ALONE WE'RE A DROP OF WATER – TOGETHER A MIGHTY RIVER
1978 Robin Tyler became the first out lesbian on U.S. national television, appearing on a Showtime comedy special hosted by Phyllis Diller. The same year she released her comedy album, Always a Bridesmaid, Never a Groom, the first comedy album by an out lesbian.
The San Francisco Lesbian/Gay Freedom Band was founded by Jon Reed Sims in 1978 as the San Francisco Gay Freedom Day Marching Band and Twirling Corp. Upon its founding in 1978, it became the first openly gay musical group in the world.
The first lesbian mystery novel in America was published: Angel Dance, 1977 by Mary F. Beal.
The TV show Soap in 1977 becomes the first sitcom to feature an openly gay character, Jodie Dallas played by Billy Crystal. Subsequently, Crystal becomes the first actor to play an openly gay character on a primetime TV Show.
Minneapolis became the first city in the United States to pass trans-inclusive civil rights protection legislation in 1975.
Angela Morley became the first openly transgender person to be nominated for an Academy Award, when she was nominated for one in the category of Best Music, Original Song Score/Adaptation for The Little Prince (1974), a nomination shared with Alan Jay Lerner, Frederick Loewe, and Douglas Gamley.
1973 Sally Miller Gearhart became the first open lesbian to obtain a tenure-track faculty position when she was hired by San Francisco State University, where she helped establish one of the first women and gender study programs in the country
Gilbert Baker raised the first Rainbow Flag at San Francisco Pride on June 25, 1978.
A Quaker group, the Committee of Friends on Bisexuality, issued the 1972 “Ithaca Statement on Bisexuality”, the first public declaration of the bisexual movement and the first statement on bisexuality issued by an American religious assembly.
1972 Hawaii would become the first state to decriminalize consensual homosexual sex acts between adults, while Delaware became the sixth state in the nation to repeal its sodomy law.