September 1

· 1864 — Roger David Casement is born in Kingston, Ireland. He would become well-known in his service as a British consul for writing detailed reports about human rights abuses in the colonies in the Congo and Peru. The continuing abuses so disgusted him that he resigned from the consular service in 1912 and became an anti-Imperialist and eventually an Irish Republican nationalist. Following the outbreak of World War I in1914, he sought to negotiate with the Germans for help in the Irish struggle against England. For those efforts, he was captured by the British and put on trial for treason. The charges against Casement were thin, and in fact the prosecution was successful in proving him guilty only after convincing the presiding judge to adopt a controversial reading of the treason law. Many notable Britons, including Sir Arthur Conan Doyle and George Bernard Shaw, pleaded for a commutation of Casement’s death sentence. To quash such pleas, the British distributed photographs of what they claimed were pages from Casement’s diaries in which the author gave evidence of being promiscuously homosexual and of having a special appetite for younger men. The validity of these diary excerpts remains questionable, but there is no question that they were effective in killing any hopes Casement might have had of receiving clemency. He was hanged at Pentonville Prison in London on August 3, 1916, at the age of 51.

· 1969 — West Germany repeals laws prohibiting consensual male-male sex. Lesbians were not affected by the law, since West German law had never prohibited lesbian sex.

· 1970 — Judy Bowen founds an organization called Transsexuals and Transvestites in New York to help them better understand each other and the challenges they face.

· 1977 — The Log Cabin Republicans hold their first meeting in Southern California.

· 1978 — The Gay Bob doll appears in stores. The anatomically correct doll has one pierced ear, stands 13 inches tall, and comes wearing a flannel shirt, tight jeans and cowboy boots. The packaging is shaped like a closet and includes a catalog from which consumers can order additional outfits.

· 1980 — John Boswell’s Christianity, Social Tolerance, and Homosexuality debuts in book stores.

· 1981 — The International Football League recommends that players be prohibited from embracing or slapping each other’s backsides because it is offensive.

· 1982 — President Reagan vetoes a bill that would have granted $500,000 to the Centers for Disease Control to fight AIDS.

· 1993 — Rip Naquin and Martin Greesom become the first couple to register as domestic partners under a New Orleans ordinance that allows same-sex couples to do so.

· 1999 — In Playboy magazine, actor Kevin Spacey says he’s straight and that rumors that he’s gay have helped him score with women.

· 2000 — Wake Forest University in North Carolina begins offering domestic partner benefits to employees.

· 2002 — Openly gay actor Treve Broudy (Fluffer) and a friend are victims of a brutal homophobic attack by two men, one with a baseball bat, on a West Hollywood street.

· 2005 — The California Senate votes 21-15 in favor of allowing gay marriage. All Senate Republicans and one Democrat oppose the measure.

September 2

· 1822 — Florida adopts the common and statute laws of England, making sodomy a capital offense in the state.

· 1894 — Annie Winifred Ellerman is born in Margate, England. She would become an early feminist and write under the name Bryher. She would live in an open lesbian relationship with writer Hilda Doolittle for many years and also become an intimate of André Gide, Gertrude Stein, and James Joyce. She would also enter into a marriage with gay American writer Robert McAlmon.

· 1917 — A book review of House-Mates by J. D. Beresford appears in the New York Times. In the book, Wilfrid Hornby falls in love with Judith Carrington but must compete with Helen Binstead for her affection. The reviewer maintains that Helen’s jealousy is a weak point in the novel because such behavior is highly improbable.

· 1954 — A special Miami police squad known as the “fruit pickers” begins a series of nightly raids on over a dozen gay bars. Publicity preceding the raids had led most bars to close and driven customers away from those that remained open. Four bartenders are arrested.

· 1954 — The Miami Herald runs an article entitled “Soft Policy toward Perverts Results Only In Evil” charging that homosexuals recruit young people and make themselves easy targets for criminals.

· 1969 — The American Sociological Association issues a declaration encouraging the passage of gay rights laws.

· 1992 — A military court in San Diego acquits Petty Officer Third Class Garrett Trance of charges of conspiracy, missing the movement of a ship, and malingering. According to his attorney, Charles T. Bumer, Trance had been sexually harassed because his shipmates aboard the U.S.S. Constellation mistakenly believed he was gay, and he persuaded shipmate Wesley Newell to break his leg with a steel pipe so he could escape the harassment. Newell was sentenced to three months of confinement, a bad-conduct discharge, and a fine.

· 1999 — A Seattle-area group organizes the nation’s first gay and lesbian PTA.

· 2004 — The Louisiana Supreme Court refuses to hear challenges to a state constitutional amendment banning gay marriage. The amendment would later be approved by voters.

September 3

· 1933 — A New York Times book review praises Gertrude Stein’s Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas.

· 1957 — After three years in the making, the Report of the Departmental Committee on Homosexual Offences and Prostitution (better known as the Wolfenden report, after Lord Wolfenden, the chairman of the Parliamentary committee that produced it) is published in Britain. All but one of the committee’s 14 members go on record recommending that “homosexual behaviour between consenting adults in private should no longer be a criminal offence.” They also break with some of the conventional medical and psychiatric opinion of the time and state that “homosexuality cannot legitimately be regarded as a disease, because in many cases it is the only symptom and is compatible with full mental health in other respects.”

· 1969 — The American Sociological Association becomes the first national professional organization in the United States to issue a statement supporting gay and lesbian civil rights.

· 1980 — Toronto Mayor John Sewell endorses George Hislop, a gay candidate for alderman, in the municipal election, a move that leads to a media uproar about “gay power politics” taking over city hall. Hislop would be defeated.

· 1992 — Sen. Bob Packwood (R) announces his opposition to an Oregon ballot initiative that would have prohibited laws banning discrimination against gays and lesbians.

· 1997 — Angela Eagle, a British Member of Parliament in Britain, comes out as a lesbian.

· 2004 — In a speech accepting his party’s nomination for a second term, George W. Bush tells Republicans that traditional marriage must be protected from “activist judges.”

September 4

· 1707 — In England, Hannah Wright and Anne Gaskill are married. They are one of two female couples whose marriages are registered in the parish of Taxal, Cheshire.

· 1891 — Lyle Chambers Saxon is born in Bellingham, Washington. He would become New Orleans’s most popular writer during the second quarter of the 20th century, producing 4 very popular works: Father Mississippi, Fabulous New Orleans, Old Louisiana, and Lafitte the Pirate. He also worked tireless to preserve the art and architecture of the city’s French Quarter. He was gay but lived a thoroughly closeted life; no homosexual characters appear in any of his books. He died on April 9, 1946.

· 1976 — The Fourth Annual Gay Conference for Canada is held in Quebec.

· 1984 — A National Gay Task Force survey indicates that approximately 10% of lesbians and 25% of gay men have been physically assaulted because of their sexual orientation.

· 1990 — Voters in Broward County (Florida) reject a gay rights ordinance 59% to 41%.

· 1995 — The British government announces it will review its policy of excluding homosexuals from military service.

· 2004 — Pope John Paul II chastises Donald Smith, the Canadian ambassador to the Vatican, for his country’s legalization of same-sex. The Canadian government would later dismiss the complaints as an inappropriate intrusion into domestic politics.

· 2005 — William H. Rehnquist, Chief Justice of the U.S. Supreme Court, dies at his Virginia home. It has been suggested that no justice voted against LGBT interests more times than Rehnquist, and yet no period of time produced more significant gains for the LGBT community than his 33 years on the court, which began less than 3 years after the Stonewall Rebellion.

September 5

· 1946 — Farrokh Bulsara is born in the British colony of Zanzibar, East Africa (now part of Tanzania). He would become better known as Freddie Mercury, the lead singer of Queen. He would die of AIDS on November 24, 1991.

· 1967 — ABC airs an episode of N.Y.P.D. about the blackmail of gay people. It marks the first time that the word “homosexual” is broadcast in a network drama in the United States.

· 1970 — The government of Colombia reclassifies criminal homosexual acts from felonies to misdemeanors and reduces the maximum penalty to three years.

· 1990 — OutRage holds a kiss-in at Picadilly Circus to demonstrate against police harassment of same-sex couples engaging in public displays of affection.

· 1991 — AIDS activists inflate a 35-foot condom on the roof of Jesse Helms’s house.

· 1996 — Prior to the enactment of the Defense of Marriage Act, Rep. Henry Hyde (R-IL) requests that the Government Accounting Office prepare a report identifying federal laws in which benefits, rights, and privileges are contingent on marital status.

· 2003 — Denis Gogolev and Misha Morozov are married in a small chapel in the Russian city of Nizhny Novgorod. The government refuses to register the wedding.

September 6

· 1860 — Jane Addams is born in Cedarville, Illinois. She would become a social activist and the first American woman to be awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. Historians disagree about whether she was a lesbian. All that we know for certain was that for many years she lived with and professed her love for Mary Rozet Smith.

· 1882 — John Powell is born in Richmond, Virginia. He would become a world-renowned concert pianist and composer and the life partner of fellow composer Daniel Gregory Mason.

· 1917 — Richard Barr is born in Washington, D.C. He would work with Orson Wells on the radio drama The War of the Worlds (1938) and the classic film Citizen Kane (1941) before moving on to a long career as an openly gay theater producer. He is most famous for producing the works of Edward Albee and Mart Crowley’s The Boys in the Band (1968). He died on January 9, 1989, of complications related to AIDS.

· 1935 — Dr. Louis W. Max of New York University addresses a meeting of the American Psychological Association in which he reports having successfully treated a case of homosexuality by using electro-shock therapy delivered at “intensities considerably higher than those usually employed on human subjects.”

· 1970 — The play The Boys in the Band closes after 1,002 performances at New York City’s Theater Four.

· 1971 — The National Organization of Women’s annual convention passes a resolution acknowledging the oppression of lesbians as a concern of feminism.

· 1990 — Twenty-six-year-old Charles Dougherty of Colorado Springs, who had not only managed to enroll at Coronado High School as a female transfer student named Cheyen Weatherly but also made the all-girl cheerleading squad, is arrested on charges of criminal impersonation. Following his conviction on those charges, some parents would insist that he be given the death penalty; he would be sentenced instead to counseling and 2 years’ probation.

· 1994 — A domestic partner registry in Seattle, Washington, takes effect. About 180 people, most of them in same-sex pairings, register their relationships.

· 1994 — The York City (Pennsylvania) Council votes unanimously to reject the nomination of anti-gay Robert Erb Sr. to the human rights commission. Erb had announced that he wanted the appointment so he could represent the interests of white men.

· 1995 — According to a San Francisco Chronicle poll, openly lesbian San Francisco mayoral candidate Roberta Achtenberg has the support of 47% of gay and lesbian voters, and challenger Willie Brown, a long-time supporter of the LGBT community, has 29%. The Alice B. Toklas Lesbian and Gay Democratic Club had recently endorsed Brown.

· 1995 — Pat Robertson tells his 700 Club audience, “If the world accepts homosexuality as its norm and if it moves the entire world in that regard, the whole world is then going to be sitting like Sodom and Gomorrah before a Holy God. And when the wrath of God comes on this earth, we will all be guilty and we will all suffer for it.”

· 2001 — London registers its first same-sex partnerships.

· 2005 — By a single vote, the California Assembly passes legislation that would allow same-sex couples to marry.

September 7

· 48 B.C. — Albius Tibullus is born near Rome. His love poems tell of his (unrequited) lust for the handsome Marathus.

· 1889 — Dr. G. Frank Lydston delivers a lecture at the Chicago College of Physicians and Surgeons in which he claims that sexual perversion is a result of moral, physical, and mental defect. He contends that homosexuals secretly recognize one another and congregate together to engage in abhorrent practices.

· 1956 — Michael Feinstein is born in Columbus, Ohio. He would attain fame as an out singer and pianist focusing on American music from the 1920s, 1930s, and 1940s.

· 1994 — Charges against Broward County (Florida) prosecutor Mark McHugh are dropped. He had been charged with going on a drunken rampage through a gay bar while dressed in drag with a couple of his rugby teammates, causing damage and harassing bar patrons. Assistant state attorney Moira Lasch explains that the charges against McHugh could not be proven, although the charges against his friends would stand.

· 1995 — Henry Earl Dunn Jr. is sentenced to death in Texas for the anti-gay murder of Nicholas Ray West.

· 1997 — Hungary holds its first gay pride parade.

· 2005 — Gov. Arnold Schwarznegger vows to veto a bill passed by the California Assembly legalizing same-sex marriage.

September 8

· 1292 — John de Wettre, a knife-maker, is burned at the stake after being convicted on a charge of sodomy at Ghent (present-day Belgium) — the earliest recorded execution for the crime in Western Europe.

· 1906 — In an essay entitled “The Problem of Sexual Variants” in the St. Louis Medical Review, Dr. T. H. Evans asserts that there are two causes for an increase in the numbers of gays and lesbians in the general population: (1) improvements in hygiene have led to extension of human longevity and an associated decrease in the urgency of the propagation of the species, and (2) changes in the division of labor between the sexes have diminished levels of erotic interest in the opposite sex.

· 1949 — John Curry is born in Birmingham, England. He would attain fame as an Olympic figure-skating champion and come out right before the 1976 Olympics. For the remainder of his career, he would dedicate his life to homosexual causes, AIDS research, and his first passion, figure skating. He would die on April 15, 1994, after a decade-long fight with AIDS.

· 1956 — Leslie Cheung Kwok-Wing is born in Hong Kong. He would become a pop singer and film star, often portraying sexually ambiguous characters as well as romantic leads in both gay- and straight-themed films. His most acclaimed performance would be in Chen Kaige’s Farewell My Concubine (1993). In a 2001 Time magazine interview, he would describe himself as bisexual. He would end his life on April 1, 2003, by jumping off the balcony of his 24th-floor hotel room.

· 1975 — U.S. Air Force Technical Sergeant Leonard Matlovich appears on the cover of Time magazine with the headline “I Am a Homosexual.”

· 1983 — In San Francisco, the Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals rules that homosexuals cannot be refused entry into the United States solely on the basis of their sexual orientation.

· 1995 — At the United Nations Fourth World Conference on Women in Beijing, about 20 protesters halt one of the sessions by draping a 25-foot banner reading “Lesbian Rights Are Women’s Rights” from the top gallery of the meeting hall.

· 1996 — Offices of the Pink Paper, a London LGBT weekly, are damaged in an arson attack.

· 2004 — Stonewall Democrats praise Log Cabin Republicans for refusing to endorse President Bush’s reelection.

· 2004 — The Rachel Maddow Show, featuring out news commentator Rachel Maddow, premieres on MSNBC. It is a virtual overnight hit.

September 9

· 1707 — William Huggins of England is indicted for sodomy. He would be found guilty.

· 1980 — The Metro Toronto Council refuses to pass a bill of rights that includes protections on the basis of sexual orientation.

· 1980 — Federal District Court Judge Gerhard Gesell orders the U.S. Air Force to reinstate Leonard Matlovich and give him back pay after having inappropriately discharged him from the service for being gay. Matlovich settled for an upgrade of his discharge to honorable and a payment of $160,000 to cover the legal bills he accumulated during his 5-year fight.

· 1987 — A San Francisco Superior Court jury awards $2.28 million to James B. Short from the estate of realtor Charles Gale in consideration of the 19 years the two had lived together. It is believed to be the first gay palimony case to be decided by a jury.

· 1994 — In California, 3 white supremacists are arrested on charges of kidnapping and assault after they threatened Thomas Lee with a shotgun, beat him with a baseball bat, stripped him, and tied him to a tree because they believed he was gay.

· 1995 — A federal judge in Omaha temporarily blocks the Air Force from discharging Captain Richard Richenberg for admitting to his superior officer that he is gay.

· 2005 — Sharli’e Dominique, a transgender woman evacuated from New Orleans, is arrested for using the women’s shower at a Texas A & M University College Station shelter.

September 10

· 1487 — Givanni Maria Ciocchi del Monte is born in Rome. In 1548, as a student of Pope Julius II, del Monte would begin to shower favors on a young (13- or 14-year-old) beggar named Innocenzo. After assuming the papacy as Julius III in 1550, del Monte would make Innocenzo a cardinal, over the protests of other church leaders. Rumors that the two shared a bed would begin to circulate. Julius would die in 1555. When Innocenzo died 1577, he would be buried beside Julius in the del Monte chapel in Rome.

· 1886 — Hilda Doolittle is born in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania. She would become a poet and memoirist, publishing under the name “H.D.” Herself bisexual, she would write three novels dealing with the theme of lesbianism: Paint It Today (1921), Asphodel (1921-1922), and HERmione (1926-1927).

· 1935 — Mary Oliver is born in Cleveland, Ohio. She would receive the Pulitzer Prize in poetry for her volume American Primitive (1983) and the National Book Award for her New and Selected Poems (1992). While not an outspoken lesbian activist, Oliver would never hide her sexual orientation or her attraction to women.

· 1960 — Alison Bechdel is born in Lock Haven, Pennsylvania. She would create the long-running comic strip Dykes to Watch Out For, which first appeared in the feminist monthly newspaper Womannews in 1983.

· 1970 —Australia’s first gay rights group, CAMP Inc., is founded by Chrisabel Poll and John Ware.

· 1989 — A convention of California Republicans rejects a proposal that would have placed it on record as opposing all gay rights legislation. Among other things, the proposal referred to the body of a male homosexual as a “tropical island of diseases.” Angered by the rejection of the proposal, Rep. Robert Dornan calls the meeting a “no-guts convention.”

· 1990 — CBS’s Face to Face with Connie Chung features a segment on gay sex at highway rest stops. Producers would be criticized for sensationalism.

· 1992 — The Fairfax County (Virginia) school board repeals a policy of punishing anti-gay abuse after complaints that the policy condoned homosexuality.

· 1993 — At a meeting of over 2,000 members of the Christian Coalition, Democratic party chairman David Wilhelm draws hisses from the crowd by saying that faith should not be used as a weapon to divide people and that God is not the possession of any political party. Christian Coalition executive director Ralph Reed had invited him.

· 1997 — The U.S. Senate deals a double defeat to gay-rights activists by voting to reject same-sex marriage in federal law and killing a separate bill that would have barred job discrimination against gays.

· 2004 — Hospitals run by Caritas Christi Health Care in Massachusetts terminate their employee health care plan in order to avoid having to cover the spouses of legally married same-sex couples.

· 2005 — Ang Lee’s movie Brokeback Mountain wins the Golden Lion (the highest prize) at the Venice Film Festival.

· 2008 — Monroe County Circuit Court judge David J. Audlin Jr. rules that an openly gay Key West foster parent can adopt a 13-year-old boy with learning disabilities and special needs he has raised since 2001. Audlin declares the adoption to be in the child’s best interest and says that the Florida law forbidding gay people from adopting children is “contrary to the state Constitution because it singles out a group for punishment.” He also says that the law violates the Constitution’s separation of powers by preventing family court and child welfare judges from deciding on a case-by-case basis what is best for a child. It is also the case, however, that Florida's gay adoption ban has been upheld repeatedly by state and federal appeals courts, so it is acknowledged that this order will not change the state-wide law. It simply means this one man can adopt this child because the court has deemed it in the child's best interest.

· 2008 — Maurice Sendak, the popular author and illustrator of such children’s books as Where the Wild Things Are, mentions to the New York Times that he is gay. The octogenarian says he had never been asked about it and hadn’t volunteered the information because he “just didn’t think it was anybody’s business.” Sendak lived with his partner, psychoanalyst Eugene Glynn, for 50 years before Glynn passed away in May 2007.

September 11

· 1779 — American statesman Alexander Hamilton writes to John Laurens, “Like a jealous lover, when I thought you had slighted my caresses, my affection was alarmed and my vanity piqued.”

· 1885 — D. H. Lawrence is born in Nottingham, England. He would become one of the preeminent novelists of the 20th century, and several of his works (e.g., Women in Love and Lady Chatterley’s Lover) would include themes of homosexuality and lesbianism.

· 1932 — In a New York Times review of Arthur Weigell’s Sappho of Lesbos, Florence Finch Kelly praises the author for focusing on the beauty of Sappho’s poems and not judging her by current moral standards. After all, since the Greeks “had no sexual morals whatever,” writes Kelly, Sappho was merely a product of her environment.

· 1948 — Jewelle Gomez is born in Boston. She would attain fame as an African American lesbian activist and author of the vampire novel The Gilda Stories (1991).

· 1961 — The Rejected, the first American television documentary about homosexuality, airs on San Francisco’s KQED. Guests include anthropologist Margaret Mead, Episcopal Bishop James Pike, several members of the Mattachine Society, and Dr. Evelyn Hooker, the first psychologist to provide compelling evidence that gay men are no more likely to suffer from mental illness than straight men. The station had provided producer John Reavis with a budget of less than $100 for the show.

· 1971 — Toronto priest Boniface of the Order of Independent Old Catholics marries two male couples in a religious ceremony. Only their first names were recorded: Don and Steve, and James and Francis.

· 1975 — The New York City Council rejects a gay rights ordinance.

· 1976 — A California Court of Appeals orders two men who had been arrested for lewd conduct after kissing in public to register with the state as sex offenders.

· 1989 — OutWeek publishes its second list of closeted homosexuals, this one with 31 names.

· 1993 — The Association of Latin Men for Action, a gay and bisexual men’s organization in Chicago, marches in the city’s Mexican Independence Day parade. It is the first time a gay organization participated in the event.

· 1994 — California governor Pete Wilson vetoes a bill that would have allowed limited recognition of relationships between same-sex partners and unmarried heterosexuals, arguing that it would have undermined heterosexual marriage.

· 1999 — PFLAG ends its partnership with Barnes and Noble, apologizing to independent booksellers for supporting a corporation that has forced smaller stores out of business.

· 2001 — Two planes commandeered by terrorists slam into New York’s World Trade Center. Among the dead is Father Mykal Judge, a member of Dignity New York and chaplain to the New York Fire Department who was hit by debris from the building while administering the last rites to a firefighter. One of the passengers of another terrorist-hijacked plane, United flight 93, credited with helping to prevent further loss of life by bringing the plane down in a field in Pennsylvania, is gay advertising agency owner Mark Bingham. In all, nearly 3,000 people die in 9-11 attacks; the total number of out and closeted gay and lesbian victims will never be known but is estimated in the hundreds.

September 12

· 1772 — The Marquis de Sade is burned in effigy after being sentenced to death for committing sodomy with his manservant and poisoning prostitutes. His death sentence would be commuted 6 years later, and he would die in a lunatic asylum in 1814.

· 1889 — Maurice Auguste Chevalier is born in Paris. He would attain moderate fame as a singer (“Thank Heavens for Little Girls”) and film star. Twice married, he is nonetheless generally understood to have maintained a long-term sexual relationship with his “valet,” Felix Paquet.

· 1946 — Minne Bruce Pratt is born in Selma, Alabama. She would be awarded the 1990 American Library Association Gay and Lesbian Book Award for Literature for Crime against Nature.

· 1954 — Robert Gober is born in Wallingford, Connecticut. He would become one of the few openly gay American sculptors in America.

· 1969 — The Gay Liberation Front protests the Village Voice’s policy of allowing writers to refer to gays as “fags.”

· 1976 — The Reverend Malcolm Boyd comes out in an interview with the Chicago Sun Times. He would later write Gay Priest.

· 1985 — Armed with a single warrant to arrest the bartender of Carol's Speakeasy, a gay bar at 1355 N. Wells Street in Chicago, 15 police storm the place with guns drawn, order all the patrons to lie on the floor, and proceed to search, photograph, and interrogate them about their personal lives. The harassment lasts more than 3 hours. The ACLU would subsequently file suit charging unreasonable search and seizure, violations of freedom of association, and illegally obtaining personal information, and the police would settle the case with a payment of $226,500.

· 1992 — Actor Anthony Perkins, best known for his role as Norman Bates in Psycho, dies of complications from AIDS at age 60.

· 2004 — New Jersey governor James McGreevey holds a news conference in which he announces “I am a gay American.” He acknowledges that he had an affair with another man and speaks of his intention to resign his office.

September 13

· 1928 — Robert Clark is born in New Castle, Indiana. He would achieve fame as a sculptor and painter using the name Robert Indiana. Under commission from the U.S. Postal Service, in 1973 he would create a LOVE postage stamp, the most popular stamp ever issued in the United States.

· 1974 — The first national lesbian writer’s convention is held in Chicago.

· 1975 — A large gay rights march sponsored by the Coalition for Gay Rights in Ontario calls for the reinstatement of John Damien, who had been fired as a judge for the Ontario Jockey Club because he was gay. Protestors also call for the inclusion of protections on the basis of sexual orientation in the Canadian human rights code.

· 1977 — Soap premieres on ABC, featuring Billy Crystal as gay character Jodie Dallas.

· 1985 — Rosemary Curb and Nancy Manahan are thrown out of their Dublin hotel after appearing on The Late Late Show and identifying themselves as lesbians and former nuns.

· 1989 — The U.S. House of Representatives rejects a proposal by Senator Jesse Helms (R-NC) to deny federal grants to art projects featuring homoeroticism.

· 1992 — A group of at least 25 teenagers attacks 2 gay men in Manhattan. Mayor David Dinkins condemns the attack and urges state and federal legislation to prevent gay bashing.

· 1996 — The U.S. Senate votes 50-49 to defeat the Employment Non-Discrimination Act, which  would have banned employment discrimination against lesbians and gay men.

· 2004 — Ontario Superior Court Justice Ruth Mesbur grants the first gay divorce in North America to a lesbian couple identified only as MM and JH, who had married the year before in Ontario.

· 2005 — Trial begins in New Jersey for Richard W. Rogers, who is accused of killing and dismembering two gay men and then dumping their remains in plastic bags along the state’s thruways. Evidence presented at the trial would link Rogers to similar murders of other gay men, and he would eventually be convicted and sentence to 65 years in prison without chance for parole.

September 14

· 1969 — In New York City, the Gay Activist Alliance protests police harassment by staging a “zap” of Mayor John Lindsay.

· 1979 — In Smeaton, Saskatchewan, an education arbitration board orders teacher Don Jones reinstated to the job from which he was fired for being gay.

· 1989 — AIDS activists disrupt New York Stock Exchange trading to protest the high cost of AZT.

· 1992 — The Cambridge (Massachusetts) City Council approves a domestic partner registry.

· 1994 — Mica England settles a lawsuit with the Dallas police department out of court for $73,000. She had been denied a job as a police officer because she was a lesbian.

· 2001 —Jerry Falwell blames gays and pro-choice advocates for the devastating terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon.

· 2005 — The U.S. House of Representatives passes a transgender-inclusive hate crimes amendment by a vote of 223-199.

September 15

· 1967 — The first issue of The Advocate appears on news stands.

· 1969 — The first issue of Gay Power is published in New York.

· 1980 — At the first meeting of Toronto Board of Education subcommittee that had been created to look into the possibility of establishing a liaison between the full board and the LGBT community, the members cave in to pressure from fundamentalist Christian groups and vote to disband.

· 1986 — Sgt. Leonard Matlovich, an early challenger of the U.S. military’s anti-gay policies, is diagnosed with AIDS.

· 1989 — Maud’s in San Francisco, described as the world’s oldest lesbian bar, closes after 23 years.

· 1994 — Colorado attorney general Gale Norton confirms that she offered anti-gay psychologist Paul Cameron public money in return for testimony in support of an amendment to the state constitution designed to outlaw the inclusion of protections for gays and lesbians in any legislation aimed at prohibiting discrimination. In the end, the testimony was never used. Cameron had been expelled from the American Psychological Association in 1983 for falsifying research data about gays and lesbians, and he was barred from practicing in Nebraska, the only state in which he had been licensed. Norton refuses to disclose the amount she had paid Cameron, but the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force indicates that it was more than $15,000.

· 1996 — The European Parliament approves a resolution urging an end to “all discrimination against homosexuals” in every country in the European Union.

September 16

· 1730 — In Amsterdam, Lourens Hosponjon is executed for sodomy.

· 1856 — Wilhelm von Gloeden is born in Wismar, Germany. He would become a prominent early photographer specializing in the male nude. His body of work, extending to more than 3,000 images of models in poses suggesting Greek myths and stories, was very popular in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. After his death, many of his glass plates and negatives were destroyed by Mussolini’s police.

· 1954 — The Miami Herald reports that Miami mayor Abe Aronovitz had introduced an ordinance prohibiting same-sex dancing or embracing in public, adopting the mannerisms, gestures, or dress of the opposite sex, and association with homosexuals in public places. Commissioners would eventually approve a watered-down version of the ordinance limited to a ban on bars catering to homosexuals.

· 1992 — Robert Sawyer of Brattleboro, Vermont, pleads not guilty to charges that he murdered his ex-girlfriend, Judith Hart Fournier, after she left him for a woman. Fournier had gotten a restraining order against Sawyer, but he had violated it repeatedly. The case sparked a demand for anti-stalking legislation.

· 1992 — Fifty-eight-year-old Roy Downs files a complaint of brutality against the Fort Worth (Texas) Police Department. He was arrested during a series of raids on gay bars, and he charged that officers beat and verbally abused him.

· 1994 — Richard Hongisto, a former San Francisco police chief, is convicted of civil rights violations. He had ordered the removal of an issue of Bay Times, a gay newspaper, from news stands.

· 1994 — The International Lesbian Gay Association loses its non-governmental organization representative status at the United Nations after a campaign by U.S. Senator Jesse Helms reveals that one of its member organizations, the North American Man Boy Love Association (NAMBLA), condones sex with children. ILGA would subsequently expel NAMBLA from its membership.

· 1997 — Singer k.d. lang is invested as an Officer of the Order of Canada, an award recognizing national achievement.

· 2003 — Kansas attorney general Phill Kline says that the state’s sodomy law must be maintained to prevent gay marriage, incest, and sex with children.

· 2008 — Ellen DeGeneres announces during her daytime talk show that CoverGirl has selected her to be its latest spokesmodel.

September 17

· 1928 — Roderick Andrew Anthony Jude McDowall is born in London. He would become better known as Roddy McDowall, one of the few child stars who made a smooth transition to adult acting. He appeared in numerous films but is probably best remembered for his roles in the Planet of the Apes film and television series. Other films included Midnight Lace (1960), Cleopatra (1963), Bedknobs and Broomsticks (1971), The Poseidon Adventure (1973), The Legend of Hell House (1973), Funny Lady (1975), Fright Night (1985), Fright Night II (1987), and It’s My Party (1995). Throughout his life, McDowall’s homosexuality remained one of Hollywood’s best known secrets. He died on October 3, 1998, from cancer.

· 1976 — Toronto gay activist Brian Mossop is expelled from the Communist Party of Canada for being openly gay.

· 1979 — California governor Jerry Brown appoints Stephen Lachs to the state Superior Court, making him the first openly gay judge in the United States.

· 1985 — President Reagan uses the word “AIDS” in public for the first time.

· 1987 — The California Supreme Court unanimously rejects an appeal from Gary Coon, a gay San Francisco man who tried to sue for emotional distress after witnessing a bus driver physically assault his lover while shouting anti-gay slurs. Under similar circumstances, heterosexual spouses would have been entitled to sue, so the court was effectively making the point that gay relationships were not as significant as straight relationships.

· 1988 — The International Gay Rodeo Association petitions Washoe County (Nevada) district court judge William Forman to force the Lawlor Events Center in Reno to reinstate a lease that had been canceled by the University of Nevada. The university claimed that it had canceled the lease because the IGRA was late on a rental payment; IGRA claimed it was because of complaints about HIV and gays.

· 1992 — Pat Robertson tells his 700 Club audience, “It’s one thing to say, ‘We have rights to jobs. . . . We have rights to be left alone in out little corner of the world to do our thing.’ It’s an entirely different thing to say, well, ‘We’re not only going to go into the schools and we’re going to take your children and your grandchildren and turn them into homosexuals.’ Now that’s wrong.”

· 1993 — Dr. Ian Barlow, founder of Bay Area Physicians for Human Rights, dies of brain cancer at age 52 in Salt Lake City, Utah.

· 1996 — The Elizabethtown (Pennsylvania) School Board passes a “pro-family” resolution that bans any positive discussion of homosexuality in the schools and declares the two-parent family to be the norm.

· 2000 — A panel of three army colonels recommends that Steve May, an Arizona state senator, be discharged from the army for violating the military’s “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” policy. May had served in the army until 1995, at which time he was discharged and became an inactive military reservist. He had come out in 1996, was elected to the Arizona legislature in 1998, and then was called up to active duty by the U.S. Army Reserve during the Kosovo crisis in 1999. Shortly after the crisis had passed, the military began its investigation based on the comments May had made prior to being reactivated.

· 2000 — Gossip columnist Liz Smith appears on CBS’s 60 Minutes to discuss her autobiography Natural Blonde, in which she writes about having had affairs with both men and women.

· 2003 — Canada’s House of Commons passes a bill making it illegal to promote hatred of gays in speech or print.

September 18

· 1905 —Greta Garbo is born in Stockholm, Sweden.

· 1977 — A 4½-hour benefit for gay and lesbian rights is held at the Hollywood Bowl.

· 1980 — The Toronto Board of Education amends its policy of banning discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation, dding a clause forbidding “proselytizing of homosexuality in the schools.”

· 1985 — Steve Horn files a class action suit to overturn Arizona’s sodomy law. After he came out, he had been fired from his job with the Mesa (Arizona) police department, despite a perfect service record, and police chief Joe Quigley had cited the sodomy law as the reason.

· 1987 — The movie Maurice, based on the book by E. M. Forster, opens in New York City.

· 1989 — The Corcoran Gallery issues an apology for canceling a Robert Mapplethorpe exhibit.

· 1992 — The San Francisco Examiner publishes an interview with attorney John Schlafly, son of conservative activist Phyllis Schlafly, in which he acknowledges that he is gay but says that he supports his mother’s right-wing politics.

· 1992 — A special committee of the Australian government recommends that the cabinet adopt a policy to end the firing of homosexual defense personnel.

· 1995 — The Canadian House of Commons votes 124-52 to reject a measure introduced by openly gay Real Menard to legalize same-sex marriages.

· 2000 — Danny Wan becomes the first out gay man to be appointed to the Oakland (California) City Council.

· 2000 — Transsexual author Dawn Langley Simmons dies at age 77.

· 2003 — The first gay couple to be legally married in Canada is refused entry into the United States after filling out form in which they identified themselves as married.

· 2004 — By a ratio of 78% to 22%, Louisiana voters pass a “Super” Defense of Marriage Amendment that not only defines marriage as between one man and one woman but also “specifically prohibits recognition of same-sex marriages” from any other jurisdiction along with any legal arrangement “identical” or “substantially similar” to marriage.” The state’s supreme court would subsequently declare the amendment to be unconstitutional.

September 19

· 1963 — The Homosexual League of New York and the League for Sexual Freedom demonstrate in front of the U.S. Army Whitehall Induction Center in New York City to protest the military’s exclusion of gays and lesbians.

· 1975 — A three-member Air Force panel recommends that openly gay Sgt. Leonard Matlovich be given a general discharge.

· 1985 — A benefit organized by Elizabeth Taylor raises $1.3 million for the Los Angeles AIDS Project. Among those attending are Betty Ford, Burt Lancaster, Shirley MacLaine, Sammy Davis Jr., Linda Evans, and Burt Reynolds.

· 1992 — Actor Frederick Combs, who played Donald in the 1970 film version of The Boys in the Band, dies of complications from AIDS at age 57.

· 2000 — Ex-gay spokesman John Paulk is confronted and photographed by activists associated with the Human Rights Campaign while patronizing Mr. P’s, a gay bar in the heavily gay DuPont Circle neighborhood of Washington, D.C. Paulk claims he hadn’t known it was a gay bar and entered only to use the restroom, though he was there for at least 40 minutes. He would later be removed as board chair of Exodus North America, the nation’s most prominent ex-gay organization.

· 2000 — In Wichita Falls, Texas, a federal judge strikes down an ordinance requiring that two gay-positive children’s books be moved to the adult section of the public library.

· 2000 — Madison, Wisconsin, adds protections on the basis of gender identity to its nondiscrimination law.

· 2003 — California governor Gray Davis signs landmark legislation giving the state’s same-sex couples most of the rights of marriage.

September 20

· 1958 — Barbara Gittings founds the East Coast chapter of the Daughters of Bilitis in New York City. Fewer than a dozen women attend the first meeting, held at the offices of the local Mattachine Society.

· 1973 — In their so-called “battle of the sexes,” Billie Jean King defeats Bobby Riggs in straight sets, 6-4, 6-3, 6-3, at the Houston Astrodome.

· 1978 — Ronald Reagan publicly expresses his opposition to California’s Proposition 6, also known as the Briggs Amendment, which seeks to ban gays and lesbians, along with anyone who openly supports civil rights for gays and lesbians, from teaching in public schools.

· 1994 — Houston assistant police chief Art Contreras admits that police officers violated policy by wearing ski masks during a series of raids on gay bars.

· 1995 — The Berkeley (California) Human Welfare and Community Action Commission votes to include protections for transgender people in its anti-discrimination policy.

· 1996 — U.S. President Bill Clinton signs the Defense of Marriage Act, which bars same-sex partners from receiving federal spousal benefits and outlaws same-sex marriage at a federal level. He says that the act should not be used as an excuse for discrimination, violence, or intimidation against gays and lesbians.

· 1996 — In Saudi Arabia, 24 Filipinos receive the first 50 lashes of a sentence of 200 lashes for homosexual behavior. Upon completion of the sentence, they would be deported.

· 2005 — Gay writer and scholar Tobias Schneebaum dies at the age of 83 in Great Neck, New York. During the 1950s, Schneebaum earned fame by living and studying cannibals in the Amazon. He documented his work in Keep the River to the Right.

September 21

· 1932 — New York Times film critic Mordaunt Hall refers to Girls in Uniform, a German film with lesbian overtones, as “a beautiful, tender, and really artistic cinematic work.”

· 1955 — The Daughters of Bilitis is founded in San Francisco by four lesbian couples, including Del Martin and Phyllis Lyons. It is the first homophile organization in America founded exclusively for women.

· 1987 — The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services honors Dionne Warwick for raising over $1 million for AIDS research with her song “That’s What Friends Are For.”

· 1993 — The Morgantown (West Virginia) City Council approves a ban on anti-gay discrimination in municipal employment.

· 1993 — Actress Amanda Bearse (of Married . . . with Children and the movie Fright Night) discusses her lesbianism in an Advocate interview, the first primetime TV star to do so. She had previously been outed by a supermarket tabloid.

· 2000 — The Mautner Project for Lesbians with Cancer, headquartered in Washington, D.C., convenes the first ever national conference focusing on cancer-related issues as they affect the lesbian community.

· 2004 — The Idaho Supreme Court upholds a lower court ruling that Theron McGriff could not have visitation rights with his children while he lived with a male partner.

September 22

· 1960 — Punk/rock singer Joan Jett is born in Philadelphia.

· 1975 — Oliver “Billy” Sipple, a Vietnam veteran, saves the life of President Gerald Ford in San Francisco by lunging for a revolver held by Sara Jane Moore. Harvey Milk (who had not yet been elected to the city’s board of supervisors) would out him to the press, destroying Sipple’s relationship with his family.

· 1984 — Polish television broadcasts its first discussion of homosexuality.

· 1992 — The Advocate runs a cover story outing U.S. Rep. Jim McCrery (R-La.), including statements from several men who report having had sex with him. The editors justify the outing by citing McCrery’s hypocrisy in sponsoring and supporting anti-gay legislation.

· 1995 — Eigel Axgil dies in Copenhagen at age 71. In 1948 he and his partner, Axel Axgil, formed the National Homosexual Association, one of Europe’s earliest gay rights groups. In 1989 the two were the first to register their relationship when a Danish law went into effect allowing same sex-couples to do so.

· 1998 — The Zambian government issues a warning that anyone taking a public stand for gay civil rights risks arrest and, upon conviction, a minimum of 14 years’ imprisonment.

· 2000 — Danny Lee Overstreet is killed and six other patrons of the Backstreet Café are wounded when Ronald Gay enters the Roanoke, Virginia, gay bar and opens fire. Police would later report that Gay, a 53-year-old drifter, had gone on the rampage because he was tired of people teasing him about his name.

· 2003 — Singer-songwriter Melissa Etheridge and actress Tammy Lynn Michaels exchange domestic partner vows in Los Angeles.

· 2005 — The Frunzensky Distict Court of St. Petersburg, Russia, rules that a litigant identified only as “Mr. V.P.” cannot be denied employment because he is gay.

September 23

· 1970 — The CBS series Medical Center airs an episode in which a brilliant medical researcher is forced to come out.

· 1970 —Ani DeFranco is born in Buffalo, New York.

· 1985 — By a vote of 88-65, the Massachusetts House of Representatives rejects a gay rights law. Several legislators acknowledge that they opposed the bill out of concerns about AIDS.

· 1992 — Massachusetts governor William Weld (R) announces his decision to grant spousal bereavement leave to gay, lesbian, and unmarried state employees in domestic partnerships. He uses the occasion to criticize Pat Buchanan’s stand on social issues and to issue an executive order granting visitation rights to same-sex and unmarried heterosexual partners of inmates in state prisons and patients in state hospitals.

· 1998 — In the case of Able v. United States, a U.S. circuit court of appeals rules that the U.S. military’s “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” policy does not violate the equal protection clause of the Fifth Amendment.

September 24

· 1731 — In Amsterdam, 22 men are executed for sodomy.

· 1951 — Christine Jorgensen enters the hospital for surgery associated with sex-reassignment therapy. When news broke about the surgery a year later, the procedure was sensationalized, and Jorgensen described as the first person to undergo a “sex-change.” In fact, this type of surgery had been performed by German doctors already in the late 1920s and early 1930s.

· 1981 — In Toronto, a provincial court judge acquits Don Franco of a charge of keeping a common bawdyhouse in own home. Police had burst in on Franco while he was having sex with 2 other men in 1979.

· 1992 — The Twin Cities chapter of Dignity, an organization for gay and lesbian Roman Catholics, is evicted from its meeting space at St. Stephens Church in Minneapolis. Archbishop John Roach orders that the organization cannot use church space unless it publicly professes agreement with the Church teaching that homosexuality is an intrinsic moral evil.

· 1992 — By a vote of 4 to 3 the Kentucky supreme court overturns the state’s sodomy law in the case of Wasson v. Kentucky. Writing for the majority, Justice Charles Leibson says, “We need not sympathize, agree with, or even understand the sexual preference of homosexuals in order to recognize their right to equal treatment.” Dissenting judges warn that the ruling will increase homosexuality, incest, and prostitution.

· 1993 — The University of Michigan’s school board votes 7-1 to adopt a ban on anti-gay discrimination.

· 1994 — In London, OutRage stages a zap against The Courage Trust’s Open Day and Chorleywood, an event aimed at persuading parents of lesbians and gays that their children can be “cured” through conversion to Christianity.

· 2004 — Nova Scotia becomes the fifth Canadian province to legalize same-sex marriage.

September 25

· 1676 — Edmund Andros, governor of the Province of New York and the Jerseys, issues an executive order making the Duke of York’s Laws the legal standard of the territory. The laws include a provision making sodomy a capital offense.

· 1791 — Louis Michel le Peletier de Saint-Fargeau presents a new criminal code to the French national Constituent Assembly. It effectively decriminalizes sodomy by making no mention of sex between consenting adults.

· 1828 — Jean-Henri Dunant is born in Geneva. In 1859, he would witness the aftermath of the battle of Solferino in modern-day Italy and write a book about it entitled A Memory of Solferino. That book would become the inspiration for the creation of the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) in 1863. His ideas would also shape the formulation of the  Geneva Conventions in 1864, and in 1901 he would receive the first Nobel Peace Prize together with Frédéric Passy. Following his death, his family would burn his personal papers in a failed effort to suppress the fact he was bisexual.

· 1969 — Six teens from a housing development near London’s Wimbledon Common beat a gay man to death with clubs. Later the Sunday Times would quote a boy from the same housing development saying, “When you’re hitting a queer, you don’t think you’re doing wrong. You think you’re doing good. If you want money off a queer, you can get it off him — there’s nothing to be scared of from the law, ’cause you know they won’t go to the law.”

· 1983 — Paul Jacobs, a pianist with the New York Philharmonic, dies of complications from AIDS at age 53.

· 1989 — After being sentenced to 3 days in jail following her conviction on charges of assaulting police officer Paul Kramer (she had slapped his face while he was ticketing her for a traffic violation), Zsa Zsa Gabor says that she’s afraid of going to jail, because “they are all lesbians in jail, and I’m so scared of lesbians.” She also implies that Officer Kramer arrested her only because he was gay and jealous of her beauty. Her protests notwithstanding, Gabor would do her 72 hours in the El Segundo jail and also be required to pay $13,000 in court costs.

· 1993 — Twenty-two members of Lesbian Avengers protest at the dedication of Focus on the Family’s $30 million headquarters in Colorado Springs, Colorado. Three are arrested. Convicted Watergate figure Charles Colson, a featured speaker at the dedication, says that the battle to defeat the gay agenda “makes Watergate look like child’s play.”

· 2000 — DeKalb, Illinois, adds protections on the basis of gender identity to its Human Relations Ordinance.

September 26

· 1601 — Louis XIII of France is born at the Château de Fontainebleau, the first child of Henry IV of France and Marie de' Medici. He would attain the throne at the age of 8 after his father had been assassinated. There are persistent and documented rumors that Louis was gay or at least bisexual. He died in 1643 at the age of 41.

· 1888 — Thomas Stearns Eliot is born in St. Louis, Missouri. He would become one of the preeminent men of letters in the 20th century, the author of Four Quartets, The Wasteland, and Murder in the Cathedral. Rumors have long circulated that Eliot was gay. At the center of the speculation is his friendship with Jean Verdenal (1889-1915), who died during World War I. In 1915 he married a governess named Vivienne Haigh-Wood, whom he had met just a few months earlier. Late in life he wrote in a private paper, “I came to persuade myself that I was in love with Vivienne simply because I wanted to burn my boats and commit myself to staying in England. . . . To her, the marriage brought no happiness. To me, it brought the state of mind out of which came The Waste Land.”

· 1937 — Bisexual African American blues singer Bessie Smith dies from injuries in a car accident.

· 1970 — In Los Angeles, Gay Liberation Front members hold a demonstration to persuade bar owners to allow same-sex couples to hold hands.

· 1973 — Toronto’s Club Baths open at 231 Mutual Street, the first of Canada’s modern gay-operated bathhouses.

· 1986 — After anti-gay televangelist Jerry Falwell threatens to move his religious organization elsewhere, the city of Lynchburg, Virginia, decides to waive the $1.4 million he owes in back taxes.

· 1992 — California governor Pete Wilson signs into law a ban on discrimination based on sexual orientation in employment.

· 1992 — Dutch Roman Catholic bishop Hendrik Bomers ordains openly gay Antoine Bodar 3 months after the Vatican had issued a letter urging bishops to take a stand against homosexuality.

· 1994 — A full-page ad in the Capital Hill newspaper Role Call features quotes by Ohio Republican congressional candidate Frank Cremeans. Among them, “The Greeks and the Romans were homosexuals. Their civilization did not stand. Did they come into contact with a social disease like AIDS? I don’t know the answer.”

· 1998 — The Maine Speakout Project and the Maine Council of Churches sponsor an event called Reclaiming Our Faith described as “a gathering for gays, lesbians, and friends in the Judeo-Christian tradition.”

· 2003 — A conservative Christian group files suit to block California’s new domestic partner law from taking effect. The courts would rule against the group in 2005.

· 2005 — The Ontario government launches a campaign to ease its doctor shortage, courting American LGBT MDs by presenting Canada as a better environment for gays.

· 2008 — After an unsuccessful 4-year fight with the State Department to recognize his partner in the U.N.’s Blue Book, which lists diplomatic personnel and their spouses, Richard Grenell leaves his post as spokesman for the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations.

September 27

· 1937 — Robert Patrick O’Connor is born in Kilgore, Texas. He is now better known as Robert Patrick, the founding father of modern gay drama. His first play, The Haunted Host, was produced in 1964. In the late 1960s, his base of operations was the Old Reliable Tavern Theatre in the East Village. In his best known work, Kennedy’s Children (1973), five denizens of a bar recollect where they were the night John F. Kennedy was murdered using alternating monologues.

· 1970 — The Chicago Gay Alliance splits from the Gay Liberation Front, maintaining that the Gay Liberation Front’s goals are too broad-based to be effective in advancing the quality of life for gay men and lesbians.

· 1973 — The Windsor (Ontario) Press Council rules that the Windsor Star unfairly discriminated against Windsor Gay Unity when it refused to publish the organization’s classified ad.

· 1974 — In response to action by gay organizations, 7 major advertisers — including Bayer Aspirin, Listerine, Gallo Wine, and Ralston Purina — pull their advertising from an episode of Marcus Welby MD in which a male science teacher rapes a 14-year-old boy. Activists claimed it fostered a false stereotype of homosexuals as child molesters.

· 1979 — An Ontario government tribunal refuses to grant registration to Tri-Aid, a gay group home, ending its 2-year struggle to be recognized.

· 1983 — At a fund-raising dinner in New York, the Reverend Jesse Jackson urges gay and lesbian activists to also be concerned with the rights of blacks and Native Americans. “The bigger you get beyond yourselves, the more you protect yourselves.”

· 1990 — The European Court of Human Rights votes 10-8 against allowing transsexuals to change the sex listed on their birth certificates, and 14-4 against their right to marry.

· 1993 — The ACLU announces that it has filed a suit to nullify an Alabama law that denies gay and lesbian groups access to public funds and accommodations.

· 1994 — Canadian Member of Parliament Real Menard becomes the second M.P. to come out. He does so in the course of condemning the televised statements of Nova Scotia M.P. Roseanne Skoke, who had asserted that gay and lesbian affection, “based on an inhuman act, defiles humanity, destroys family . . . and is annihilating mankind.”

· 1996 — Navy Captain Joe Kalu-Igboamah, newly appointed Military Administrator of the northeastern Nigerian state of Adamawa, states publicly that HIV-positive individuals should not be allowed to move and live among the public and orders that all AIDS patients be arrested and confined to curb the spread of the disease.

· 1999 — Roman Catholic Sister Jeannine Gramick announces that she will obey the Vatican and dissolve her ministry to gays and lesbians but will continue to work within the Church to have the order reversed.

· 1999 — Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni announces that he has ordered the arrest of homosexuals under the authority of a law barring homosexual activity. The law allows for life imprisonment.

· 2004 — London police give British gay rights leader Peter Tatchell round-the-clock protection following death threats from supporters of anti-gay Jamaican reggae artists.

· 2005 — The Superior Court of Pennsylvania affirms a lower court ruling awarding custody of twins to Patricia Jones, a lesbian mother, ruling that Jones would provide a better home than her ex-partner, Ellen Boring (the children’s biological parent).

September 28

· 1292 — John, a knife maker from Ghent (in present-day Belgium), is sentenced to be burned at the stake for having sex with another man. This is the first documented execution for sodomy in Western Europe.

· 1973 — Gay poet W. H. Auden dies in Vienna at age 66.

· 1987 — Thomas Bailey, chairman of the Oregon Republican Party, announces a petition drive to discourage Gov. Neil Goldschmidt from issuing an executive order granting employment protection to gays and lesbians who work for the state.

· 1987 — The city council of Mankato, Minnesota, votes 5-2 to defeat a gay rights ordinance.

· 1992 — Eighty United Methodists ministers in Michigan sign an open letter supporting pastors who wish to bless same-sex relationships.

· 1993 — The Council of Europe called for the repeal of Romania’s sodomy law.

· 1994 — Mayor Richard M. Daley of Chicago proclaims October 1994 “Lesbian and Gay History Month” and urges all Chicagoans to “recognize the significant contributions of members of Chicago’s diverse Gay and Lesbian communities to the vitality of this great city.”

· 1996 — An article by Vittoria D’Alessio in New Scientist entitled “Born to Be Gay?” reviews current research and concludes that the existence of a genetic link to homosexuality is almost indisputable.

· 1996 — Activists demonstrate at Chrysler Corporation headquarters in Auburn Hills, Michigan, for an amendment to the company’s contract with United Auto Workers to prohibit discrimination based on sexual orientation.

· 2005 — Rev. Robert Guste of Our Lady of Perpetual Help Church informs the New Orleans City Council that gays were responsible for hurricane Katrina.

September 29

· 1760 — William Beckford is born in London. At age 10 he would inherit the family fortune and embark on an extravagant life as an author and connoisseur. He is now best known for his gothic novel Vathek, but in his own time he gained notoriety for his sexual interests. At the age of 25 he went into self-imposed exile on continental Europe when he was accused of seducing William Courtenay, who would later become Viscount Courtenay and 9th Earl of Devon, but who was 16 years old at the time.

· 1926 — The Captive, an adaptation of Edouard Bourdet’s play La Prisonnière, opens at the Empire Theatre in New York. The plot centers on a young woman being seduced by an older woman.

· 1970 — Gay actor Edward Everett Horton dies of cancer in Encino California at age 84. A comic character actor in numerous films of the 1930s and ’40s, he turned to television in the ’50s. His distinctive voice is fondly remembered by many from his stint as narrator of the “Fractured Fairy Tales” segment of the Rocky and Bullwinkle show.

· 1982 — During a raid on a New York City gay bar, police injure 12 patrons and do $30,000 worth of damage. The police entered the bar with their guns drawn, ordered all the “faggots” to get to the back of the bar, and proceeded to destroy liquor bottles and take money out of the cash register. The raid resulted in a protest march and a reprimand by Mayor Ed Koch. No reason was ever given for the raid.

· 1982 — Presidential hopeful Walter Mondale announces his support for gay and lesbian rights.

· 1987 — California governor George Deukmejian signs legislation allowing the state to establish a system to test new drugs to treat AIDS but vetoes a bill that would have granted a 55% tax credit for contributions to an AIDS research fund.

· 1987 — After Congress had passed a $20 million appropriation to fund a project to mail information on AIDS to every household in the country, assistant secretary of health Robert Windom announces that the information would be distributed only to health departments, community organizations, and major employers. He indicates that the decision to restrict the mass mailing came from officials in the Reagan White House.

· 1991 — California governor Pete Wilson vetoes AB101, a bill to extend employment rights to gay and lesbian workers. The action spurred weeks of marches and protests across the state.

· 1992 — Administrators at the University of Maine at Orono announce tjat they will assist Neal Snow, a senior who was expelled from ROTC because he was gay.

· 1992 — The U.S. Navy confirms that it will discharge 21-year-old Robert A. Matt because he wrote a letter to his commanders saying he was gay and believed the ban on gay and lesbian servicepersons to be hypocritical.

· 1992 — Ontario affirms a human rights commission ruling that extends provincial pension benefits to surviving same-sex partners of government employees.

· 1993 — Donna J. Fox of Norman, Oklahoma, vows to fight a decision by a state appeals court that removed her children from her custody because she was in a lesbian relationship.

· 1993 — Tennis player Martina Navratilova announces her retirement from singles competition.

· 1996 — 28,000 participants in the 12th annual AIDS Walk Los Angeles raise $3.4 million.

· 1999 — Kenyan president Daniel arap Moi denounces homosexuality as a scourge that is contrary to African tradition and Christian teachings.

· 2001 — A South African court rules that gay and lesbian couples may adopt children.

· 2001 — The Finnish parliament approves a law allowing gays to register as couples, inherit property, and visit partners in hospitals but not to adopt children or take a common surname.

September 30

· 1897 — Charlotte Wolff is born in Riesenburg, West Prussia. She would fall victim to early Nazi anti-Semitism, and in January 1933 she would be arrested and charged with espionage and cross-dressing. Her 1971 book Love between Women is a pioneering study of lesbian relationships.

· 1924 — Truman Streckfus Persons is born in New Orleans. In 1933 he would move to New York to live with his mother and her second husband, who would adopt him and give him the new surname Capote. He would attain considerable fame as the author of Breakfast at Tiffany’s (1958) and In Cold Blood (1966), and he would succumbed to the ravages of alcohol and drug addictions at the age of 59.

· 1926 — In his review of The Captive for The New York Times, theater critic Brooks Atkinson characterizes the lesbian relationship in the play as twisted, warped infatuation, loathsome, and doomed. He referred to the woman who successfully challenges a man for the possession of his woman as a monster preying on a helpless victim.

· 1935 —Johnny Mathis is born in Gilmer, Texas. He would become the third most popular recording artist in the world, based on sales of albums, trailing only Frank Sinatra and Elvis Presley. He would come out in a 1982 interview in Us magazine and then lapse into silence on the subject. In 2006 he would explain that he had remained quiet because of numerous death threats he had received after the 1982 interview.

· 1955 — Gay icon James Dean dies in a car accident at the age of 24.

· 1970 — The California State Liquor Authority closes down Fe-Be’s, a leather bar in San Francisco. It would reopen the next year.

· 1985 — Four female impersonators are arrested for performing in Meridian, Mississippi.

· 1985 — Anthony Sullivan is ordered deported by Anthony Kennedy, a federal judge in the ninth U.S. circuit court (the same Anthony Kennedy who is now a U.S. Supreme Court justice). In 1971 Sullivan, an Australian citizen in the United States on a tourist visa, had met met Richard Adams at the now-defunct Closet Bar in Los Angeles, and a few months later the two moved into an apartment together. By 1974, his tourist visa long since expired, Sullivan was facing imminent deportation proceedings. Adams read an article in The Advocate saying that a county clerk in Boulder, Colorado, was issuing marriage licenses to same-sex couples. Adams and Sullivan went there the next day, were one of just 6 couples to receive a valid license, and on April 21, 1975, had a small wedding ceremony in the First Unitarian Church of Denver. A high-profile 10-year court battle ensued. Judge Kennedy had the final word and ordered Sullivan to leave. Adams and Sullivan left together, traveled through Europe, and then sneaked back into the United States, where Sullivan has lived illegally with Adams ever since.

· 1987 — Sen. Lowell Weicker (R-CT) and Rep. Ted Weiss (D-NY) publicly criticize President Reagan for being unresponsive to the AIDS epidemic.

· 1991 — Liza Minnelli receives a star on Hollywood’s Walk of Fame.

· 1992 — In Minnesota, Jay Thomas Johnson pleads guilty to the anti-gay murder of former state senator John Chenowith, 48, and Joel Larson, 21. He is sentenced to two concurrent life sentences plus 15 years.

· 1993 — Rev. Janine De Boer announces that she will resign as minister of a small church in Grouw, the Netherlands, because of the controversy generated by the discovery that she had had gender-reassignment surgery in 1982.

· 1997 — U.S. Roman Catholic bishops release a statement affirming that homosexual orientation is not chosen and that parents of gay and lesbian children must not reject them.

· 1998 — Scott Caan, son of actor James Caan, and his companion Ross Porterfield are arrested for assault after a fight with two other men in a gay bar in West Hollywood.

· 2004 — The U.S. House of Representatives fails to get enough votes to pass a proposed amendment to the Constitution to bar same-sex marriage.

· 2005 — The “ex-gay” ministry Love in Action files a federal lawsuit against the state of Tennessee to vacate an order to either obtain a license or shut down. The ministry had made national headlines a few months earlier when 16-year-old Zach Stark wrote on his blog that he was being forced by his parents to enter the program.

· 2005 — Uganda passes legislation making same-sex marriage a criminal offence subject to imprisonment.