148 Fun Facts About Pride Month

In 2012, which search engine began decorating LGBTQ-related searches with rainbow patterns each June?

Google began showing rainbow-coloured bars on LGBTQ-related searches each June in 2012, and in 2017 it also painted rainbow routes onto Google Maps along Pride parade paths.

What slang term named the weekly cash envelopes the Stonewall Inn's Mafia owners handed police?

Gayola was the slang for such police payoffs; the Stonewall Inn, run by the Mafia without a liquor licence, handed the Sixth Precinct cash envelopes weekly to stay open.

In 1969 the Stonewall Inn was owned by which New York crime family?

The Genovese family's 'Fat Tony' Lauria and his partners put up $3,500 in 1966 to turn the former restaurant into a gay bar run without a liquor licence.

The first New York Pride event, held on 28 June 1970, was promoted under what name?

Christopher Street Liberation Day, named for the Stonewall Inn's street, was the banner of the 28 June 1970 march; its permit arrived only two hours before the start.

The first New York Pride march in 1970 ran 51 blocks from Sheridan Square to where?

The marchers reached Central Park's Sheep Meadow for a 'gay-in'; The New York Times reported on its front page that the procession stretched about fifteen blocks.

Bisexual activist Brenda Howard, a planner of New York's 1970 march, is remembered by what nickname?

Mother of Pride is the name Brenda Howard earned on the 1970 march committee; she is also credited, with two fellow activists, with popularising the word 'Pride' for the celebrations.

Which U.S. president first proclaimed June as 'Gay & Lesbian Pride Month'?

Bill Clinton issued the first presidential proclamation of Gay and Lesbian Pride Month in June 1999 and repeated it in 2000; Barack Obama revived the practice in 2009 as LGBT Pride Month.

Besides New York, which city held a Pride march in June 1970, a year after Stonewall?

Los Angeles marched down Hollywood Boulevard on 28 June 1970, the same day as New York, after the ACLU helped organisers overturn police permit conditions meant to price the parade out.

The first two hand-dyed rainbow flags were raised on 25 June 1978 at which event?

The Gay Freedom Day Parade flew both flags over United Nations Plaza; a remnant of one, believed lost for four decades, turned up among Baker's belongings in 2020.

How many colored stripes were in Gilbert Baker's original 1978 design of the rainbow flag?

Gilbert Baker's original rainbow flag, debuted in 1978, featured eight colored stripes, each with a specific meaning.

What does the red stripe in the standard six-color rainbow flag typically symbolize?

In Gilbert Baker's scheme the red stripe stands for life; the six-colour flag is usually flown with red on top, the order the colours appear in a natural rainbow.

Philadelphia's 2017 'More Color More Pride' flag added which two stripes to the rainbow?

Black and brown stripes were added to recognise LGBTQ people of colour after complaints of racism in the city's gay bars; Daniel Quasar's Progress flag carried them on a year later.

Which stripe of Gilbert Baker's original rainbow flag was dropped because that fabric colour was hard to get?

Hot pink was dropped when Harvey Milk's assassination in November 1978 sent demand soaring and the fabric proved unavailable, so the Paramount Flag Company sold a seven-stripe version instead.

In Daniel Quasar's 2018 Progress Pride Flag, what do the light blue, pink and white stripes represent?

Transgender individuals, and non-binary people, are represented by the stripes borrowed from the Transgender Pride Flag; Quasar's 2018 redesign also took elements from the Philadelphia flag.

Rainbow-flag creator Gilbert Baker went by which drag name, alluding to the first US flag's seamstress?

Baker's drag name Busty Ross punned on Betsy Ross, the legendary seamstress of the first US flag; he refused to trademark the rainbow flag, saying it belonged to everyone.

Before entering politics, what type of business did Harvey Milk open in the Castro District?

A camera store, Castro Camera, became his campaign headquarters; a 1973 shouting match there with a state official over a $100 tax deposit helped push him toward running for office.

Which Nazi camp badge for gay men was reclaimed in the 1970s as a symbol of gay pride?

The pink triangle marked thousands of men sent to the camps for homosexuality; in 1986 New York activists turned it point-up for the 'Silence = Death' poster that ACT UP adopted.

Which president was the first Republican to publicly recognize LGBTQ Pride Month?

Donald Trump recognised Pride Month in a May 2019 tweet, the first Republican president to do so; the White House later issued it as a statement, and Joe Biden returned to formal proclamations in 2021.

Many US colleges celebrate Pride in April rather than June under what nickname?

Gaypril lets colleges hold Pride events while students are still on campus, since most academic terms end before June.

The 'Annual Reminders', early LGBTQ+ demonstrations held each July 4 from 1965 to 1969, took place in which city?

Philadelphia's Independence Hall was the backdrop each July 4; after Stonewall the organisers dropped the picket for an annual June march in New York, which became the first Pride.

What slogan was the planners' first thought for New York's 1970 march before 'pride' won out?

Gay Power was the committee's first thought, but member Craig Schoonmaker argued that few people had power while anyone could have pride, and his word stuck.

The Stonewall Inn, site of the June 1969 uprising, stands in which Manhattan neighbourhood?

Greenwich Village had a sizeable gay and lesbian population from after the First World War, and Prohibition-era speakeasies had quietly helped its gay bars flourish.

Which Greek letter was used as an early emblem by some LGBTQ+ rights movements?

Designer Tom Doerr picked lambda for the Gay Activists Alliance in 1970, citing its physics sense of an exchange of energy; a 1974 congress in Edinburgh adopted it as the international gay-rights symbol.

The Gay Activists Alliance's New York headquarters, occupied in 1971 and burned by arsonists in 1974, was a former what?

The GAA Firehouse, a former fire station at 99 Wooster Street in SoHo, hosted hugely popular Saturday dances that funded the group's 'zaps' of politicians.

What does the orange stripe in the common six-color rainbow flag represent?

Orange stands for healing in Gilbert Baker's scheme; he and dozens of volunteers dyed and stitched the first two flags by hand in a gay community centre on Grove Street.

Which journalist wrote the 1982 biography 'The Mayor of Castro Street', about Harvey Milk?

Randy Shilts, a San Francisco Chronicle reporter, published The Mayor of Castro Street in 1982 and went on to write And the Band Played On (1987) about the AIDS epidemic.

London's first Pride march, in July 1972, ran from Trafalgar Square to which park?

Hyde Park was the finish for a few hundred marchers; the date was picked as the Saturday nearest the anniversary of the Stonewall riots.

What does the yellow stripe in the common six-color rainbow flag symbolize?

Yellow stands for sunlight in Gilbert Baker's 1978 scheme; Harvey Milk and other activists had pressed him to give the movement a symbol of its own.

Marsha P. Johnson co-founded STAR in 1970, to shelter homeless queer youth, with which fellow activist?

Sylvia Rivera and Johnson formed Street Transvestite Action Revolutionaries after a 1970 sit-in at New York University, and their STAR House in the East Village took in homeless young people.

In the six-color rainbow flag, green stands for what?

Green stands for nature in Gilbert Baker's scheme; tie-dye artist Lynn Segerblom, then known as Faerie Argyle Rainbow, helped dye the giant first flags.

In 1979 the rainbow flag lost turquoise to split evenly around what?

Lamp posts on Market Street were to carry the flag in two halves in 1979, so Gilbert Baker needed an even number of stripes; turquoise, which had stood for magic and art, went.

What does the blue stripe in the common six-color rainbow flag stand for?

Serenity is the meaning Gilbert Baker's foundation gives the stripe, carried over from indigo in his 1978 scheme, though some published lists say harmony; in 2015 New York's Museum of Modern Art added the flag to its design collection.

What does the violet (or purple) stripe in the common six-color rainbow flag represent?

Violet stands for spirit in Gilbert Baker's scheme; for Stonewall's 25th anniversary in 1994 he made a mile-long version of the flag, carried through New York by thousands of people.

Whose apartment hosted the planning meetings for the first New York Pride march in 1970?

Rodwell ran the Oscar Wilde Memorial Bookshop and had proposed the march at a homophile conference in Philadelphia in November 1969.

Harry Hay co-founded which pioneering American gay rights organisation in 1950?

Harry Hay co-founded the Mattachine Society in 1950 with Rudi Gernreich and others, naming it after masked medieval French societies; it became one of the earliest lasting US gay rights groups.

Where did Gilbert Baker's 2003 anniversary rainbow flag stretch 1.25 miles from sea to sea?

Baker's 25th-anniversary flag ran a mile and a quarter down Duval Street in Key West in the original eight colours; sections were afterwards sent to more than 100 cities.

Organisers of the 1960s 'Annual Reminder' gay-rights pickets required marchers to follow which rule?

A formal dress code, jackets and ties for men and dresses for women, was the organisers' way of showing gay people as 'presentable and employable'; signs asked for equality, opportunity and dignity.

Which activist coined "Gay is Good" after hearing Stokely Carmichael chant "black is beautiful"?

Frank Kameny's slogan 'Gay is Good' is engraved on his marker in Washington's Congressional Cemetery, and he said he hoped to be remembered for coining it.

Where did Monica Helms donate her original transgender pride flag in 2014?

The Smithsonian's National Museum of American History took in the flag in August 2014; Helms designed it to look right whichever way up it flies, 'signifying us finding correctness in our lives'.

The Society for Human Rights, America's first documented gay rights group, was founded in 1924 in which Midwestern city?

Henry Gerber, a German-born postal worker, founded the Society for Human Rights in Chicago in 1924; it published two issues of Friendship and Freedom before police shut it down in 1925.

Harvey Milk and Mayor George Moscone were shot dead in November 1978 by which former city supervisor?

Dan White had cast the sole vote against Milk's gay-rights ordinance; his lenient manslaughter verdict later triggered the White Night riots.

What term refers to the broader range of Pride events held from June to September in Canada?

Pride Season is Canada's term for a summer of staggered festivals: Toronto's falls in June, Montreal's in mid-August and Calgary's at the end of August.

Gilbert Baker said the rainbow flag was inspired less by 'Over the Rainbow' than by 'She's a Rainbow' by which band?

The Rolling Stones' song 'She's a Rainbow' was more his touchstone, Baker said, as a child of the Sixties; a 1985 profile added that he chose the motif for its hippie-era associations.

The first openly gay city commissioner in the United States was appointed in 1976 in what city?

Harvey Milk became the first openly gay city commissioner when Mayor George Moscone put him on San Francisco's Board of Permit Appeals in 1976; announcing a State Assembly run got him fired after five weeks.

Which stripe of the 2010 Asexual Flag stands for allies and non-asexual partners?

White stands for non-asexual partners and allies; black is asexuality, grey the grey area between, and purple community. Asexual forum members chose the design in an online vote in 2010.

Why were yellow and purple chosen for the 2013 Intersex Flag?

Because they carry no gender associations, unlike pink and blue, yellow and purple were chosen; the flag's unbroken purple circle stands for wholeness and completeness.

Britain's Gay Liberation Front held its first meeting in 1970 in a basement at which London institution?

The London School of Economics hosted the first meeting on 13 October 1970; founders Bob Mellors and Aubrey Walter had seen the American GLF at work and built a British version.

On Michael Page's 1998 bisexual pride flag, what does the pink stripe stand for?

Same-sex attraction is the pink band and opposite-sex attraction the blue; where they overlap, a purple band stands for attraction to both. Page unveiled the flag at the BiCafe's first anniversary party.

RuPaul's Drag Race first aired in 2009 on which cable channel?

Logo TV, Viacom's LGBTQ-focused channel, launched RuPaul's Drag Race in February 2009; the show moved to VH1 for seasons 9 to 14 and to MTV from season 15.

Which singer's show ended RuPaul's Drag Race's run of four straight competition Emmys in 2022?

Lizzo's Watch Out for the Big Grrrls, her search for backup dancers, took the 2022 award; Drag Race had won every year since 2018 and took the prize back at the next ceremony.

Ellen DeGeneres came out in April 1997 on which magazine's cover, under the line 'Yep, I'm Gay'?

Time ran the cover weeks before 'The Puppy Episode', the sitcom's most-watched instalment, in which her character came out too; ABC cancelled the show a season later.

Which 2016 film became the first LGBTQ-themed Best Picture winner after a famous envelope mix-up?

Moonlight was named Best Picture only after La La Land had been read out and its producers had begun their speeches; the presenters had been handed a duplicate Best Actress envelope.

Brokeback Mountain lost the 2005 Best Picture Oscar to which film?

Crash, Paul Haggis's ensemble drama, took Best Picture at the March 2006 ceremony; Ang Lee won Best Director and Brokeback's screenplay, adapted from Annie Proulx's short story, also won.

For playing Harvey Milk in Milk (2008), which actor won the Best Actor Oscar?

Sean Penn won his second Best Actor Oscar for Milk and used his speech to tell those who had voted to ban gay marriage to anticipate 'their great shame'.

Billy Porter became the first openly gay Black man to win a lead-acting Emmy for which FX drama?

Pose won Porter the 2019 Emmy as Pray Tell, an HIV-positive character; in 2021 he revealed that he had kept his own diagnosis secret since 2007.

At the 2020 Emmys, Schitt's Creek became the first comedy or drama series to do what?

To sweep all seven major awards in comedy it took series, writing, directing and all four acting prizes; Dan Levy had written its town to be free of homophobia, saying he had no patience for it.

Lil Nas X came out in June 2019 while which song topped the Hot 100?

Old Town Road was in its then-record 19-week run at number one when he tweeted on 30 June 2019, the last day of Pride Month, telling fans to listen closely to his track 'C7osure'.

Kim Petras won her history-making Grammy for Best Pop Duo/Group Performance for her feature on which Sam Smith song?

Unholy won at the February 2023 Grammys, a first for an openly transgender woman in that category; accepting, Petras thanked the trans artists who 'kicked these doors open', the late producer Sophie and Madonna.

For which series was Laverne Cox the first transgender Primetime Emmy acting nominee in 2014?

Orange Is the New Black cast Cox as Sophia Burset; her twin brother, the musician M Lamar, played Sophia before her transition in two episodes.

Frankie Goes to Hollywood's 'Relax' hit UK number one in January 1984 despite what?

A BBC radio ban followed in January 1984 after Radio 1 DJ Mike Read objected on air to its lyrics; the song still reached number one and spent five weeks there.

Jennie Livingston's 1990 documentary Paris Is Burning chronicles which New York subculture?

The Harlem ball scene of the late 1980s is the film's subject; its dance style, voguing, reached the mainstream the same year through Madonna's hit 'Vogue'.

Netflix's Heartstopper, about schoolboys Nick and Charlie, is based on a webcomic by which author?

Alice Oseman wrote and illustrated the Heartstopper webcomic from 2016 and adapted it herself; Kit Connor and Joe Locke star, with three eight-episode series released between 2022 and 2024.

The Rocky Horror Picture Show (1975) holds what record in cinema?

Rocky Horror is cinema's longest-running theatrical release: after flopping in 1975 it became a midnight movie at New York's Waverly Theater in 1976 and stayed in limited release for five decades.

Roughly how many people attended Stonewall 50 - WorldPride NYC in Manhattan in 2019?

Five million people came to Manhattan over the final weekend of June 2019, by the mayor's estimate; the march alone took twelve hours to pass, with 150,000 people walking in it.

Jack Baker and Michael McConnell applied for a marriage licence in 1970 in which Midwestern city?

Jack Baker and Michael McConnell applied in Minneapolis in May 1970; the refusal led to Baker v. Nelson, which the US Supreme Court dismissed in 1972 'for want of a substantial federal question'.

Which city hosted Africa's first pride parade, on 13 October 1990?

Johannesburg's 1990 march, organised by GLOW with Simon Nkoli among its leaders, came near apartheid's end; South Africa's 1996 constitution then banned discrimination on grounds of sexual orientation.

A June 1994 march often regarded as Southeast Asia's first Pride took place in which country?

Philippines activists from ProGay and the Metropolitan Community Church marched in Quezon City, marking Stonewall's 25th anniversary and protesting a new value-added tax.

Which city's Pride parade was named the world's biggest by Guinness World Records in 2006?

São Paulo's parade drew about 2.5 million people to Paulista Avenue in 2006, having begun there with around 2,000 marchers in 1997.

Which 26 June 2015 Supreme Court ruling legalised same-sex marriage in every US state?

Obergefell v. Hodges was decided 5-4 on 26 June 2015; the White House was lit in rainbow colours that night, and lead plaintiff Jim Obergefell had sued Ohio to be named on his late husband's death certificate.

Which country was the first in the world to legalise same-sex marriage, on 1 April 2001?

The Netherlands opened marriage to same-sex couples on 1 April 2001; four couples wed that day, with the capital's mayor, Job Cohen, made a registrar specifically so he could officiate.

The 2016 Pulse nightclub shooting, which killed 49 people, took place in which city?

Orlando's Pulse, a gay nightclub, was holding its Latin Night on 12 June 2016, and most of the 49 people killed were Latino.

Which European city's Pride peaks with a Canal Parade of decorated boats each August?

Amsterdam's Canal Parade, held on the first Saturday of August, began in 1996 as a festival of freedom and diversity rather than as a protest march, unlike most Prides.

Which man, pardoned posthumously in 2013, appeared on the Bank of England's £50 note in 2021?

Alan Turing's £50 note entered circulation on 23 June 2021, his birthday; the 2017 'Turing's law' posthumously pardoned thousands of other men convicted under old indecency laws.

Which playwright was the catalyst for founding the protest group ACT UP in 1987?

Larry Kramer's March 1987 speech at New York's Lesbian and Gay Community Center sparked ACT UP; he had co-founded Gay Men's Health Crisis in 1982 and later left his papers to Yale.

In May 2015, which country became the first to legalise same-sex marriage by popular vote?

Ireland's referendum on 22 May 2015 passed with 62% in favour and wrote marriage equality into the constitution; Australia followed with a postal survey in 2017.

Which advocacy group's logo is a yellow equals sign on a blue square?

The Human Rights Campaign adopted the equals-sign logo in 1995; its red version, shared during the Supreme Court's March 2013 marriage arguments, produced a 120% jump in Facebook profile-photo changes.

Asked about her gender, Marsha P. Johnson said her middle initial stood for what?

'Pay it no mind' became Johnson's motto; in 2020 New York State renamed East River State Park, on the Brooklyn waterfront, in her honour.

Which openly gay organiser of the 1963 March on Washington was posthumously awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2013?

Bayard Rustin received the medal from Barack Obama on November 20, 2013; weeks before the 1963 march, Senator Strom Thurmond had read his Pasadena arrest file into the Congressional Record to discredit him.

Which country gained the world's first openly LGBTQ head of government in 2009?

Iceland's Jóhanna Sigurðardóttir took office on 1 February 2009 after the previous coalition collapsed in the financial crisis, and served as prime minister until 2013.

Tammy Baldwin became the first openly LGBTQ US senator in 2012, representing which state?

Wisconsin elected Baldwin to the Senate in 2012; as a House member she had led the push for the health-law rule that keeps young adults on a parent's insurance until 26.

In Germany and Switzerland, the annual Pride events held between June and August are known by what name?

Christopher Street Day, named for the Stonewall Inn's street, reached West Germany in 1979; Cologne's parade is now among the biggest, and Zürich hosts the main Swiss event.

The first WorldPride, held in July 2000, took place in which city?

Rome hosted WorldPride in July 2000 during the Catholic Church's jubilee year; the Vatican tried to have the march banned, yet organisers counted 250,000 people walking to the Colosseum.

Gay Games founder Tom Waddell had competed at the 1968 Olympics in which event?

Waddell finished sixth in the decathlon at the 1968 Mexico City Olympics; he wanted to call his 1982 event the Gay Olympics until a US Olympic Committee lawsuit forced a name change weeks before it opened.

Which columnist founded the It Gets Better Project in September 2010?

Dan Savage and his husband Terry Miller posted the first It Gets Better video in September 2010 after a string of suicides by bullied teenagers; an essay collection they edited followed in 2011.

Which justice wrote 2020's Bostock opinion extending Title VII to gay and trans workers?

Neil Gorsuch wrote the 6-3 Bostock opinion of 15 June 2020, reasoning as a textualist that firing someone for being gay or transgender is discrimination 'because of sex'.

The 1966 Compton's Cafeteria riot, three years before Stonewall, broke out in which San Francisco neighbourhood?

Compton's Cafeteria stood at Turk and Taylor streets in the Tenderloin; trans women and drag queens fought back against police harassment there in August 1966, as retold in Susan Stryker's 2005 documentary Screaming Queens.

Which group organized the first Dyke March, in Washington, D.C. in April 1993?

The Lesbian Avengers, founded in New York in 1992, called the 24 April 1993 march on the eve of the March on Washington; more than 20,000 women took part, and the New York Dyke March followed that June.

The phrase 'Lavender Menace', reclaimed by lesbian feminists in 1970, is attributed to which feminist leader?

Betty Friedan, NOW's president, reportedly used 'lavender menace' in 1969 for lesbians she saw as a threat to feminism; Rita Mae Brown resigned her NOW job in protest and joined the May 1970 Lavender Menace action.

The UK charity Stonewall was formed in 1989 to campaign against which law?

Section 28, the 1988 law banning councils from 'promoting homosexuality', prompted Stonewall's founding by Ian McKellen and others in May 1989; it was repealed in Scotland in 2000 and in England and Wales in 2003.

In 2012, Moscow courts banned gay pride parades in the city for how long?

A ban of 100 years was upheld by Moscow's top court in August 2012 after activist Nikolay Alexeyev asked to stage parades for the next century; the European Court of Human Rights had already ruled against earlier bans.

Who said in 1967 there was 'no place for the state in the bedrooms of the nation'?

Pierre Trudeau, then justice minister, paraphrased a Globe and Mail editorial in December 1967 while defending the omnibus bill that decriminalized homosexual acts between consenting adults in 1969.

The Trevor Project, an LGBTQ youth crisis line founded in 1998, is named after what?

An Oscar-winning short film, Trevor (1994), follows a gay thirteen-year-old who attempts suicide after friends reject him; its makers set up the hotline when HBO aired it in 1998.

The Daughters of Bilitis chose an obscure name so members could claim to belong to what?

A poetry club fit because Bilitis is a fictional contemporary of Sappho in Pierre Louÿs's 1894 verse; 'Daughters' was picked to sound like any other women's social club.

Kathy Kozachenko, the first openly gay candidate to win a US election, took a council seat in 1974 in which Michigan city?

Ann Arbor elected Kozachenko, a 21-year-old University of Michigan student, by 52 votes in April 1974 for the left-wing Human Rights Party, three years before Harvey Milk's win.

Which president signed Executive Order 10450, the order behind the 'Lavender Scare'?

Dwight D. Eisenhower signed Executive Order 10450 in April 1953, listing 'sexual perversion' as grounds for dismissal from federal jobs; thousands lost careers before a 1995 order lifted the security-clearance bar.

Rita Hester's 1998 murder inspired the annual Transgender Day of what, held each 20 November?

Transgender Day of Remembrance grew from a candlelight vigil for Hester and Gwendolyn Ann Smith's 'Remembering Our Dead' web project; the first observance was held in 1999.

The first Olympic 'Pride House' for LGBTQ athletes and fans opened at which Games?

Vancouver 2010 had the first Pride House, hosted by the community centre Qmunity with a second in Whistler; four years later Russia's justice ministry refused to register one for Sochi.

Magnus Hirschfeld's sexology institute, looted by Nazis in 1933, had opened in 1919 where?

Berlin's Tiergarten district housed the institute from July 1919, with a museum, clinic and lecture hall; it arranged 'transvestite passes' with the police to shield trans people from arrest.

Which Disney villain's look was modelled on Divine, the drag star of John Waters's Hairspray?

Ursula, the sea witch of The Little Mermaid, shares Divine's signature eye makeup, jewellery and build. Divine died in 1988, a year before the film came out, and never saw the likeness.

The slang 'friend of Dorothy', code for a gay man, is most often traced to a role played by which star?

Judy Garland played Dorothy in The Wizard of Oz in 1939 and became an enduring gay icon, the usual explanation. A rival theory credits the writer Dorothy Parker, whose circle included many gay men.

Which astronaut, the first American woman in space, had a female partner of 27 years, revealed only by her obituary?

Sally Ride flew aboard the shuttle Challenger in 1983 and kept her relationship with Tam O'Shaughnessy private all her life. The 2012 obituary made her the first astronaut known to have been LGBTQ.

Which sci-fi hit was made by Lana and Lilly Wachowski, sisters who both later came out as trans women?

The Matrix reached cinemas years before either sister came out. Lilly Wachowski has since encouraged viewers to revisit its themes of identity and transformation through the lens of their transness.

In 2014 the chief executive of which tech giant became the first Fortune 500 CEO to come out as gay?

Apple boss Tim Cook came out in a Bloomberg essay, calling being gay one of the greatest gifts he had been given. Reports about his sexuality had circulated since 2011, but he had kept his life private.

Which royal shook hands with AIDS patients without gloves in 1987 while opening Britain's first dedicated AIDS ward?

Princess Diana opened the Broderip Ward at Middlesex Hospital in April 1987, greeting patients bare-handed. She came back to the ward in 1991 with the US First Lady, Barbara Bush.

Which pronoun did Merriam-Webster name its 2019 Word of the Year after lookups rose by 313 percent?

They took the title months after the dictionary added its use for one person whose gender identity is nonbinary. Singular they is no novelty: it had emerged in English by the 14th century.

In which PC game did two female characters fall in love and kiss at an in-game wedding during a press demo?

The Sims went on sale in 2000. After that unscripted kiss at the E3 show the year before, its designers reworked the relationship rules so that each character's orientation was set by the player's own actions.

Which playwright got two years' hard labour for 'gross indecency' in 1895 after suing a marquess for libel?

Oscar Wilde dropped his libel case when the hearings turned up evidence against him, and was arrested that spring. His prison labour meant hours on a treadmill and picking apart old rope.

Which rock singer, born Farrokh Bulsara in Zanzibar, died in 1991 a day after confirming he had AIDS?

Freddie Mercury had been diagnosed in 1987 but went on recording with Queen. A tribute concert at Wembley Stadium in 1992 raised money for AIDS awareness.

The word 'lesbian' comes from the name of the home island of which ancient Greek poet?

Sappho came from Lesbos, and the adjective sapphic comes from her own name. Most of her poetry is now lost, and what remains survives mostly in fragments.

Which singer and David Furnish formed a civil partnership on the first day the law allowed it in England?

Elton John and Furnish held the ceremony at Windsor Guildhall on 21 December 2005. They married on the same date nine years later, once same-sex marriage was legal in England and Wales.

Which chart-topping Lady Gaga single shares its name with the youth foundation she set up with her mother?

Born This Way entered the Billboard Hot 100 at number one in 2011, the 1,000th chart-topper in its history. Its lyrics name LGBTQ communities directly, Gaga's thanks for years of their support.

Which NBC sitcom, launched in 1998, paired a gay lawyer with his straight best friend, an interior designer?

Will & Grace won praise from an unlikely critic: in 2012 Vice President Joe Biden said it had probably done more to educate the American public on LGBT issues than almost anything else.

Which actress won her first Academy Award for playing Brandon Teena, a young trans man, in Boys Don't Cry?

Hilary Swank earned only $75 a day on the low-budget drama, about $3,000 in all. The film dramatises a real hate crime in Nebraska.

Which Juno star became the first openly trans man on the cover of Time magazine, in 2021?

Elliot Page came out as a trans man in 2020 and kept his part in The Umbrella Academy, with Netflix updating his name across the service.

Which Battle of the Sexes winner lost lucrative endorsements when a 1981 lawsuit outed her?

Billie Jean King beat Bobby Riggs at the Houston Astrodome in 1973 and was sued by a former partner eight years later. The case cost her an estimated $2m in endorsements and prolonged her career to pay lawyers.

Which British diver, who came out in a YouTube video, was often shown knitting in the stands at the Olympics?

Tom Daley announced in December 2013 that he had been in a relationship with a man. He keeps a separate Instagram account just for his knitting and crochet projects.

Cleve Jones conceived which huge tribute to people lost to AIDS, first laid out on the National Mall in 1987?

A quilt of panels made for the dead, it began when stigma denied many AIDS victims a funeral. At an estimated 54 tons, it is called the largest piece of community folk art in the world.

Which state's voters passed Proposition 8 in 2008, halting same-sex weddings that had begun there that June?

California had been licensing same-sex couples for under five months when Proposition 8 passed with a 52% majority. The 18,000-plus marriages already performed stayed valid.

Which makeover series, a Netflix reboot of a 2003 Bravo original, features five advisers called the Fab Five?

Queer Eye gives its five advisers a week to help improve one person's life. The Bravo original first aired under a longer title, Queer Eye for the Straight Guy, and won an Emmy in 2004.

Which place became the first in Asia to legalise same-sex marriage, two years after a top court ordered the change?

Taiwan's Constitutional Court gave lawmakers a deadline of 24 May 2019, after which couples could simply register. A government bill went to the legislature for fast-tracked review that February.

Which president made the area around New York's Stonewall Inn the first US national monument to LGBTQ history?

Barack Obama designated the 7.7-acre Stonewall National Monument on 24 June 2016. Land inside its boundary was first settled as a tobacco farm in 1633.

Which Pillow Talk star became in 1985 the first major American celebrity to die of an AIDS-related illness?

Rock Hudson died at home in Beverly Hills at 59, ten weeks after a publicist confirmed he had AIDS. Less than three weeks before his diagnosis he had been a guest of the Reagans at a state dinner.

Which Pulitzer-winning 1982 novel follows Celie, who becomes infatuated with the blues singer Shug Avery?

The Color Purple made its author, Walker, the first Black woman to win the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction. Celie tells much of the story in letters addressed to God.

Jason Collins, who wore 98 in memory of Matthew Shepard, was the first openly gay active player in which league?

NBA centre Collins signed with the Brooklyn Nets in February 2014, months after coming out. His jersey rose to the top spot for sales in the league's online shop.

Which country's Supreme Court unanimously struck down a colonial-era ban on gay sex in September 2018?

India had kept the law, which called gay sex an unnatural offence, since British rule. Commentators suggested that similar laws elsewhere in South Asia, modelled on it, could fall next.

Which state's sodomy law did the US Supreme Court strike down in 2003, voiding such laws in every other state too?

Texas had charged John Lawrence after a false police report gave officers cause to enter his home. The ruling overturned a 1986 decision in which the court had upheld Georgia's statute.

Gay student Matthew Shepard, whose murder led to a federal hate-crimes law, was attacked near which Wyoming city?

Laramie is home to the University of Wyoming, where Shepard was a first-year political science student. His death inspired The Laramie Project, a 2000 play that was later filmed.

Edith Windsor's 2013 Supreme Court win over a $363,053 estate tax demand struck down part of which federal law?

The Defense of Marriage Act stopped the federal government recognising her marriage to Thea Spyer, her partner of more than 40 years. As a recognised spouse she would have owed no estate tax at all.

Which US state created the country's first civil unions for same-sex couples in July 2000?

Vermont acted after a ruling from its own Supreme Court. In 2009 it also became the first state to bring in same-sex marriage by statute, without a court requiring it.

Which country in 1989 became the first in the world to offer registered partnerships to same-sex couples?

Denmark's law took effect that autumn and gave couples almost all the rights and benefits of marriage. It was replaced in 2012 by a gender-neutral marriage law.

Which Indiana University biologist, an expert on gall wasps, devised a 0-to-6 scale of sexual orientation?

Alfred Kinsey took 26 measurements from each of hundreds of thousands of gall wasps before he turned to studying people. His scale runs from exclusively heterosexual at one end to exclusively homosexual at the other.

In December 1973 the trustees of which body voted to stop classing homosexuality as a mental disorder?

The American Psychiatric Association acted the year after a gay psychiatrist addressed its members in a mask and wig, using a voice distorter to conceal his identity.

Which country did the drag performer Conchita Wurst represent when winning the 2014 Eurovision Song Contest?

Austria had not won Eurovision since 1966. Conchita is the stage persona of the singer Thomas Neuwirth, and petitions in two countries had called for the performance to be cut from the broadcast.

Jeanne Manford, who walked beside her gay son at an early New York march, founded which support group for families?

PFLAG grew out of the response to the sign she carried, which urged parents of gay children to unite in their support. She was posthumously awarded the Presidential Citizens Medal in 2013.

Which 1956 novel by the author of Go Tell It on the Mountain did a publisher suggest burning over its gay theme?

Giovanni's Room worried James Baldwin's American publisher, Knopf, which feared it would alienate his Black readers. It follows a young American in Paris and his affair with an Italian bartender.

Which cartoonist, whose name is on a famous test for women in film, wrote the graphic memoir Fun Home?

Alison Bechdel first set out the test in 1985 in her comic strip Dykes to Watch Out For. Fun Home later became a Broadway show that won the top award for a new musical in 2015.

The 2014 British film Pride tells how lesbian and gay activists raised money for which striking workers in 1984?

Coal miners' families were the cause taken up by Lesbians and Gays Support the Miners, the real campaign behind the story. The film won the Queer Palm at Cannes.

Which English actor came out on air in 1988 and was knighted three years later?

Ian McKellen made the announcement on Third Ear, having long been out to fellow actors. He went on to co-found Stonewall, the British lobby group named after the 1969 riots.

Which ancient Greek city fielded the Sacred Band, an elite infantry unit made up of 150 male couples?

Thebes made the Sacred Band the elite of its army in the 4th century BC. The unit was annihilated at Chaeronea in 338 BC by Philip II of Macedon and his son, the young Alexander the Great.

The 1973 arson attack on the UpStairs Lounge, a gay bar where 32 people died, happened in which Southern city?

New Orleans lost those lives in a second-floor bar on Iberville Street, where 15 more people were injured. For 43 years it stood as the deadliest attack on LGBTQ people in US history.

In which 1977 sitcom did Billy Crystal play Jodie Dallas, one of US primetime's earliest openly gay major characters?

Soap drew much of its criticism over Jodie, and religious groups urged American families to boycott the show. It was an early role for Crystal, whose character has a secret affair with a famous quarterback.

Which singer and Florida citrus spokeswoman led the 1977 Save Our Children drive against a gay rights law?

Anita Bryant won repeal of the ordinance by 69 to 31 percent, but the victory galvanised her opponents. They organised a boycott of the juice she promoted, backed by a string of celebrities.

Which secret slang, once used by British gay men, did Julian and Sandy air in the comedy show Round the Horne?

Polari takes its name from the Italian parlare, to talk. The need for a secret language faded after 1967, when gay sex between adults was partly decriminalised in England and Wales.

Whose 1957 British report said private homosexual acts between consenting adults should no longer be a crime?

John Wolfenden chaired a committee set up after several prominent men, the actor John Gielgud among them, were convicted. Its proposal took ten years to become law, and then only in England and Wales.

Leonard Matlovich, the gay Vietnam veteran on a 1975 Time cover, was fighting his discharge from which service?

Air Force Technical Sergeant Matlovich, a Bronze Star recipient with three tours of duty, hand-delivered a letter to his commanding officer that March. His tombstone, a memorial to all gay veterans, omits his name.

What name was given to the 1966 protest in which gay men asked to be served at Julius' bar in New York?

The Sip-In challenged a state liquor rule under which gay customers counted as disorderly by definition. It established the right of gay people to be served in licensed premises in New York.

In 18th-century England, what name was given to the taverns and private rooms where gay men met?

Molly houses drew repeated raids. The best known, Mother Clap's, was open from 1724 to 1726, when a raid ended with 40 men being taken to Newgate prison.

Which Yorkshire landowner, whose coded diaries record her affairs with women, inspired the BBC drama Gentleman Jack?

Anne Lister's diaries were so explicit that they were thought to be a hoax until they were authenticated. Many entries were in a code that was not cracked until long after her death in 1840.