The lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) community in San Francisco is one of the largest and most prominent LGBT communities in the United States, and is one of the most important in the history of American LGBTQ rights and activism alongside New York City. The city itself has been described as "the original 'gay-friendly city'". LGBTQ culture is also active within companies that are based in Silicon Valley, which is located within the southern San Francisco Bay Area.

History 19th century

San Francisco's LGBTQ culture has its roots in the city's own origin as a frontier town, what San Francisco State University professor Alamilla Boyd characterized as "San Francisco's history of sexual permissiveness and its function as a wide-open town – a town where anything goes". The discovery of gold saw a boom in population from 800 to 35,000 residents between 1848 and 1850. These migrants were composed of miners and fortune seekers from a variety of nationalities and cultures, over 95% of whom were young men.

These transient and diverse populations thrust into a relatively anarchic environment were less likely to conform to social conventions. For example, with an unbalanced gender ratio, men often assumed roles conventionally assigned to women in social and domestic settings. Cross-gender dress and same-sex dancing were prevalent at city masquerade balls where some men assumed the traditional role of women going so far as to wear female attire. In her study "Arresting dress, cross-dressing in 19th-century San Francisco", Clare Sears also describes numerous cases of women who donned men's clothing in public spaces for increased social and economic freedom, safety, and gender-progressive experimentation.

The late 1800s saw a shift in the demographics of the city along with new social and political attitudes. Anti-vice campaigns emerged to target prostitution along with the criminalization of perceived gender transgressions including outlawing cross-dressing in 1863. Cross-dressing laws and public decency laws continued to influence LGBTQ culture and its interactions with law enforcement well into the 20th century. This political shift resulted in San Francisco's queer culture reemerging in bars, nightclubs, and entertainment of the Barbary Coast, removed from policing and control. Through the 1890s to 1907, the Barbary Coast, San Francisco's early red-light district located on Pacific Avenue, featured same-sex prostitution and female impersonators who served male clientele.

20th century

Through WWII - in the shadows

Michael Stabile of Out stated that the first "notorious" gay bar in San Francisco was The Dash, which opened in 1908."12 Bars That Made San Francisco Gay, In Chronological Order " (Archive). Out. September 20, 2013. Retrieved on September 6, 2014. During World War I, the U.S. Navy began the "Blue discharge" practice, which discharged known homosexuals in port cities, helping to create a community of identified (blue discharge was not confidential) gays in San Francisco. The San Francisco LGBTQ community first fully formed in the 1920s and 1930s. The most prominent LGBTQ area then was North Beach. Mona's, San Francisco's first lesbian bar, opened on Union Street in 1934, and featured cross-dressing waitresses as well as entertainer Gladys Bentley. Nightclubs with drag shows drew both gay and straight audiences.

During World War II, US military started to systematically identify and exclude homosexuals, and those discharged on the Pacific theater ended up in the West Coast ports, mostly in the principal Pacific troop transport port of Fort Mason. Gay night life in San Francisco also went through several waves of crackdown and reorganization. From 1942 to 1943, the San Francisco Moral Drive—consisting of military patrols—carried out a series of raids targeting the gay bars in San Francisco, with the stated aim of protecting servicemen from homosexuals. Chinatown, as one of places where gay visitors gathered, had also been searched several times. For example, In 1943, the police raided the gay bar, Rickshaw in Chinatown, and arrested 24 patrons and two dozen customers, including a couple of lesbians who tried to fight back and triggered a small riot.Bérubé, Allan. Coming out under fire : the history of gay men and women in World War Two. n.p.: New York : Free Press, c1990

Todd J. Ormsbee, an American studies professor at San Jose State University who wrote The Meaning of Gay: Interaction, Publicity, and Community among Homosexual Men in 1960s San Francisco, stated that a "somewhat more open gay male culture" appeared in San Francisco due to the city's "relative safety" compared to other American cities and due to a "permissiveness" in the city's culture.Ormsbee, p. 306.

1950s - the Beats, and first organizations

Beat culture erupted in San Francisco in the 1950s with a rebellion against middle class values and thus became aligned with homosexuality and other lifestyles not part of mainstream culture. The beat poets who relocated to San Francisco from New York flourished in San Francisco's permissive atmosphere, and some like Allen Ginsberg were openly gay. In these conditions the first homosexual groups were founded, such as the Daughters of Bilitis (founded in San Francisco, it was the first lesbian civil and political rights organization in the United States), and the Mattachine Society, which started in Los Angeles but was headquartered in San Francisco beginning around 1956. Police raids on The Black Cat bar, which had a bohemian and LGBTQ clientele and featured entertainer and activist José Sarria, sparked an important legal fight for homosexual protections in the 1950s.Boyd p. 56

1960s - SF as gay capital, first struggles for recognition In 1961 in San Francisco, José Sarria became the first openly gay candidate in the United States to run for public office, running for a seat on the San Francisco Board of Supervisors.Miller, Neil (1995). Out of the Past: Gay and Lesbian History from 1869 to the Present. pg. 347. New York, Vintage Books. Sarria almost won by default. On the last day for candidates to file petitions, city officials realized that there were fewer than five candidates running for the five open seats, which would have assured Sarria a seat. By the end of the day, 34 candidates had filed.Witt, Lynn, Sherry Thomas & Eric Marcus (1995). Out in All Directions: The Almanac of Gay and Lesbian America. pg. 8. New York, Warner Books. Sarria garnered some 6,000 votes, shocking political pundits and setting in motion the idea that a gay voting bloc could wield real power in city politics.Shilts, Randy (1982). The Mayor of Castro Street. pg. 56-57. New York: St. Martin's Press. As Sarria put it, "From that day on, nobody ran for anything in San Francisco without knocking on the door of the gay community."Lockhart, John (2002). The Gay Man's Guide to Growing Older. Los Angeles, Alyson Publications.

The Tavern Guild, the first gay business association in the United States, was created by gay bar owners in 1962 as a response to continued police harassment and closing of gay bars (including the Tay-Bush Inn raid), and continued until 1995.

The June 1964 Paul Welch Life article entitled "Homosexuality In America" marked the first time a national publication reported on gay issues. Life's photographer was referred to a gay leather bar in San Francisco called the Tool Box by Hal Call, who had long worked to dispel the myth that all homosexual men were effeminate. The article opened with a two-page spread of the mural of life size leathermen in the bar, which had been painted by Chuck Arnett in 1962.Brook, J., Carlsson, C., and Peters, N. J. (1998). Reclaiming San Francisco: history, politics, culture. San Francisco: City Lights The article described San Francisco as "The Gay Capital of America" and inspired many gay leathermen to move there.Ormsbee, p. 307.

The Society for Individual Rights (SIR), founded in San Francisco in 1964, published the magazine Vector and became within two years the largest homophile organization in the United States. SIR focused on community building, public identity and legal and social services.Bill Brent, "Society for Individual Rights", Black Sheets magazine, 1998 Retrieved December 31, 2016

On the eve of January 1, 1965, several homophile organizations in San Francisco, California - including SIR, the Daughters of Bilitis, the Council on Religion and the Homosexual, and the Mattachine Society - held a fund-raising ball for their mutual benefit at the California Hall.Miller, Neil (1995). Out of the Past: Gay and Lesbian History from 1869 to the present. New York: Vintage Books. pp. 348. . San Francisco police had agreed not to interfere; however, on the evening of the ball, the police showed up in force and surrounded the California Hall and focused numerous kleig lights on the entrance to the hall. As each of the 600-plus persons entering the ball approached the entrance, the police took their photographs. A number of police vans were parked in plain view near the entrance to the ball. Evander Smith, a lawyer for the groups organizing the ball, and Herb Donaldson tried to stop the police from conducting the fourth "inspection" of the evening; both were arrested, along with two heterosexual lawyers - Elliott Leighton and Nancy May - who were supporting the rights of the participants to gather at the ball. But twenty-five of the most prominent lawyers in San Francisco joined the defense team for the four lawyers, and the judge directed the jury to find the four not guilty before the defense had even had a chance to begin their argumentation when the case came to court. This event has been called "San Francisco's Stonewall" by some historians; the participation of such prominent litigators in the defense of Smith, Donaldson and the other two lawyers marked a turning point in gay rights on the West Coast of the United States.

Vanguard, an organization of LGBT youth in the low-income Tenderloin district, was created in 1965. It is considered the first Gay Liberation organization in the U.S.

In 1966, SIR opened America's first gay and lesbian community center. Also in 1966, one of the first recorded transgender riots in US history took place. The Compton's Cafeteria Riot occurred in the Tenderloin district of San Francisco. The night after the riot, more transgender people, hustlers, Tenderloin street people, and other members of the LGBTQ community joined in a picket of the cafeteria, which would not allow transgender people back in. The demonstration ended with the newly installed plate-glass windows being smashed again. According to the online encyclopedia glbtq.com, "In the aftermath of the riot at Compton's, a network of transgender social, psychological, and medical support services was established, which culminated in 1968 with the creation of the National Transsexual Counseling Unit [NTCU], the first such peer-run support and advocacy organization in the world".

One of the earliest organizations for bisexuals, the Sexual Freedom League in San Francisco, was facilitated by Margo Rila and Frank Esposito beginning in 1967. Two years later, during a staff meeting at a San Francisco mental health facility serving LGBT people, nurse Marguerite Rubenstein came out as bisexual. Due to this, bisexuals began to be included in the facility's programs for the first time. The number of San Francisco gay bars increased in the 1960s.

1970s - Gay liberation, The Castro comes out

In the wake of the Stonewall riots in New York in June 1969, groups in New York, San Francisco and elsewhere became active in 1970 promoting rights for gays. Newspapers were established, and parades were organized in major cities commemorating the anniversary of the riots. These disparate efforts became known collectively as the Gay liberation movement in the United States, and primarily involved gay men and lesbians.