November 11 - National
NBC airs An Early Frost, a TV movie of the week, featuring Aidan Quinn as a Chicago attorney who goes home to tell his parents that he is gay and has AIDS. It is the first major film that deals with the subject of AIDS.
June 1 - National
The Dead Milkmen in their debut album, recorded a song called "Serrated Edge" that features numerous absurd references to Charles Nelson Reilly as a Jesus figure and orgy centerpiece. Charles was a well known comedian and television personality who came out publicly in a one man show called “Save It For The Stage”.
April 1 - New York
The Hetrick-Martin Institute opens the Harvey Milk School for 20 openly gay and lesbian teens in the basement of a Greenwich Village church. The city founded high school provides a refuge place for LGBT students, many of whom have dropped out of their schools to escape abuse and harassment.
Paul Cameron
The Family Research Institute
President Ronald Reagan
January 1 – Virginia
The Richmond Virginia Gay and Lesbian Alliance is led by Guy Kinman and sponsors a billboard project, with several billboards around town that say, “Someone you know is gay, maybe someone you love…”
January 1 – California
Christian Haren, the Marlboro Man, after being diagnosed with HIV formed "The Wedge", a "safe sex" AIDS prevention organization for teens in San Francisco.
January 1 – New York
In response to the New York Post’s defamatory and sensationalized HIV/AIDS coverage, the Gay & Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation (now known as GLAAD) is formed to pressure media organizations to end homophobic reporting.
November 1 - National
The NAMES Project memorial quilt for AIDS victims is launched.
June 16 - Illinois
In a Chicago Sun Times article about lesbians in sport, Penn State Women’s basketball coach Rene Portland is quoted, “I will not have it (lesbianism) on my teams.” Portland’s hostility toward actual and perceived lesbians becomes notorious in women’s college basketball.
Founders for the Harvey Milk School for LGBT students
April 1 - National
The movie “My beautiful launderette” is released. In a seedy corner of London, Omar, a young Pakistani, is given a run-down laundromat by his uncle, who hopes to turn it into a successful business. Soon after, Omar is attacked by a group of racist punks, but defuses the situation when he realizes their leader is his former lover, Johnny. The men resume their relationship and rehabilitate the laundromat together, but various social forces threaten to compromise their success.
June 15 - National
Three gay men, Pat Coleman, Jaye Evans, and Jim Heverly, launch the first issue of Etcetera Magazine. Before its 10th anniversary, it becomes the Southeast’s largest lesbian and gay publication.
January 1 - Alaska
A court for the first time allows a non-biological mother to adopt the biological child of her female partner. The ruling, in Alaska, also allows the biological father to maintain a relationship with the child.
June 1 - National
The 15th General Synod of the United Church of Christ passes a resolution a policy on nondiscrimination in employment, volunteer service and membership policies with regard to sexual orientation, and encourages the congregations of the UCC to adopt a nondiscrimination policy and a Covenant of Openness and Affirmation of persons of lesbian, gay and bisexual orientation within the community of faith.
October 2 - California
Rock Hudson announces that he has AIDS. He dies later the same year.
January 1 – Colorado
Addressing the annual Conservative Political Action Conference, Paul Cameron uses the AIDS crisis to suggest that “the extermination of homosexuals” might become necessary. The following year, Colorado’s Summit Ministries will publish Special Report: AIDS. Co-authored by Cameron, the popular pamphlet blames gay men for the epidemic and calls for a national crackdown on homosexuals. Through his organization “The Family Research Institute” he has promoting misconception and a hard-Christian view that the only sexuality is heterosexuality and anything else is aligned with pedophilia and other crimes of nature. He event takes his message to politicians to reinforce that relationships outside of heterosexuality are not valid relationships nor are they equal in any way.
March 10 - National
Cynthia Slater (1945-1989), an early outspoken bisexual and HIV positive woman, organized the first Women's HIV/AIDS Information Switchboard.
June 1 - National
Southern Baptist Convention pass another resolution is passed that “deplores the proliferation of all homosexual practices” and opposes the “identification of homosexuality as a minority with attendant benefits or advantages.”
July 10 - Texas
“Given a choice between sharing a park with homosexuals or a bunch of white-sheeted, racist, hate- peddling losers, we think we would prefer homosexuals.” An editorial in the Texas Daily News regarding an upcoming anti-gay rally by the Ku Klux Klan.
Cynthia Slater
January 1 - Massachusetts
The Bisexual Resource Center (BRC) was founded.
January 1 – National
Lansing Mayor Terry McKane vetoes Fair Housing ordinance that would protect homosexuals.
October 1 - National
Felice Picano published his first memoir “Ambidextrous: The Secret Lives of Children”. Picano's bold, funny and outrageously honest memoir of suburban 1950s childhood forever altered how we remember childhood and how we think of it today. So scandalous at the time that the book's first shipment to Great Britain was seized and burned on the London docks, AMBIDEXTROUS has since become a much-prized classic, and is now re-released as Volume One in this completely repackaged series of Picano's classic complete memoirs.
September 1 - Rhode Island
Bowing to pressure from Bishop Louis E. Gelineau and others, the Providence City Council rejects a civil rights proposal that would have protected gays and lesbians from discrimination in housing and jobs.
Ed Gallagher
Rock Hudson
Tom Potter
December 18 - National
Michael Lassell publishes his book “Poems for Boys and Un-Lost Boys”.
July 1 - Washington D.C.
The District of Columbia Court of Appeals rules that Georgetown University, which has Roman Catholic affiliations, cannot refuse recognition of a homosexual student group. The university had argued that requiring it to recognize the group would be “an unconstitutional infringement of its Roman Catholic beliefs.”
December 1 - National
The movie “The color purple” is released. An epic tale spanning forty years in the life of Celie, an African-American woman living in the South who survives incredible abuse and bigotry. After Celie's abusive father marries her off to the equally debasing "Mister" Albert Johnson, things go from bad to worse, leaving Celie to find companionship anywhere she can. She perseveres, holding on to her dream of one day being reunited with her sister in Africa.
September 1 - National
Episcopal General Convention passes a resolution urging each diocese to “find an effective way to foster understanding of homosexual persons, to dispel myths and prejudices about homosexuality, [and] to provide pastoral support.” Despite this, the House of Deputies (one of two houses making up the Convention) rejects a church law that was approved by the House of Bishops (the other legislative body) that would forbid discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation in the process of ordination.
August 23 - Washington D.C.
The Restoration Church of Jesus Christ, informally called the Gay Mormon Church is founded by Antonio A. Feliz.
January 1 - National
Alison Bechdel’s first “Dykes To Watch Out For” strip appears in Womannews. She begins to self- syndicate the strip in 1985 and it is first collected in 1986.
January 1 – Oregon
Barbara Roberts, elected Oregon Secretary of State in 1984, requests PGMC to sing at her inauguration, elevating public awareness of Oregon's gay community.
June 7 - Ohio
Rally & Parade. Gathered at City Hall and marched to Fountain Square (Greater Cincinnati Gay & Lesbian Coalition)
January 1 – Oregon
Portland Police Chief Penny Harrington appoints Deputy Chief Tom Potter as the Portland Police Bureau’s liaison between the police and the gay community.
July 25 - Washington D.C.
President Reagan publicly mentions the AIDS virus for the first time, in response to a reporter’s question at a press conference.
January 1 - California
GLSU sponsors its first fundraiser called University Night at Rage in West Hollywood.
United States LGBT History for 1985
June 1 - National
Presbyterian General Assembly votes down an amendment to the church constitution that would have protected homosexuals from employment discrimination. Additionally, all homosexual acts are declared to be inherently sinful regardless of nature of relationship or degree of commitment.
May 21 - Georgia
U.S. Court of Appeals rules in the Michael Hardwick case that Georgia’s sodomy statute infringes on the privacy rights of U.S. citizens and is therefore unconstitutional. Georgia Attorney General Michael Bowers appeals the decision to the U.S. Supreme Court.
June 1 - National
John Preston an erotic writer published “Hot Living” and started a trend in short story writing in the United States.
January 1 - Pennsylvania
Former University of Pittsburgh football player Ed Gallagher survives a suicide attempt, and dedicates his life to battling homophobia.
Barbara Roberts
August 1 - Rhode Island
Rhode Island Gov. Edward D. DiPrete issues an executive order banning discrimination against gays and lesbians in state government.
October 22 - California
Dan White, the man convicted of shooting to death Mayor George Moscone of San Francisco and fellow Supervisor Harvey Milk in 1978 commits suicide.
Bud Clark
January 1 – Texas
The Austin Latino/Latina Lesbian, Gay, and Bisexual & Transgender Organization (ALLGO) is founded to work toward social change through progressive community organizing, promoting queer Latina and Latino culture, and encouraging artistic expression. Today it is the longest running queer Latino organization in the U.S.
State equality and discrimination bills
January 1 – National
Kalamazoo chapter of Parents and Friends of Lesbians and Gays forms.
October 29 - Oregon
Northwest Gender Alliance reaches out for new members with an ad in Just Out.
February 1 - National
Representatives from the Catholic church join with Protestant and Jewish leaders for an “interfaith forum on religion and AIDS.” A joint statement is released calling on religious individuals to treat those with AIDS with compassion, not judgment.
June 28 - Oregon
Portland Mayor Bud Clark proclaims June 28th as Portland Gay Men’s Chorus day.
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