September 20: We Refused to Keep Hiding
🏳️🌈 THIS DAY IN LGBTQ+ HISTORY
There was a time when LGBTQ+ people were expected to follow one unwritten rule: you can exist, just don't let anybody know. You could serve your country, but don't tell. You could build a career, but don't tell. You could fall in love, but don't tell. You could find community, but don't make too much noise about it. For generations, hiding wasn't simply about privacy. Being identified as gay or lesbian could cost someone employment, military service, housing, family relationships and personal safety. September 20 carries several moments in LGBTQ+ history that show what happened when people finally began challenging the idea that silence should be the price of belonging.
One of those stories begins with Hal Call, born September 20, 1917. Call became an important figure in America's early gay-rights movement and eventually a leader within the Mattachine Society, one of the country's earliest sustained organizations advocating for homosexual people. His activism unfolded during the 1950s, long before Stonewall transformed the national conversation. At that time, homosexuality was heavily stigmatized, gay establishments could face police scrutiny and being publicly identified as homosexual could destroy a career. Simply putting your name and face behind gay advocacy required a level of courage that can be difficult to appreciate from today's perspective.
Call understood that information could create community. Publishing became part of his activism because LGBTQ+ people couldn't organize if they didn't know one another existed. Before websites, podcasts, social media and YouTube, magazines and newsletters traveled where activists couldn't. A publication could quietly arrive at someone's home and tell that person something incredibly powerful: you aren't the only one. That idea became one of the foundations of early LGBTQ+ organizing. Visibility didn't always begin with thousands of people marching down a street. Sometimes it began with one person opening an envelope.
Lesbian women were creating their own networks during this period as well. On September 20, 1958, women including Barbara Gittings gathered for the first meeting of the New York chapter of the Daughters of Bilitis, an early lesbian organization. This matters because lesbian history can easily disappear when LGBTQ+ history is told primarily through organizations dominated by men. Lesbians were building their own spaces, publications, friendships and political strategies while dealing with both homophobia and sexism.
Barbara Gittings would become one of the most recognizable figures in that struggle. Her activism eventually included challenging the psychiatric profession's treatment of homosexuality and pushing libraries to make accurate information about gay and lesbian people available. Once again, access to information mattered. If society controlled everything people could learn about homosexuality, society could also control how homosexual people understood themselves. LGBTQ+ activists began taking that power back.
While predominantly white gay and lesbian organizations were developing political strategies, Black LGBTQ+ people were navigating another layer of American life. A Black gay man could enter a gay space and still experience racism. A Black lesbian could experience racism inside feminist organizations, sexism elsewhere and homophobia within her own racial community. LGBTQ+ identity didn't erase race, and racial solidarity didn't automatically erase homophobia.
Black queer people responded by creating culture, literature, organizations and community of their own. Long before the modern gay-rights movement, queer Black artists and intellectuals were already part of the Harlem Renaissance. Later generations including James Baldwin, Audre Lorde, Bayard Rustin, Barbara Smith, Marsha P. Johnson, Sylvester and Essex Hemphill would continue expanding the meaning of Black LGBTQ+ visibility. Some worked through politics. Some wrote books. Some created music. Some organized communities. Some simply refused to make themselves smaller for a society uncomfortable with everything they represented.
Black and white LGBTQ+ history therefore shouldn't be presented as though everyone experienced the same struggle. They didn't. White gay and lesbian Americans could experience severe discrimination because of sexuality while moving through a racially divided country differently from Black LGBTQ+ Americans. Black LGBTQ+ people often carried multiple battles simultaneously. The histories intersected, but they weren't interchangeable. Recognizing that difference doesn't divide LGBTQ+ history. It makes the history more truthful.
By 1970, a younger generation was becoming increasingly unwilling to politely request space. On September 20, 1970, gay liberation activists began occupying Weinstein Hall at New York University after the university canceled dances organized for gay people. A disagreement over a dance might sound small today, but the real issue was much larger. Who gets to gather publicly? Who gets to dance with the person they love? Who gets to create community without being treated as though their existence is inappropriate?
The protest unfolded during the rapidly changing political atmosphere following the Stonewall uprising. LGBTQ+ liberation was becoming louder, younger and more confrontational. People weren't simply asking society to tolerate homosexuality behind closed doors anymore. Increasingly, activists were saying that LGBTQ+ people had the same right to occupy public space as everyone else.
This period also connects to Marsha P. Johnson and Sylvia Rivera, two figures who would become important in transgender and gender-nonconforming history. Their activism contributed to the development of Street Transvestite Action Revolutionaries, better known as STAR, which focused particular attention on transgender and gender-nonconforming young people experiencing homelessness and poverty.
Marsha's presence in this history is especially important because she represents something that can disappear when LGBTQ+ history is presented too neatly. A Black gender-nonconforming person living with limited financial resources wasn't experiencing gay liberation the same way as a financially secure white gay man. Race mattered. Gender expression mattered. Housing mattered. Money mattered. Those differences sometimes created tension within the movement itself.
Yet people kept organizing.
That is one of the most beautiful and complicated truths about LGBTQ+ history. Our community didn't have to be perfect before it could make progress. People argued about strategy, respectability, race, gender and who should receive attention. Organizations split. New organizations formed. Some people were pushed aside and created their own spaces. Progress came from that messy collection of people continuing to push forward.
Decades later, September 20 would become connected to one of America's most recognizable LGBTQ+ policy changes. For years, the United States military operated under “Don't Ask, Don't Tell,” a policy that allowed gay, lesbian and bisexual people to serve only under restrictions surrounding disclosure of their sexuality. Service members could defend the country while being expected to hide a basic part of their personal lives.
The contradiction was impossible to ignore. Someone could be trusted with weapons, intelligence, military equipment and the lives of fellow service members, yet revealing who they loved could threaten their career. Thousands of service members were discharged under the policy.
On September 20, 2011, the repeal of “Don't Ask, Don't Tell” officially took effect. Gay, lesbian and bisexual members of the United States military could finally serve openly without that policy requiring silence around their sexual orientation.
For Black LGBTQ+ service members, that milestone carried another historical layer. Black Americans had served in a military that was itself racially segregated until the twentieth century. A Black gay or lesbian service member therefore stood at the intersection of two histories in which government institutions had attempted to determine whether someone fully belonged.
White LGBTQ+ service members also experienced the humiliation and fear created by policies targeting homosexuality, although their experiences weren't shaped by anti-Black racism. Both stories belong inside LGBTQ+ history without pretending they were identical.
That is what makes September 20 so interesting. In 1958, lesbians were quietly gathering in New York to create community. In 1970, activists were occupying space because they refused to accept being denied somewhere to gather. By 2011, LGBTQ+ Americans were watching a national military policy built around silence finally disappear.
Different decades. Different people. Different battles.
But underneath them was the same question.
Why should we have to hide?
That question traveled through Black and white LGBTQ+ history in different ways. It lived inside the gay man who carefully hid photographs of his partner. It lived inside the Black lesbian who couldn't fully relax in either predominantly white lesbian spaces or homophobic Black spaces. It lived inside the transgender person trying to find somewhere safe to sleep. It lived inside the military service member who couldn't tell coworkers who was waiting for them at home. It lived inside the activists printing newsletters, organizing meetings and creating spaces where people could finally recognize themselves in somebody else.
Those people didn't all become famous.
Most never will.
But they created LGBTQ+ history too.
The person attending their first secret meeting was making history. The couple entering a gay bar together was making history. The Black queer writer putting experiences on paper that nobody else wanted to publish was making history. The lesbian activist demanding accurate books in libraries was making history. The soldier refusing to believe that homosexuality erased years of honorable service was making history.
Sometimes history happens in Congress.
Sometimes history happens in a courtroom.
And sometimes history happens when somebody walks into a room and realizes for the first time, I'm not alone.
That is the luxury of knowing our history. We get to see the inheritance previous generations left behind. The freedoms LGBTQ+ people enjoy today weren't simply handed over because society suddenly became more accepting. They were built through thousands of decisions made by people who were tired of shrinking themselves to make everybody else comfortable.
Black LGBTQ+ trailblazers brought experiences shaped by race and sexuality into the movement. White gay and lesbian activists challenged institutions that criminalized and pathologized their lives. Transgender and gender-nonconforming activists demanded recognition from a movement that sometimes wanted their labor without fully respecting their identities. Military service members challenged the idea that patriotism somehow disappeared when someone was gay.
Together, those stories created something larger than any single organization or protest.
They created visibility.
They created community.
They created possibility.
And eventually, they created change.
September 20 reminds us that LGBTQ+ history isn't simply the story of people asking America for permission to exist. It's the story of people slowly realizing they never needed permission in the first place.
We were already serving.
We were already creating.
We were already organizing.
We were already loving.
We were already building community.
The only thing that changed was our willingness to keep doing it quietly.
We refused to keep hiding.
🏳️🌈 Know the history. Honor the differences. Remember who opened the doors. Protect the progress. Never let silence become the price of belonging again.
I AM ME INC.
This Day in LGBTQ+ History is presented by I Am Me Inc. as part of our commitment to informing, empowering, connecting and celebrating LGBTQ+ people and our Allies.
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Our History. Our Voices. Our Legacy.
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