When we last left off, we had seen gays and lesbians burnt at the steak, thrown to the dogs and imprisoned for being homosexual. I'd like to tell you that things are going to be just fine but, as we all know, the struggle continues.

New York City: Lesbians and gay men open some 20 restaurants and "personality clubs" in Greenwich Village. Magnus Hirschfeld's Scientific Humanitarian Committee forms a coalition with two other German homosexual organizations, Adolf brand's Gemeinschaft der Eigenen (Community of [Those Who Are] Their Own Persons) and the German Friendship Association, to revitalize the fight to decriminalize sex between adult males.

March 18, 1922
Magnus Hirschfelds petition for the repeal of Paragraph 175 is presented to the Reichstag. Although 6,000 people have signed the petition, including Sigmund Freud, the late Leo Tolstoy, and Albert Einstein, it falls to persuade German lawmakers to decriminalize sex between men.

May 1925
At the end of a year's worth of police raids on predominantly lesbian and gay restaurants and clubs in New York City's Greenwich Village, only three are left open.

Meanwhile, the Harlem Renaissance gives rise to the earliest documented African-American lesbian and gay subculture.

September 29, 1926
The Captive, a melodrama about a young woman seduced by an older woman (her "shadow"), creates a sensation on Broadway.

Ma Rainey records "Prove It on Me Blues," in which she sings of a night out on the town with friends:
They must been womens
Cause I don't like no mens.
It's true I wear a collar and a tie ... They say I do it.
Ain't nobody caught me.
You sure got to prove it on me.
April 1. 1930
Hollywood: The Motion Picture Producers and Distributors of America (MPPDA) introduce a self-regulatory code of movie ethics, discouraging filmmakers from including frank depictions of sex and sexuality. Nicknamed the Hays Code after the head of the MPPDA, former Republican National Committee chairman Will H. Hays, the regulations become mandatory on July 1, 1934.

February 23-24, 1933
Germany: Adolf Hitler's government launches the Nazi persecution of homosexuality with directives closing gay and lesbian clubs, banning pornography and homophile publications, and dissolving homosexual rights groups.

Germany: Some 300 Nazi Party members are arrested and murdered in a purge ordered by Adolf Hitler that comes to be known as the Night of the Long Knives. The most prominent victim of the purge is SA (Brown Shirts) chief Ernst Rohm, a gay man whom Hitler accuses of having formed a subversive "homosexual clique."

September 6. 1935
New York University professor Dr. Louis W Max tells a meeting of the American Psychological Association that he has successfully treated a "partially fetishistic" homosexual neurosis with electric shock therapy delivered at "intensities considerably higher than those usually employed on human subjects." Max's presentation is the first documented instance of aversion therapy used to "cure" homosexuality.

Mona's, the first lesbian BAR in San Francisco, opens on Columbus Avenue.
New York City: Mayor Fiorello La Guardia orders a citywide "cleanup" of gay and lesbian gathering places in preparation for the 1939 World's Fair, closing down most of the city's best-known gay bars.

1940
New York City: A bar called Gloria's goes to court to fight being closed down, citing recent scientific studies and arguing that "there is no rule or regulation" preventing a "sex variant" from being served at a bar. Courts reject the argument, however, allowing the State Liquor Authority to continue closing bars frequented by gay men and lesbians.

The US. Military orders the first "blue" discharges of gay and lesbian service people.

1943
The US. Military expands "blue" discharges to cover "homosexuals" as a class. Sexual orientation, not conduct, is now the criterion.

Jim Kepner begins the private collection that will grow to become the International Gay and Lesbian Archive in Los Angeles.

1944
Sweden decriminalizes consensual, private same-sex relations between adults.

Los Angeles: Lisa Ben (a pseudonym that is an anagram for "lesbian") types and mails 12 copies of Vice Versa - "America's Gayest Magazine." The first lesbian newsletter, Vice Versa includes book and movie reviews, poems, and upbeat essays encouraging lesbians to persevere in their quest for a more satisfying life.

January 1948
Gore Vidal's The City and the Pillar is the first widely read American novel with gay male characters. Although the portrayals are generally positive, his publishers force him to make the ending an unhappy one.

The Kinsey Report on men is published, shocking the nation with its revelation of the high incidence of same-sex acts among American men.
November 11, 1950
Los Angeles: Chuck Rowland; Harry Hay and his lover, Rudi Gernreich; Dale Jennings; and Bob Hull hold the first of a series of weekly gatherings leading to the formation of a homophile organization the men will call the Mattachine Society.
1951
The California Supreme Court rules in favor of San Francisco's famed Black Cat Bar, finding that no state law prohibits gay men and lesbians from being served alcohol in a public establishment. Four years later, however, a law is passed allowing the state to deny liquor licenses to any BAR that is a "resort for sexual perverts."
1952
The American Psychiatric Association includes homosexuality as a "sociopathic personality disturbance" in its first official list of mental disorders.

Harry Hay and other members of the Mattachine Society set up a not-for-profit educational organization and apply for incorporation under Calif. law as the Mattachine Foundation, Inc.
May 24, 1953
A Mattachine Foundation circular estimates total membership in the society at over 2,000. There are almost 100 different discussion groups meeting in California from San Diego to the Bay Area.

August 1953
The Kinsey Report on women is released.