The rainbow flag was first used in 1978 at the San Francisco Gay Freedom Day parade, but was truly established as the symbol for LGBTQIA+ pride in 1994 with a mile-long version being used for the 25th anniversary of the Stonewall riots. Now you may be asking, where does the rainbow flag come into it? Gay Pride has exapnded ever since and is now an important month in the yearly calendar, symbolised by not just the rainbow flag, but also by thousands upon thousands of people celebrating being themselves. Celebrations then spread across America to LA, San Francisco, Boston and Chicago and eventually to Canada, Britain, Australasia and Europe. Three years later in 1970, the first Gay Pride Week happened in New York and thousands of people attended. The riots came from a long period of police harassment of homosexual people and resulted in the formation of the Gay Liberation Front (GLF) and the Gay Activists Alliance (GAA) amongst others, two radical groups that actively fought for improved rights. Coinciding with this came the launch of The Beaumont Society, the longest running support group for transgender people.ĭespite the slow pivot towards an attitude change to the LGBTQIA+ community, there was still a lot of work to do and years of resentment and anger boiled over, leading to the Stonewall Riots (named after a prominent LGBTQIA+ bar in Greenwich Village) in New York in 1969. The Wolfenden Report in 1957 began a turn to a more positive view on homosexuality by recommending that homosexual behavious between consenting adults should no longer be considered a criminal offence, which 10 years later was written into the Sexual Offences Act 1967.
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In 1951, Roberta Cowell was the first transgender women to undergo surgery to transition from male to female. Michael Dillon, in his book Self: A Study in Endocrinology, detailed the transition of (arguably) the first transgender man from Laura to Michael. Jump forward to 1946 and transgender identities were starting to become visible. The Act made ANY male homosexual act illegal, even if the act happened in private (which could include a letter between two males expressing terms of affection) and famous poet and playwright Oscar Wilde was punished under these laws.įemale homosexuality wasn’t targeted by the above or any other legislation, as it was widely assumed that rates of lesbianism were extremely low and the government of the time feared that legislating would lead to experimentation between women and increase the rates. These restrictions were further increased by an amendment to The Criminal Law Amendment Act 1885. The death penalty wasn’t abolished until 1861 with the Offences Against the Person Act, that changed the punishment for homosexual acts to a minimum of 10 years imprisonment. In 1533, King Henry VIII’s parliament passed an act that targeted male homosexuality for persecution in the UK, punishable by death. The restrictions on homosexual relationships used to be very harsh.
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Gay rights haven’t always been as accepted and open as they are today, however there’s still work to do even now.Īs part of our focus on Pride this month, we begin with a history of gay rights and pride in the UK.
June is national Pride Month, a month dedicated to celebrating LGBTQIA+ communities around the world.