19th century San Francisco's LGBTQ culture has its roots in the city's own origin as a frontier town, what
San Francisco State University professor Alamilla Boyd characterized as "San Francisco's history of sexual permissiveness and its function as a wide-open town – a town where anything goes". The discovery of
gold saw a boom in population from 800 to 35,000 residents between 1848 and 1850. These migrants were composed of miners and fortune seekers from a variety of nationalities and cultures, over 95% of whom were young men. which portrays a men-only dance during the 1849
California gold rush These transient and diverse populations thrust into a relatively anarchic environment were less likely to conform to social conventions. For example, with an unbalanced gender ratio, men often assumed roles conventionally assigned to women in social and domestic settings. Cross-gender dress and same-sex dancing were prevalent at city masquerade balls where some men assumed the traditional role of women going so far as to wear female attire.
20th century Through WWII - in the shadows performed at the lesbian club Mona's in the 1930s Michael Stabile of
Out stated that the first "notorious" gay bar in San Francisco was The Dash, which opened in 1908. During
World War I, the U.S. Navy began the "
Blue discharge" practice, which discharged known homosexuals in
port cities, helping to create a community of identified (blue discharge was not confidential) gays in San Francisco. The San Francisco LGBTQ community first fully formed in the 1920s and 1930s. The most prominent LGBTQ area then was
North Beach. Nightclubs with
drag shows drew both gay and straight audiences. During
World War II, US military started to systematically identify and exclude homosexuals, and those discharged on the
Pacific theater ended up in the West Coast ports, mostly in the principal Pacific troop transport port of
Fort Mason. Gay night life in San Francisco also went through several waves of crackdown and reorganization. From 1942 to 1943, the San Francisco Moral Drive—consisting of military patrols—carried out a series of raids targeting the gay bars in San Francisco, with the stated aim of protecting servicemen from homosexuals. Chinatown, as one of places where gay visitors gathered, had also been searched several times. For example, In 1943, the police raided the gay bar,
Rickshaw in Chinatown, and arrested 24 patrons and two dozen customers, including a couple of lesbians who tried to fight back and triggered a small riot. Todd J. Ormsbee, an American studies professor at
San Jose State University who wrote
The Meaning of Gay: Interaction, Publicity, and Community among Homosexual Men in 1960s San Francisco, stated that a "somewhat more open gay male culture" appeared in San Francisco due to the city's "relative safety" compared to other American cities and due to a "permissiveness" in the city's culture.
1950s - the Beats, and first organizations Beat culture erupted in San Francisco in the 1950s with a rebellion against middle class values and thus became aligned with homosexuality and other lifestyles not part of mainstream culture. The beat poets who relocated to San Francisco from New York flourished in San Francisco's permissive atmosphere, and some like
Allen Ginsberg were openly gay. In these conditions the first homosexual groups were founded, such as the
Daughters of Bilitis (founded in San Francisco, it was the first lesbian civil and political rights organization in the United States), and the
Mattachine Society, which started in Los Angeles but was headquartered in San Francisco beginning around 1956. Police raids on The
Black Cat bar, which had a bohemian and LGBTQ clientele and featured entertainer and activist
José Sarria, sparked an important legal fight for homosexual protections in the 1950s.
1960s - SF as gay capital, first struggles for recognition In 1961 in San Francisco,
José Sarria became the first openly gay candidate in the United States to run for public office, running for a seat on the San Francisco Board of Supervisors. Sarria almost won by default. On the last day for candidates to file petitions, city officials realized that there were fewer than five candidates running for the five open seats, which would have assured Sarria a seat. By the end of the day, 34 candidates had filed. Sarria garnered some 6,000 votes, As Sarria put it, "From that day on, nobody ran for anything in San Francisco without knocking on the door of the gay community." The
Tavern Guild, the first gay business association in the United States, was created by gay bar owners in 1962 as a response to continued police harassment and closing of gay bars (including the
Tay-Bush Inn raid), and continued until 1995. The June 1964 Paul Welch
Life article entitled "Homosexuality In America" marked the first time a national publication reported on gay issues.
Life's photographer was referred to a gay
leather bar in San Francisco called the Tool Box by
Hal Call, who had long worked to dispel the myth that all homosexual men were
effeminate. The article opened with a two-page spread of the mural of life size leathermen in the bar, which had been painted by
Chuck Arnett in 1962. The article described San Francisco as "The Gay Capital of America" and inspired many gay leathermen to move there. The Society for Individual Rights (SIR), founded in San Francisco in 1964, published the magazine
Vector and became within two years the largest
homophile organization in the United States. SIR focused on community building, public identity and legal and social services. On the eve of January 1, 1965, several homophile organizations in San Francisco, California - including SIR, the
Daughters of Bilitis, the
Council on Religion and the Homosexual, and the
Mattachine Society - held a fund-raising ball for their mutual benefit at the California Hall. San Francisco police had agreed not to interfere; however, on the evening of the ball, the police showed up in force and surrounded the California Hall and focused numerous kleig lights on the entrance to the hall. As each of the 600-plus persons entering the ball approached the entrance, the police took their photographs. Vanguard, an organization of LGBT youth in the low-income
Tenderloin district, was created in 1965. It is considered the first
Gay Liberation organization in the U.S. In 1966, SIR opened America's first gay and lesbian community center. Also in 1966, one of the first recorded transgender riots in US history took place. The
Compton's Cafeteria Riot occurred in the Tenderloin district of San Francisco. The night after the riot, more transgender people, hustlers, Tenderloin street people, and other members of the
LGBTQ community joined in a
picket of the cafeteria, which would not allow transgender people back in. The demonstration ended with the newly installed plate-glass windows being smashed again. According to the online encyclopedia
glbtq.com, "In the aftermath of the riot at Compton's, a network of transgender social, psychological, and medical support services was established, which culminated in 1968 with the creation of the National Transsexual Counseling Unit [NTCU], the first such peer-run support and advocacy organization in the world". One of the earliest organizations for bisexuals, the Sexual Freedom League in San Francisco, was facilitated by Margo Rila and Frank Esposito beginning in 1967. Two years later, during a staff meeting at a San Francisco mental health facility serving LGBT people, nurse
Marguerite Rubenstein came out as bisexual. Due to this, bisexuals began to be included in the facility's programs for the first time. By 1972 this evolved into the Gay Liberation Day Parade, renamed several times since then to
San Francisco Pride. The identification of
The Castro as a
gay neighborhood identity began in the 1960s and 1970s as LGBT people began moving to the community. The first gay bar to have clear windows in San Francisco was
Twin Peaks Tavern, which removed its blacked-out windows in 1972. Lesbian bars and women's organizations began to proliferate in the 1970s, including bars like
Maud's,
Peg's Place, Amelia's,
Wild Side West, and A Little More, as well as women's coffeehouses, a bookstore and a bathhouse. Many women's businesses and organizations were concentrated in the
Valencia Street area of the
Mission District. The world's first gay softball league was formed in San Francisco in 1974 as the Community Softball League, which eventually included both women's and men's teams. The teams, usually sponsored by gay bars, competed against each other and against the San Francisco Police softball team. San Franciscans also created a gay university, Lavender U, and hosted the world's first gay film festival in 1977. The
Cockettes, a psychedelic gay theater collective started by
Hibiscus, were popular entertainers of the early 1970s. One of their members,
Sylvester, went on to achieve international acclaim during the
Disco Era. In 1976 Maggi Rubenstein and Harriet Levi founded The San Francisco Bisexual Center. In November 1977
Harvey Milk was elected as the first openly gay politician in the city of San Francisco; he became a member of the
San Francisco Board of Supervisors. The Harvey Milk LGBT Democratic Club was founded as the San Francisco Gay Democratic Club in 1976 and received its current name in 1978 in honor of Harvey Milk after he was assassinated that year. This club was a more progressive offshoot of the
Alice B. Toklas Democratic Club, founded in San Francisco in 1971, which was the first gay Democratic club of the United States.
Harry Britt was president of the club when Milk was assassinated and was appointed by the Mayor Feinstein to succeed Milk as supervisor. Britt went on to be the second openly gay elected official in San Francisco, as well as the first openly gay official to become the President of the Board of Supervisors, writing and passing domestic partnership legislation. He passed rent control ordinances, was the highest elected gay official in the city during the onset of the AIDS epidemic, and later became a Vice Chair of the
Democratic Socialists of America.
Anne Kronenberg was Milk's campaign manager during his San Francisco Board of Supervisors campaign, and later worked as his aide while he held that office. (While Kronenberg identified as a lesbian at that time, she later fell in love with and married a man she met in
Washington, D.C. in the 1980s.) In 1978, lesbian
Sally Miller Gearhart fought alongside Milk to defeat Proposition 6 (also known as the "
Briggs Initiative" because it was sponsored by
John Briggs), which would have banned gays and lesbians from teaching in public schools in California. Milk was murdered on November 27, 1978, in the
Moscone–Milk assassinations.
Riots broke out after the perpetrator,
Dan White, received a manslaughter conviction, and was sentenced to seven years in prison.
Gilbert Baker raised the first
LGBT Pride flag at
San Francisco Pride on June 25, 1978. San Francisco lesbian bar
Peg's Place was the site of an assault in 1979 by off-duty members of the San Francisco
vice squad, an event which drew national attention to other incidents of anti-gay violence and police harassment of the LGBT community and helped propel a (unsuccessful) citywide proposition to ban the city's vice squad altogether. Historians have written about the incident when describing the tension that existed between the police and the LGBT community during the late 1970s. The
Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence started in the Castro District in 1979, and eventually became nationwide.
1980s and 1990s - the AIDS crisis and response, and bi activism The San Francisco gay community was devastated by the
AIDS epidemic following the discovery of the
HIV virus in 1981. In the early 1980s,
AIDS began affecting the male LGBT population of San Francisco, with the disease continuing to have a fatal effect through the 1990s. 15,548 people in San Francisco had died due to AIDS prior to the introduction of drugs that treated AIDS, and a total of almost 20,000 people died within 15 years of the start of the AIDS crisis. The victims had obituaries in San Francisco-area LGBT newspapers. He was hired as a national
correspondent by the
San Francisco Chronicle in 1981, becoming the first openly gay reporter with a gay "beat" in the American mainstream press. In 1984, bisexual activist
David Lourea finally persuaded the San Francisco Department of Public Health to recognize bisexual men in their official AIDS statistics (the weekly "New AIDS cases and mortality statistics" report), after two years of campaigning. The
Gay Games were held in San Francisco in 1982 and 1986. In 1984, the magazine
On Our Backs began publication in San Francisco, featuring lesbian erotica by lesbians.
Bear culture began to be popularized among gay men with the publication of
Bear Magazine in San Francisco in 1987.
BiNet USA, the oldest national bisexuality organization in the United States, was founded in 1990 under the name North American Multicultural Bisexual Network (NAMBN), and had its first meeting in San Francisco, at the first National Bisexual Conference in America. This first conference was held in 1990 and sponsored by BiPOL. The first Eagle Creek Saloon, that opened on the 1800 block of Market Street in San Francisco in 1990 and closed in 1993, was the first black-owned gay bar in the city. The first San Francisco
Dyke March was held in June 1993, and is celebrated every year on the last Saturday in June.
After 2000 - same-sex marriage and trans awareness The first decade of the new century saw a new awareness of transgender identity in San Francisco, with the establishment of the first Trans pride march in 2004 and heralded several important legal events in the movement towards
Same-sex marriage in California, sparked by San Francisco mayor Gavin Newsom's move in 2004 to permit city hall to grant marriage licenses to same-sex couples. were married in San Francisco in 2004
Del Martin and Phyllis Lyon became the first same-sex couple to be legally married in the United States in 2004, However, all same-sex marriages done in 2004 in California were annulled in 2008 by
California Prop 8 overturning a California Supreme Court decision in May 2008 that granted same-sex couples in California the right to marry (the same-sex couples who married in the June–November 2008 "window" were not annulled) . Same-sex marriages were halted until 2013, when the U.S. Supreme Court made them legal again in
Hollingsworth v. Perry. In 2004, the
San Francisco Trans March was first held. It has been held annually since; it is San Francisco's largest transgender Pride event and one of the largest trans events in the entire world. and trans activist
Donna Personna raise the
trans pride flag outside
City Hall, 2023 In 2011, San Francisco's Human Rights Commission released a report on bisexual visibility, titled "Bisexual Invisibility: Impacts and Regulations"; this was the first time any governmental body released such a report. In 2013,
San Francisco Board of Supervisors member
David Campos started a campaign to have
San Francisco International Airport renamed for
Harvey Milk. In 2016, the
San Francisco Board of Supervisors passed a law, authored by
Scott Wiener, barring the city from doing business with companies that have a home base in states such as
North Carolina,
Tennessee, and
Mississippi, that forbid civil rights protections for LGBT people In 2017, the
Compton's Transgender Cultural District in the
Tenderloin became the first legally recognized transgender district in the country. In 2019, Jeanine Nicholson, who is gay, became San Francisco's first openly LGBT fire chief. In 2019, San Francisco Board of Supervisors member
Rafael Mandelman authored an ordinance to create the Castro LGBTQ Cultural District; the ordinance was passed unanimously. In 2021, San Francisco officially recognized August as Transgender History Month, becoming the first city in the country to make such a declaration. == Organizations and community institutions ==