Новости за 17.05.2022

After plain-clothed police officers raided the Black Cat Tavern in Los Angeles on New Year’s Day in 1967, beating up staff and patrons alike, a group of gay rights protestors began demonstrating out front. Organized by the Personal Rights in…

When the New York State Liquor Authority banned bartenders from serving alcohol to gay people, an activist group called the Mattachine Society responded in 1966. Large groups turned out at the bar Julius’ in New York City to host a…

In 1965, a group of young people in San Francisco got together to create the Vanguard, the country’s first gay liberation organization. The group, co-founded by Adrian Ravarour and Billy Garrison, also produced an accompanying news publication, the Vanguard Magazine,…

Although it’s hard to say for sure given the burgeoning nature of the gay rights movement at the time, the protests outside the U.S. Army’s Whitehall Street induction center in 1964 are generally considered to be the first public demonstrations…

In 1962, Illinois became the first state in the nation to remove sodomy laws from its criminal code. The historic legislation occurred after the American Law Institute put together a list of recommendations called the Model Penal Code in an…

One, Inc. v. Olesen was the first U.S. Supreme Court case that involved gay rights—and it won, marking a triumphant moment for the emerging liberation movement. The ruling occurred in 1958 when the high court overturned a federal district court’s…

James Baldwin published “Go Tell It on the Mountain” in 1956, offering the world a novel that was “pivotal in American gay literature,” according to many critics. Although the theme of homosexuality is never outrightly expressed, the subtext is hard…

In 1955, there weren’t any lesbian political rights groups in the United States until the Daughters of Bilitis formed in San Francisco, making history as the first group of its kind. What began as a safe space for women to…

Gender confirmation surgeries (called “sex reassignment” at the time) had been performed prior to Christine Jorgensen. However, the transgender woman from the Bronx was the first person to become famous for it, bringing awareness and resources to the trans community…

When biologist Alfred Kinsey published “Sexual Behavior in the Human Male” in 1948, he asserted that approximately 37% of men at the time had engaged in homosexual activities at least once. That, along with other findings in his book, acted…

In 1936, Spanish police raided the Granada home of Federico García Lorca, a famous poet they described as a socialist prone to “homosexual and abnormal practices.” He fled to a friend’s house but they caught up with him and surrounded…

Amelia Earhart and openly gay reporter Lorena Hickok are just two of the women with whom former first lady Eleanor Roosevelt was rumored to have had closeted affairs, the latter with whom she exchanged more than 3,300 letters over a…

Dora Richter was a transgender woman under the care of Magnus Hirschfeld who received the first known vaginoplasty procedure in 1931 (though Hirschfeld did not perform the surgery). Along with a number of other transgender women, Richter worked at the…

A contemporary of Magnus Hirschfeld’s, Emma Goldman was an American feminist and anarchist who served as an early ally to gay rights activism. The Russian-born Jew, who emigrated to America as a teenager, was heterosexual but spent much of her…

Magnus Hirschfeld was a German physician who spent most of his career studying sexuality with a focus on homosexuality. He became a champion for gay rights and co-founded the Scientific-Humanitarian Committee, the world’s first gay rights organization. Being both Jewish…

In 1886, a mixed-gender Zuni Native American named We’wha took part in a delegation to Washington D.C., where they were introduced to then-President Grover Cleveland. We’wha was a famous Lhamana, a person in Zuni culture who is assigned a male…

In 1811, the Netherlands was the first major European country of the 19th century to decriminalize homosexuality. The Dominican Republic followed suit in 1822. Over the next decade, El Salvador, Brazil, Bolivia, Portugal, Argentina, Turkey (then the Ottoman Empire), Honduras,…

During the French Revolution, the penal code outlined new crimes and their respective punishments in an effort to take sweeping power away from judges. Along with the new code came the legalization of sodomy, which was the first lift on…

In 27 B.C., Augustus established the Roman Empire under which the first recorded same-sex marriage ceremony reportedly took place. At this time, laws around homosexuality were also formed—among them that gay prostitution would be legal, but taxed. When Nero became…

The lesbian poet Sappho, who hailed from the island of Lesbos (the root of the word lesbian), was born sometime between 630 and 621 B.C. Though her sexuality has been an ongoing subject of debate, she wrote commonly about seemingly…

Niankhkhnum and Khnumhotep were ancient manicurists who worked for the royal court in a city called Saqqara, Egypt, around 2400 B.C. In 1964, archaeologists unearthed a joint tomb in which the men were buried face-to-face in the same fashion many…

Although rock art dating as far back as 9600 B.C. depicts what some scholars have interpreted as homosexual love scenes, one of the first sets of skeletal remains of an LGBTQ+ person was a body thought to be a transgender…

Today’s Gay Liberation Movement can trace its roots directly to the Stonewall riots on June 28, 1969. The impromptu demonstrations, which occurred after a nighttime police raid at the Stonewall Inn in Greenwich Village, New York City, lasted several days.…

In 1970, Hank Aaron gets an infield single off Cincinnati’s Wayne Simpson for his 3,000th hit. See more sports moments from this date in history:

Donald LeLand Cray, 77, of Albany, passed away at his home on March 12, 2022. Fisher Funeral Home is handling arrangements.