ALONE WE'RE A DROP OF WATER – TOGETHER A MIGHTY RIVER
The first Southern Comfort Conference was held. The Southern Comfort Conference is a major transgender conference that takes place annually in Atlanta, Georgia. It is the largest, most famous, and pre-eminent such conference in the United States.
On December 1, 1955, African American seamstress Rosa Parks was traveling in a Montgomery City bus when the bus driver asked her to vacate her seat for a white man. The driver’s request was standard practice of racial segregation in buses at the time. Rosa Parks refused to leave her seat on the grounds of fairness, freedom and equality. As a result, she was arrested and convicted of violating the laws of segregation, known as the “Jim Crow” laws. She appealed her conviction and formally challenged the legality of segregation. At the same time, civil rights activists, including Martin Luther King Jr, boycotted the Montgomery bus system.
The boycott lasted for 381 days, into December 1956, when the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that the segregation law was unconstitutional and the Montgomery buses should be integrated. This boycott kick-started other civil rights protests throughout the U.S. Over the years, the Rosa Parks bus has become a symbol of the fight for equal rights. It has been fully restored and is now displayed in the Henry Ford Museum. Rosa Parks’ Day, on February 4, is also known as the Day of Courage.
The first lesbian kiss on television occurred in 1991; it was on L.A. Law between the fictional characters of C.J. Lamb (played by Amanda Donohoe) and Abby (Michele Greene).
Marcella Di Folco – world’s first openly transgender person to be elected for an administrative role, as municipal Councillor in Bologna, Italy 1990.
Denmark 1989 – first country to legally recognize same-sex registered partnership.
Dallas S. Drake – first openly gay firefighter (Fire Motor Operator) in 1989 in the upper Midwest (Burnsville Fire Department, Burnsville, Minnesota).
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.
Becky Smith and Annie Afleck became the first openly lesbian couple in America granted legal, joint adoption of a child.[
Matthew Shepard was taken from this world to soon. His journey will never be forgotten. On the date of his passing we honer him and others who have been taken from us.
Matthew Wayne Shepard (December 1, 1976 – October 12, 1998) was an American student at the University of Wyoming who was beaten, tortured, and left to die near Laramie on the night of October 6, 1998. He was taken by rescuers to Poudre Valley Hospital in Fort Collins, Colorado, where he died six days later from severe head injuries.
Aaron McKinney and Russell Henderson were arrested shortly after the attack and charged with first-degree murder following Shepard’s death. Significant media coverage was given to the killing and to what role Shepard’s sexual orientation played as a motive in the commission of the crime. The prosecutor argued that McKinney’s murder of Shepard was premeditated and driven by greed. McKinney’s defense counsel countered that he had intended only to rob Shepard but had killed him in a rage when Shepard made a sexual advance toward him. McKinney’s girlfriend told police that he had been motivated by anti-gay sentiment but later recanted her statement, saying that she had lied because she thought it would help him. Both McKinney and Henderson were convicted of the murder, and each received two consecutive life sentences.
Shepard’s murder brought national and international attention to hate crime legislation at the state and federal levels. In October 2009, the United States Congress passed the Matthew Shepard and James Byrd Jr. Hate Crimes Prevention Act (commonly the “Matthew Shepard Act” or “Shepard/Byrd Act” for short), and on October 28, 2009, President Barack Obama signed the legislation into law. Following her son’s murder, Judy Shepard became a prominent LGBT rights activist and established the Matthew Shepard Foundation. Shepard’s death inspired films, novels, plays, songs, and other works.
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.