By Dr. Bill Lipsky—
(Editor’s Note: The following is part five of Bill Lipsky’s timeline of LGBTQ+ history starting with the 19th century. The first part ran in the June 11, 2026, issue of the San Francisco Bay Times.)
During the latter years of the 1980s, LGBT San Francisco had to fight against a returning, blatant homophobia from citizens, civil servants, and corporations; for AIDS research to combat the virus; and for the means to assist people with HIV who could no longer care for themselves, all while continuing the ongoing struggle for equal rights.
1984
The Department of Public Health issued an order to close the city’s 14 gay bathhouses.
San Francisco’s Lesbian/Gay Freedom Day Parade was dedicated for the first time to people with AIDS. The Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence performed a ritual exorcism of extreme homophobic political activists Jerry Falwell and Phyllis Schlafly, attended by some 2,000 witnesses.
On the day before the Democratic National Convention met in the city for the first time since 1920, the National March for Lesbian and Gay Rights took to the streets from the Castro to Moscone Center to protest the lack of federal action to combat AIDS.
At Moscone Center, BiPOL, the nation’s earliest known bisexual political organization, held the first Bisexual Rights Rally, after registering and running pioneering “feminist bisexual queer activist” Lani Ka’ahumanu as a vice presidential candidate at the convention.
Mobilization Against AIDS organized to fight against anti-AIDS initiatives, promote the development of new AIDS drugs, and draw attention to the growing worldwide AIDS epidemic.
First produced to show that there was a vibrant South of Market neighborhood, then threatened with urban redevelopment, the Folsom Street Fair over time became the world’s largest event to celebrate leather and kink.
Educator and activist David Lourea, one of the founders of the San Francisco Bisexual Center in 1976, convinced the city’s Department of Public Health to include information about bisexual men in its official AIDS statistics, setting a national precedent.
On Our Backs, the first magazine to feature lesbian erotica that was created by lesbians for a lesbian audience in the United States, began publication in San Francisco.
When California Governor George Deukmejian vetoed Assembly Bill 1, which would have forbidden employers from discriminating against lesbians and gays because of their sexual orientation, hundreds of demonstrators gathered in the Castro to protest his action before marching to City Hall.
1985
Organized by Jerry Vallaire and Patrick Toner, winner of 1985’s International Mr. Leather contest in Chicago representing Chaps, a South of Market bar that featured leather entertainment, Up Your Alley premiered as a local block party specifically to celebrate the city’s lesbian and gay leather community.
After she learned that a neighbor with AIDS had died from malnutrition, Ruth Brinker founded Project Open Hand to provide home-delivered meals, when no other social service did so, to residents living with HIV/AIDS whom the disease made too weak or too impoverished to feed themselves.
Sixty-three cyclists rode their bicycles from San Francisco to the Russian River in the first AIDS Bike-a-Thon, “Pedaling for Pride in ‘85.”
Terry Thompson, manager of the Arena, and three friends published San Francisco’s first Bare Chest Calendar to raise funds “to assist those affected by the AIDS epidemic.”
Founded in San Francisco in 1975 by Randy Burns (Northern Paiute) and Barbara May Cameron (Hunkpapa Lakota), Gay American Indians, the first organization for LGBT Native Americans, created the GAI History Project “to collect the oral records and traditions of same-sex relationships as well as gender variance in Indigenous tribes.”
When the Food and Drug Administration imposed a lifetime ban on blood donations from men who had sex with men, Lenore Chinn and other women from the Harvey Milk Lesbian and Gay Democratic Club organized the first annual Women’s Day Blood Drive, held at Most Holy Redeemer Catholic Church in the Castro, where more than 130 lesbians donated blood to join “with our brothers in fighting the AIDS epidemic.”
1986
Cleve Jones gathered a small group of friends to create a memorial, now known as the NAMES Project AIDS Memorial Quilt, for those who had died of AIDS, making the first panel to remember his friend Marvin Feldman.
Arvind Kumar and Suvir Das co-founded Trikone, the first South Asian LGBT social, cultural, and activist group in the world.
Voters defeated Proposition 64, which would have separated and quarantined people with AIDS had it passed.
1987
Homosexuality completely stopped being classified as a mental disorder when the American Psychiatric Association published a revised Diagnostic and Statistical Manual. (Classification of “gender identity disorder” appeared as a label for transgender people for the first time in 1980 and would remain until 2013.)
Anne Young became the first openly LGBT person hired to be a San Francisco firefighter.
More than 6,000 people joined the first AIDS Walk San Francisco in Golden Gate Park.
At a competition held in San Francisco, Judy Tallwing McCarthy of Portland, Oregon, was chosen to be the first International Ms. Leather.
The United States Food and Drug Administration approved AZT (azidothymidine), making it the first antiretroviral drug authorized to treat HIV/AIDS.
The 21st Street Baths, the city’s last gay bathhouse, closed.
1988
Art Agnos became the first San Francisco Mayor to ride in the city’s Pride Parade, then called the San Francisco Lesbian/Gay Freedom Day Parade.
LYRIC, the second-oldest LGBT youth organization in the United States, began offering affirming services to young people, ages 10 to 24, who faced challenging circumstances.
In an act of protest, civil disobedience, and compassion, volunteers established Prevention Point, officially sanctioned by the city in 1993, which became the country’s largest needle exchange program to help stop the spread of HIV/AIDS among intravenous drug users.
Voters defeated Proposition 102, a ballot measure supported by Governor Deukmejian to abolish anonymous HIV testing and require everyone who tested positive for the virus to be reported to health authorities.
Asian/Pacifica Sisters organized the first Asian and Pacific Islander lesbian contingent in the Gay Pride Parade, its banner proclaiming “For the Love of Women” in English, Chinese, Tagalog, Hawaiian, and Vietnamese.
1989
Some 80 protesters unfurled a banner reading “Stop AIDS Now Or Else” on the Golden Gate Bridge, the first time a demonstration completely stopped traffic on the span.
San Francisco voters passed a domestic partnership ordinance that provided legal recognition and protection for same-sex couples who registered with the city.
During a protest by ACT UP/SF against the United States government’s continuing inaction against the ongoing AIDS pandemic, more than 200 members of the San Francisco Police Department, about half of all officers on duty at the time, marched shoulder-to-shoulder down Castro Street in an encounter with the community that eventually covered 7 city blocks and led to the arrests of 53 people.
The Gay Asian Pacific Alliance, founded the year before, established the GAPA Community HIV Project, the first gay-identified Asian and Pacific Islander HIV/AIDS program in the United States.
Tracker McDyke, the world-famous lesbian detective, solved the mystery surrounding the disappearance of local drag queen Tessy LaFemme in C. M. Ralph’s Caper in the Castro, the first LGBT video game.
Bill Lipsky, Ph.D., author of “LGBTQ+ Trailblazers of San Francisco” (2023) and “Gay and Lesbian San Francisco” (2006), is a member of the Rainbow Honor Walk board of directors.
Faces from Our LGBT Past
Published on September 10, 2026
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