Gay History

First same-sex marriage officially approved in Bolivia For the first time in Bolivian history, a gay marriage was officially recognized. 48-year-old economist David Aruquipa and 46-year-old lawyer Guido Montano came out of the civil registry office, where they had returned empty-handed many times, this time with official marriage certificates. Aruquipa “Of course we are happy to be the first and to pave the way. But also this brings a lot of responsibility. “What we have achieved is only a first step towards the day when the diversity of Bolivia can fully reveal itself,” he said. For 3 Years Legal Struggle The couple, who met in the capital La …

Israel announced that it is to erect a monument in the honour of gay victims of the Holocaust, the first of its kind in the country. The memorial is to be completed in Meir Park, Tel Aviv later this year, and the first of its kind in Israel. Like other monuments around the world, it will feature a concrete pink triangle. Eran Lev said: “This will be the first and only memorial site in Israel to mention the victims of the Nazis who were persecuted for anything other than being Jewish. As a cosmopolitan city and an international gay centre, Tel Aviv will offer a memorial site that is universal in its essence. As far as I’m concerned, it’s not a monument, but …

In June 1976 the British gay newspaper Gay News published a poem, The love that dares not speak its name, by James Kirkup. Someone sent a copy to television campaigner Mary Whitehouse. She applied for a private prosecution for blasphemy in November and the prosecution began in December 1976. Gay News Ltd and Denis Lemon (the editor) were charged. The offending publication was “a blasphemous libel concerning the Christian religion, namely an obscene poem and illustration vilifying Christ in his life and in his crucifixion”. The Independent obituary for Mr Lemon notes: He published Kirkup’s poem in 1976 because he thought ‘the message and intention of the poem was…

On Sept. 14, 1961 242 patrons, nearly all of them men, were packed into the Tay-Bush Inn at the Corner of Taylor and Bush in San Francisco. Gary Kamiya tells SF Gate what happened on that night. “The Tay-Bush was a one-room cafe that drew night owls who danced to its jukebox until dawn. Some walked up the hill from the theater district after the shows let out. At 3:15 that September morning, three undercover police officers in the bar gave a prearranged signal, the jukebox went silent, a loudspeaker outside blared and uniformed cops barged in. They began herding the patrons onto the sidewalk and arresting them. The headline on The Chronicle’s story the…

The Hamilton Lodge was a black gay social group that held extravagant drag balls in Harlem, New York, in the 1930s. Prohibition put an end to the Hamilton Lodge drag formals at the Rockland Palace on West 155th Street. New York’s drag balls were given national exposure by the 1990 documentary “Paris is Burning.” Harlem’s gay scene was well known before Prohibition, and Hamilton Lodge was one of the foremost venues for the area’s thriving LGBT community. Artists who supported Harlem’s gay community during the 1930s included Tallulah Bankhead. “You had a large majority of drag queens and what we now call gender-queer pushing the boundaries,” says Hael Fisher, who …

The Eldorado was a famed destination in Berlin for lesbians, homosexual men, transvestites of both sexes, and tourists during the 1920’s and 30’s. As soon as the Nazis came to power, gay bars and clubs like the Eldorado were closed down. The “El Dorado” was situated at 29, Lutherstraße. It had a lavish floor show. It was closed down in about 1932. Clubs with the same name have since re-opened. Tony’s Smart Set notes: “Berlin’s 400 or so bars were divided in tourist guidebooks according to a strict taxonomy of desire. Flush heterosexuals might choose the Kakadu, with Polynesian-style décor and caged parrots hanging over each table; when patrons wished to leave, t…

Leonard P. Matlovich was born on July 6, 1943 and died on June 22, 1988. He was a Vietnam War veteran, race relations instructor, and recipient of the Purple Heart and the Bronze Star. Matlovich made history by becoming the first gay service member of US forces to out himself to the military to fight their ban on gays. In the 1970s he and Harvey Milk were the best known gay men in America. The gay community rallied behind his fight to stay in the USAF. His photograph appeared on the cover of the September 8, 1975, issue of Time magazine, making him a symbol for thousands of gay and lesbian servicemembers and gay people generally. Matlovich was the first openly gay pe…

The lambda was selected as a symbol by the Gay Activists Alliance of New York in 1970, following the Stonewall Riots, and was declared the international symbol for gay and lesbian rights by the International Gay Rights Congress in Edinburgh, Scotland, in 1974. The lambda signifies unity under oppression. The Scottish Minorities Group hosted the first ever International Gay Rights Conference in Edinburgh from 18 to 22 December 1974. It was co-organised by Ian Dunn and Derek Ogg. Ian Dunn had organised the first meeting of what was to become the Scottish Minorities Group in 1969. Derek Ogg later founded Scottish AIDS Monitor in the 1980s. The conference tried to p…

Stalin didn’t think much of gay rights. Dan Healy of the Moscow Times had given us a history of homophobia in Russia. “Orthodox clerics condemned sex between men and youths. They also condemned men who shaved, used make-up, or wore gaudy clothing as devotees of the “sodomitical sin.”” Peter the Great outlawed sex between men in his Military Code of 1716, to be punished by flogging, and male rape, by penal servitude. In 1835, motivated by reports of vice in the Empire’s boarding schools, Tsar Nicholas I formally extended the ban on male same-sex relations to wider society in a new criminal code. Men who engaged in voluntary “sodomy” (muzhelozhstvo) were exil…