1998
U.S: The Indigo Girls and Sarah McLachlan perform cameos on the Ellen show. * Circuit Noize magazine and the gay-travel newsletter Out & About call a boycott of the Cayman Islands. They’re angry that Cayman’s Minister of Tourism, Commerce and Transport, Thomas Jefferson, denied access to a Norwegian Cruise Lines/Atlantis Events gay cruise. * Gay writer Bruce Vilanch becomes head writer for a new Hollywood Squares series. * Betty DeGeneres, Ellen’s mom, stars in a 30-second ad urging parents to offer loving support to their gay children. * Carrie Hunter, a transsexual woman from San Francisco, commits suicide in the presence of Dr. Jack Kevorkian. Hunter suffered from AIDS-related complications. * Cuba: Pope John Paul visits AIDS patients. * Canada: Martin Dube, a Montreal man, files suit charging the province’s refusal to let him marry his Mexican lover violates Quebec’s Charter of Rights and Freedoms.
1993
U.S.: In San Francisco, the Dolores Street Baptist Church votes to withdraw as members of the Southern Baptist Convention because of their condemnation of homosexuality. * In Kansas City, Ka., a Federal district judge issues a restraining order that temporarily bars the U.S. Army from discharging lesbian officer Maj. Joyce Walmer. * The boycott of Colorado because of Amendment 2 continues with the National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences, the producers of the Grammy Awards, suspending all scheduled events in the state. * Oprah has a show about in-laws of gays and lesbians. * People magazine has a lengthy article about how AIDS has devastated the male figure-skating world. * k.d. lang tells the gay inaugural ball at the Press Club: ‘The best thing I ever did in my life was come out.’
1988
U.S.: Womanspace, a lesbian social and cultural organization in Philadelphia, is destroyed by an arson attack. * On the subject of AIDS and gay men, Anita Bryant says: ‘I’m never happy to see people in a death-style that is terminal.’ * Mexico: Issue No 15 of Macho Tips, a slick gay and lesbian magazine from Mexico City, is available. * Brazil: Luis Cardoso, a hemophiliac painter with AIDS, tells Metra newspaper that he is making a record of his suffering by producing paintings drawn with his own blood.
1983
U.S.: Howard Cruse’s comic strip ‘Wendel’ debuts in The Advocate. * Hollywood director George Cukor (My Fair Lady, A Star Is Born, The Philadelphia Story and Camille) dies in Los Angeles at age 83. * Nearly two years after the epidemic is first reported, a Centers for Disease Control report documents cases of AIDS passing from male to female. The press coverage results in the first stirrings of heterosexual panic. * Britain: Thirty-two men are arrested during a police raid on the Albion Sauna in Wallasey, near Liverpool.