Milk comes in 10th out of 32 candidates, earning 16,900 votes, winning the Castro District and other liberal neighborhoods. He runs on a socially liberal platform and opposes government involvement in personal sexual matters. Harvey Milk runs for city supervisor in San Francisco.
1973 The American Psychiatric Association removes homosexuality from its official list of mental disorders. Patrons of a gay bar in New York's Greenwich Village, the Stonewall Inn, fight back during a police raid on June 27, sparking three days of riots. 1969 The Stonewall riots transform the gay rights movement from one limited to a small number of activists into a widespread protest for equal rights and acceptance. 1966 The world's first the transgender organization, the National Transsexual Counseling Unit, was established in San Francisco. to decriminalize homosexual acts between consenting adults in private. 1962 Illinois becomes the first state in the U.S. Six years after Caffe Cino opens, it hosts the first gay plays, The Madness of Lady Bright, by Lanford Wilson, and The Haunted Host, by Robert Patrick. Caffe Cino is credited with starting the Off-Off-Broadway theater movement. 1958 Joe Cino, an Italian-American theater producer, opens Caffe Cino. 1956 The Daughters of Bilitis, a pioneering national lesbian organization, is founded. 1955 The first lesbian-rights organization in the United States, the Daughters of Bilitis, was established in San Francisco in 1955. 1951 The Mattachine Society, the first national gay rights organization, is formed by Harry Hay, considered by many to be the founder of the gay rights movement. 1948 Alfred Kinsey publishes Sexual Behavior in the Human Male, revealing to the public that homosexuality is far more widespread than was commonly believed. This timeline provides information about the gay rights movement in the United States from 1924 to the present: including the Stonewall riots the contributions of Harvey Milk the "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" policy the first civil unions the legalization of same-sex marriage in Massachusetts, Connecticut, New York and more.ġ924 The Society for Human Rights in Chicago becomes the country's earliest known gay rights organization. The American Gay Rights Movement: A Timeline It has been suggested that Baker was inspired by Judy Garland's singing Over the Rainbow. In 1988, the rainbow flag came to nationwide attention in the United States after John Stout sued his landlordsĪnd won when they attempted to prohibit him from displaying the flag from his West Hollywood, California, apartment balcony. Changing the flag design to one with an even number of stripes was the easiest way to rectify this, so the turquoise stripe was dropped, which resulted in a six stripe version of the flag. The lamp posts of San Francisco’s Market Street, the center stripe was obscured by the post itself. As Baker ramped up production of his version of the flag, he dropped the hot pink stripe because of the unavailability of hot-pink fabric.
The flag consisted of eight stripes Baker assigned specific meaning to each of the colors: hot pink: sexuality red: life orange: healing yellow: sunlight green: nature turquoise: magic/art indigo/blue: serenity/harmony violet: spirit.Īfter the November 27, 1978, assassination of openly gay San Francisco City Supervisor Harvey Milk, demand for the rainbow flag greatly increased. It flew in the San Francisco Gay Freedom Day Parade on June 25, 1978. The original gay-pride flag was hand-dyed by Gilbert Baker.