Queer As Art issue 2 April-May-June 2017 | Page 26

Gay Pride, with marches happening in
New-York, Los Angeles and Chicago.
Brenda Howard is then called the “Mother
of Pride”. Sylvia Rivera and Marsha P.
Johnson, who were both leaders to the
riots, found the Street Transvestite Action
Revolutionaries.
Berkeley Barb,1969, Volume 8, Issue 13(189)
And things change slowly from there. In
1972 the movie That Certain Summer is
the first gay-themed movie to win an
Emmy and in 1973, The Rocky Horror
Picture Show meets a huge success,
becoming a pop-culture phenomenon for
decades to come. 1972 is also the year of
the first gay synagogue and of the first gay
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person to be ordained by a major
Christian denomination. Politics also move,
even more than culture. Canada is faster at
decriminalizing homosexual acts between
consenting adults - in 1969. In the United
States, it’s in 1973 that homosexuality is
removed from the Diagnostic and
Statistical Manual of Mental
Disorders by the American
Psychiatric Association,
under the combined
pressure of activism, social
changes and empirical
evidence.
One year prior to that
was founded the Lesbian
Feminist Liberation, by
Jean O’Leary, as the first
lesbian activist group to
counterbalance the
domination of gay men in
the activist movements and
the exclusion of lesbians
from most feminist groups,
and this group is the first
one to organize a meeting
of gay activists in the White
House, in 1977. The same year, Harvey
Milk becomes the first openly gay person
to be elected in public office, in San
Francisco. In 1978, he encourages the
activist Gilbert Baker to create a symbol for
the LGBT Community. Since the US flag
has become a symbol for people to gather
around during hard times, Baker creates
the rainbow flag, made of eight lines
stacked together representing people