Richard Adams, Gay Rights Pioneer, Dies
Richard Adams, a gay rights pioneer and one of the first people to enjoy a legal (but unfortunately very brief) same-sex marriage in the U.S., died on this day.
Adams and his partner, Anthony Sullivan, along with five other couples, participated in the first same-sex marriages in America on March 25, 1975. The county clerk in Boulder, Colorado, issued marriage certificates until the state attorney general ordered her to stop.
Adams died just months before the landmark Supreme Court decision, United States v. Windsor, on June 26, 2013, which struck down a key provision of the federal Defense of Marriage Act, which banned federal recognition of same-sex marriages.
Learn more about Richard Adams: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/12/23/richard-adams-dead-gay-marriage-pioneer-dies-age-65_n_2356760.html
Read about the history of the GLBT revolution: Lillian Faderman, The Gay Revolution: The Story of the Struggle (2015)
Visit the GLBT History Museum in San Francisco: http://www.glbthistory.org/museum/