On January 24th in Gay History:

1965- Winston Churchill died at age 79. He had been Britain’s wartime minister whose courage, leadership and defiant rhetoric had fortified the English during their long struggle against Hitler’s Germany. In his biography of W. Somerset Maugham, Ted Morgan writes Maugham asked Churchill if it were true Churchill’s mother had claimed that the statesman had affairs with men in his youth,”not true” Chuchill replied,”but I once went to bed with a man(musical star Ivor Novello) to see what it was like.”

On December 20th in Gay History:

1973- The New York City council rejected a gay rights ordinance.

1980- According to recently released statistics, at least one person is physically assaulted in New York City each day because they are gay or lesbian.

1990- OutRage established the coalition for lesbian and gay rights to address legal attacks against the LGBT community.

1999- The Vermont supreme court ordered the legislature to pass a law requiring equal protection for same-sex committed couples.

December 10th in Gay History:

1973- the Nobel Peace Prize for literature is awarded to novelist, Patrick White, the first openly gay to ever be awarded the prize.

1980- Dan White, in prison for murdering San Francisco mayor George Moscone & openly gay city supervisor Harvey Milk, requests a 16 month reduction in sentence due to a technicality, he was denied.

2003- Bob Ross, pioneering gay journalist, co-founder of The Bay Area Reporter in San Francisco in 1971, dies of diabetes.

December 3rd in Gay History:

1910- Lesbian Freda Du faur becomes the first woman to climb Mt. Cook in New Zealand.

1968- Rev. Troy Perry founder of the Universal Fellowship of Metropolitam Community Churches, an American gay Protestant church, officiates at his firs same-sex holy union, thirty five years later he and his boyfriend fly to Canada to get a real marriage at Toronto’s city hall.

1973- As a result of the case, Society For Individual Rights vs. Hampton, proceedings were held to determine under what circumstances sexual orientation may be considered in determining whether a person is suitable for employment in the U.S. government.