Pride Facts and Statistics
- The Rainbow Flag or Pride Flag is the symbol of the LGBTQIA+ community.
- Rainbow Flag has six stripes using the colors red, orange, yellow, green, blue, and purple.
- The Pride Parade Committee adopted the Rainbow Flag as a symbol in 1979 after the assassination of revered LGBT-rights activist Harvey Milk.
- Harvey Milk was a civil and human rights leader and the first openly gay elected official in the United States.
- Kathy Kozachenko won a seat on the Ann Harbor, Michigan, City Council in 1974, becoming the first out American to be elected to public office.
- Harvey Milk won a seat on the San Francisco Board of Supervisors in 1977.
- On June 28, 1970, one year after the Stonewall Riots Uprising, the first Pride marches were held in New York, Los Angeles, and Chicago.
- LGBT+ people gathered to commemorate Stonewall and demand equal rights.
- In 1977, the New York Supreme Court ruled that transgender woman Renée Richards could play at the United States Open tennis tournament as a woman.
Pride Month History Facts and Statistics
- Henry Gerber, a German immigrant, founded the Society for Human Rights in Chicago in In 1924. The first documented gay rights organization in the United States.
- Gerber’s Society for Human Rights published “Friendship and Freedom,” the country’s first gay-interest newsletter.
- The Society for Human Rights group disbanded in 1925 as a result of police raids.
- 90 years later, the United States government designated Gerber’s Chicago house a National Historic Landmark.
- Pride was adapted from the “Reminder Day Pickets” held yearly on July 4th from 1965-1969 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania at Independence Hall.
- The Annual Reminder Day Pickets were organized by the Eastern Regional Conference of Homophile Organizations (E.R.C.H.O). E.R.C.H.O. (initially called E.C.H.O.).
- Eastern Regional Conference of Homophile Organizations was formed in 1962 as an organization of east coast homophile groups which included the New York Chapter of the Daughters of Bilitis, the Janus Society in Philadelphia, and the Mattachine Society of Washington.
- Pride month exists to publicly celebrate and include all LGBTQIA+ members who in the past had to hide who they were.
- The clandestine gay club Stonewall Inn was an institution in New York City’s downtown neighborhood Greenwich Village.
- Stonewall Inn was a large, cheap, club that allowed dancing, and welcomed drag queens and homeless youths.
- The Stonewall Riots of 1969 in New York City marked the origin of Pride.
- The 1969 riots at Stone Wall in New York were to demand marriage equality.
- After the Stonewall Inn riots, members of the Mattachine Society split off to form the Gay Liberation Front.
- The Gay Liberation Front was a radical group that launched public demonstrations, protests, and confrontations with political officials.
- LGBTQ Pride Month is celebrated in the month of June.
- LGBTQ History Month is celebrated in the month of October in the United States.
- The United Kingdom celebrates LGBTQ History Month in the month of February.
- The Christopher Street Liberation Day Committee organized the first NYC Pride March in 1970 a year after the Stone Wall Riots.
- The Christopher Street Liberation Day Committee aimed to hold a massive march at the culmination of Gay Pride Week between June 22th to the 28th.
- The NYC Pride March has continued to happen in NYC every June since 1970.
- The HIV and AIDS pandemic of the 1980s was a war against the LGBQ+ community.
- The World Health Organization declared December 1st to be World AIDS Day in 1988.
- The 1993 March on Washington for Lesbian, Gay, and Bi-Equal Rights and Liberation was another historic event for LGBTQ+ rights and social justice.
- The United States Supreme Court ruling in Obergefell v. Hodges on June 26, 2015, was the first positive rule in favor of marriage equality.
- In the five to four ruling of Obergefell v. Hodges on June 26, 2015, The Supreme Court ruled that the Constitution guarantees that every American has the right to marry the person they love.
LGBT Facts
- In 1993 President Bill Clinton passed the “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” (DADT) policy/
- DADT allowed gay men and women to serve in the military as long as they kept their sexuality a secret.
- Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell was officially repealed on September 20, 2011.
- Hate crimes against all members of the LGBTQ+ community continue particularly against Black Queer and Trans communities.
- One in Six GenZ adults identifies as part of the LGBTQIA+ community.
- L – Lesbian: Women are sexually attracted to other women.
- G – Gay: A person is attracted to someone of the same gender.
- B– Bi-Sexual: A person is attracted to someone of the same or another gender.
- T – Trans: Someone who identifies with a gender that is different than the one assigned at birth.
- Q – Queer: General term for people who do not identify as being attracted to the opposite gender and do not identify with their sex assigned at birth.
- The “Q” also stands for Questioning: When individual questions where their fall regarding their own sexual inclination.
- I – Intersex: Someone who is born with a more unique combination of hormones, genitalia, or chromosomes.
- A – Asexual: Refers to the absence of sexual attraction.
- Plus: Includes all other queer identities not represented in the acronym mentioned above. An example of plus is pansexual and polysexual.
- Nonbinary is used by people whose gender identity and/or expression falls outside the binary gender categories of “man” and “woman.”
- Genderqueer and Genderfluid were terms previously used by Nonbinary individuals to identify themselves.
- The Boy Scouts of America lifted its ban against openly gay leaders and employees in 2015.
- The Boy Scouts of America reversed a century-old ban against transgender boys in 2017.
- The Girl Scouts of America accepted its first transgender Girl Scout in 2011.
- In 2016, the United States military lifted its ban on transgender people serving openly.
- In March 2018, President Donald Trump announced a new transgender policy for the military that again banned most transgenders from military service.
- On January 25, 2021, President Biden signed an executive order overturning the ban President Donald Trump imposed in 2018.
Source: Educator 4 Social Change, NYC Pride, Facing History Ourselves, Prevent Child Abuse, Outwords, Belt Magazine, The Center, GLAAD, Milk Foundation, Library of Congress, GLAAD New York, History.