Button protesting the closure of bathhouses from the Jerry Jansen collection (2003-11).
April 9 (1984): The San Francisco Department of Public Health closes the City's bathhouses in the belief that they contribute to the spread of AIDS.  

Photo of Una Toubridge & Radclyffe Hall (l-r).
April 19 (1929): A New York City appellate court rules that, contrary to a verdict reached earlier by a lower court, Radclyffe Hall's The Well of Loneliness is not obscene. The decision clears the way for even wider distribution of the best-selling novel. 

April 23 (1990): President George Bush signs The Hate Crime Statistics Act, which requires the Department of Justice to collect and publish statistics for five years about hate crime motivated by prejudice based upon race, religion, sexual orientation, or ethnic origin. It is the first law to extend federal recognition to lesbians and gay men.

April 27 (1953): President Dwight D. Eisenhower signs Executive Order 10450, mandating the dismissal of all federal employees determined to be guilty of "criminal, infamous, dishonest, immoral, or notoriously disgraceful conduct, habitual use of intoxicants to excess, drug addiction, sexual perversion." 

April (1966):

From the Donald Lucas Collection (1997-25).
The Society for Individual Rights opens the first gay community center in the United States in San Francisco.

Photo from the Henri I. Leleu collection (1997-13).
Rikki Streicher opens Maud's Study, one of the longest-lasting lesbian bars anywhere, in San Francisco's Haight-Ashbury.