August 5-11
1996
U.S.: In Portland, Ore., for the first time in the United States, a judge requires a public agency to extend to gay couples the medical, life and dental insurance benefits that married couples have. Judge Stephen L. Gallagher of Multnomah County Circuit Court rules that Oregon Health Sciences University was discriminating by denying benefits to the domestic partners of three gay employees. Christine Tanner, a professor of nursing at the university, filed the suit, along with another nursing professor and a university pharmacist, in 1992.
1991
U.S.: A Houston police "sting" aimed at apprehending gay bashers results in two separate attacks on undercover officers and 13 arrests during the first weekend alone. Both police and local gay activists are surprised by the high level of violence. * In Miami Beach, the police department begin gay sensitivity training for its officers after discussing anti-gay harassment with gays.
1986
U.S.: In San Francisco, the 2nd Gay Games attracts twice as many participants as the first; 3,482 athletes from 16 countries participate in 17 events. * Bell South Advertising and Publishing Corp., or the "real" Yellow Pages, refuses to renew a standing ad listing for the Weekly News, Miami's gay and lesbian paper, this year, because it contains the word "gay." * The Walter Reed Army Institute of research reports that four times as many Black military recruits as whites test positive for exposure to HTLV-III. * In New York, an estimated 10,000 gays and lesbians hold a civil disobedience blockade at the Lincoln Center to protest the Supreme Court ruling upholding Georgia's sodomy law, while Chief Justice Warren Burger is inside addressing the American Bar Assoc. * Norway: The youth group of Det Norske Forbundet av ( NF1948 ) , the Norwegian gay organization, and the International Gay Youth Information Pool co-host the 3rd International Gay Youth Conf. in Oslo.
1981
U.S.: Black and White Men Together members begin weekly demonstrations outside the Ice Palace, a disco in New York City, in protest of the club's allegedly racist door policies. * The National Association of Business Councils, the nationwide gay and lesbian chamber of commerce, holds its first anniversary board meeting to elect officers and plan its convention. Jean O'Leary, executive director of Gay Rights Advocates, becomes the new president. * Calling themselves Parents FLAG, parents from seven states create a national federation, Parents & Friends of Lesbians and Gays, to build support for their gay sons and daughters. * In Alexandria, Va., three Marine military policemen plead guilty in U.S. District Court to assault charges following an attack at the Iwo Jima Memorial on two gay men and a chase involving a third. * Philip Meyers, an 18-year-old Morrisville, Pa., tent dweller, is arrested for the slaying of 53-year-old Hugh J. Daily. Meyers claimed Daily had provoked him by making an advance after picking him up while hitch-hiking. * In Illinois, the Rockford Register-Star publishes a letter from Richard Lundberg, the national chairman of the Aryan Unity Party of America. The letter reads: Recently in San Francisco an estimated 250,000 marched in the 12th annual Lesbian-Gay Freedom Day Parade ... To say that the lifestyles of these people are normal is someone's idea of a sick joke. ... [ T ] he entire lesbian gay population of America should be declared either mentally retarded or mentally ill ... rounded up, sterilized, and placed into institutions."
