Get out your rainbow flags and wave them with pride, it is LGBT History Month! As a bisexual man I thought I would make a short article displaying the history of the LGBT community. So show your pride or support and click read more.

Dating back to 1870’s we have had gay rights activist groups but they were all met with resistance and were first widely noticeable with the Homophile movement in the 1940’s. The Homophile movement was when the awareness activist groups spread to Europe, with a few groups in The Netherlands and Denmark that started in the aftermath of World War II. The name of the movement came from activists preferring to focus on the love instead of sex between couples.

In 1976 the LGBT community expanded as the awareness of bisexuality became more visual to the public light, and the activist group National Bisexual Liberation Group was established.

During the 1970’s there were several attempts to assemble people for an awareness march towards the White House in Washington D.C., but it was not until October 14th 1979 that the first National March on Washington for Lesbian and Gay Rights occurred. The march had between 75,000 and 125,000 gay men, lesbians, bisexuals, transgender people, and straight allies to demand equal civil rights and urge the passage of protective civil rights legislation.

In 1988 the annual Coming Out Day was stated as October 11th and 12th in some countries. The day was founded by Robert Eichberg and Jean O’Leary. Eichberg was a psychologist from New Mexico and founder of the personal growth workshop, The Experience. O’Leary was an openly lesbian political leader and long-time activist from New York, and was at the time the head of the National Gay Rights Advocates in Los Angeles. The day was founded as a positive response to anti-LGBT activists to celebrate coming out.

Leslie Feinberg published the book “Transgender Liberation: A Movement Whose Time Has Come” in 1992, bringing public light to the transgender movement to the public.

The annual LGBT History Month started in 1994 in The United States and has later spread widely to other countries. The same year Gay Pride March was celebrated for the first time in the Philippines making it the first Asian Gay Pride March in history.

In 1996 the first first LGBT youth activist groups started with the establishment of “Day of silence” was held in American high school and colleges. “Day of silence” is a day to spread awareness about the effect of bullying and harassment of lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer, and questioning (LGBTQ) students.

The Netherlands were the first country to allow same sex marriages in 2001, with Belgium as the next country in 2003 and Canada in 2005. As of today 29 countries have officially legalised same-sex marriage either nationwide or by region.

In 2011 the 1993 “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” law which forbade homosexual people from serving openly in the United States military, was repealed. This meant that gays and lesbians could now serve openly in the military without any fear of being discharged because of their sexual orientation.

On the 9th of December 2017 Australia became the most recent country to legalise same sex marriages, and Alderney (in the Channel Islands) is the latest nonindependent island to pass the legalisation as of May 2nd 2018.

To close up I just want to spread awareness of the LBGT foundation who offer support and advice to anyone in the LGBT community, click the link to read about the foundation or if you are in need of advice or support of any kind.

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