An NYPD officer grabs a youth by the hair as another officer clubs a young man during a confrontation in Greenwich Village after a Gay Power march in New York. A year earlier, the June 1969 uprising by young gays, lesbians and transgender people in New York City, clashing with police near the Stonewall Inn, was a vital catalyst in expanding LGBT activism nationwide and abroad.
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Demonstrators carry signs of, from left, Adolf Hitler, Anita Bryant, the Ku Klux Klan and Idi Amin, chanting “Human rights now,” during the annual Gay Freedom Day March in San Francisco on June 26, 1977. Bryant, an anti-gay activist, led a successful campaign to overturn a Miami-Dade County ordinance outlawing discrimination against homosexuals in 1977.
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San Francisco Supervisor Harvey Milk, left, and Mayor George Moscone sit together in the mayor’s office during the signing of the city’s gay rights bill in April 1977. Milk was the first openly gay elected official in the history of California. On November 27, 1978, Milk and Mayor Moscone were assassinated by Dan White.
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A march sponsored by the National Gay Task Force goes past the White House in Washington in support of a federal ban on discrimination against gays in federal jobs on Oct. 14, 1979. This was the first national gay rights march in the capital.
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Rock Hudson is pictured in Los Angeles, California, in August 1982. The 1980s proved shattering, but also galvanizing for gay Americans during the AIDS epidemic. Many thousands of gay men died, including Hudson. His death played a major role in raising public awareness of the disease.
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Mourners embrace each other next to the casket of AIDS patient David Thurmond during his funeral service in Houston on March 11, 1991.
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The AIDS Memorial Quilt, a memorial to celebrate the lives of people who have died of AIDS-related causes, is displayed on Oct. 10, 1992.
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President Bill Clinton salutes sailors aboard the USS Eisenhower as he arrived to thank the troops for their role in Operation Restore Democracy at the Norfolk Naval Base in Norfolk, Virginia, on Oct. 6, 1994. Clinton’s “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy prohibited gay men and women from serving openly in the armed forces. After prolonged controversy and litigation, Congress repealed the policy in 2010.
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Ellen DeGeneres, left, and her companion, Anne Heche, leave the Human Rights Campaign national dinner in Washington after DeGeneres received her civil rights award. President Clinton spoke earlier at the dinner, before the nation’s largest lesbian and male homosexual group, becoming the first president to appear before such an audience.
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University of Wyoming student Matthew Shepard was tied and pistol whipped into a coma in Laramie, Wyoming, in 1998 and later died. The murder of Shepard was a watershed moment for gay rights and LGBTQ acceptance in the US.
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Rep. Barney Frank speaks at a gay rights rally aimed at ending discrimination based on sexual orientation in Tallahassee, Florida, on March 21, 1999. In 1987, Frank publicly came out as gay, the first member of Congress to do so.
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Gene Robinson is applauded after his investiture as the Episcopal Church’s bishop of New Hampshire at St. Paul’s Church in Concord, New Hampshire on March 7, 2004. Robinson was the first openly gay bishop in the Episcopal Church.
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Same-sex couple Del Martin, left, and Phyllis Lyon exchange rings as they are married by San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom in a private ceremony at San Francisco City Hall on June 16, 2008. Martin and Lyon were the first couples to be married in San Francisco as same-sex marriages become legal in California.
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Richie Beanan, of Los Angeles, puts a sign on a bus that will tour California in support of Proposition 8 after a rally in Sacramento, California, on Oct. 20, 2008. California voters passed proposition 8 that November, eliminating the right for same-sex couples to marry.
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Merit badges and a rainbow-colored neckerchief slider are pictured on the Boy Scout uniform of Pascal Tessier, 17, a gay Eagle Scout, on May 21, 2014, as he speaks in front of a group of scouts and leaders outside Amazon headquarters in Seattle. The group delivered a petition urging Amazon to stop donating money to the Boy Scouts due to the organization’s policy of excluding openly gay adults from leadership positions, despite recently accepting gay youth as scouts.
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Same-sex marriage supporters rejoice after the US Supreme Court in Washington DC handed down a ruling regarding same-sex marriage June 26, 2015. The high court ruled same-sex couples have the right to marry in all 50 states.
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People gather in Lafayette Park to see the White House illuminated with rainbow colors in commemoration of the Supreme Court’s ruling to legalize same-sex marriage in Washington on June 26, 2015. President Barack Obama, who was inside, said a few days later, “To see people gathered in the evening outside on a beautiful summer night, and to feel whole and to feel accepted, and to feel that they had a right to love — that was pretty cool.”
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Rowan County Clerk Kim Davis, right, talks with David Moore following her office’s refusal to issue marriage licenses at the Rowan County Courthouse in Morehead, Kentucky, on Sept. 1, 2015. Although her appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court was denied, Davis still refused to issue marriage licenses.
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A woman writes a note on a cross for Eric Ivan Ortiz-Rivera at a memorial with wooden crosses for each of the 49 victims of the Pulse Nightclub on June 17, 2016 in Orlando, Florida. The shooting at Pulse Nightclub, which left 49 people dead and 53 others injured, is the deadliest incident of violence against LGBT people in US history.
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Pete Buttigieg is joined by husband Chasten Glezman before announcing he will seek the Democratic presidential nomination during a rally in South Bend, Indiana, on April 14, 2019. Buttigieg is the first openly gay major candidate for the Democratic presidential nomination.
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A framed New York Post clipping about the 1969 riots that followed a police raid of the gay bar hangs inside the Stonewall Inn on June 14, 2019,
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NYPD Commissioner James O’Neill, left, and Deputy Commissioner John Miller, right, hold a press conference in New York on June 6, 2019 in which O’Neill apologized for the 1969 police raid at the Stonewall Inn, which catalyzed the modern LGBT rights movement.
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Pride flags and colors are displayed on the Stonewall Inn on June 3, 2019, marking the site of 1969 riots that followed a police raid of the bar’s gay patrons.
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