Some key moments in gay rights history in the United States:

• 1919: The U.S. military revises the Articles of War to make sodomy a felony.

• 1924: The Society for Human Rights, the first formal U.S. gay organization, is founded in Chicago.

• 1958: Supreme Court rules that ONE Magazine, the first national gay periodical, can be distributed through the mail.

• 1961: Illinois becomes the first state to decriminalize homosexuality.

• 1969: Patrons of a gay bar in New York City’s Greenwich Village fight back in a police raid, launching the Stonewall Riots.

• 1972: American Psychiatric Association declassifies homosexuality as a mental disorder.

• 1974: First gay civil rights legislation introduced in Congress.

• 1977: Anita Bryant launches anti-gay Save Our Children campaign. Florida becomes first state to ban adoption by gays.

• 1983: U.S. Rep. Gerry Studds wins re-election as first openly gay politician in national office.

• 1986: Supreme Court refuses to extend privacy rights to gay sex in Bowers vs. Hardwick, ruling 5-4 to uphold Georgia law making sodomy a crime punishable by up to 20 years in prison.

• 1993: President Clinton seeks to lift the ban on gay military service. As a compromise, the impotent “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy is adopted.

• 1994: American Medical Association opposes medical treatment to “cure” homosexuals.

• 1996: President Clinton signs the Defense of Marriage Act, which denies federal recognition of same-sex marriages.

• 2000: General Motors Corp., Ford Motor Co. and DaimlerChrysler AG offer full health care benefits to the same-sex partners of their full-time salaried employees, at the time the largest such programs offered by major U.S. corporations.

• 2000: The Supreme Court rules, 5-4, that the First Amendment allows the Boy Scouts of America to oust an openly gay Scout leader in New Jersey.

• 2001: Federal judge upholds Florida law banning gays and lesbians from adopting children, in the first federal court decision on the issue.

• 2003: Supreme Court, acting on a Texas case, outlaws sodomy laws still on the books in 13 states, calling them an invasion of privacy.