark ruling the Supreme Court of Canada declares in an 8 to 1 decision that for the purposes of family law, same-sex partners must be considered "spouses." Common-law gay spousal rights thus become enshrined in Canadian law, but marriage is excluded from the decision.
  

May 21^st  

• 1730- In Amsterdam, four men are arrested after being accused of sodomy. All of them confessed and one of them, Pieter Martijn, gave the court the names of 40 other men who he accused of being sodomites. All four men would later be executed.
• 1970- Bella Abzug becomes one of the first major U.S. politicians to openly court the gay vote as she addresses a meeting of the Gay Activists Alliance while running for Congress in New York City.
• 1976- US presidental candidate Jimmy Carter announces that if elected he will support and sign a federal civil rights bill outlawing discrimination against gays and lesbians. He got elected, but the civil rights bill didn't happen.
• 1979- Thousands of lesbians and gays riot in San Francisco as ex-cop Dan White, the killer of gay politician Harvey Milk, gets a sentence of only three years.
• 1985- The U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals rules that Georgia's sodomy laws are unconstitutional, but ruling is later overturned by the U.S. Supreme Court.
• 1999- A 20-year-old girlfriend of one of those charged with the kidnapping, aggravated robbery and first-degree murder of 21-year-old Wyoming gay activist Matthew Shepard was sentenced to serve between 15 and 24 months in prison out of a possible maximum of three years after pleading guilty 5 months earlier to being an accessory after the fact to first-degree murder. Her boyfriend and his buddy later each got life sentences with no parole for murder.
• 2003- A proposed amendment to the US constitution which would define marriage as between a man and a woman only is introduced in the US house of representatives.
  

May 22^nd

• 1930- Harvey Milk was born, Milk was an openly gay San Francisco politician murdered in 1979 by ex-cop Dan White. Milk became a martyr and icon of gay rights in the US as a result.
• 1980- Homophobic orange juice queen Anita Bryant, who led the campaign to repeal a gay rights law in Dade County Florida and once said that divorce was one of the worst sins a person could commit, files for divorce.
• 1990- Thirty-two students are transferred out of their dormitory at Ohio State University because they harassed two gay students. One of the transferred students claimed he was really the victim, and accused the gay students of blowing things out of proportion. The harassment included threats, physical attacks, harassing phone calls, death threats, and DIE FAGS written on their doors.
• 2007- South African lawmakers approve reforms to the country's rape laws, including extending the definition of rape to include men. Rape victims of either gender are allowed to obtain a court order for alleged offenders to get HIV testing and for the results to be revealed to the victim.
  

May 23^rd

• 1972- The US state of Delaware repeals its sodomy laws.
• 1977- A bill to repeal Nebraska's sodomy law is vetoed by Governor James Exon.
• 1985- Massachusetts bans gay men and lesbians from becoming foster parents.
  

Quote of the Week

If a bullet should enter my brain, let that bullet destroy every closet door. - Harvey Milk