365gay and Logo are celebrating LGBT History Month! Now 14 years old, LGBT history month – originally Lesbian and Gay History Month – was started by a Missouri high school teacher, Rodney Wilson.

Brush up on your gay history by watching moving documentaries or printing out the October gay calendar, below, for 31 days of gay.

   
October  1

October 1, 1987 – The US Senate voted 75-23 to allow the former hospital at Presidio Army base to be used for a regional AIDS treatment facility in order to meet the projected needs of San Francisco. President Reagan said if the bill was passed by the House of Representatives, he would veto it.

October 1, 1987 – ACT-UP disrupted evangelist Pat Robertson’s formal announcement of his candidacy for the Republican nomination for US President.

October 1, 1989 – Axil & Eigil Axgil became the first gay couple to be legally married in Copenhagen, Denmark. They had been together for 40 years, 32 of which were under a common last name. Ten other couples were married the same day.
October 1, 1993 – An Ottawa court ordered the Canadian government to grant a gay federal worker spousal and bereavement benefits equal to those heterosexual employees receive.

October 1, 1993 – National Public Radio in the US announced it would offer domestic partner medical and dental benefits to employees in same-sex relationships. The policy also included unmarried heterosexual couples.

October 1, 1995 – OutRage and Lesbian Avengers picketed Sainsbury’s over funding of anti-gay religious organizations.

October 1, 1998 – Javier Cruz was executed in Texas by lethal injection for the murder of two gay men, James Ryan, 69, and Louis Neal, 71, in their home.

October  2

October 2, 1650 – The Plymouth colony court found Sara Norman guilty of lewd behavior on a bed with Mary Hammon. She was given a warning and ordered to publicly acknowledge her unchaste behavior. (The death penalty in Plymouth applied only to sex between men.)

October 2, 1973 – Dr Howard Brown, former New York City health administrator, came out. He later became director of the National Gay Task Force.

October 2, 1985 – Actor Rock Hudson died of complications from AIDS. His death resulted in greater attention to the AIDS epidemic.

October 2, 1987 – The Minnesota Supreme Court refused to rule on the constitutionality of the state’s sodomy law, which allowed the law to remain on the books.

October 2, 1987 – Commissioner John Markl of Traverse City Michigan resigned after Cindy and Dean Robb organized a petition campaign to demand that he be recalled after making homophobic remarks. The couple called his resignation a victory for civil and human rights. According to Dean Robb, nearly all of the volunteers he and his wife organized to get signatures were heterosexual.

October 2, 1990 – Metropolitan police met with members of the London direct action group OutRage to discuss their concerns after several actions directed at UK law enforcement agencies.

October 2, 1997 – “Variety” objected to the Motion Picture Association of America’s decision to give the movie “Bent” an NC-17 rating, pointing out that the sex scenes were far less graphic than heterosexual sex scenes in movies which receive R ratings.

October 2, 1999-California governor Gray Davis signed three gay rights bills.

October  3

October 3, 1847 – Hans Christian Andersen wrote to the Hereditary Grand-duke of Saxe-Weimar-Eisenach, “I love you as a man can only love the noblest and best. This time I felt that you were still more ardent, more affectionate to me. Every little trait is preserved in my heart.”

October 3, 1970 – Bisexual singer Janis Joplin died of a heroin overdose.

October 3, 1980 – US Representative Robert Bauman (R-MD) was arrested in Washington DC for soliciting sex from a male prostitute. Bauman was a supporter of the Moral Majority and a founding member of the American Conservative Union.

October 3, 1992 – At the fourth annual Asian Lesbian and Gay Regional Conference in Manila, delegates voted to create the Global Alliance Lesbian and Gay Asia to promote solidarity among Asian sexual minorities.

October 3, 1997 – Paul Bradford Cain, a 26 year-old champion kickboxer, was sentenced to 25 years to life for the murder of gay scientist Dr Stanley Keith Runcorn. In a statement before his sentencing, Cain claimed he was the true victim because Runcorn made a pass at him. The judge disagreed, saying to Cain “I hope you rot in hell because what you did was callous and cruel.”

October 3, 1997 – An Ontario court ruled that the province’s Insurance Act had to include same-sex couples in the definition of spouse.

October 3, 1997 – Gay historian and Shakespeare scholar A. L. Rowse died at age 93 in southwest England. He had suffered a stroke the year before.
October  4

October 4, 1913 – E.M. Forster finished writing his novel “Maurice” which is about a man coming to terms with his homosexuality. It would not be published until 1971, after Forster’s death, at the request of the author.

October 4, 1983 – AFL-CIO voted to support gay rights legislation.

October 4, 1985 – West Germany elected its first openly gay parliament member.

October 4, 1989 – Graham Chapman, co-founder of Monty Python’s Flying Circus, died of throat cancer at the age of 48. Chapman came out in his book “A Liar’s Autobiography.” He was survived by his lover of 23 years, David Sherlock, and John Tomiczek, who the couple adopted as a teenager in 1971.

October  5

October 5, 1513 – Spanish conquistador Vasco Nunez de Balboa discovered what he claimed was a colony of cross-dressing males in present day Panama. It was reported that he massacred them.

October 5, 1840 – John Addington Symonds, one of the earliest scholars of gay and lesbian issues is born. He assisted Havelock Ellis in the writing of
“Sexual Inversion.”

October 5, 1987 – The city commission of Traverse City Michigan voted unanimously to repeal a law banning the sale of condoms in city limits.

October 5, 1990 – Dennis Barrie, director of the Cincinnati Contemporary Arts Center, was acquitted of obscenity charges after displaying a Robert Mapplethorpe exhibit.

October 5, 1998 – The US Congress killed an amendment by Rep Frank Riggs (R-CA) which would have barred San Francisco from spending federal housing money to implement its domestic partner ordinance.

October 5, 1999 – African scholar Ali Mazrui criticized Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni for targeting gay and lesbian citizens for harassment and arrest.

October  6

October 6, 1928-The New York Times reported that George Bernard Shaw and H.G. Wells had protested the seizure of the lesbian novel “The Well of Loneliness” by English customs agents. The novel had been published in France and was being imported into England.

October 6, 1968 – 12 people in Los Angeles gathered for the first service of Metropolitan Community Church. Rev. Troy Perry founded the church with a primary outreach to the glbt community.

October 6, 1981 – The Supreme Court of Canada refuses to hear appeal of The Body Politic. Last resort of appeal exhausted; TBP back to retrial.

October 6, 1989 – The NAMES Project Quilt was displayed in Washington DC, with 10,848 panels.

October 6, 1989 – In reaction to a small, peaceful protest against federal neglect of people with AIDS, about 200 San Francisco police officers rioted in the Castro neighborhood, beating protesters
and passersby, sweeping seven city blocks of all pedestrians, and placing thousands in homes and business under house arrest for the duration.

October 6, 1993 – A lesbian in Bentonville Arkansas announced she would appeal a court decision to give custody to her ex-husband because of her sexual orientation.

October 6, 1993 – Martina Navratilova withdrew from the suit challenging the constitutionality of Colorado’s Amendment 2, which had been approved by voters and would have banned gay rights laws in Colorado. She said it was due to tennis commitments.

October 6, 1997 – The US Supreme Court refused to hear a case filed by Sandy Nelson, a reporter who was demoted because she refused to stop her off-duty campaigning in support of a gay rights initiative in Washington. The Washington Supreme Court had ruled that a law barring discrimination in employment for political views did not apply to newspapers.

October 6, 1998 – Twenty-one year old gay college student Matthew Shepard of Wyoming was pistol whipped and tied to a fence in a field. He would die of his injuries at a hospital in Ft Collins, Colorado.

October 6, 1998 – The Ford Foundation gave a $100,000 grant to the United Fellowship of Metropolitan Community Churches for its programs targeting at-risk gay and lesbian youth.

October 6, 1999 – Donna Brazile, an out lesbian, became Al Gore’s campaign manager. She was also the first African-American woman to manage
a presidential run.

October 6-7 1973 – In  Quebec City the first pan-Canadian conference of gay organizations is hosted by Centre humanitaire d’aide de libération

October  7

October 7, 1728 – Charles Genevieve Louise Auguste Andre Timothee d’Eon was born in Burgundy, France. The name was a mouthful, and the Chevalier d’Eon’s life was was hard to swallow.  But the strange story is true.  An adventurer, he did drag for a court ball.  Louis XV was so impressed with the chevalier’s beauty that he decreed he must dress as a woman for ever more.  Throughout the years, people forgot she was a he.  d’Eon was French spy throughout Europe.  When he returned to court, no one would believe he was a man.  Bets were taken but the truth came out only after he died and the body was examined.

October 7, 1943 – Author Radclyffe Hall died. Hall’s novel “The Well of Loneliness” was banned in several countries because of lesbian content.

October 7, 1959 – During a radio speech, Russell L. Wolden criticized the mayor of San Francisco. “Under the benign attitude of the Christopher administration, those who practice sex deviation operate in San Francisco today to a shocking extent, under shocking circumstances, and in open and flagrant defiance of the law. So favorable is the official San Francisco climate for the activities of these persons that an organization of sex deviates known as The Mattachine Society actually passed a resolution praising Mayor Christopher by name for what the resolution described as the enlightened attitude of his administration toward them.”

October 7, 1964 – The Northwestern Homosexual Law Reform Committee was formally launched with a semi-public meeting in Manchester England.

October 7, 1964 – Walter Jenkins, Lyndon B. Johnson’s trusted friend and top advisor, was arrested for having sex in a YMCA men’s room only blocks away from the White House.

October 7, 1975 – Musician Elton John said he was bisexual in Rolling Stone magazine.

October 7, 1981 – In Toronto, a Dykes in the Street march, sponsored by Lesbians Against the Right becomes the first lesbian pride march in the city.

October 7, 1987 – A US Justice Department report declared the most frequent victims of hate crimes are gays, lesbians, and bisexuals.

October 7, 1993 – A protest, complete with a book burning, was held to object to a donation of two gay themed books. “Annie on My Mind” and “All-American Boys” to 42 Kansas City Missouri high schools.

October 7, 1993 – The AFL-CIO unanimously approved a resolution to actively oppose attempts to repeal gay rights laws. The vote was held at the labor union’s biennial convention in San Francisco.

October 7, 1996 – 250 students in Elizabethtown Pennsylvania walked out of class to protest the school board’s passage of a “pro-family” resolution which banned positive discussion of homosexuality.

October  8

October 8, 1904 – In Germany, lesbian feminist Anna Ruhling spoke at an annual meeting of the Scientific Humanitarian Committee, one of the earliest gay organizations. She criticized the women’s movement for not taking an active role in ending the oppression of lesbians.

October 8, 1972 – The 6th annual convention of the Association for the Advancement of Behavioral Therapy was greeted by approximately 100 demonstrators protesting the continued use of aversion therapy in an attempt to alter sexual orientation.

October 8, 1974 – The National Gay Task Force organized a protest over the airing of an episode of “Marcus Welby M.D.” in which a gay man is portrayed as a rapist who preys on the junior high school students he teaches. Bayer Aspirin, Listerine, Gallo Wine, and Ralston Purina pulled their advertising from the episode.

October 8-10, 1977 – In  Halifax the first Atlantic Canada Gay Conference of groups in eastern provinces begins.

October 8, 1985 – The Austin Latino/a Lesbian and Gay Organization, was formed.

October 8, 1997 – An episode of “Ellen” titled “Roommates” aired. It was given an adult content warning because of a kiss between Ellen and another woman.

October  9

October 9, 1806 – African-American scientist Benjamin Banneker died.

October 9-11, 1976  – A National Lesbian Conference hosted by Lesbian Organization of Ottawa.

October 9, 1985 – New York City mayor Ed Koch wrote a letter to the New York County American Legion asking them to reconsider their decision not to allow the Gay Veterans to participate in the annual Veterans Day Parade. The American Legion did not respond to the request.

October 9, 1987 – The US National AIDS Network held a ceremony to honor volunteers in the fight against AIDS. Among those present were Gary Collins, actresses Morgan Fairchild and Whoopi Goldberg, playwright Harvey Fierstein, and Congressman Gerry Studds.

October 9, 1993 – Evangelist Billy Graham apologized for saying AIDS may be a judgment of God for sin. The remark was made during a sermon in Columbus Ohio. “I don’t believe that, and I don’t know why I said it.”

October 9, 1993 – Episcopal bishop E. Otis Charles, 67, who had been bishop of Utah from 1971-1986, publicly came out.

October 9, 1998 – South Africa’s highest court repealed the country’s sodomy law and ruled that the two men who challenged the law could file for monetary damages and have their records cleared.

October 9, 1998 – The Netherlands sanctioned adoption by same-sex couples as long as they meet the same criteria required of heterosexual couples.

October  10

October 10, 1949 – The periodical Newsweek published a story titled “Queer People” calling gays perverts and comparing them to exhibitionists and sexual sadists. It challenged the idea that homosexuals hurt no one but themselves.

October 10, 1953 – British newspaper “The Times” reported that Rupert Croft-Cooke was sentenced to nine months in prison and Joseph Alexander was sentenced to three months after they were accused of homosexual acts by two Royal Navy cooks. Croft-Cooke wrote about the case in “The Verdict of You All.”

October 10, 1987 – In Washington DC 2,000 gay and lesbian couples were united in a mass commitment ceremony in front of the IRS building. That morning, Rev Troy Perry, founder of Metropolitan Community Church, led a worship service at the First Congregational Church in Washington DC, and the crowd overflowed the church. The same day in Washington DC, a memorial service was held for Harvey Milk at the Congressional Cemetery at the burial plot purchased by the Never Forget Foundation to memorialize gay heroes.

October 10, 1990 – OutRage, a London direct action group, held a Kiss-In at Brief Encounter, a gay pub which had recently banned same-sex kissing.

October 10, 1995 – The US Supreme Court began hearing oral arguments in the case of Romer v Evans, Colorado’s Amendment 2 which would have
banned all gay rights laws in Colorado.

October 10, 1997 – Lesbians organized a Daiku no Hi (Dyke Day) in Tokyo. It drew about 200 participants and received much media attention.

October 10, 1998 – Jackie Foster, a British broadcaster, actor, and lesbian activist, died at age 70.

October 10, 1998 – The Evangelical Lutheran Church in America held a conference in Minneapolis Minnesota on gay and lesbian clergy.

October 10, 1999 – The Washington Post reported that a Harvard University research team conducted a study which demonstrated that gay men and lesbians are better than heterosexuals at identifying other gay men and lesbians.

October 10, 1999 – Catholic Bishop Pat Buckley of Belfast came out.

October 10  1973 – Toronto City council passes resolution banning discrimination in municipal hiring on basis of sexual orientation. First such legislation in Canada.

October  11

October 11, 1884 – Eleanor Roosevelt is born in New York City.  She was the wife of President Franklin Roosevelt, and while he had his  lady friends, Eleanor had hers.  In her case, one special lady friend: Lorena Hickok.  “Hick darling,” Eleanor wrote, “Oh I want to put my arms around you…I want to hold you close.” 

October 11, 1979 – Toronto Police raid gay bathhouse, the Hot Tub Club, and charge forty men with bawdyhouse charges.

October 11, 1987 – The Baltimore Gay and Lesbian Community Center refused to provide meeting space to NAMBLA after the local gay and lesbian community responded to the request with outrage. They had considered the request despite their opposition to NAMBLA’s views but felt the tremendous negative reaction of the community indicated that it would interfere with BGLCC’s own mission.

October 11, 1987 – The second march on Washington drew 1/2 million people. The NAMES project AIDS quilt was displayed with 1,920 panels. Rev Jesse Jackson addressed the crowd, calling for AIDS funding, civil rights protection, and an end to anti-gay violence.

October 11, 1988 – The first National Coming Out Day was celebrated.

October 11, 1993 – After learning they did not have the authority to carry out their threat, Fairfax County Virginia supervisors voted to withdraw a threat to abolish the library board for refusing to ban the distribution of gay and lesbian books and magazines.

October 11, 1993 – The US Supreme Court refused to hear an appeal from a former CIA employee who was fired for acknowledging he was gay.

October 11, 1999 – After receiving an angry letter from GLAAD, World Champion Wrestling discontinued the “Lenny” and “Lodi” characters whose arena entrance routinely sparked chants of “fag.”

October 11, 1999 – Rev. Jerry Falwell and other religious conservatives held an event in San Francisco to encourage gay men and lesbians to leave the homosexual lifestyle.

October  12

October 12, 1774 – Adolph Jans van Oldeberkoop of Frisia Netherlands, a fifty year old customs officer, was convicted of seduction to sodomy and banished for two years.

October 12, 1971 – The New York City Department of Consumer Affairs recommended the repeal of a law prohibiting homosexuals from working in or frequenting bars.

October 12, 1979 – The National Coalition of Black Gays sponsored a conference in Washington DC, The First Third World Lesbian and Gay Conference.

October 12, 1998 – Twenty-one year old Matthew Shepard, a Wyoming college student, died of injuries inflicted during a gay bashing.

October  13

October 13, 1896 – The play “A Florida Enchantment” was reviewed in the New York Times. Some of the characters swallowed a magic seed which transformed them into members of the opposite sex. It was described as vile, stupid, and the worst play ever produced in New York.

October 13, 1970 – The first meeting of the London branch of the Gay Liberation Front was held at the London School of Economics.

October 13, 1987 – In Washington DC 600 people were arrested in an act of civil disobedience at the US Supreme Court to protest the Bowers v. Hardwick decision which upheld the constitutionality of Georgia’s sodomy law. It was the largest number to participate in an act of civil disobedience since the Vietnam War. (Federal law prohibits protesting on the steps of the US Supreme Court.)

October 13, 1993 – The Lesbian Avengers protested during a speech by Senator Sam Nunn (D) in New York City. Nunn fought to retain the military’s ban on gay and lesbian servicepersons.

October 13, 1997 – Retired US Army Col. Margarethe Cammermeyer, who challenged the ban on gay and lesbian servicepersons, announced that she was considering running for the House of Representatives.

October 13, 1998 – In a New York Times article, Steven Schwalm, a spokesman for the Family Research Council, said that hate crimes laws criminalize pro-family beliefs.

October 13, 1999 – The French National Assembly approved a law giving unwed gay and straight couples the same rights as married couples.

October 13, 1999 – President Clinton renewed his call to include gay men and lesbians in hate crimes legislation.

October  14

October 14, 1979 – The first March on Washington for Gay and Lesbian Rights was held, attracting 50,000-100,000 participants.

October 14, 1982 – Scott Thorson filed a palimony suit against Liberace, requesting $113 million. He would later settle for $95,000 and a Rolls Royce.

October 14, 1987 – The US Congress voted in favor of banning federal funding for AIDS education organizations that “promote homosexuality.”

October 14, 1993 – Nikola Trumbo, daughter of writer Dalton Trumbo, came out.

October 14, 1999 – California state senator Pete Knight, who sponsored a ballot initiative banning same sex marriages in California, was criticized in the Los Angeles Times by his gay son. He questioned his father’s defense of family values because his father rejected him when he came out.

October  15
 
October 15, 1952 – One, Inc. was founded in Los Angeles to publish One Magazine. The magazine was published until 1969. One, Inc. still continues as an educational institution.

October 15, 1969 – New York City’s Gay Liberation Front joined a moratorium protest against the war in Vietnam.

October 15, 1973 – The formation of the National Gay Task Force was announced in New York City.

October 15-16, 1977 – The First National Congress of Quebec Gays meets.

October 15, 1977 – The Santa Barbara, California,  board of education voted to ban discrimination against GLB students, making it the first US school board to do so.

October 15, 1983 – Eddie Murphy’s HBO special “Delirious” aired. It raised controversy because of several tasteless AIDS jokes and a long diatribe about “faggots.”

October 15, 1987  – Ken Dawson, who had been director of Senior Action in a Gay Environment for six years, resigned. When he began the organization had an annual budget of $45,000 and 100 volunteers, when he resigned the annual budget was $750,000 and 600 volunteers.

October 15, 1988 – A gay rights ordinance was passed in Alexandria, Virginia.

October 15, 1993 – Federal district court judge Kimba Wood ruled that shareholders of Cracker Barrel Old Country Stores Inc should be allowed to vote on retaining a company policy that would forbid employment of gays and lesbians.

October 15, 1999 – The US State Department issued a statement to the government of Uganda expressing “deep concern and consternation” over anti-gay statements made by President Yoweri Museveni.

October 15, 1999 – Washington Times columnist Cal Thomas reported that George W. Bush told a small group of conservative Republicans he would not knowingly appoint a practicing homosexual as an ambassador or department head if elected president.
October  16

October 16, 1856 – Oscar Wilde is born in Dublin.  Great writer, greater wit, gay martyr.

October 16, 1975 – During a raid on a Hollywood gay porn theatre the Deputy Mayor of Los Angeles was arrested.

October 16, 1987 – AIDS quilt organizer Cleve Jones was named “Person of the Year” by ABC anchorman Peter Jennings.

October 16, 1993 – OutRage attended the Anti-Nazi League/Anti-Racist Alliance march in Plumstead England.
October  17

October 17,1920 – Actor Montgomery Clift is born in Omaha Nebraska. Clift brought in intensity to the screen that was studied by and copied by others, most notably Marlon Brando.  His sexuality was carefully guarded from fans but few in Hollywood did not know. Clift burned himself out and was dead at the age of 46.

October 17-18, 1975 – Five Montreal gay bars, The Lime Light; Le Mystique; P.J.’s; Le Rocambole; and Au Taureau d’Or. are raided by police.

October 17, 1977 – An appeal of an obscenity conviction against Vancouver’s Gay Tide is heard before the Supreme Court of Canada. It is the first time a gay civil rights case heard by Supreme Court.

October 17, 1980 -The first Black Lesbian Conference began in San Francisco with nearly 200 women in attendance.

October 17-18, 1981 – In Fredericton, the third regional conference of the Atlantic Lesbian and Gay Association brings together the largest assembly of gays in New Brunswick.

October 17, 1990 – US Representative Henry Hyde (R-IL) insulted openly gay congressman Barney Frank during a budget debate, saying Frank does not know what is going on in Congress because he is too
busy performing quickie sex acts.

October 17, 1995 – The Advocate published an interview with Barney Frank, Gerry Studds, and Steve Gunderson, the three openly gay members of Congress.

October 17, 1997 – Donald Goor was installed as senior rabbi of Temple Judea of Tarzana in Los Angeles. The synagogue became the largest Jewish congregation to have an openly gay rabbi.

October 17, 1997 – The International Gay and Lesbian Aquatics Championship opened in San Diego California.

October 17, 1998 – Melinda Whiteway was appointed co-chair of the National Lesbian and Gay Law Association, making her the first transgendered person to co-chair a national gay and lesbian organization.

October  18

October 18, 1907 – 2,000 people attended a debate on the repeal of Paragraph 175, Germany’s sodomy law.

October 18, 1977 – Citizens United to Protect Our Children, an organization in Portland OR, announced they had failed to get enough signatures to get a recall election of Mayor Neil Goldschmidt after he declared Portland Gay Pride Day.

October 18, 1990 – Former Supreme Court justice Lewis Powell declared that he believed he made a mistake by voting to uphold Georgia’s sodomy laws in the 1986 Bowers v Hardwick case.

October 18, 1990 – Three white supremacists were convicted of conspiring to blow up a gay bar in Boise, Idaho.

October 18, 1991 – Admiral Frank B Kelso, chief of naval operations, announced that the explosion of the USS Iowa which killed forty-seven men had been proven not to have been caused by a wrongful intentional act and apologized to the family of Clayton Hartwig. Hartwig had been accused of intentionally causing the blast as an act of suicide following the break up of a homosexual affair. (It was not proven that he was homosexual.)

October  19

October 19, 1946 – Harris Glenn Milstead, better known to the world as Divine, is born in Baltimore.  The queen of shock starred in Pink Flamingos, Female Trouble and a raft of other films.

 October 19, 1955 – Daughters of Bilitis, the first long-term American organization for lesbians, was founded in San Francisco by Del Martin and Phyllis Lyon.

October 19, 1981- Former Toronto  mayor John Sewell wins junior aldermanic seat in Ward 6 byelection. It is the first time the gay issue has not played a role in an election in the mainly gay area.

October 19, 1993 – Massachusetts state education officials announced that they would use $450,000 in funds raised from a new state cigarette tax to fund programs to stop anti-gay harassment in public schools.

October 19, 1996 – Representatives of the American Psychiatric Association met with approximately fifty transgender activists who voiced their concerns about reforming the diagnosis of Gender Identity Disorder.

October 19, 1999 – A  rape center in Vancouver organization was ordered to pay $2,030 in damages for banning a transgendered person from its drop-in center.

October  20

October 20, 1969 – The National Institutes of Mental Health released a report based on a study led by psychologist Dr. Evelyn Hooker. The report urged states to repeal sodomy laws.

October 20, 1987 – Over fifty ACT-UP members were arrested during an act of civil disobedience protesting President Reagan’s lack of action in the AIDS epidemic. Another demonstration of about 150 people was held across the street from the United Nations building during the UN General Assembly’s first debate on AIDS.

October 20, 1987 – The US House of Representatives voted 368-47 to approve an amendment to withhold federal funding from any AIDS education organization which encourages homosexual activity. The senate approved a similar amendment the previous week by a vote of 94-2. It was introduced by Sen. Jesse Helms.

October 20, 1987 – The US House Judiciary Committee voted 21-13 to approve a bill requiring the justice department to collect statistics on hate crimes, including anti-gay violence.

October 20, 1992 – The San Diego Police Department announced that it was severing its ties with the Boy Scouts of America due to a local chapter’s dismissal of a gay police officer who was involved with the Explorer program.

October 20, 1993 – Roman Catholic priest Rev Andre Guindon died of a heart attack at age 60. In his book “The Sexual Creators” he wrote that heterosexuals should look to same-sex couples to learn about tenderness and sharing.

October 20, 1997 – Portugal’s first Gay and Lesbian Community Centre opened in Lisbon.

October  21

October 21, 1797 – Reinder Pieters van Workum of Frisia Netherlands was convicted of seduction to sodomy and sentenced to flogging, ten years in prison, and banishment for life.

October 21, 1893 – Alice Mitchell and Freda Ward made the cover of “The Mascot,” a New Orleans periodical. It read, “Good God! The Crimes of Sodom and Gomorrah Discounted.” The editors referred to it as a “story of the love of two women-licentious, horrible love.”

October 21, 1939 – In New York, police raided a masked drag ball and arrested 99 men and charged them with masquerading as females.

October 21-22, 1977 – Days of Protest Rallies are held across Canada protesting job discrimination with focus on John Damien a judge with the Ontario Racing Commission who was fired for being gay.

October 21, 1979 – Letters between Eleanor Roosevelt and journalist Lorena Hickok were made available. Many of the letters are of a romantic nature.

October 21, 1985 – Dan White, who murdered San Francisco mayor George Moscone and gay City Supervisor Harvey Milk in 1978, committed suicide by asphyxiating himself in his wife’s car. White served just over 5 years for the murders.

October 21, 1992 – The University of Iowa in Iowa City’s school board approved a policy to extend spousal insurance benefits to same sex couples and unmarried heterosexual couples.

October 21, 1993 – Yale University announced that it would extend spousal health benefits to the domestic partners of its gay and lesbian faculty members, administrators, and managers.

October 21, 1993 – Openly gay author James Leo Herlihy died in Los Angeles at age 66. Herlihy wrote “Midnight Cowboy” and “Season of the Witch.”

October 21, 1998 – US Surgeon General David Satcher released a report with recommendations for suicide prevention. The report recognized that gay and lesbian youth are a high risk group and recommended target prevention efforts.

October  22

October 22, 1870 – Lord Alfred Douglas is born near London.  Forever known as Bosie, the boy lover of Oscar Wilde was regarded at the time as a mincing queen intent on self-destruction.  In the end it was Wilde who was destroyed.

October 22,  1916 – Police in New York City raided an all-male Turkish bath after agents from the New York Society for the Prevention of Vice, who had infiltrated the establishment, filed a detailed report. Thirty-seven men, including the manager, were arrested. Twenty-five of them were convicted and sentenced to prison. The manager committed suicide.

October 22, 1986 – U.S. Surgeon General C. Everett Koop advised that sex education that includes information on both gay and straight relationships would help prevent the spread of AIDS.

October 22, 1977 -  Montreal Police raid gay bars Truxx, and Le Mystique charge 146 men with being found-ins in common bawdyhouse. More than fifty uniformed and plainclothes police in bullet proof vests from the divisional morality, mobile and technical squads carried off the raid. It was the largest mass arrest since War Measures Act during the FLQ Crisis. The 146 men arrested were held for up to 15 hours at police headquarters “while ‘compulsory’ VD tests were administered

October 22, 1992 – A report on hate crimes in Michigan was rejected by the US Civil Rights Commission because it included documentation of anti-gay hate crimes.

October 22, 1993 – US Air Force Lt. Heide De Jesus announced that she was dropping her lawsuit challenging her discharge from military service under the ban on gay and lesbian service personnel because the fight had left her literally broke.

October 22, 1999 – Boeing announced it would begin offering domestic partner benefits to its gay and lesbian employees. The company explained that unmarried opposite sex couples would not be included because marriage is an option for them, which brought criticism from union leaders.

October 22, 1999 – San Francisco archbishop William Levada announced he would make a $30,000 contribution to a California ballot initiative to restrict the definition of marriage to opposite sex couples.

October  23

October 23, 1766 – Christoffel Bosch van Leeuwarden, a seventy year old porter in the Netherlands, was convicted of seduction to sodomy and sentenced to three years of prison labour.

October 23, 1907 – The Molte v. Harden trial began in Germany. Journalist Maximillian Harden accused General Kuno Count von Moltke of being in a homosexual relationship. Moltke filed a civil suit, and though Harden was acquitted the verdict was later overturned and he was found guilty.

October 23, 1937 – Mattachine Society founder Harry Hay’s former lover Stanley Haggart wrote to him after marrying a woman in an attempt to change his sexuality, “To think it had to take a marriage with its wedding night experiences to show me where my real affinity lies. Every cell in me screamed out in protest at my desecration of my body. At that time I knew that I belonged to you and you to me.”

October 23, 1977 – Two thousand people demonstrate in downtown Montreal to protest October 22 bar raids. Police attack the demonstrators with motorcycles and billy-clubs and made further arrests.

October 23, 1979 – Former Winnipeg Free Press publisher Richard Malone pleads guilty to charges of buggery and obstructing justice. He is given a one-year sentence, following “juvenile sex ring” investigation in February 1979.

October 23, 1993 – In Helena Montana the state supreme court ruled that transvestitism is not a sufficient reason to deny a father joint custody of his 3-year old child.

October 23, 1998 – The Los Angeles City council condemned the “Making Sense of Homosexuality” conference, organized by the National Association for Research and Therapy of Homosexuality, saying that claims of “curing” homosexuals create an atmosphere that can lead to anti-gay violence.

October 23, 1999 – Religious right leader Rev. Jerry Falwell and evangelical Christian supporters met with Rev. Mel White and gay Christians for an anti-violence forum.

October 23, 2002 – Pioneering gay activist Harry Hay dies. A founder and architect of the modern gay rights movement in 1950, Hay and four others formed one of the nation’s first gay rights organizations, the Mattachine Society.

October  24

October 24, 1926 – The New York Times printed a book review of “The Doctor Looks at Love and Life” by Dr. Joseph Collins. In the chapter on homosexuality, Dr. Collins countered the claim that homosexual love is pathological and that homosexuals are psychopaths or neurotic, saying that he knew many well-balanced homosexuals of both sexes who have distinguished themselves in various fields from arms to the pulpit. He also stated that “Genuine homosexuality is not a vice, it is an endowment.”

October 24, 1981 – The first National Conference on Lesbian and Gay Aging was held in California.

October 24, 1987 – Elizabeth Kirby Lewallen was named the new president of Parents and Friends of Lesbians and Gays at the organization’s Sixth International convention in Washington DC.

October 24, 1992 – Thirty-five religious leaders in northwest Vermont joined to condemn two acts of hate-motivated violence, one anti-gay and one anti-Semitic.

October  25

October 25, 51 AD – Titus Flavius Domitianus was bon in Rome. The Emperor is the first recorded case of a married man ditching his wife for his boyfriend.  The young man was the mime, Paris.  After a public outcry he killed off Paris and went back to wife.  It didn’t last long though.  Domitian kept up his affairs with young men, and the wife had him assassinated. 

October  26

October 26, 1990 – A U.S. Army colonel was discharged and sentenced to 90 days in Leavenworth for appearing in drag at an AIDS benefit and kissing another man.

October 26,  1992 – Portland Oregon police chief Tom Potter testified before a state senate committee, saying many victims of anti-gay assaults do not report the crimes because of fear that their identities will be made public.
October  27

October 27, 1903 – In “Die Zeit”, Sigmund Freud was quoted as saying homosexuals are not sick and should not be treated as sick.

October 27, 1951 – The French postal service issued stamps with gay lovers Paul Verlaine and Arthur Rimbaud.

October 27, 1970 – Forty members of the Gay Activist Alliance invaded the offices of Harper magazine to protest an article which presented homosexuality as a mental illness. GAA president Arthur Evans verbally attacked editor Midge Decter for publishing an article which would add to the suffering of homosexuals. The protest led to a three part television news series on gay liberation.

October 27, 1977 – A meeting between Quebec Human Rights Commission and representatives of gay group ADGQ results in public recommendation that government amend Human Rights Charter to include sexual orientation.

October 27, 1990 – US Congress repealed a law barring homosexuals from being admitted to the United States on grounds of mental illness.

October 27, 1992 – The Federal Court of Canada ordered the military to lift the ban on gay and lesbian service personnel. The Defence Department declined to appeal the decision.

October 27, 1993 – Allen Schindler, a gay American sailor, was beaten to death by his shipmates.

October 27, 1997  – BET-TV withdrew an invitation to Keith Boykin to appear on a show with Angie and Debbie Winans. The Winans objected to his presence on the show, which featured their anti-gay song “It’s Not Natural.”

October 27, 1999 – The Ontario provincial government changed 67 statutes to give same-sex couples equal treatment to heterosexual couples.

October 27, 1999 – Democratic presidential nomination candidates Al Gore and Bill Bradley promised that if elected they would do everything in their power to ensure equal rights for gay and lesbian Americans.

October  28

October 28, 1903 – British writer Evelyn Waugh is born in London.  The writer of “Brideshead Revisited” kept diaries of his affairs.
October 28, 1970 – Author Kate Millet came out.

October 28, 1987 – The Human Rights Campaign Fund began running ads in response to an amendment introduced in the Senate by Sen. Jesse Helms (R-NC) and passed by the house and senate to restrict funding to AIDS organizations which distributed gay-related prevention literature.

October 28, 1987- At the University of Vermont in Burlington nineteen people were arrested in a demonstration protesting the CIA’s exclusion of gays and lesbians.

October 28, 1990 – During a campaign speech, US Congressman Jesse Helms referred to gays and lesbians as “disgusting people marching in the streets demanding all sorts of things, including the right to marry each other.”

October 28, 1990 – Placido Domingo and Andre Watts raise $1.5 million at a fundraiser for the Gay Men’s Health Crisis.

October 28, 1992 – Episcopal bishop A. Theodore Eastman issued an order to clergy in Maryland not to bless same-sex unions.

October 28, 1992 – The lesbian comic book “Hothead Paisan #7″ was seized from Toronto Women’s Bookstore. Officials sited “sexual degradation” as the reason for the seizure, though it contained no sex. The prohibition would be lifted seven months later.

October 28, 1997 – The National Black Lesbian and Gay Leadership Forum condemned gospel singers Angie and Debbie Winans for their anti-gay song “It’s Not Natural” and BET-TV for providing them with a one-sided forum to promote their homophobic views. Earlier in the year, BET-TV refused to air MeShell NdegeOcello’s video “Leviticus Faggot,” about a black gay teenager’s struggle to come to terms with his sexuality.

October 28, 1998 – Welsh secretary Ron Davies resigned after British tabloids reported he was robbed at knifepoint in a London park while looking for a male sexual companion.

October 28, 1998 – Glen Murray, an out gay man, was elected mayor of Winnipeg, Manitoba.

October  29

October 29, 1979 – Gay activists hold “mince-in” at Ontario legislature in Toronto to draw attention to inaction on human rights protections for gays and lesbians.

1995 – In Iran, a 31 year old man was convicted of “ugly and improper conduct” and sentenced to twenty lashes for cross-dressing.

1997 – Representatives from the National Black Lesbian and Gay Leadership Forum, the Human Rights Campaign, the National Latino/a Lesbian and Gay Organization, and the Gay Lesbian and Straight Educators Network met with House Democratic leader Richard Gephardt to discuss the Employment Non-Discrimination Act and funding for AIDS care and research.

1997- US House Democratic Leader Dick Gephardt met with several leaders of national gay and lesbian organizations to discuss ways in which the party could assist gay and lesbian candidates through the coming election cycle.

1997- Rep. Barney Frank (D-Mass.) introduced a bill calling for the extension of health insurance coverage to the domestic partners of US federal employees through the federal employee health program.

1997- Maryland’s Court of Special Appeals unanimously overturned Circuit Court Judge Lawrence H. Rushworth’s decision prohibiting a divorced gay man from seeing his children in the presence of his partner.

October  30

October 30, 1976 – The first gay civil rights group in Quebec, Association pour les droits de la communauté gaie du Québec (ADGQ) is formed.

October 30, 1987- A panel discussion on gays and the constitution was held during the inauguration of the new Lesbian and Gay Studies Center at Yale University.

October 30, 1992 – New Ways Ministry, a Mt. Rainier Maryland group led by three Roman Catholic bishops, announced it would release a statement of disagreement with the Vatican’s call for gays and lesbians to be barred from becoming adoptive or foster parents, teachers, coaches, or military personnel. 1,500 lay persons signed the statement.

October  31

October 31, 1968 – Silent film star Ramon Novarro was found murdered. A bathroom mirror had the words “US GIRLS ARE BETTER THAN FAGGITS” smeared with blood. Hustler Paul Ferguson and his brother Tom Ferguson were convicted of the murder and both received life sentences. During the trial, Novarro’s sexual orientation was called into question with more vigor than the guilt or innocence
of the defendants.

October 31, 1969 – Time magazine ran a cover story on “The Homosexual in America” that included a report on the Stonewall Riots. It was protested by the Gay Liberation Front because the writer said homosexuals are mentally ill and immoral.

October 31, 1977 – Halloween brings thousands of queer-bashers to Toronto’s Yonge Street looking for the annual drag parade. Gay representatives meet with police beforehand to try to prevent crowd from gathering. Operation Jack-o’-Lantern, a gay street patrol is organized to monitor situation but police do little to control crowd.

October 31, 1980 – For the first time, Toronto  police do not allow queer-bashers and spectators to congregate outside St Charles Tavern to wait for drag queens. Traffic and pedestrians are kept moving with help of large numbers of police officers. Not a single egg thrown.

October 31, 1987 – The Associated Press reported that several nursing homes in King County Washington were under investigation for refusing to accept AIDS patients or those suspected of being likely to have been exposed to HIV.

October 31, 1992 – The coalition for Lesbian and Gay Rights held a march in London.