1998U.S.: Thousands of women go to Hart, to attend the Michigan Womyn’s Music Festival. * Cheryl Dunne’s movie The Watermelon Woman airs on the Sundance Channel. * San Francisco’s Bay Area Reporter reports that for the first time in 17 years there were no obits in this week’s issue. * The Morning After circuit party on Fire Island—to raise funds for the Gay Men’s Health crisis—claims one life and sends three other men to the hospital with drug overdoses. * Two hundred Log Cabin Republicans gather in Dallas for their annual convention. The focus was on strategizing through the year 2000, honoring supporters to the cause of equality, and premiering the video On the Front Lines. * Kenya: President Daniel arap Moi tells the Daily Nation newspaper: ‘Kenya has no room or time for homosexuals and lesbians.’ * Ireland: Gay protestors in Belfast heckle U.S. House Speaker Newt Gingrich as he visits a Habitat for Humanity housing project.
1993U.S.: Red Hot & Country is released by the Red Hot Organization, who donate the proceeds from albums to AIDS programs. * In Houston, three ACT UP members are acquitted of disorderly conduct charges filed after they staged a protest during last year’s Republican National Convention. * J.B. Mologhan, head nurse at the outpatient AIDS ward at San Francisco General Hospital, comments on the 10th anniversary of the hospital’s AIDS program: ‘We didn’t think it would be a long-term arrangement. We thought there’d be a cure in a couple of years.’ * President Clinton and Colorado Gov. Roy Romer greet Pope John Paul II when he flies into Denver. Few gay-rights protesters show up. * Boy George in The Advocate says: ‘If clogs can make a comeback, why can’t I?’
1988U.S.: Gay and Lesbian VOICE ’88, the coalition of gay/lesbian groups at the Republican Convention in New Orleans, zap Ronald Reagan, George Bush, Dan Quayle and Phyllis Schlafly. * The 13th Annual Michigan Womyn’s Music Festival takes place in Hart, Mich. Highlights included Alix Dobkin, Teresa Trull and Toshi Reagon. * Blue Heaven by Joe Keenan is in bookstores. * Mexico: Tijuana, in the Mexican state of Baja California, has its first lesbian bar. Das Bierhaus is run by lesbian businesswoman ‘Bertha’ who is also a prominent member of La Comision Lesbica International en Tijuana. * Brazil: The Grupo Gay de Bahia (GGB), the gay activist group in the city of Salvador, in the State of Bahia in northeast Brazil, reports that a rash of murders throughout the country continues. GGB details the names, ages, occupations, and manner of death of 278 gay victims so far.
1983U.S.: Popular porn videos include: Hot Shots starring Casey Donovan, Lou Davis and Rick Madison, and California Boys starring J.W. King. * The police say there are no suspects in a string of eight remarkably similar gay-related murders in Indiana and Illinois. Most were in their early 20s; the youngest was 14 and the oldest 27, and all lacked so-called defensive wounds, indicating that they did not struggle with their attacker. Larry Eyler is later arrested. * In Watertown, Mass., Persephone Press, a lesbian-feminist publishing house, folds due to financial difficulties. They have been operating since 1976. * In Tulsa, Okla., city officials drain and disinfect a swimming pool after a gay organization holds a pool party in it, following calls from from several residents who feared catching AIDS.
* Luguna Beach, Calif., becomes the nation’s second city to elect an openly gay mayor. He is Bob Gentry. The other openly gay mayor is in Bunceton, Mo.