1998
U.S.: The Log Cabin Republicans release a video called On the Front Lines: The Anti-Gay Agenda Exposed. It's about LCR's failed effort to have a booth at the Texas Republican Convention. * Rita Hester, an M2F, is found stabbed to death in her Boston apartment. * The Georgia Supreme Court strikes down the state's anti-sodomy law as a violation of the right to privacy guaranteed by the State constitution. * South Africa: Gay activist Simon Tseko Nkoli dies in Johannesburg. * India: The lesbian film Fire opens to the "outrage, enlightenment and confusion" of cinemagoers. * Netherlands: The Dutch Air Force begins a recruitment campaign in Gay Krant, the nation's leading magazine for gays. Beside a picture of an F16 fighter plane in flight runs the caption "There are more exciting places on earth than the dark room."
1993
U.S.: For six days Houston's Dial-A-Gay-Atheist hotline features recorded readings from sexually explicit letters purportedly written by closeted gay Roman Catholic priests. * In an interview with TV Guide, Dolly Parton denies rumors that she and her longtime friend Judy Ogle are lesbians, saying: "We have done everything together, but not that." * San Franciscans observe the 15th anniversary of the assassination of Harvey Milk with a candlelight march and the dedication of a plaque outside the Castro Street building that was once Milk's camera shop. The plaque is inscribed GOTTA GIVE 'EM HOPE, a phrase taken from one of Milk's stump speeches. * In his new book, Barney, the Purple Messiah, Joseph Chambers, who runs a four-state radio ministry in North Carolina, claims that the dopey dinosaur on the PBS children's show is, "straight out of the New Age and the world of demons and devils," because he is "teaching kids that we must accept everyone as they are, whether they're homosexuals or lesbians." * Labor Secretary Robert Reich tells an electronic 'town hall' meeting that he will not tolerate discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation in his department. * Marky Mark in UK's Gay Times magazine: "It's cool to suck dick." * Gay writer Gore Vidal wins the National Book Award in the non-fiction category for United States: Essays 1952-1992. * Wales: The first Welsh-language gay film, Dafydd, is aired on Welsh television. The film tells the story of a rural Welsh boy who becomes a prostitute in Amsterdam.
1988
U.S.: Officials announce that 8 percent of the male sheep at the United States Department of Agriculture's Sheep Experimental Station in Dubois, Idaho, are gay. * Gay-rights activists call for the removal of Texas District Judge Jack Hampton, who sentenced 18-year-old Richard Bednerski to a 30-year prison sentence, instead of the maximum life sentence, for the shooting death of two gay men. Bednarski, the son of a police officer, could be paroled in 8 to 10 years. * Three people are arrested outside of Trump Tower during a demonstration by ACT UP New York, who were demanding that the city build housing for homeless people with AIDS, instead of allowing millions of dollars in tax abatements for real-estate developers.
1983
U.S.: A federal judge concludes that the First National Bank of Louisville, Ky., did not practice wrongful discrimination when, in 1981, they forced branch manager Samuel Dorr out of his job, after he refused to quit his membership to Dignity, the gay Catholic group. * New books from Alyson Publications: The Movie Lover by Richard Friedel, The Butterscotch Prince by Richard Hall, All-American Boys by Frank Mosca.
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