Less well-known than its summer sister, October is LGBTQ+ History Month. The month was chosen based on other important dates in October, such as National Coming Out Day (which is tomorrow) and the day of the first national march for lesbian and gay rights (which is in four days), and for the fact that it falls during the school year.
Chances are, whether you identify as LGBTQ or not, you’re not all that familiar with the history surrounding LGBTQ rights. It’s not exactly something that’s covered in our U.S. history classes. Which — of course — is a shame.
Learning about LGBT history can provide essential context to today’s discussions on LGBT rights. So, here’s a quick guide to the most important events and names in gay, lesbian and trans liberation in the U.S., with resources on where to learn more:
The Stonewall Uprising – June 28, 1969 to July 4, 1969
If there’s one event to know about in LGBT history, it’s Stonewall. The Stonewall Uprising was a series of riots and protests as retaliation to a police raid of The Stonewall Inn, a gay club in New York City.
In this time period, many gay bars were subject to violent police raids, but the Stonewall Uprising is a landmark event of these bar patrons fighting back. Some significant names in Stonewall are Marsha P. Johnson and Sylvia Rivera.
Make no mistake, however, Stonewall is not where gay rights began. Liberation movements like the Mattachine Society and the Daughters of Bilitis had formed long before Stonewall, but the Stonewall Uprising was a major catalyst for LGBT rights movements in America and globally.
March on Washington – Oct. 14, 1979
This first March on Washington for LGBT rights had been a long time in the making, but had struggled to get organized until the assassination of Harvey Milk, one of America’s first few openly gay elected officials.
This event marked a shift towards a more organized, collective approach to gay rights, setting the stage for the gains made by advocates in the coming years, but also catalyzing influential counter-movements — such as the campaign led by Anita Bryant called “Save Our Children.”
On this same day in 1977, Bryant was hit in the face with a pie by gay rights advocate Tom Higgins. Bryant was emblematic of the concerned response of many straight citizens to the push for LGBT rights.
Even as some states were growing more welcoming to LGBT people, the fear of the LGBTQ+ community was still strong.
The AIDS Crisis – Started June 1981
In June 1981, New York doctors began noticing a pattern of previously healthy gay men suddenly developing diseases associated with greatly weakened immune systems. It took four years and over ten thousand deaths, however, before President Ronald Reagan so much as mentioned the crisis publicly.
Human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) which, in its most severe form, develops into acquired immunodeficiency syndrome (AIDS), is an STI that, to this day, disproportionately affects gay and transgender people.
The great tragedy of the AIDS crisis is the sheer number of deaths that could have been avoided if not for the prevalent stigma surrounding gay men. Stereotyped as the “gay plague,” politicians were seemingly disinterested in doing anything to address the crisis until it affected an impossible-to-ignore number of citizens.
Part of the issue, too, is how AIDS effectively would “out” gay men in their communities, leading those with HIV/AIDS to avoid treatment for fear of discrimination. Not to mention that, even today, treatment can be prohibitively expensive.
Today, significant advancements have been made in managing and treating HIV, as well as raising awareness and destigmatizing the disease.
A staggering number of gay men, however, were lost to the mishandling of this crisis, with the few who did survive having been left to watch, helpless, as their friends and lovers died.
Decriminalizing Homosexuality and Legalizing Gay Marriage
Throughout these events, LGBTQ+ liberation movements had overarching goals of first decriminalization, then anti-discrimination and de-stigmatization.
In the U.S., sodomy laws (laws criminalizing homosexuality) had been in place nationwide until 1961 when Illinois became the first state to decriminalize homosexuality. However, it wasn’t until 2003 and the supreme court decision of Lawrence v. Texas that it was decriminalized nationwide.
Beyond being framed as immoral, homosexuality was initially defined as a mental illness or disease — a classification that was completely removed from the DSM in 1987, after initially being redefined as “sexual orientation disturbance” in 1973.
Then, in most recent memory, the 2015 Supreme Court decision to strike down bans on gay marriage nationwide.
Throughout the past several decades, there have been advancements and backlash, protests and successes alike. Many of the challenges we face today, we’ve faced in the past — if you look into Anita Bryant’s advocacy in the 70s, for example, a lot of it may feel eerily familiar to concerns about trans people today.
The journey for LGBTQ+ rights and recognition has been long, and has not stopped just because gay marriage was officially legalized in 2015. There’s still work to be done, especially for trans rights.
But we know where we’ve been and, with that context, we can figure out where we’re going.
