Joseph Bennington-Castro

The Stonewall Riots of 1969 are arguably the most famous and impactful uprisings for lesbian, gay, bisexual transgender, and queer (LGBTQ+) rights. But they are not the first LGBTQ+ uprising by far. Various smaller uprisings preceded Stonewall—some by over a decade—to push back ...read more

First imagined by gay rights activist Cleve Jones in 1985, the AIDS Memorial Quilt—with 1,920 individual panels, each inscribed with the name of a person lost to AIDS—was displayed for the first time on the National Mall in Washington, D.C. on October 11, 1987. The Quilt then ...read more

By the end of 1984, AIDS had already ravaged the United States for a few years, affecting at least 7,700 people and killing more than 3,500. Scientists had identified the cause of AIDS—HIV—and the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) identified all of its major ...read more

The Supreme Court of the United States (SCOTUS) was established in 1789, but it didn't rule on a case that directly influenced gay rights until nearly 170 years later. Since then, the highest federal court in the country has weighed-in on about a dozen other LGBTQ rights-related ...read more