Australia: Women in Melbourne found a local branch of the Daughters of Bilitis. The group is the first homophile organization in the country.

March 8, 1970

New York City: Police conduct an early morning raid on the Snake Pit bar and arrest 167 persons. Diego Vinales, afraid of being deported to his native Argentina, leaps from a second-story police station window and impales himself on a wrought-iron fence. Later in the day, some 500 gay liberation front activists and other supporters demonstrate in protest.

March 17, 1970

The film version of The Boys in the Band, the first major Hollywood look at gay life, premieres.

April 1970

Dissatisfied with the overwhelmingly male ambiance of most movement activities, gay liberation front lesbians organize the first all-women's dances" in New York City.

April 13, 1970

New York City: Gay activists alliance borrows a tactic of the New Left and unleashes the first gay zap, a surprise disruption of a public event to call attention to a political issue. Activists begin shouting "gay power" during a public appearance by Mayor John Lindsay, who has resisted meeting with ' activists.

May 1, 1970

At the Second Congress to Unite Women in New York City, lesbian feminists stage the Lavender Menace action in protest of lesbophobia in the women's movement and particularly in the National Organization for Women.

At the same Congress, radical lesbians distribute an epoch-defining manifesto entitled 11 Woman-Identified Woman." The manifesto, which is also published in the June 1970 issue of Come Out!, is among the first to advocate lesbianism as a (feminist) political choice and solidarity with separatism.

May 14, 1970

New York City: gay liberation front activists ZAP a special session of the American Psychiatric Association dealing with "sex problems." The activists protest an Australian doctor's paper on the use of electroshock aversion therapy to "treat" homosexuality.

May 21, 1970

Running for Congress, Bella Abzug openly seeks gay and lesbian support at a Gay Activists Alliance meeting ill New York City. One of the first politicians to ally herself with the gay rights movement, she wins election ill November.

June 24. 1970

New York City: Police arrest Gay Activists Alliance members Tom Doerr, Arthur Evans, Jim Owles, Phil Raia, and Marty Robinson for staging a sit-in at the headquarters of the Republican State Committee. The men, who wanted to present their demands for "fair employment" practices to New York State Governor Nelson Rockefeller, become known as the Rockefeller Five.

June 24 1970

Tranny classic, Myra Breckinridge, starring Mae West and Raquel Welch, debuts.

June 28, 1970

New York City: The tradition of annually commemorating the anniversary of the Stonewall Uprising begins with a "Christopher Street Liberation Day" march and a "gay-in . " in Central Park. About 15,000 people participate, making it the largest gay and lesbian rally yet.

Los Angeles celebrates the Stonewall anniversary with a march down Hollywood Boulevard that draws about 1,000 people.

Smaller marches take place in Chicago and San Francisco. The anniversary is also marked by special celebrations at gay bars around the world, including clubs in Buenos Aires, Argentina; Lima, Peru; and Managua, Nicaragua.

July 1970

Australia's first lesbian or gay organization, Australian Daughters of Bilitis, begins to hold public meetings in Melbourne. A straight woman acts as a spokesperson for the group.

July 2, 1970

The Fifth Biennial Convention of the Lutheran Church in America expresses its opposition to discrimination and oppression of gay men and lesbians.

July 4, 1970

The General Assembly of the Unitarian Universalist Association becomes the first mainstream religious group in the US to recognize publicly the existence of gay, lesbian, and bisexual clergy and laity among its members and to demand "an end to all discrimination against homosexuals."

July 10-12, 1970

The national organization of Daughters of Bilitis is disbanded. Local chapters are free to continue as independent entities.

July 25, 1970

The Vatican issues a statement reminding the faithful that the Roman Catholic Church considers homosexuality a moral aberration.

Late Summer 1970

Reflecting a strengthening feminist identity, women active in Gay Liberation Front form their own "Gay Women's Liberation Front" within the movement, then break away to start a completely independent organization called Gay Liberation Front Women.

August 1970

New York City: Police begin the traditional "election-year cleanup," repeatedly inspecting gay clubs and arresting more than 300 gay men and lesbians on charges of "loitering."

August 5, 1970

New York City: The Rockefeller Five appear in court, but their trial is postponed (charges are later dismissed).

Daughters of Bilitis activist Isabel Miller (pseudonym of Alma Routsong) is among the speakers at a rally held after their court appearance.

August 21, 1970

Huey Newton, leader of the Black Panthers, expresses his support of the Gay Liberation movement.

August 24, 1970

"Homosexuals in Revolt" is a front-page story in The New York Times. The article reports "a new mood now taking hold among the nation's homosexuals. In growing numbers they are publicly identifying themselves as homosexuals, taking a measure of pride in that identity and seeking militantly to end what they see as society's persecution of them."

August 29, 1970

New York City: A peaceful demonstration against police harassment is followed by an evening of rioting in Greenwich Village.

September 14, 1970

New York City: Gay Activists Alliance stages the first of an orchestrated campaign of zaps in protest of continuing police harassment, heckling Mayor John Lindsay as he enters the Metropolitan Opera House for its opening night gala.

September 19, 1970

Sydney, Australia: John Ware and Christabel Poll, founders of the newly formed Campaign Against Moral Persecution, Inc. (CAMP, Inc.) become the first gay man and the first lesbian, respectively, to come out in the country's history when an interview featuring them is published in the newspaper The Australian.

September 23, 1970

On the CBS Television series Medical Center, a medical researcher announces, "I am a homosexual." Although his "condition" is portrayed as unfortunate, the program is acclaimed as the first sympathetic treatment of a gay man in an American TV drama.

September 26, 1970

Los Angeles: Gay Liberation Front demonstrators persuade bar owners to allow gay patrons to hold hands.

September 27. 1970

Chicago Gay Alliance separates from the local Gay Liberation Front (GLF), declaring in a position statement that GLFs political agenda is too broad to be effective in the struggle for gay and lesbian civil rights.

October 8, 1970

New York City: Two policemen invade a private club to interrupt a Daughters of Bilitis-New York business meeting. The blatantly harassing nature of the police action persuades many members of the hitherto low profile group of the need for militancy.

October 9, 1970

Minneapolis: FREE (Gay Liberation Of Minnesota) opens the first "Regional Gay Convention" in the Midwest.

October 13, 1970

Bob Mellors and Aubrey Walter host the United Kingdom's first Gay Liberation Front meeting at the London School of Economics.

October 27, 1970

To protest a September 1970 Harper's cover story entitled "The Struggle for Sexual Identity," in which editor Joseph Epstein had lamented homosexuals as "an affront to our rationality" and homosexuality as "anathema," Columbia graduate student Pete Fisher stages a sit-in at the magazine's Park Avenue offices with 40 other Gay Activists Alliance (GAA) members. Although the Harper's zap falls to elicit an official response from the magazine, it has an enormous impact oil future media coverage of lesbian and gay issues, in addition to leading to GAA's national Television debut.

October 28, 1970

Kate Millett becomes one of the first leaders of the growing women's movement to acknowledge her lesbianism when she comes out as bisexual at a Daughters of Bilitis meeting in New York City.

November 1970

Canada's first Gay Liberation Front is formed in Vancouver.

November 27, 1970

Gay Activists Alliance representatives Marty Robinson and Arthur Evans and Mattachine Society of New York president Dick Leitsch appear on Dick Cavett's Television talk show to explain the aims of the Gay Liberation movement.

London: The Gay Liberation Front mounts its first public demonstration, a torch-lit protest march on Highbury Fields.

December 4, 1970

New York City's first gay Community Center opens in Greenwich Village.

December 22, 1970

The San Francisco Free Press prints Carl Wittman's Refugees from Amerika: A Gay Manifesto. Reprinted and distributed all across the country in the next year, it quickly becomes the bible of Gay Liberation.

1971

Berlin, Germany: The premiere of Rosa Von Praunheim's "It Is Not the Homosexual Who Is Perverse but the Society in which He Lives" marks the beginning of the German Gay Liberation movement.

January 3, 1971

Ti-Grace Atkinson advocates political lesbianism -- a total and exclusive commitment to women that may or may not include sex -at a Daughters of Bilitis New York meeting.

January 17, 1971

The New, York Times Magazine includes a groundbreaking seven-page essay by writer Merle Miller entitled "What It Means to Be a Homosexual."

February 6, 1971

Sydney, Australia: CAMP (Campaign Against Moral Persecution) holds its first public meetings.

March 10, 1971

France: Guy Hocquenghem and other, mostly lesbian activists disrupt a Paris conference on the "problem" of homosexuality. The demonstration leads to the formation the following month of a Gay Liberation group, Front Homosexual d'Action Revolutionnaire.

March 14, 1971

Albany, New York: An estimated 2,000 people march on the state capitol in protest of anti gay and anti lesbian laws and policies.

April 1, 1971

France: Police confiscate copies of jeanPaul Sartre's newspaper Tout when it publishes an editorial advocating social acceptance of homosexuality (which is not criminalized in France).

May 1971

Ann Arbor, Michigan: The lesbian newspaper Spectre publishes one of the earliest position statements of lesbian separatism.

May 6, 1971

New York City: Gay Activists Alliance opens the Firehouse, a Community Center Offering an alternative to bars and baths.

July 1, 1971

United Kingdom, a court upholds a lower-court decision ruling that personal ads for gay men and lesbians constitute "indecency" whether or not same-sex relations are legal.

Austria: Parliament rescinds laws against sex between consenting adults but adds legislation penalizing individuals who make public statements or join organizations that favor homosexuality. Although the new legislation is used to harass lesbians and gay men and, later, to prevent the import of gay and lesbian pornography, including safer sex literature, no individuals or organizations are successfully prosecuted under the laws.

September 1971

Netherlands: lesbian separatism leads to the founding of the all-women's group Lavender September.

Japan's first magazine for gay men, Barazoku ("Rose Tribe"), makes its debut. A cover blurb, in English, reads, "For Young Men and Guys followed by the lyrics, also in English, of the first verse of "Bridge over Troubled Waters."

September 6, 1971

The annual convention of the National Organization for Women passes a resolution acknowledging "oppression of lesbians as a legitimate concern of feminism."

October 1, 1971

Connecticut is the second state (after Illinois 1/19/62) to decriminalize same-sex acts between consenting adults.

October 8. 1971

Australia's first public gay and lesbian rights demonstration takes place in Sydney outside the headquarters of the Liberal Party. Gay writer and activist Dennis Altman is one of about 70 protesters.

October 10, 1971

Seven lesbians, including Barbara Gittings, break new ground on US Television when they appear on The David Susskind Show.

December 29, 1971

Wakefield Poole's trend-setting Boys in the Sand premieres, prompting Variety to remark, "There are no more closets." Shot on Fire Island, Poole's slickly produced film marks a dramatic departure from the low-budget pornography previously available.

1972

Hollywood, California: Jim Kepner founds the International Gay and Lesbian Archive.

Australia: a breakthrough Television program called Number 96 debuts with a sympathetically portrayed, openly gay main character and numerous gay and lesbian supporting cast members. Complete with nudity and interracial love stories, the show is top-rated on all five of the weeknights it is shown.

January 27, 1972

New York City: A municipal rights ordinance for lesbians and gay men is defeated. The bill remains a hotly contested part of City Council politics for the next 14 years.

March 1972

An American Bar Association committee recommends the decriminalization of consensual same-sex acts.

March 7, 1972

The first US municipal rights ordinance forbidding hiring discrimination against lesbians and gay men is passed in East Lansing, Michigan.

June 1972

United Kingdom: the International Times is found guilty of a conspiracy to corrupt public morals" for publishing "contact adverts" (personal ads) for gay men.

June 25, 1972

The United Church of Christ becomes the first mainstream US denomination to ordain an openly gay man, William Johnson.

June 27, 1972

United Kingdom: the fortnightly Gay News, the first and best-known British gay newspaper, is founded.

July 1. 1972

The United Kingdom's first Gay Pride March draws about 2,000 gay men and lesbians to the center of London.

July 10, 1972

Ann Arbor, Michigan, passes the first comprehensive gay and lesbian municipal rights ordinance.

July 12, 1972

At the Democratic National Convention, Madeline Davis, representing the Mattachine Society of the Niagara Frontier, and Society for Individual Rights leader Jim Foster are the first speakers to advocate lesbian and gay rights at a national political convention.

August 9, 1972

The Ohio Secretary of State refuses to grant articles of incorporation to the Greater Cincinnati Gay Society. Two years later, the Ohio Supreme Court upholds the decision, stating that even though homosexual acts are now legal in Ohio, "the promotion of homosexuality as a valid life style is contrary to the public policy of the state."

November 1, 1972

Almost 20 million people watch the first positive treatment of gay characters on American Television: ABC's broadcast of That Certain Summer, a sympathetic but ultimately disheartening TV movie about a boy who finds out his father is gay.

January 18, 1973

Viewers of An American Family 12-part Television documentary shown on PBS about the lives of an "average" American family, discover that son Lance is living as an openly gay man in New York City.

February 1973

The National Organization for Women passes a resolution declaring lesbian and gay rights a "top priority."

March 4. 1973

Betty Friedan, one of the founders of the National Organization for Women, tells The New York Times that "man-hating" lesbians are seeking to take control of the organization.

May 1973

Dykes and Gorgons, a publication of the East Coast-based Gutter Dyke Collective, takes lesbian separatism to its most extreme position, angering many other lesbians with its call to "rid the world of men." The first step: "wimmin" must stop having male babies. The collective is also one of the first to declare that male-to-female transsexuals cannot be lesbians, an issue that will remain controversial for decades to come.

July 4, 1973

Seattle: The Lesbian Separatist Group (later the Gorgons) issues The Amazon Analysis, a manifesto and handbook of lesbian separatism. The paper's nearly 100 mimeographed pages are passed among lesbians across the Country.

October 1, 1973

In Touch, the first glossy Playboy-style magazine for gay men, debuts with a blend of erotica, male nude photography, and feature stories.

October 15, 1973

Dr. Howard Brown announces the founding of the National Gay (later: and lesbian) Task Force, considered the first gay or lesbian rights organization with a truly national scope. Dr. Bruce Voeller is named the first executive director.

November 5, 1973

The US. Supreme Court rules that Florida's anti-sodomy laws are constitutional.

November 23, 1973

New York City: 325 persons attend the first conference of the Gay Academic Union. The pioneering Lesbian and Gay Studies group, which was founded the previous March, includes Martin Bauml Duberman, John D'Emilio, Jonathan Ned Katz, and Joan Nestle among its members.

December 15, 1973

After years of controversy and often stormy debate, the Board of Trustees of the American Psychiatric Association declares that "by itself, homosexuality does not meet the criteria for being a psychiatric disorder."

1974

Netherlands: ends discrimination against lesbians and gay men in the country's military services.

Rita Mae Brown publishes her largely autobiographical Rubyfruit Jungle, the most widely read lesbian novel of the Post-Stonewall era.

February 1974

The Australian and New Zealand College of Psychiatrists becomes one of the first such groups in the world to eliminate homosexuality from its official listing of mental disorders.

March 2, 1974

Five activists discuss gay and lesbian issues on a nationally televised forum, The David Susskind Show

April 1974

The Front Runner, Patricia Nell Warren's romantic gay male love story, goes on sale.

The national board of Alcoholics Anonymous (AA) permits gay and lesbian AA meetings to be listed in the group's directory for the first time.

April 1, 1974

Michigan: Kathy Kozachenko wins a seat on the Ann Arbor City Council. She is the first openly lesbian or gay person elected to public office in the US

April 4, 1974

New York City: More than 1,000 people gather in Greenwich Village to demonstrate support for a gay and lesbian municipal rights ordinance currently under debate in the City Council. The bill has been strongly opposed by, among others, the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of New York and the Uniformed Fire Officers Association.

April 10, 1974

The Gay Activists Alliance publication Out -- The Gay Perspective debuts, with Ernest Peter Cohen as editor in chief.

May 1974

Chile: Where a military junta led by Augusto Pinochet seized power last year, the regime begins arresting gay and lesbian activists as part of its campaign against leftists.

May 1, 1974

Oporto, Portugal: Activists organize the country's first public demonstrations in favor of gay and lesbian rights a week after the overthrow of the long installed Salazar regime.

May 14, 1974

In the US Congress, New York Democratic Representatives Bella Abzug and Edward 1. Koch introduce the first bill proposing to broaden the 1964 Civil Rights Act to include protection against discrimination based on "sexual orientation, sex or marital status."

May 24, 1974

From the USSR, comes a rare public acknowledgment of the country's repressive policies against gay men and lesbians. American news services report that noted film director Sergei Paradzhanov has been given six years' hard labor for crimes including "partial homosexuality" and "incitement to suicide." He is one of all estimated 1,000 persons arrested each year on charges related to homosexuality.

August 1974

AT&T is the first major American corporation to agree to an equal opportunity policy for lesbians and gay men.

Fall 1974

The scholarly quarterly Journal of Homosexuality makes its debut.

September 27. 1974

The National Gay [later: and lesbian] Task Force and other lesbian and gay activists persuade major consumer advertisers to withdraw commercials from a Marcus Welby, MD, episode about a high school boy who is raped by a male teacher. Their achievement is hailed as the first successful protest against alleged defamation of gay men on American Television.

November 5, 1974

Elaine Noble becomes the first openly lesbian or gay politician to be elected to state office when a Boston district chooses her as its representative to the Massachusetts legislature.

November 18, 1974

The New Yorker publishes Allan Gurganus's short story "Minor Heroism," the first piece of fiction with an openly gay theme in the magazine's history.

November 24, 1974

The National Gay [later: and Lesbian] Task Force protests an episode of NBC's Police Woman (aired on November 8) that featured lesbian murderers in a home for aged women. The network agrees not to rerun the episode, but MCA-TV producer David Gerber keeps it in syndication release.

December 9, 1974

Minnesota State Senator Allan Spear becomes the first gay male state officeholder to come Out.

January 31, 1975

The American Association for the Advancement of Science approves a resolution denouncing discrimination against lesbians and gay men.

May 12, 1975

California becomes the 11th state to decriminalize same-sex acts.

June 1, 1975

The national debut of Drummer magazine spotlights the rise of open s/m and leather sub-subcultures within the gay male subculture.

June 19, 1975

The American Medical Association approves a resolution recommending the repeal of state laws against consensual same-sex acts between adults.

July 1975

San Francisco: Randy Burns, Barbara Cameron, and ten other Native Americans organize Gay American Indians, the first group of its kind in the US Within a year, members from more than 20 different Native American tribes join the organization.

July 1. 1975

Mexico: Lesbian activists at the first United Nations World Conference on Women come to the attention of the world press, when Pedro Gringoire attacks their efforts to make lesbian rights part of the conference agenda in an essay published in Excelsior, the country's leading newspaper. Gringoire calls lesbianism a "pathological irregularity," a "sexual aberration," and a "severe illness." Lesbian activists score gains in visibility as a result, but fail to elicit an official response to their demands at the conference.

July 3, 1975

The US Civil Service Commission decides to consider applications by lesbians and gay men on a case-by-case basis. Previously, homosexuality was grounds for automatic disqualification.

July 15. 1975

Santa Cruz County, California, is the first US county to make job discrimination against gay men and lesbians illegal.

July 23, 1975

World-famous evangelist Billy Graham states that he is in favor of gay men being ordained as ministers.

August 13, 1975

The Advocate calls 1975 the Year of the Disco. cross the US and around the world, discos have changed the face of the gay and lesbian subculture.

December 9, 1975

Reporter Lynn Rosellini kicks off a series of articles in the Washington Star about homosexuality and sports, revealing that "some of the biggest names in football ... are homosexual or bisexual."

December 11, 1975

David Kopay, a former Washington Redskins linebacker, is featured in the Washington Star's series of articles on homosexuality and sports, becoming the first major professional athlete to come out voluntarily.

1976

Africa: ozambique's Marxist government begins to incarcerate lesbians and gay men in "reeducation camps.."

France: Michel Foucault publishes La Volonte de Savoir, the first volume of what is to become his three-volume The History of Sexuality. Foucault's work later becomes one of the most important texts in the Constructionism VS. Essentialism Controversy.

The San Francisco Police Department becomes the first American law enforcement agency to institute a policy of encouraging officers to come out.

San Francisco: Rudi Cox applies for a position as a sheriff's deputy, becoming the first openly gay law enforcement officer in the US.

The General Convention of the American Episcopal Church passes a resolution calling homosexuals "children of God" and urging acceptance and respect on the part of the Church.

January 15, 1976

The Roman Catholic Church reaffirms its opposition to same-sex eroticism, calling it "a serious depravity" in the Vatican document "Declaration on Certain Questions Concerning Sexual Ethics."

January 19, 1976

Campaigning for the Democratic presidential nomination, former Vice President Hubert Humphrey becomes one of the first nationally known politicians to endorse gay and lesbian rights.

February 10, 1976

Garry Trudeau's Doonesbury is the first mainstream comic strip to feature a gay male character.

March 12, 1976

Los Angeles, jimniy Carter, Campaigning for the Democratic presidential nomination, expresses support for gay and lesbian rights and says he would be willing to sign an executive order banning discrimination against lesbians and gay men in the military.

March 24, 1976

Argentina: A military coup leads to seven years of brutal dictatorship, during which gay and lesbian meeting places are frequently raided, and some 400 gay men are "disappeared"- kidnapped, tortured, and killed -by military commandos.

March 29, 1976

The US Supreme Court rules that Virginia's anti-sodomy laws are constitutional.

April 4, 1976

Pope Paul VI publicly denies press reports that he has had affairs with men.

May 1976

Publisher Charles Ortleb debuts Christopher Street, the first nationally distributed gay and lesbian literary magazine.

May 14, 1976

Canada: Montreal police launch a campaign of raids on lesbian and gay bars and bathhouses.

May 21, 1976

Jimmy Carter, campaigning for the Democratic presidential nomination, expresses support for a federal gay and lesbian civil rights bill.

May 24, 1976

The San Francisco Chronicle begins running Armistead Maupin's Tales o the City The serial, which is later published in book form (and, still later, televised), includes a number of gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transsexual characters.

November 10, 1976

Lynn Ransom of Oakland, California, is one of the first openly lesbian mothers to win custody of her children in court.

January 10, 1977

The Episcopal Church ordains Ellen Marie Barrett. She is the first openly lesbian cleric of any major religious organization in the US

January 12, 1977

An article in The Advocate reports that the CIA has files on about 300,000 people who have been arrested on charges relating to homosexuality.

January 18, 1977

Miami, Florida: Anita Bryant, a former beauty queen, launches a nationwide crusade against gay and lesbian rights in response to Dade County's new municipal rights ordinance forbidding housing and employment discrimination against lesbians and gay men. Accusing lesbians and gay men of corrupting the nation's youth, Bryant dubs her crusade the "Save Our Children" campaign.

February 7. 1977

The US State Department announces it will begin considering job applications from lesbians and gay men for employment in the foreign service and other international agencies.

February 9. 1977

San Francisco: The world's first lesbian and gay FILM festival draws an audience of about 200 people.

March 1. 1977

New York City: Blueboy Forum debuts on a cable network. The show is probably the first regularly scheduled gay-themed Television program in the US.

March 17, 1977

The Arkansas legislature recriminalizes same sex acts between consenting adults. The new law, approved two years after Arkansas had repealed its anti-sodomy laws is the first of a series of setbacks for gay and lesbian civil rights that evidence the rise of a conservative backlash in the US.

March 20, 1977

The Arkansas State House of Representatives unanimously passes a resolution in praise of Anita Bryant and her anti gay and -lesbian rights campaign.

May 25, 1977

In a unanimous vote, the San Francisco school board decides to make information on lesbian and gay sexuality a part of the city schools' sex education programs.

March 26, 1977

Officers of the National Gay [later: and Lesbian] Task Force Bruce Voeller and Jean O'Leary and other leaders-including Pokey Anderson, Charles Brydon, Charlotte Bunch, Frank Kameny, Cookie Lutkefedder, Mary Mendola, Elaine Noble, Rev. Troy Perry, Betty Powell, George Raya, Myra Riddell, and Charlotte Spitzer - meet with White House aide Midge Costanza. The meeting marks the first official discussion of gay and lesbian rights in the White House.

June 7, 1977

Dade County, Florida, residents vote two to one in favor of repealing the county's gay and lesbian municipal rights ordinance.

Florida: Governor Reubin Askew signs a law prohibiting gay men and lesbians from adopting children.

June 26, 1977

Gay Pride Celebrations across the country, including the original STONEWALL-inspired New York City march, held today, attract record numbers of participants. The heavy turnout is judged a response to the backlash against gay and lesbian rights inspired by Anita Bryant's campaign.

July 12, 1977

Denis Lemon, the editor of Gay News, is the first person to be convicted of "blasphemy" in the United Kingdom in 55 years. Lemon had printed James Kirkup's homoerotic poem about Christ, "The Love That Dares to Speak Its Name."

October 19, 1977

United Kingdom, Rev. Ian Paisley fights pro gay law reform in Northern Ireland by declaring a "Save Ulster from Sodomy" campaign.

October 23, 1977

Montreal, Canada: more than 1,000 demonstrators protest anti gay and -lesbian police actions.

November 2, 1977

Senior Action in a Gay Environment (SAGE) is founded in New York City as a support group for aging lesbians and gay men.

November 8, 1977

Harvey Milk is elected to the San Francisco Board of Supervisors. He is the first openly gay elected official of a large US. city.

December 15, 1977

Canada: Quebec is the first province to make rights protection for lesbians and gay men an explicit part of its Charter for Human Rights.

December 30, 1977

Canada: Toronto police take action against The body Politic, the country's leading gay and lesbian newspaper, seizing materials and charging the publication with "using the mails to distribute immoral, indecent, and scurrilous material."

1978

Iceland: Activists form Samtokin '78. With its founding, every country in Scandinavia now has an open gay and lesbian rights organization.

The National Coalition of Black Gays -- later the National Coalition of Black Lesbians and Gays-is founded in New York City to help unite lesbians and gay African-Americans across the country and to support local organizing efforts.

April 1978

Brazil's first gay publication, Lampiao, makes its debut. Also see August 1978.

June 25, 1978

San Francisco artist Gilbert Baker debuts the first Rainbow Flag design. Thirty volunteers have dyed and sewn two gigantic banners featuring his design for the city's annual Gay Freedom Day Parade, which this year draws a record 350,000 participants.

July 1978

Australia: Police arrest lesbian and gay merrymakers at Sydney's first Mardi Gras, sparking angry protest marches all over the country until all those arrested are released without charge. Considered by some to be Australia's "Stonewall," the protests revitalize the Australian gay and lesbian movement.

August 1978

Sao Paulo and Rio de Janeiro police begin a yearlong investigation of Brazil's only gay and lesbian publication, Lampiao, on charges of offending public morality. With the support of the Brazilian journalists Union, activists fight the charges, and the case is dropped for lack of evidence.

August 8, 1978

Representatives of 17 gay, predominantly male and European organizations found the International [as of 1986: Lesbian and] Gay Association at a meeting hosted by the English Campaign for Homosexual Equality in Coventry, England.

November 7, 1978

California voters decisively reject Proposition 6, an initiative launched by state senator John Briggs that would have made it illegal for lesbians and gay men or "anyone advocating a homosexual lifestyle" to teach in the state's schools.

November 27, 1978

San Francisco: Dan White shoots and kills Mayor George Moscone and Supervisor Harvey Milk

1979

Larry Kramer publishes Faggots, a scathing satire of fast-lane gay male life, in New York City.

February 1979

France: Gai Pied makes its debut. The magazine, which becomes the best-selling gay or lesbian publication in Europe, is considered by many to be the main focus of the French gay male movement for the next decade.

Brazil: A public debate held at the University of Sao Paulo leads to the formation of Brazil's first gay and lesbian organization, Somos (We Are).

May 20, 1979

Chicago: David Kloss wins the first Mr. International Leather Contest.

May 21, 1979

San Francisco: A jury finds Dan White guilty of manslaughter rather than murder Ili the shooting deaths of Harvey Milk and Mayor George Moscone. Several thousand demonstrators protest the verdict in a march on City Hall. A night of rioting ensues, during which dozens of demonstrators and police officers are injured.

June 10, 1979

Spain: a policeman shoots and kills a gay man in a bar in Renteria, near the Basque city of San Sebastian. Basque nationalist groups join forces with EHGAM, a Basque Gay Liberation organization, and stage a series of protest rallies and a general strike, culminating Ili a demonstration in which 2,000 lesbian and gay EHGAM supporters march through San Sebastian.

August 1979

Los Angeles: A collective comprising Bia Lowe, Louise Moore, Jody Palmer, Barbara Stopha, Tyaga, and Terry Wolverton launch "The Great American Lesbian Art Show," the first national assembly of its kind in the US Tee Corinne, Harmony Hammond, and Kate Millett are among the exhibitors.

August 31, 1979

Radical Faeries stage their first major gathering.

September 17, 1979

California: Governor Jerry Brown appoints Stephen M. Lachs to the Los Angeles Superior Court. He is the first openly gay judge in the US.

October 12, 1979

The first National Third World Lesbian and Gay Conference opens in Washington, DC, in preparation for the upcoming March on Washington.

October 14, 1979

An estimated 1 00,000 people, with delegations representing every state and tell foreign countries, participate in the first-ever March on Washington for Lesbian and Gay Rights.