1965 – in April 150 gender non-conforming people came to Dewey’s Coffee Shop in Philadelphia to protest the fact that the shop was refusing to serve young people in “non-conformist clothing”. Members of the Janus Society of Philadelphia and other community members organized the protest and when three protesters refused to leave after being denied service, they, along with a black gay activist, were arrested. This led to a picket of the establishment organized by the black LGBTQ population. Later, in May of that same year another sit-in was organized, and Dewey’s agreed to end their discriminatory policies.

1965 – The first LGBTQ+ organization in central Pennsylvania, a chapter of the Philadelphia-based Janus Society, was founded by Richard Schlegel. It only lasted about 6 months when Schlegel was fired from his high-profile job with the PA Department of Highways and moved away.

1965 – The Harrisburg police and the PA Liquor Control Board conducted raids on the Clock Bar, a gay bar in Harrisburg, and on the State Street area and arrested about two dozen men. Their names were printed in the newspaper and many lost jobs, family and friends and at least one died by suicide.

1965 through1969 – The Annual Reminders were held at Independence Hall in Philadelphia on July 4. The Annual Reminders were protests held to remind the American public that LGBTQ+ people were not granted full rights and equality with the rest of Americans. Pickets were organized by members of the Mattachine Society, the Janus Society of Philadelphia and other east coast homophile groups to raise awareness and bring attention to LGBTQ+ civil rights issues.
Kiyoshi Kuromiya, one of the organizers of the Annual Reminders, was a gay man born in a Japanese American internment camp in Heart Mountain, Wyoming in 1943. He attended the University of Pennsylvania to study architecture and lived his adult life in Philadelphia. He was openly gay and began his gay activism marching in the Annual Reminders, a series of protest marches held on July 4 from 1965-1969 at Independence Hall. He was active in the Homophile Action League and a co-founder of the Gay Liberation Front in Philadelphia in 1969. He started the Gay Coffee Hour in 1972, the first gay organization on the University of Pennsylvania campus. He was also involved in other activist movements in the 1960s and 70s, including Black civil rights and anti-Vietnam War protests. He attended the 1963 March on Washington where he met Dr. Rev. Martin Luther King, becoming a close friend to King and his family. He participated in many activist protests and actions throughout the country. In the 1980s, he became very active in HIV/AIDS work, including ACT UP and the Critical Path Project and newsletter. He wrote the ACT UP Standards of Treatment for HIV/AIDS. He was a writer and collaborated with architect and futurist Buckminster Fuller on six books.

1966 – In April, four activists from the Mattachine Society staged a “Sip-In” at Julius a bar in Greenwich Village, to protest the NY State Liquor Authority’s discriminatory policies against homosexuals. In August, transgender people and drag queens in San Francisco reacted to ongoing harassment by the police force with the Compton’s Cafeteria Riot. After several days, the protests stopped.

1967 – A January 1 raid on the Black Cat Tavern in Los Angeles led to a February 11 protest outside the gay bar against ongoing police harassment. In November, the Oscar Wilde Memorial Bookshop opened in New York City by Craig Rodwell. The bookshop was the first of its kind in the U.S. that was devoted to gay history and gay rights.

1968 – Rev. Troy Perry starts a new Christian denomination based on full acceptance of LGBTQ+ people called the Universal Fellowship of Metropolitan Community Churches, based in Los Angeles. It has since grown to more than 200 congregations in 37 countries, including MCC of the Spirit in Harrisburg and Vision of Hope MCC in Mountville, Lancaster County.

1968 – On May 9, the largest pre-Stonewall student gay rights demonstration occurred at Bucks County Community College in Newtown, Pennsylvania when about 200 students protested the decision made by the college’s president to cancel a lecture by Richard Leitsch, president of the Mattachine Society of New York.