Pareen Mhatre
A protester waves a flag symbolizing LGBTQ support during the Women's March on Chicago.
It isn’t surprising that people often don’t know queer history. Queer people, after all, have historically been a marginalized community in the US. It’s only been more recently that the existence of the LGBTQ community has been acknowledged in any sort of a positive way. Most of us don’t even know what the first American gay rights group was, let alone when the first state decriminalized homosexuality, or when transgender people were first allowed to openly serve in the military. To find out more, look at the brief overview of American queer history below.