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Pride Month Facts
On this day in…
1979 - In Toronto the Gay Liberation Union establishes the first gay self-defense course in Canada. The program grew out of increasing anti-gay violence on streets. (Ronni Sanlo, Ed.D.)
2008 - California’s Supreme Court rejected challenges to its historic decision permitting same-sex couples to wed. By rejecting petitions asking for reconsideration of the May 15 ruling, the court's 4-3 vote removed the final obstacle to same-sex marriages in California. The first same-sex marriages in California took place on June 16. (Arlington Public Library)
On June 5 in…
1967 - A Los Angeles homophile group called Pride mobilizes a crowd of several hundred demonstrators on Sunset Boulevard to protest police raids on gay bars. (Ronni Sanlo, Ed.D.)
1981 - The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention(CDC) described cases of a rare lung infection in five young, previously healthy, gay men in Los Angeles, the first official reporting of what became known as the AIDS epidemic. Throughout the 1980s, HIV and AIDS disproportionately affected the LGBT community, and the stigma surrounding gay identity often made it more difficult for AIDS patients to access adequate healthcare and information about their condition. But through persistent advocacy by healthcare professionals, educators and community activists, and advances in medical technology, life expectancy and quality of life have improved dramatically for those living with AIDS in the US. (Arlington Public Library)
1984 - Rock Hudson becomes the first major celebrity to be diagnosed with HIV but he doesn’t announce it until 1985. (Ronni Sanlo, Ed.D.)
2010 - Portugal becomes the eighth country to approve same-sex marriage. (Ronni Sanlo, Ed.D.)
2018 - The European Court of Justice (ECJ), the judicial body that oversees the European Union’s 28 member nations, rules that all 28 nations must grant legal rights of residence to same-sex spouses legally wed elsewhere, even if their home countries do not allow legalized same-sex marriages. (Ronni Sanlo, Ed.D.)
On June 6 in…
1875 - German author Thomas Mann was born. Mann’s work, most notably the 1912 novella “Death in Venice,” was pivotal in introducing the discourse of same-sex desire into general culture. Mann was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1929, and is one of the best-known contributors to Exilliteratur, the body of anti-Nazi literature produced by German exiles. He fled the Nazis, first to Switzerland, then to the United States, where he remained from 1939 until the increased surveillance and censorship of the McCarthy era forced him to return to Europe. (Arlington Public Library)
1967 - The New York City’s Civil Service Commission makes public its year-old policy of allowing city agencies to hire and employ lesbians and gay men. The new policy comes partly in response to the lobbying efforts of the Mattachine Society of New York. (Ronni Sanlo, Ed.D.)
1976 - Richard Heakin, a 21 year old college student, is killed on this day in Tucson, AZ, by four teenagers while leaving the Stonewall Tavern. He was visiting in Tucson for Gay Pride. The 13 teenage killers received only probation for the murder. The entire community of Tucson was outraged. Within months anti-discrimination laws were introduced. (Ronni Sanlo, Ed.D.)
2012 - A federal district judge in New York becomes the fifth to rule against the Defense of Marriage Act. The case, Windsor v. United States, eventually will reach the Supreme Court. United States v. Windsor, 570U.S. 744 (2013) (Docket No. 12-307), is a landmark civil rights case in which the United States Supreme Court held that restricting U.S. federal interpretation of “marriage” and “spouse” to apply only to opposite-sex unions, by Section 3 of the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA), is unconstitutional under the Due Process Clause of the Fifth Amendment. (Ronni Sanlo, Ed.D.)
Hope you all have a great weekend!