1/3 12 important moments in the history of the gay rights movement

lauraskitty

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Talking about transgender

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Christine Jorgensen, a former U.S. Army private, made headlines in the 1950s after having sex reassignment surgery and talking widely about her experience, one of the first people in the U.S. to do so. Her gender conversion began with hormone injections in 1950, when she was 24, and was completed in 1952 with surgery at the Danish State Hospital in Copenhagen.



Fighting back

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Early on June 28, 1969, New York police raided the Stonewall Inn, a gay club in Greenwich Village. The raid set off a riot among bar patrons and neighborhood residents as police roughed up customers, leading to six days of protests and clashes with police.

The Stonewall riots were a defining moment for the nascent gay rights movement and the reason behind June being chosen as Pride Month.




PFLAG is started

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The idea for PFLAG, which originally stood for Parents and Friends of Lesbians and Gays, began in 1972 when Jeanne Manford marched with her son, Morty, in New York's Christopher Street Liberation Day parade, the precursor to today's pride parades. In March 1973 the first meeting of what would become PFLAG was held.

The group went national as Parents, Families and Friends of Lesbians and Gays in 1982. Since 2014, PFLAG is no longer considered an acronym but rather the entire name of the organization.




Pride parades are born

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The first pride parade was held in New York on June 28, 1970, one year after the Stonewall raid on Christopher Street. A few thousand people took to the streets in New York, and gay activist groups on the West Coast held a march in Los Angeles and a march and gay-in in San Francisco. In Chicago people marched the day before New York and marked the Stonewall anniversary with a week of events.

Today, millions around the world march and rally for LGBTQ pride around the world, including in West Hollywood, pictured, which has one of the biggest and best-known pride events in the country.



Winning elected office

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Gays and lesbians also made strides in the 1970s by running for office. Kathy Kozachenko became the first openly LGBT American elected to public office when she won a seat on the Ann Arbor, Mich., City Council in 1974. Elaine Noble was the first openly gay candidate elected to a state office when she was elected to the Massachusetts legislature, also in 1974.

And Harvey Milk won a seat on the San Francisco Board of Supervisors in 1977. Milk was loud and unapologetic about his sexuality, earning widespread attention. His remarkable career was cut short when he was gunned down about a year after taking office.



Pop culture representation

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Billy Crystal, pictured in 1998, played one of the first openly gay characters in a recurring role on a prime-time television show on "Soap," which ran from 1977 to 1981.
 
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