Researching LGBTQ DC

On November 6, 2012, a referendum on Maryland's marriage equality law was upheld by voters. Fifty years ago sodomy laws made lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender relationships illegal—defined by authorities at that time as sexual perversion. LGBT individuals were routinely arrested, fired from employment from both the federal government and private employers and condemned as mentally ill by psychiatrists. A few images from the early battles…

An anonymous flyer, probably produced by one or more members of the D.C. Gay Liberation Front, reprints a gay revolution party manifesto that originally appeared in Ecstasy, Issue 2, 1970.

Kameny was fired from his job at the Army Map Service in 1957 after he was arrested in Lafayette Park—then a gay male cruising location. The Civil Service fired him as a “sexual pervert.”

The fight for equality for lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people took a dark turn in 1981 when the HIV/AIDS epidemic was identified.

Images related to Joe Acanfora's struggle to be a public school teacher in Pennsylvania and Maryland in the early 1970s.

Pauli Murray was a pioneering black, female lesbian activist who worked primarily for civil rights, but broke a number of barriers throughout her life.

Photos of a rally and picket lines in support of the "October 11 Brothers" and for better prison conditions on September 8, 1973. Includes photos of Robert Anthony Martin Jr., (later known as Stephen Donaldson) a gay rights activist.