June

June 1

June 1,1971 - London's underground newspaper, the International Times, loses its appeal of a recent conviction for indecency, for having run personal ads for gay men. The judge rules that while the acts may be legal, public encouragement of the acts is not.

 

June 1, 1975 - Drummer magazine debuts.

 

June 1, 1976 - West Virginia decriminalizes private consensual adult homosexual acts.

 

June 1, 1979 - Jerry Falwell forms The Moral Majority.

June 3

June 3, 1989 - The United States postal service issues the first "Lesbian and Gay Pride" postage stamp.

June 4 

June 4, 1979 - In Toronto the Gay Liberation Union establishes the first gay self-defense course in Canada. The program grew out of  increasing anti-gay violence on streets.

June 5 

June 5, 1981 - In Edmonton three employees and  five found-ins charged after police raided the Pisces Spa plead guilty in Provincial Court. The owners receive heavy fines.

June 6 

June 6 , 1979 - Toronto Teacher Don Franco is charged with being a keeper of a common bawdyhouse in his own home after a police raid found him in an orgy with a number of other men.  A year earlier Franco was arrested in a police raid at the Barracks baths and then released his name to the media.

June 7 

June 7, 1778 - Beau Brummell was born in London.  His real name was George Bryan Brummell.  It is possibly this English dandy who is responsible for the caricature of the gay males that persisted for  generations. He lived in the poshest apartments, wore the most stylish clothes, and had the most bitchy sense of humor.  Brummell died in an insane asylum hounded by his creditors.

 

June 7, 1977 -  A referendum, in Dade, County Florida, forced by pressure from fundamentalist Christians Anita Bryant, husband Bob Green and their "Save Our Children" organization, repeals the county ordinance prohibiting discrimination on basis of sexual orientation. It was the first major battle -- and defeat -- in struggle for gay civil rights in United States. It was also the first successful use of "child molestation tactic" by anti- gay forces  and set the pattern of attack for remainder of Seventies and into Eighties.

 

June 8

June 8, 19 75 - Members of the gay rights group GATE appear before a Parliamentary Committee in Toronto on  Immigration and call for dropping of all references to homosexuality in Immigration Act. 

June 9 

June 9, 1892 - Cole Porter is born in Peru, Indiana.  A snob and would-be aristocrat, Porter was one of America's best song writers. When Cary Grant played Porter in the film "Night and Day," no one it seemed bother to look in Porter's closet.   

June 10

June 10, 356 BCE - Alexander the Great died.

 

June 10, 1976 - West Virginia is the 16th state to repeal its sodomy laws.

 

June 10, 1977 - In Vancouver, the British Columbia Court of Appeal reverses a BC Supreme Court ruling favoring Gay Tide in a complaint against Vancouver Sun for refusing to run a classified ad by saying the Sun had "reasonable cause" not to print ad.

June 10, 2003 - The Ontario Court of Appeal strikes down Canada's ban on same-sex marriage. 

June 11

June 11, 1972 - The first issue of "The Other Woman" is produced. It is a combination of several feminist newspapers with the predominant input from lesbian feminists.

June 11-13,  1976, In  Kingston, Ontario, a convention of the New Democratic Party calls for the  inclusion of sexual orientation in human rights codes. It is the first time a major Canadian  political party accepts gay movement demands.

June 12

June 12, 1981 - A Provincial Court judge in Toronto finds two employees guilty and three owners not guilty of keeping common bawdyhouse. Charges relate to the Barracks steambath, raided by police December 9, 1978.

June 13

June 13, 1574 - Richard Banfield, the writer of the gay epic poem "The affectionate Shepherd" is baptized.

 

June 13, 1926 - Comedian Paul Lynde is born in Mt. Vernon, Ohio.  Asked on the original "Hollywood Squares"., "Why do motorcyclists wear leather?" Lynde answered, "Because chiffon wrinkles too easily."    

 

June 13, 1992 - The first White House liaison to the gay and lesbian community is named. Bill Clinton is president.

June 14

June 14, 427 BC - Philosopher Plato is born in Athens.  Platonic love today means love without sex.  For Plato it meant sex with young men.

 

June 14, 1972 - In  Montreal gay rights group FLH opens new gay center with a dance. Police raid  it and charge forty people for being found in an establishment selling liquor without permit. The charges were later dropped, but attendance falls at center. Organization folds within a few months.

 

June 15

June 15, 1843 - Composer Edvard Grieg was born in Bergen, Norway

 

June 15, 1982 - Provincial Court judge Thomas Mercer in Toronto acquits gay publisher,  Pink Triangle Press and its officers of immorality / indecency charges a second time. The charges involved an article in "The Body Politic" about oral sex. 

June 16

June 16-23, 1979 - In  Montreal the city's first major gay celebration, Gairilla Week, takes place.

 

June 16, 1981 -  Toronto Police raid two more bathhouses, arresting twenty-one men on bawdyhouse charges. Raided were the Back Door Gym and Sauna; and the International Steam Baths.

 

June 16, 1992 - Singer k.d. lang comes out in an interview with The Advocate.

June 17

June 17 1976 - In Toronto the Coalition for Gay Rights in Ontario presents brief The Homosexual Minority in Ontario to the Ontario Human Rights Commission.

June 18

June 18, 1970 - Jane Rule's second novel, This is Not For You, published (Doubleday Canada).

 

June 18,  1981 - The McDonald Amendment passes the U.S. House of Representatives. The amendment would bar the Legal Service Corporation from assisting in any case which seeks to "promote, defend or protect" homosexuality.

 

June 18, 1992 - The soap opera One Life to Live airs the first openly gay teen character. Billy Douglas, a high school student, tells his best friend, Joey Buchanan, that he is gay.

June 19

June 19, 1566 - King James I is born in Edinburgh Scotland. His father was gay, and murdered in bed with his lover.  James, responsible for the version of the bible which bears his name, confined his love to "heterosexual" men.

June 19, 1976 - Largest gay demonstration in Canada to date is organized in Montreal by Comité homosexuel anti- répression ( Gay Coalition Against Repression) to protest pre-Olympic "clean-up" raids on gay bars and baths.

June 19, 1979 - Metro Toronto Council calls on the city police commission to answer specific demands of gay community. Toronto City Council makes same request again June 25. Police commission does not act.

June 20

June 20, 1909 - Actor Errol Flynn is born in Hobart Tasmania.  One of the most handsome men to grace the big screen Flynn was also one of the horniest.  His conquests of both men and women is legendary.

June 20, 1977 - In  Ottawa, Private Barbara Thornborrow is given notice of discharge by Canadian Armed Forces as a "sexual deviate" who is "not advantageously employable."

June 20, 1981 - A Gay demonstration in Toronto, protesting bathhouse raids June 16, results in altercations with queer-bashers and police violence against demonstrators.

June 20-28, 1981 - In  Montreal the third annual Gay Pride Week (called "Gai-e lon la") draws nearly fifteen thousand lesbians and gay men. Coincides with La fête nationale.

June 21

June 21, 1922 - Actress Judy Holliday is born in New York.  Her real name was Judith Tuvim.  Her voice could etch glass and despite playing the dumb blonde in the movies, she is said to have had the IQ of a genius. Bisexual she played with just about everyone in Hollywood.  Sadly she died young of cancer. 

 

June 21 - July 3, 1980 - More than ten thousand gay men and lesbians participate in second annual Gairilla Week. The Gay celebration awarded grant by organizing committee of Quebec's national holiday, la fête nationale des Québécois.

June 22

June 22, 1910 - English tenor Peter Pears was born in Surrey, England.  He was the devoted lover of composer Benjamin Britten.

June 22, 1969 - Judy Garland dies barely two weeks after her 47th birthday. The official cause of death was listed as an accidental overdose of sleeping pills.

June 23

June 23, 1912 - Alan Turing was born near London .  Who? Turning designed some of the world's first computers, during WWII.  In the early 50's he experimented with artificial intelligence.  He committed suicide in 1954 and his colleagues believed it was the result of being blackmailed over his homosexuality.

June 23, 2001 - John Herbert, drag queen, pioneering gay playwright and "mordant gadfly" of the Canadian theatre scene in the 1960s and 70s, dies at his Toronto home. He was 74 and had been ill for a month after undergoing a biopsy for prostate cancer Herbert was best known as the author of Fortune and Men's Eyes, his 1964 play that mercilessly exposed the homosexual reality of prison culture

June 24

June 24, 1976  -Gay activist Stuart Russell, along with four others, are fired from COJO (Olympic organizing committee) in Montreal for political activity and sexual orientation.

June 24 1980 - In Vancouver the Gay Alliance Toward Equality (GATE), one of Canada's oldest and most active gay rights organizations, announces dissolution.

June 25

June 25, 1977 - The newly formed Coalition to Stop Anita Bryant organizes demonstration in Toronto. It is the first of several coalitions and public actions across Canada reacting to Bryant's anti-gay crusade.

June 26

June 26, 1969 - A group of New York drag queens organize a memorial for the next night  for Judy Garland who died several days earlier.  Little did they know the wake would turn into a riot and give birth to the gay liberation movement.

June 26, 2003 - The US Supreme Court strikes down sodomy laws and rules gays have a right to equal protection under the law.

June 27 

June 27, 1969 - Gay customers fight back during police raid on Greenwich Village gay bar called Stonewall Inn. Symbolic beginning of contemporary gay liberation movement.

June 27, 1972 - Gay News debuts as England's first national gay magazine.

 

June 27-30 1975  - In Ottawa, the National Gay Rights Conference sees the formation of National Gay Rights Coalition.. It was disbanded two years later: see Jun 27, 1980.

 

June 27 - July 2, 1979 - Celebration '79, the seventh annual conference of lesbians and gay men. It is officially opened by Ottawa Mayor Marian Dewar, who proclaims June 27 "Human Rights Day."

 

June 27, 1980 - July 1 - In  Calgary, Celebration '80, the eighth annual conference of lesbians and gay men, disbands the moribund Canadian Lesbian and Gay Rights Coalition. Proposals are made to form more limited group aimed at lobbying federal government. The lobby group, the Canadian Association of Lesbians and Gay Men (CALGM), was tentatively set up at the conference  but the group faded from view by early 1981.

June 28

June 28, 1978 - July 4 - Sixth National Gay Conference is hosted by the Gay Alliance for Equality in Halifax. At this meeting the National Gay Rights Coalition changed its names to the Canadian Lesbian and Gay Rights Coalition. 

June 28, 1970 - First gay pride march is held (in New York), in honor of the first anniversary of the Stonewall Riots.

June 28, 2000 - US Supreme Court rules the Boy Scouts of America can discriminate against gays and bisexuals saying it is a private organization and not bound by local human rights laws..

June 29

June 29, 1977  - A Gallup Poll shows that 52 percent of Canadians believe gay people should be protected against discrimination under new Canadian Human Rights Act.

June 29, 1977  - July 5, 1977  - The Fifth Annual National Gay Rights Conference sponsored by Saskatoon Gay Community Center.

June 29 1972 - Gays demonstrate at Queen's Park (site of Ontario legislature in Toronto) to protest the omission of sexual orientation from amendments to Ontario Human Rights Code then being considered by legislature. It is the first public gay action around rights code reform.

June 30

June 30 1973 - First lesbian conference in Canada held at the YWCA in Toronto.

June 30, 1981 - The  Moncton, New Brunswick City council passes a last-minute amendment to a bylaw to prevent a gay picnic from taking place in Centennial Park to celebrate Canada Day. A group of gay people hold picnic anyway.