page_title: 1970s in LGBT rights
section_title: Themes
hierarchical_section_title: 1970s in LGBT rights / Themes
caption_attribution_description: English: Six color rainbow gay pride flag flying above Castro Street, San Francisco, California, June 2005. Photo by Justin J.W. Powell.
context_page_description: This is a list of notable events in the history of LGBT rights that took place in the 1970s.
context_section_description: The Stonewall riots, which occurred in New York City in June 1969, are generally considered to have ignited the modern gay rights movement in the United States (Canada, England and Wales had already decriminalised homosexuality in 1967). In the 1970s, in western countries and especially so in major urban centers, gay and lesbian people came out of the closet like never before (even as many others remained closeted) and a vocal and visible gay-rights movement coalesced in an unprecedented way.
  Considering the profound stigma still attached to homosexuality at the dawn of the 1970s, the movement, although still nascent, saw tremendous gains over the course of the decade. The American Psychiatric Association removed homosexuality from its list of psychiatric disorders in 1973. Homosexual decriminalisation laws and ordinances were passed by several cities and states, including Ann Arbor, Michigan in 1972, South Australia in 1975, the Australian Capital Territory in 1976, and in 1977 Quebec became the first jurisdiction larger than a city or county in the world to prohibit discrimination based on sexual orientation in the public and private sectors.
  
  Bisexuality also saw increased visibility. A Quaker group, the Committee of Friends on Bisexuality, issued the “Ithaca Statement on Bisexuality” supporting bisexuals. 
  The Statement, which may have been "the first public declaration of the bisexual movement" and "was certainly the first statement on bisexuality issued by an American religious assembly," appeared in the Quaker Friends Journal and The Advocate in 1972.
   Today Quakers have varying opinions on LGBT people and rights, with some Quaker groups more accepting than others.
  For the first time, a few openly gay people were elected to political office in the United States. In 1977 Harvey Milk, a politically active gay man in the emerging gay neighborhood The Castro, was elected to the Board of Supervisors in San Francisco. Milk and liberal San Francisco mayor George Moscone were assassinated the following year. In 1979 their assassin, Dan White, received a sentence of voluntary manslaughter. The anger the gay community felt about the murders and about White's light sentence further galvanized the movement (see White Night Riots).
  The increasing visibility of gay people also generated a backlash during the 1970s. In perhaps the most discussed anti-gay rights campaign of the decade, singer Anita Bryant led a successful drive in 1977 to repeal a gay-rights ordinance in Dade County, Florida. The new openness about homosexuality proved disconcerting to some heterosexuals who had been accustomed to gay and lesbian people remaining closeted and politically silent. Canadian author Robertson Davies wrote during the decade that "the love that dare not speak its name" (referencing the famous Lord Alfred Douglas quotation, also quoted by Oscar Wilde during his court case in 1895) "has become the love that won't shut up." On October 14, 1979, approximately 100,000 people marched in Washington, D.C., in the largest pro-gay rights demonstration up to that time.
caption: The Gay Pride Flag, symbol of the  Rights Movement, was first flown in 1978 in San Francisco. This is the current version, flying over the Castro in June 2005
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