1998U.S.: Exodus International, the sponsors of a full-page New York Times anti-gay ad. were surprised to find the ad contained the wrong toll-free number. An Alabama electrical contractor received many calls from angry gays. * John (To Wong Foo … ) Leguizamo’s one man show, Freak, closes on Broadway. * Bobbie Kerns, a transgender candidate, wins the Democratic primary in Indiana’s 6th Congressional district. * Spain: The parliament of the country’s Catalonia region passes a law that gives cohabiting gay and straight couples many of the rights of matrimony but withholds adoption rights for gays. * Romania: The Chamber of Deputies votes against full legalization of homosexuality.
1993U.S.: Singer/songwriter Janis Ian ‘comes out’ with the release of her new album Breaking The Silence. * Coretta Scott King, widow of Martin Luther King Jr, supports the lifting of the ban on gays in the military, saying: “The arguments that have been raised in favor of the ban are the same arguments that were so often raised against racial integration in the past.” * Patricia Ireland, who has a lesbian lover and a heterosexual marriage, is elected as president of the National Organization of Women. * The front page of The New Yorker depicts a cartoon of a drag queen shaving in a military barracks, and is accompanied by an article opposing the Pentagon’s ban on gays and lesbians. * Back To Broadway by Barbra Streisand is in stores. * The Body Shop, a New Jersey-based nationwide chain of personal-care shops, introduces a new men’s cologne called ‘Activist.’ The firm says it wants to prove that ‘men’s grooming doesn’t have to be a drag.’
1988U.S.: The 9th Annual Conference for the Gay and Lesbian Parents Coalition International takes place in Columbus, Ohio. * Rock singer Ted Nugent, explaining why he doesn’t worry about AIDS, in Music Connection: “I’ve never hung around with pigs, and I can’t imagine any girl I’ve ever touched being downwind of a faggot or a dope user, so I’m not worried about it. My girls are real clean, and most of ’em are real young, so no problem.” * A Michigan gay rights group and 12 individuals, both gay and heterosexual, file a suit to overturn the state’s sodomy and gross indecency statutes, on the grounds that they violate the state’s constitution.
1983U.S.: Seattle Archbishop Raymond G. Hunthausen is the first Roman Catholic archbishop in history to address a secular gay audience of some 150 members of the gay organization the Dorian Group. * The gay P Street Wildlife Association in Washington, D.C., enters the National Park Service’s ‘Adopt-a-Park’ program, and have taken over the maintenance and rehabilitation of P Street Beach, a popular gay sunbathing area. * David Mapes, 28, from Cleveland, is sentenced to death for the slaying of John Allen, the owner of two gay bars. * In a presentation to the 6th World Congress of Sexology in Washington D.C., Dr Mary S. Calderone, a professor in the New York Sexuality Program states that the male fetus has an erection every five hours, about the same rate as a sleeping adult. * The Conservative Digest publish the results of their third annual poll of most admired conservatives in Congress. Top billing is shared between Jesse Helms, R-N.C., and Rep. Larry McDonald, D-Ga., who was recently heard to remark that AIDS victims should raise their own research funds. * Australia: In Sydney, Club 80, a gay bar raided twice in January and February by the city’s vice squad, is closed down for being a ‘disorderly house’ by the New South Wales Supreme Court.