1998U.S.: Merrill Lynch offers domestic-partnership benefits to lesbigay employees beginning in 1999. * A Harris poll finds 52% of American adults favor laws that make it illegal to discriminate against gays. * Rolling Stone contains an in-depth article about queer youth. * Joan Jett talks about her lesbian fan base in Girlfriends magazine. * Our Own Community Press, a 22-year-old gay paper in West Virginia, closes down declaring bankruptcy. * New Zealand: In Hamilton, a lesbian who had three children via artificial insemination while with her ex-lover will receive child support payments from the woman, a family Court rules.
1993U.S.: A bill extending spousal health benefits to the domestic partners of gay, lesbian, and unmarried heterosexual city employees is approved 8-7 by the Atlanta City Council. * Garbage collectors in Nueces County, Texas, refuse to use a demo version of the $81,000 state-of-the-art trash collection truck that county beach-services director Chris Lawrence had ordered. The problem? It’s pink. * Lettie Conrad and a dozen or so other women hold a topless car wash in Santa Cruz, Calif., to raise funds to produce an erotic safe-sex calendar for lesbians and female bisexuals. * The Boston Coalition for Freedom of Expression, a civil-rights group, predicting dire consequences if Oliver North prevails in his current senatorial bid, says: ‘If he wins in 1994, the citizens of Virginia will find themselves represented in the U.S. Senate by a Ken doll from hell.’ * Norway: Wenche Lowzow and Kim Friele become the first lesbian couple to be legally married in Oslo under a Norwegian law that allows same-sex marriages.
1988U.S.: Sarah Schulman talks about her novel After Dolores with GayLife: ‘So we’ve heard endless stories of a guy who gets off the Greyhound bus with a suitcase full of dreams and makes his way to Broadway and lives in a dinky tenement house and downstairs is Mr. Caterina who lived there for 35 years. This is Mr. Caterina’s story.’ * After touring the country, the NAMES Project quilt returns home to San Francisco, just in time for its 1st birthday. * The Object Of My Affection by Stephen McCauley is No. 1 on the Gay Bestsellers List at Unabridged Books.
1983U.S.: The 8th International Conference of Gay and Lesbian Jews takes place in Miami, Fla. * Twenty-seven-year-old James Roe pleads guilty to the 1981 abduction, and attempted ‘deprogramming,’ of Stephanie Reithmiller, after her parents, who thought their daughter was a lesbian, paid Roe and two accomplices $8,000 to ‘deprogram’ their daughter. Roe gets 40 days in prison. * In spite of protests from fundamentalist Christian groups, the 8th annual National Reno Gay Rodeo opens to an estimated crowd of 20,000 people. * In a Newsweek poll, 76% of Americans say they have no friends or acquaintances who are homosexual. * The sequel to Saturday Night Fever, Stayin’ Alive, is panned by the critics, but gay men flock to see the new pumped-up John Travolta. * In Manchester, N.H., all three candidates for the mayoral seat agree that there should be no gay bars in the city. Incumbent Mayor Emile Beaulieu says: ‘I’m against it. I think it’s very wrong, and I hate to see it in our community.’ Fern Gelinas, a challenger, says: ‘They should be outlawed. We have to make sure that (homosexual bars) are not going to be a part of the scene in Manchester.’ While Robert Pariseau says: ‘I suppose the liquor commission cannot discriminate, but I would highly recommend the commission look at the rules and regulations allowing these clubs to exist.’