Items25The creator’s order
  1. 1Magnus HirschfeldMagnus HirschfeldBorn 14 May 1868The first organised legislative campaign for gay rights began in Berlin in 1897, when Hirschfeld, a physician, co-founded the Scientific-Humanitarian Committee and launched a petition to the Reichstag to repeal Paragraph 175, the law criminalising sex between men. It gathered thousands of…0i
  2. 2Antony GreyAntony GreyThe 1957 Wolfenden Report recommended decriminalising private sex between men over 21, and then governments did nothing for a decade. Grey, who worked under that pseudonym to protect his family, ran the Homosexual Law Reform Society through most of those years, lobbying MPs and peers, briefing…0
  3. 3Leo AbseLeo AbseBorn 22 Apr 1917Abse, a Labour MP for Pontypool and a Cardiff solicitor, took the Wolfenden recommendation into the Commons as a private member's bill, while the Earl of Arran carried a parallel bill in the Lords. Home Secretary Roy Jenkins gave the bill government time, without which it would have died. Abse made…0i
  4. 4Frank KamenyFrank KamenyBorn 21 May 1925Kameny, a Harvard-trained astronomer, was fired from the Army Map Service in 1957 for being gay, and in 1961 filed the first petition to the US Supreme Court arguing that such dismissals violated civil rights. The court declined to hear it. He kept going with the Mattachine Society of Washington:…0i
  5. 5Harvey MilkHarvey MilkBorn 22 May 1930Milk is the most famous name here, and his legislative record was short because his time in office was: eleven months on the San Francisco Board of Supervisors before his assassination in November 1978. In that time he sponsored the city's 1978 ordinance banning discrimination on grounds of sexual…0i
  6. 6Jeff DudgeonJeff DudgeonThe 1967 act did not reach Northern Ireland, and in 1976 police raided Dudgeon's Belfast home, seized his diaries and questioned him about his sex life. He took the case to Strasbourg, and in Dudgeon v United Kingdom in 1981 the European Court of Human Rights ruled that criminalising private sex…0
  7. 7David Norris (politician)David Norris (politician)Born 31 Jul 1944Norris, a Trinity College Dublin lecturer in English, challenged Ireland's Victorian laws against sex between men in the Irish courts, losing in the Supreme Court in 1983. His barrister, Mary Robinson, later president of Ireland, took the case to Strasbourg, and in Norris v Ireland in 1988 the…0i
  8. 8Michael CashmanMichael CashmanSection 28 of the Local Government Act 1988 banned councils from "promoting" homosexuality, and the campaign against it produced the professional lobbying group that changed British law over the next 15 years. Cashman, then an EastEnders actor, co-founded Stonewall in 1989 with Ian McKellen, Lisa…0i
  9. 9Rodney CroomeRodney CroomeTasmania was the last Australian state to criminalise sex between men, with penalties of up to 21 years. Croome and Nick Toonen of the Tasmanian Gay and Lesbian Rights Group took a complaint to the UN Human Rights Committee, which ruled in Toonen v Australia in 1994 that the law breached the…0i
  10. 10Simon NkoliSimon NkoliBorn 26 Nov 1957South Africa's 1996 constitution was the first in the world to ban discrimination on grounds of sexual orientation, and Nkoli is a large part of why. Tried for treason alongside anti-apartheid leaders in the Delmas trial of 1985 to 1988, he was openly gay throughout, which pushed fellow defendants…0i