United States LGBT History for 1995
January 1 - National
The Pink Swastika: Homosexuality in the Nazi Party, by fundamentalist activists Scott Lively and Kevin Abrams, claims gays weren't victimized in the Holocaust, but instead helped mastermind the extermination of Jews. Repudiated by credible historians, the book is nevertheless praised by
the Family Research Council and sold by several anti-gay organizations.
January 1 - National
Simon LeVay publishes “City of Friends: A Portrait of the Gay and Lesbian Community in America”.
June 17 - Ohio
Fountain Square rally, march to the Dock for festival in front parking lot (Gay & Lesbian Community Center Cincinnati)
September 1 - National
Howard Cruse’s historical graphic novel STUCK RUBBER BABY is released. It earns him both the Eisner for Best Graphic Album-New and the Harvey for Best Graphic Album.
January 1 – National
GLBA coordinated Graduation and Honors Evening with student leaders Muriel Lynn Jones and Jayzen E.I. Patria that served as the Mistress and Master of Ceremony. At this ceremony, 17 graduates were honored. This tradition continues today and is called Lavender Celebration.
September 15 - National
Dirk Shafer wrote, directed and starred in “Man of the Year”, a mockumentary about his time as a semi-closeted gay man in the role of a heterosexual sex symbol.
April 13 - Kansas
Max Movsovitz is arrested for sodomy solicitation in Topeka ’s Gage Park. Instead of paying the fine like others before him, he vows to fight it in court. Specifically, Max decides to fight the constitutionality of the Topeka’s "Solicitation of Sodomy" ordinance and the Kansas sodomy law (Max is arrested for admitting his willingness to have oral sex with an undercover cop who initiates the conversation. In other words, talking dirty gets him arrested.)
January 1 – National
Allstate Insurance changes its policies to offer joint coverage to same-gender homeowner couples.
March 1 - Rhode Island
Gov. Lincoln C. Almond tells The Providence Journal that he supports the long-debated antidiscrimination bill, now in its 12th year in the General Assembly. The bill passes and Almond signs it, making Rhode Island the ninth state to ban discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation.
October 1 - National
Paul Delph ’s final album, A God That Can Dance, was independently released. It chronicles the artist's struggle with HIV/AIDS and draws its title from a quote attributed in the liner notes to Friedrich Nietzsche (1844 – 1900): "I would believe only in a God that knew how to dance." — Thus Spoke Zarathustra
November 1 - Michigan
Chris Swope runs as an openly gay candidate for the Lansing City Council in the First Ward. He loses the election to Harold Leeman, Jr.
January 1 – Georgia
The Georgia Equality Project (later Georgia Equality), the state’s first statewide gay political organization, is organized.
November 1 - National
Ariel Schrag creates her first autobiographical comic dealing with her high school career and her emerging homosexuality with AWKWARD. She continues her tale with DEFINITION (Slave Labor, August 1997), POTENTIAL (Slave Labor, six issues starting in March 1998, collected February 2000), and LIKEWISE (Slave Labor, two issues so far, October 2002, April 2003).
July 1 - Illinois
In Chicago, 10 Latinas form a support group, Amigas Latinas, for lesbian, bisexual, and questioning women that still exists today. Also in Chicago, for over a decade the Association of Latino Men for Action (ALMA) provides educational support and social services to queer Latinos.
March 31 - National
K. M. Soehnlein an author screen writes “The Second Coming”
August 4 - Washington D.C.
Senator Jesse Helms introduces two anti-gay bills in Congress. The first bill, numbered S.23, would give a special exemption from workplace nondiscrimination policies to government employees who voice prejudices against lesbian and gay co-workers. The second bill, S. 25 would “stop the waste of taxpayer funds on activities by Government agencies to encourage its employees or officials to accept homosexuality as a legitimate or normal lifestyle.”
June 14 - Washington D.C.
President Bill Clinton names the first-ever White House liaison to the gay and lesbian communities
June 14 - National
BiNET USA Bisexual Youth Initiative, Fayetteville, N.C., develops and mails survey to LGBT youth programs. National survey published and sent back to agencies, offering assistance to improve services to bisexual youth.
November 20 - Massachusetts
Chanelle Pickett, 23, an African American trans woman, died at the home of William C. Palmer after a fight that, according to Palmer, ensued after Palmer discovered that she was transgender and he demanded she leave his home. Patrons of the Playland Café, where they had met, said
that Palmer was a regular there with a well known preference for transsexuals.
November 1 - Washington D.C.
The Hate Crimes Sentencing Enhancement Act goes into effect as part of the Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act of 1994. The law allows a judge to impose harsher sentences if there is evidence showing that a victim was selected because of the “actual or perceived race, color, religion, national origin, ethnicity, gender, disability, or sexual orientation of any person.”
January 2 - National
Paul Russell publishes his novel “The Gay 100: A Ranking of the Most Influential Gay Men and Lesbians, Past and Present”
January 9 - National
Jim Grimsley publishes “Dream Boy”
March 5 - Delaware
Douglas Steele and Corey Marshall legally change their names to become Douglas and Corey Marshall-Steele. This sets a legal precedent in Delaware for a same-gender couple to change their surnames to reflect their relationship. The precedent is later successfully used by another male couple whose judge had intended to disallow their surname change.
September 8 - National
Douglas Carter Beane a playwright created an adaptation of “To Wong Foo, Thanks for Everything!”
January 1 - Washington D.C.
The Christian Coalition pledges to spend one million dollars promoting the House Republican Agenda.
August 18 - National
Bryan Batt starred in “Jeffrey” which at the time was controversial and tested Hollywood.
March 9 - National
Scott Amedure was murdered after revealing his attraction to his friend Jonathan Schmitz on a The Jenny Jones Show episode about secret crushes. Schmitz purchased a shotgun to kill Amedure and did so after Amedure implied he still was attracted to him; Schmitz then turned himself in to police.
September 1 - Washington D.C.
Justice Thomas Van Bebber of the U. S. District Court rules that while a school district is not obligated to purchase any book or books, it cannot remove a book from library shelves unless that book is deemed educationally unsuitable. Van Bebber rules that "Annie on My Mind" is not educationally unsuitable, and that its removal constituted "viewpoint discrimination."
October 15 - Kansas
As a member of the Student Health Advisory Board, graduate student Christine Robinson persuades KU’s student health insurance carrier to add a domestic partner health insurance plan. It is available to students beginning in 1996.
January 7 - National
Norman Wong published his short story collection “Cultural Revolution”, which was one of the first books of LGBT literature published by an Asian American writer.
January 1 - National
Eric Marcus publishes “Breaking the Surface: The Greg Louganis Story”
April 2 - Washington D.C.
House Speaker Newt Gingrich proposes on "This Week with David Brinkley" that the military should return to the policy of discriminating against qualified personnel who happen to be gay or lesbian. This is in direct opposition to Gingrich's 1992 statement to the Associated Press, where he said he saw no reason to expel people from the military "for purely private behavior."
February 1 - California
Cianna Stewart, of the Living Well Project and San Francisco Asian Pacific Islander AIDS Services, develops sexual/gender diversity and HIV/AIDS awareness handbook and videos in five languages.
May 1 - National
Will Roscoe a poet publishes “Queer Spirits: A Gay Men's Myth Book”
June 15 - National
David M. Halperin theorist and historian publishes “Saint Foucault: Towards a Gay Hagiography”
Governor Mike Leavitt Utah
Douglas Cater Beane
Chanelle Pickett
November 1 - National
Keith Curran a playwright and actor gets his play The Stand In was included in The Actor's Book of Gay and Lesbian Plays.
May 12 - National
CBS golf commentator Ben Wright is fired for making on-air negative comments about lesbian golfers and the physiological limitations women golfers have because of their breasts.
Roxanne Ellis and Michelle Abdill
October 1 - Washington D.C.
The first U.S. conference for transgendered persons who are FTM takes place.
State equality and discrimination bills
May 23 - National
Andy Hartzell receives a Xeric Award and Grant for his self-published BREAD & CIRCUSES, which has some gay content.
June 1 - National
THE MAN: A HERO FOR OUR TIME by Robert Drake, a novel that tells the story of a man who trains himself to be a superhero after the gay-bashing death of his lover.
January 1 – Michigan
Diana Green’s anthropomorphic comic strip “TRANNY TOWERS” first appears in Minneapolis’ Lavender Magazine
August 5 - Washington D.C.
President Bill Clinton finally ends the ban on security clearances for gay people, the last vestige of McCarthy-era restrictions imposed in the 1950s when gays were deemed an automatic threat to national security because of their sexuality.
June 1 - National
In BLACK LIGHTNING (v.2) #5 written by Tony Isabella, Jefferson Pierce learns that fellow teacher WALTER KASKO who died saving a student was gay.
March 1 - Utah
Gov. Mike Leavitt (R) signs into law the first state Defense of Marriage statute, which stipulates that Utah does not have to recognize out-of-state marriages that violate state public policy and only recognize marriages between one man and one woman.
January 1 - Kansas
Sam Brownback begins his first term in office. After being Governor he becomes Ambassador-at- Large for International Religious Freedom.
The 1995 Kansas Legislature begins its own Newt Gingrich style of "Contract With America" by
introducing three measures that would restrict discussion, or even the mention of Lesbians and Gays, in public schools:
1. HR 2301, also known as the Darlene Cornfield Amendment, requires sex education school teachers to limit their discussion of sex to "heterosexual marriage," forcing educators to present such information only in the context of abstinence or marriage. This measure, co-sponsored by Shallenburger, is later defeated.
2. HCR 5009 would amend the state Constitution with language that would give parents the
'exclusive right' to determine how their children will be taught in public schools. If passed, the amendment would create a legal basis to allow creationism to be taught along side science in the classroom, and allow parents to censor school libraries and curriculum, especially when dealing with issues such as sex education and diversity. According to one Kansas lgbt activist, "It would effectively remove any discussion of Lesbian and Gay issues from all public schools."
3. HB 2092 would rescind the Quality Performance Accreditation program, which prepares public school students in Kansas to live, learn and work in a global society. "Conservatives are using this bill to kill the QPA program, in part, because it demands that all people, including Lesbians and Gays, be treated frankly and objectively during the presentation of relevant course material," says Doug Glaze of Equality Kansas.
March 1 - National
In PRIME (v.1) #21, written by Gerald Jones and Len Strazewski, TURBOCHARGE‘s crush on Prime is revealed. With this revelation, TurboCharge becomes the first gay teen super-hero.
July 1 - National
Written by David Rawson and Pat McGreal, the 10-issue mini-series CHIAROSCURO, subtitled on the covers The Private Lives of Leonardo da Vinci, tells tales from the life of the Renaissance artist without expunging the gay elements.
September 16 - National
Coors Brewing Company fueled a fierce demonstration against the LGBT community as a family owned company up to 1973 that catered to the conservative family base. What started as a general boycott in 1973 related to how the company treated people generally speaking turned into a gay rights issue when the worker unions approached Harvey Milk to initiate a targeted boycott that would last almost 20 years. One Coors announced they will offer health benefits to domestic partners of their gay employees they found that they were then the focus of boycotts from the LGBT community AND the anti-gay Christian right. They wouldn't commit to how much the company lost because of the LGBT boycott other than reporting that it was significant to drive change. The boycott by the anti-gay groups was marginal. The vote to offer inclusive benefits to their employees was a unanimous vote from their board of directors.
August 4 - Michigan
Detroit's first gay rodeo held at the State Fairgrounds.
April 1 - National
Dan Butler created a one man show to facilitate his coming out called “The Only Thing Worse You Could Have Told Me”
January 1 - Michigan
Washtenaw County chapter of MCHD becomes the Washtenaw Rainbow Action Project.
January 1 – Georgia
Chris Companik’s “HIV + ME” starts as a comic strip in Atlanta AIDS Survival Project’s newsletter Survival News (January 1995). The strips have been collected on a website, distributed to other newsletters and newspapers, and began running in A & U magazine beginning March 2003.
Governor Lincoln Almond RI
January 1 - National
Sasha Alyson originally from Ohio, forms a travel company called Alyson Adventures which focus on Gay and Lesbian family tours and adventures.
September 1 - National
Andrew Sullivan a writer and activist publishes “Virtually Normal: An Argument About Homosexuality”
President Bill Clinton
January 1 – National
Belasco self-publishes his first erotic comic featuring African-American men, LUST FOR SALE. Stories from his self-published comics and from such publications as MEATMEN are collected in BROTHERS OF NEW ESSEX: AFRO EROTIC ADVENTURES (Cleis Press, November 2000).
January 1 - California
The Gay Lesbian Bisexual Transgender Student Support (GLBTSS) is founded and located at the Center for Women and Men. This creates a new presence for LGBT education and advocacy. GLBTSS is mentioned in SCampus at Orientation and education in residential programming, as well as offers visible support for GLBT students. GLBTSS is under the supervision of Elizabeth Davenport, the Director for the Center for Women and Men.
September 1 - National
Matthew Rettenmund publishes “Boy Culture”
July 1 - National
DYKE STRIPPERS: LESBIAN CARTOONISTS FROM A TO Z, edited by Roz Warren, presents work by several lesbian comics creators.
January 1 – National
Joyce Brabner, Mark Badger, and Wayne Vansant produce Activists! for The Fellowship of Reconciliation, a movement committed to non-violent personal, social, and political change, intended to inspire young people to get involved.
August 18 - California
The first U.S. conference for transgendered persons who are FTM takes place.
May 1 - National
In GEN 13 (v.1) #2 the Native-American super-hero RAINMAKER reveals that she is bi-sexual in a story written by Brandon Choi.
November 1 - Washington D.C.
Stephen O. Murray publishes his first book “Latin American Male Homosexualities”
June 1 - National
Paige Braddock launches “JANE’S WORLD” as an online comic strip. It has since been collected in an ongoing series of comic books (starting in August 2002) and crossed over to print comic pages (September 2003).
May 1 - National
Mark de Solla Price published “Living Positively in a World with HIV/AIDS”
October 1 - National
Leo Bersani literary theorist and Professor Emeritus of French and released “Homos”
October 7 - California
Walt Disney Company announce they will offer health benefits to domestic partners of their gay employees. Allstate Insurance changes its policies to offer joint coverage to same-gender homeowner couples. The boycott fails without unified support.
December 4 - Oregon
Roxanne Ellis and Michelle Abdill, a lesbian couple in Medford, Oregon, were murdered by a man who said he had "no compassion" for bisexual or homosexual people. Robert Acremant was convicted and sentenced to death by lethal injection.
February 1 - Kansas
Chaplains for the Kansas House and Senate begin every session with non-inclusive prayers in spite of complaints from a Jewish House member and the ACLU. House Speaker Tim Shallenburger says he isn't going to do anything about it. "I don't think there's a problem," Shallenburger states. "The only problem is in the minds of a few people."
Scott Amedure
Ben Wright
CBS Commentator
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