OVERVIEW OF LGBT HISTORY IN SAN FRANCISCO March 3, 2014

THE MATTACHINE SOCIETY ESTABLISHED  November 11, 1950  In Los Angeles, gay rights activist Harry Hay founds America’s first national gay rights organization. Source:

DAUGHTERS OF BILITIS ESTABLISHED  September 21, 1955  In San Francisco, Del Martin and Phyllis Lyon founds The Daughters of Bilitis, which becomes the first lesbian rights organization in the United States. Source:

NATIONAL TRANSSEXUAL COUNSELING UNIT ESTABLISHED  August, 1966  After transgender customers become raucous in a 24-hour San Francisco cafeteria, management calls police. When a police officer manhandles one of the patrons, she throws coffee in his face and a riot ensues, eventually spilling out onto the street, destroying police and public property.  Following the riot, activists established the National Transsexual Counseling Unit, the first peer-run support and advocacy organization in the world. Source:

STONEWALL RIOTS  June 28, 1969  In the early hours of the morning of a police raid on the Stonewall Inn in New York's Greenwich Village sparked the Stonewall riots, one of the first well-known instances of lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender rebellion against government-sponsored oppression of LGBT people. Source:

FIRST PRIDE PARADE  June 28, 1970  One year later, on the one-year anniversary of Stonewall on the first Pride marches were held in San Francisco, New York, Chicago, and Los Angeles. Source:

HARVEY MILK November 8, 1977 Harvey Milk, the Mayor of Castro, wins a seat on the San Francisco Board of Supervisors and is responsible for introducing a gay rights ordinance protecting gays and lesbians from being fired from their jobs. Milk also leads a successful campaign against Proposition 6, an initiative forbidding homosexual teachers. Source: /timeline/stonewall/

HARVEY MILK IS ASSASSINATED  November 27, 1978  Former city supervisor Dan White assassinates Milk. White's actions are motivated by jealousy and depression, rather than homophobia Source:

HARVEY MILK ASSASSINATED CON’T  May 21, 1979  Dan White is convicted of voluntary manslaughter and is sentenced to only seven years in prison.  The following night, approximately 10,000 people gather on San Francisco's Castro and Market streets for a peaceful demonstration to commemorate what would have been Milk's 49th birthday. Source:

GAY RELATED IMMUNE DEFICIENCY DISORDER  July 3, 1981  The New York Times prints the first story of a rare pneumonia and skin cancer found in 41 gay men in New York and California. The CDC initially refers to the disease as GRID, Gay Related Immune Deficiency Disorder. Source:

PROPOSITION 8 & NOH8  November 4, 2008  California voters approve Proposition 8, making same-sex marriage in California illegal. The passing of the ballot garners national attention from gay-rights supporters across the U.S. Prop 8 inspires the NOH8 campaign, a photo project that uses celebrities to promote marriage equality.  August 4, 2010  District Court Judge, Vaughn Walker, in San Francisco decides that gays and lesbians have the constitutional right to marry and that Prop 8 is unconstitutional. Source:

PROPOSITION 8 – AN UPDATE  June 26, 2013  The United States Supreme Court decided that supporters of Proposition 8 did not have legal standing to defend the law, returning the case to the Ninth Circuit’s jurisdiction whereby Judge Vaughn Walker’s original, groundbreaking ruling was allowed to stand.  June 28, 2013  Marriage licenses were once again offered to California’s same-sex couples and while the case was not quite the landmark one that had been hoped for by same-sex marriage proponents, it remains important as the first case where a same-sex marriage ban enacted by a majority of the voting public has been deemed unconstitutional, setting a significant benchmark for future ballot fights. Source: