This recognition, along with positive portrayals of LGBTQI+ people on American TV and film, has spurred greater social acceptance of LGBTQI+ people and support for their equal rights as U.S. Over the past 30 years, millions of Americans have come to realize that many of the people they know - their neighbors, colleagues, friends and family members - are LGBTQI+. And on October 14, 1979, the National March on Washington for Lesbian and Gay Rights drew some 75,000 gay men, lesbians, bisexuals, transgender people and their heterosexual allies and established LGBTQI+ rights as a national issue. In 1973, the American Psychiatric Association removed homosexuality from its official list of mental disorders.
The Stonewall Uprising that began June 28, 1969, marked a turning point in efforts to protect the rights of LGBTQI+ people, expanding a campaign led by a relatively small group of activists into a widespread movement. state to decriminalize consensual same-sex conduct between adults in private.
It was followed by the Mattachine Society, the first national gay rights organization, in 1950, and by the Daughters of Bilitis, a lesbian rights organization, in 1955. In 1924, the Chicago-based Society for Human Rights, founded by activist Henry Gerber, became the country’s earliest known gay rights organization.
