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1976
From Outcyclopedia, the free and queer encyclopedia
Following is a list of significant events in gay history which occurred in 1976:
Events
January-February
Bette Midler claims in a Chicago Tribune interview that she "does not have a gay following" and "wouldn't know a homosexual if I saw one."
15 January - A report, Declaration on Certain Questions Concerning Sexual
Ethics, is released by the Vatican, calling homosexuality a "serious depravity which cannot be
approved of under any circumstances."
19 January - Hubert Humphry says he supports gay rights, and knows of no
reason why homosexuals should be excluded from civil rights and civil
liberties.
February - Maurice Weiner, Deputy Mayor of Los Angeles, is convicted for lewd conduct after groping an undercover vice officer in a public restroom.
A "gay purge" is instituted by commanding officers at Malstrom Air Force Base in Great Falls, Montana after a serviceman attempts suicide when his relationship with another man ends. Twenty service personnel are discharged.
10 February - Andy Lippincott, a gay character, is first introduced in Gary Trudeau's Doonesbury comic strip.
21 February - A court in Detroit awards $200,000 in damages to a man who claims that he
turned into a homosexual after being rear-ended in an automobile accident.
March-April
In San Francisco, Rudi Cox becomes the first openly gay deputy sheriff in the US.
(2 March) - A gay rights bill is vetoed in Anchorage, Alaska by Mayor George Sullivan, who says the people of Anchorage should not be forced to associate with "sexual deviants."
(5 March) - In Peoria, Illinois President Gerald Ford tells an audience of university students that while he has no easy answers to the question of gay rights, he tries to be understanding of people who are different from him.
(12 March) - Presidential candidate Jimmy Carter announces that if elected he would issue executive orders banning discrimination against gays and lesbians in the military, housing, employment, and immigration.
(25 March) - Jimmy Carter's nephew, William Carter Spann begins a three-year prison term for robbing several gay businesses in San Francisco.
(29 March) - The constitutionality of Virginia's sodomy laws is upheld by the US Supreme Court in the case of Doe vs. Commonwealth Attorney of Virginia.
(31 March) - The Florida Supreme Court overturns a conviction of "open and gross lewdness" in a 5-2 decision. The defendant, a waiter in a gay bar, had been accused of fondling a customer in a public area. In the written decision Justice Sundberg wrote that the conduct had to be extremely indecent and offensive, and that in "the dark and crowded recesses of the Yum Yum Tree at 2:00 a.m." it was unlikely that anyone was offended.
April - Metropolitan Life Insurance Company begins extending married status to gay couples who have been together for at least a year.
The gay rights group, Association for the Protection of Individual Rights, is founded in Tel Aviv, Israel.
The Gay Community Services Center in Seattle is destroyed by arson.
(1 April) - The Austin Texas City Council passes a Public Accommodations Ordinance which includes equal access on the basis of sexual orientation.
(2 April) - The owner of a New Jersey dinner theater cancels a performance of The Boys in the Band after learning the play is about homosexuality.
4 April -Pope Paul VI publicly denies that he is a homosexual.
7 April - Rep. Barbara Jordan (D-TX) refuses to co-sponsor a federal gay rights bill, and becomes angry at comparisons made between discrimination based on race and discrimination based on sexual orientation.
10 April - A charity auction at a bathhouse in Los Angeles is raided by over 100 police. Forty people are arrested. The charges are dropped against thirty-six of them because of public reaction. The estimated cost to taxpayers is $17,800.
17 April - The First Annual Lavender World's Fair, promoted as the first all-gay world's fair and scheduled to take place in Los Angeles, is cancelled when opening act the Pointer Sisters walk out for lack of payment.
30 April - An appearance by Chief Justice Warren Burger in
New York is protested by gay demonstrators in response to the Supreme Court's decision on 29 March to uphold Virginia's sodomy law.
May-June
1 May - Christopher Street magazine premieres.
14 May - In an attempt to make the
city presentable for the summer Olympic Games, a series of raids on gay bars is conducted by police in Montreal. Owners decide to close their establishments down until after the Games are over.
21 May - Jimmy Carter says that if elected he will support a federal
gay rights law. He retracts his support for such a law at the Democratic Convention the following month.
June - The US Marine Corps is blocked from discharging Staff Sergeant Robert LeBlanc for homosexuality by the US Court of Appeals in San Francisco.
10 June - West Virginia repeals its sodomy law.
11 June - Queen Elizabeth knights Benjamin Britten.
23 June - The FBI acknowledges that it has been keeping files on gay newsmagazine
The Advocate
24 June - Iowa repeals its sodomy laws. Also, G Harold Carswell, a Nixon Supreme Court nominee rejected by the Senate for his record on civil rights, is charged with soliciting a male undercover vice officer.
28 June - An ordinance is passed by the Washington DC city council prohibiting denial of child custody or visitation rights on grounds of sexual
orientation.
July-October
Portugal's first gay-rights group is formed.
16 July - Federal District Judge Gerhard Gesell upholds the discharge of Sgt. Leonard Matlovich.
19 July - A former Los Angeles vice
police officer writes in a New West magazine article that LAPD officers routinely beat gay men.
28 July - An outbreak of shigellosis and amoebic dysentery among gay men in the city is reported by the San Francisco Department of Health.
1 August - A UCLA releases a study which shows that being raised by a
lesbian mother has no effect on the mental health or sexual orientation
of her child.
September - Gerry Studds is re-elected to Congress. His opponent had criticized Studds' support of a federal gay rights bill. Studds will later come out as gay.
In Ann Arbor, Michigan, Gerald Ford admits he was unaware homosexuality was used as a reason to deny immigrants entry to the US.
Chicago's lesbian-feminist newspaper, Lavender Woman, ceases publication after five years.
11 September - A California court upholds the convictions of two men arrested for lewd conduct for kissing in public. They are forced to register as sex offenders
under California law.
12 September - Rev Malcolm Boyd comes out in an interview with the Chicago Sun Times.
October - Promoted as the first gay-themed talk show in the US, Blueboy Forum debuts on Miami's WKID-TV.
The Yale Younger Poets Award for 1976 goes to openly lesbian Olga Broumas, a women's studies instructor at the University of Oregon.
November-December
The Tribunal on Homosexuals and Discrimination, a day-long symbolic trial, is held in Sydney, Australia. Afterwards, sevral government officials urge reform of existing anti-gay laws.
2 November - Anti-gay US Representative Robert Dornan, (R-AZ), is elected to his first
term.
Minnesota State Senator Allan Spear and Massachusetts State Representative Elaine Noble, both openly gay, are re-elected.
4 November - Syndicated columnist Nicholas von Hoffman's column "Out of
TV's Sitcom Closet" appears. Von Hoffman cliams Americans are
experiencing the "Year of the Fag," and the National Gay
Task Force was controlling at least one sitcom. He refers to
gays as flits, faggots, fruits, homos, and queers.
Gay publications are banned from all federal prisons by the US Bureau of Prisons.
1 December - Willard Allen is released from a Florida mental
hospital 26 years after he was ordered by a judge to be held
there for having sex with another man. His doctors had been
recommending his release for almost 20 years.
Unknown dates
Marlon Brando says in an interview, "Like a large number of men, I, too, have had
homosexual experiences and am not ashamed."
Rock musician Ted Nugent says in an interview, "When I was ten or eleven, I remember very vividly, I got it on with guys. But it was just experimentation ... I was a gay bandido."
Porn star Jack Wrangler claims in an interview that his first gay experience was in a gangbang at age 13 by the swim team at his prep school. He later recants the story as a hoax.
Bella Abzug is defeated in her bid for the US Senate by Patrick Moynihan.
Ethel Waters, now a gospel singer touring with the Rev. Billy Graham, retires from performing due to ill health.
The first Southeastern Conference on Lesbians and Gay Men is held in Chapel Hill, North Carolina.
Redbird, a feminist lesbian intentional community, is founded in Vermont. It lasts until 1979.
Rev. Dolores Jackson co-founds the Salsa Soul Sisters, the precursor to African Ancestral Lesbians United for Societal Change.
Sinister Wisdom magazines premieres.
In a People magazine interview, gay actor Paul Lynde makes the controversial statement that he prefers not to have gay men in his audiences, saying, "they killed Judy Garland."
Year in topic
Year in film
Gay for a Day, a home movie record of the Gay Pride Parade in San Francisco and a gay Halloween bash in Chicago.
Gay Freedom Day Parade - 1976, a chronicle of the event by Bob Hansen.
Goodbye, Norma Jean, Larry Buchanan's account of the life of Norma Jean Baker during the years before she became Marilyn Monroe, starring Misty Rowe.
The Opening of Misty Beethoven, co-starring Casey Donovan, using his alternate name of Cal Culver. It is a pornographic take-off on My Fair Lady, and one of Cal/Casey's few appearances in heterosexual porn.
Kansas City Trucking Company, directed by Joe Gage and starring Richard Locke and Jack Wrangler.
Year in literature
Jonathan Ned Katz's Gay American History.
Armistead Maupin's Tales of the City first appears as a daily serial in the San Francisco Chronicle.
Anne Rice's novel Interview With the Vampire, introducing the bisexual vampire Lestat.
Bisexual poet Steve Abbott's Mermaid Dreams.
Martin Green's Children of the Sun: A Narrative of "Decadence" in England After 1918, detailing the lives of Harold Acton and other gay luminaries between the World Wars.
Year in music
The first Michigan Womyn's Festival is held in Hart, Michigan
Leslie Cheung wins second prize in the ATV Asian Music Contest.
Year in theatre
Michael Bennett's “A Chorus Line” wins nine Tony Awards.
Year in sports
27 August - Transsexual tennis player Renee Richards is barred from playing tennis in the women's division because she was "still biologically a man."
Births
Danny Pintauro, former child actor on the 80s television sitcom Who's the Boss? (Jan. 6)
Stephen Gately , former member of the pop singing group "Boyzone" (Mar. 17)
Deaths
January-June
(Feb. 12) - Actor Sal Mineo is stabbed to death outside his West Hollywood apartment at age 37. Two years later, Lionel Ray Williams, a drifter imprisoned in Michigan for forgery, claims to be Mineo's killer, saying he did it "for the fun of it." Williams is later convicted for the crime, serving 12 years out of a 5 years to life sentence.
Italian director Luchino Visconti, in Rome, age 69. (March 17)
Howard Hughes , aviation pioneer, film director, eccentric (5 April).
September-December
Benjamin Britten, composer (4 December)
External links:
Entry revised 1 February, 2005. All text is available for use under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License. (see Copyrights for details).