Marcella Di Folco – world’s first openly transgender person to be elected for an administrative role, as municipal Councillor in Bologna, Italy 1990.
Bologna, Italy
Recognition
Denmark 1989 – first country to legally recognize same-sex registered partnership.
Firefighter
Dallas S. Drake – first openly gay firefighter (Fire Motor Operator) in 1989 in the upper Midwest (Burnsville Fire Department, Burnsville, Minnesota).
First Nationwide Bisexual Gathering
A group of 75 bisexuals marched in the 1987 March On Washington For Gay and Lesbian Rights, which was the first nationwide bisexual gathering. The article “The Bisexual Movement: Are We Visible Yet?“, by Lani Ka’ahumanu, appeared in the official Civil Disobedience Handbook for the March. It was the first article about bisexuals and the emerging bisexual movement to be published in a national lesbian or gay publication.
Joint Adoption
Becky Smith and Annie Afleck became the first openly lesbian couple in America granted legal, joint adoption of a child.[
Saturday Night Live
In 1985 Terry Sweeney became Saturday Night Live‘s first openly gay male cast member; Sweeney was “out” prior to being hired as a cast member.
Sally Ride
Sally Ride first went into space in 1983. In 2012, she died, and her obituary revealed that Ride’s partner of 27 years was a woman, Tam O’Shaughnessy, a professor emerita of school psychology at San Diego State University and childhood friend, who met Ride when both were aspiring tennis players. Ride had also been married to a man previously. Ride is thus the first and only known LGBT astronaut.
Randy Shilts
Randy Shilts was hired in 1981 as a national correspondent by the San Francisco Chronicle, becoming “the first openly gay reporter with a gay ‘beat’ in the American mainstream press.”
Billie Jean King
Tennis player Billie Jean King became the first prominent professional athlete to come out as a lesbian, when her relationship with her secretary Marilyn Barnett became public in a May 1981 “palimony” lawsuit filed by Barnett. Due to this she lost all of her endorsements
TAO
In the early 1970’s Angela Douglas founded TAO (Transsexual/Transvestite Action Organization), which published the Moonshadow and Mirage newsletters. TAO moved to Miami in 1972, where it came to include several Puerto Rican and Cuban members, and soon grew into the first international transgender community organization.