LGBTQ+ history
A living timeline of LGBTQ+ history in the United States — the people, raids, marches and rulings that brought us here.
1924
Henry Gerber wins a state charter for the Society for Human Rights, the first documented gay-rights group in the United States.
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1955
Del Martin and Phyllis Lyon help found the first lesbian civil-rights organization in the United States.
1966
In San Francisco’s Tenderloin, trans women and drag queens refuse to be cleared out of an all-night diner.
1969
A routine police raid on a Christopher Street bar becomes several nights of refusal, and a movement changes its voice.
1970
On the first anniversary of Stonewall, people step into daylight in New York, Chicago, Los Angeles, and San Francisco.
1973
The American Psychiatric Association votes to stop listing homosexuality as a mental illness.
1978
Gilbert Baker raises an eight-color flag over San Francisco Gay Freedom Day. A movement gets a banner of its own.
1981
A short federal bulletin is the first public alarm of the epidemic that will be called AIDS.
1987
Silence = Death. A coalition decides the epidemic will be fought in the street and inside the science.
The NAMES Project unfolds 1,920 handmade panels on the National Mall, each one about the size of a grave.
2003
The Supreme Court says a state may not criminalize the private intimate lives of gay adults.
2011
Gay, lesbian, and bisexual Americans can serve in the military without the closet as a condition of the job.
2015
In Obergefell v. Hodges, the Supreme Court holds that same-sex couples have a constitutional right to marry.
2020
The Supreme Court says the Civil Rights Act’s ban on sex discrimination protects gay and transgender workers.
2022
Congress puts federal recognition of same-sex and interracial marriage into statute, so it does not rest on a court opinion alone.
Pictures are original illustrations, not archival photographs.