Today in LGBT History--June 29

June 29, 7:05 PMGrassroots Equality ExaminerBrandon Santo

A vision of courage: Rev. Brent Hawkes

1629: While on a trip to New England, Rev Francis Higgeson records in his journal that five boys had confessed to sodomy. They would be sent back to England for punishment. While their fate is unknown, the law in England allowed for males over 14 to be hanged for sodomy.

1939: In preparing Berlin for the Olympics, 52 gay men are taken to Mauthausen concentration camp.

1969: The New York Mattachine Society holds a meeting to discuss the direction gay liberation would take in the aftermath of the Stonewall riots.

1972: Gays demonstrate at Queen's Park in Toronto (site of Ontario legislature) to protest omission of sexual orientation from amendments to the Ontario Human Rights Code then being considered by legislature. This is considered to be the first public gay action around rights law reform.

1973: The first bisexual religious organization, The Committee of Friends of Bisexuality, is founded by Stephen Donaldson in Ithaca, New York.

1977: Coors Beer Company takes out a full page ad in the Advocate announcing that the Coors family did not contribute in any way to the defeat of Miami's gay rights ordinance. Coors was already reeling from a union boycott.

1977: A Gallup Poll shows that 52 percent of Canadians believe gay people should be protected against discrimination under new Canadian Human Rights Act.

1977: Canada's Fifth Annual National Gay Rights Conference opens in the prairie city of Saskatoon, Saskatchewan.

1981: A 37-year-old gay man is stabbed to death by two 15-year-old boys in Burnham, Illinois.

1989: The Washington Times reports that VIP officials in the Reagan and Bush administrations are implicated in a federal investigation into a gay prostitution ring. After being identified as one of those under investigation, Elizabeth Dole's adviser Paul Balach is forced to resign. Republican National Committee chairman Lee Atwater stated that it was wrong for people to be forced out of their jobs because of something that is strictly a personal matter.

1989: Claiming that Congress needs to be aware of the truth about the sexual activities which the average homosexual man engages in before granting assistance to them, Rep William Dannemeyer (R-CA) claims that common acts include rimming, golden showers, fisting and the rectal insertion of light bulbs. He also claims that the majority of doctors and therapists treat homosexuals every day to reverse "this devastating pathology."

1998: Researchers at the 12th World Conference on AIDS report that a drug resistant strain of HIV had been identified.

2000: The Canadian government's landmark bill granting common-law spousal rights to gays comes into effect. Spousal rights for common-law heterosexual and homosexual couples are now identical under Canadian federal law. A test-case for gay marriage was launched in the courts earlier in the year.

2007: The Rev. Brent Hawkes, who in 2001 conducted what became the first legal gay weddings in Canada at his Metropolitan Community Church in Toronto, is named to the Order of Canada, the highest civilian honor given by the Canadian government. Hawkes had to wear a bulletproof vest under his religious gowns during the 2001 ceremony because of threats to his life by right-wing Christian extremists.

2008: India holds its first-ever Gay Pride marches, as a total of about 1,000 people in four larges cities march in favor of gay rights legislation in this country of about 1 billion which retains a 10-year jail term for homosexual activity.

"We look forward to the day when Canada embraces the diversity of all people, and legally recognizes what God already knows -- that love has no bounds." --Rev. Brent Hawkes