It was the first large-scale LGBTQ political demonstration in Chicago.Īfter the three-hour protest, some of the marchers headed over to Pioneer Court outside Tribune Tower to protest a series of inflammatory, questionably sourced articles co-written by then a Tribune reporter Michael Sneed (now of the Sun-Times) that purported to link a child pornography ring to the gay community in Chicago.Ĭoverage of the anti-Bryant rally made the Tribune's front page. "The gays were noisy but peaceful," a police spokesman told the Tribune, though eight demonstrators were arrested. The vote to repeal the law happened on June 7, 1977. The law prohibited discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation in employment, public service, and accommodations. The concert had been booked months earlier before Bryant achieved new national notoriety as the leader of an anti-LGBTQ initiative in Dade County, Florida, where citizens voted to overturn an anti-discrimination ordinance that had been passed by the county commission earlier that year. The expression of solidarity inspired more and more Chicagoans to rally around the issue of gay rights, and the following year's PRIDE Parade saw a dramatic surge in attendance.Ī demonstrator is arrested in front of the Medinah Temple on June 14, 1977, while anti-gay crusader Anita Bryant gives a concert inside. What transpired that day was an important moment for Chicago's LGBTQ community - 5,000 individuals showed up at Medinah Temple (now a Bloomingdale's outlet store at Wabash and Ohio) to picket the event. JAnita Bryant landed in Chicago to perform at an event for Shriners Children's Hospital. The coalition's efforts were successful, and on June 7, Miami area voters took a step backward, reversing the decision. She took to the airwaves with her newly founded Save Our Children organization, a coalition devoted to repealing the act that banned housing and employment discrimination based on sexual orientation. June 1977 - The nation saw former Miss America Anita Bryant – the seemingly good-natured woman who tried to sell them orange juice in Tropicana commercials – initiate a hostile "anti-homosexual" media campaign across the country.īryant was outraged at a Dade County, Florida decision to protect sexual orientation as a civil right and vowed to aggressively pursue its repeal. Gay men and lesbians fight back over four days in what has come to be called the Stonewall Rebellion and was seen as the watershed event that triggered the gay liberation movement. JNew York City police raid the Stonewall, a gay bar on Christopher Street in Greenwich Village, the sixth gay bar to be raided in Manhattan in three weeks.
The Motion Picture Association of America lifts its ban on gay themes in movies to allow "Advise and Consent" to be shown, but negative attitudes toward homosexuality are still evident since the story has the gay character in the movie commit suicide. June 1961 - Illinois becomes the first state to decriminalize homosexual acts between consenting adults in private. The organization, started by an itinerant preacher and laundry, railway and postal workers, publishes two issues of a journal before being shut down after the wife of one of the directors learns about the group and calls the Chicago police.ĭecember 1950 - As part of the era of McCarthyism, gay men and lesbians are added to the list of people considered security risks, and a purge of government agencies and the military begins. in Chicago and received an Illinois state charter.
LGBTQ communities:ĭecemThe first gay rights group in the United States is founded at 1710 Crilly Ct.
Highlights of the history of the development of the U.S.