On this day in queerstory: First Black Lesbian Conference and queer rights at the UN

One of the earliest recorded queer-tinged events on October 17 dates back to 1535, when Pope Paul III wrote a letter chastising his son, Duke Pier Luigi Farnese, for traveling with male lovers on an official mission. While cloaked in the moral language and power dynamics of its era, this letter stands as a rare – and bizarre – documented instance of same-sex relationships becoming the subject of papal admonishment.

Fast‐forward nearly five centuries: on October 17, 1995, the United Nations, for the first time in its history, allowed complaints about abuses of lesbian and gay rights to be heard by its International Tribunal on Human Rights. That shift marked a soft opening for global queer human rights claims in the formal international sphere, elevating queer abuses from silenced local struggles to matters of supranational legal and moral concern.

But perhaps the most resonant October 17 anniversary in modern queer history is the First Black Lesbian Conference, held in San Francisco from October 17 to 19, 1980. With a theme of “Becoming Visible,” the conference drew more than 200 African American lesbians from across the U.S. to the Women’s Building in San Francisco. Participants came together to strategize, affirm their identities, and counteract the overlapping oppressions of racism, sexism, and homophobia. The event was groundbreaking: it foregrounded Black lesbian experience at a moment when mainstream queer activism often sidelined issues of race and intersectionality.

That 1980 conference is remembered today as a foundational moment in Black queer feminist organizing – one that rippled outward into later collectives, identity politics scholarship, and networks of intergenerational care.

In contemporary times, October 17 continues to host queer cultural events. For instance, the New York Public Library is staging “Queer Activism and its Wearable History in Buttons” on October 17, exploring how pins and buttons have served as small but potent symbols of resistance in queer struggle.

Meanwhile, the Circa Queer Histories Festival includes a performance on October 17 titled Mujre Ki Raat (Mujra Night), a gender-bending South Asian dance and drag event, reflecting how queer traditions –  global and diasporic ones –  being revived and reinterpreted.

These modern events illustrate that October 17 is not just a date to look backward, but one to animate queer memory into living, expressive community. The button exhibition, in particular, underscores how small artifacts – lapel pins, campaign buttons, protest ribbons – the can act as portable archives of queer visibility, solidarity, and dissent.

In London and elsewhere, activists and archives might consider staging mirror events: panel talks on queer history, exhibitions of protest ephemera, or reading circles focused on queer legal evolution. After all, the significance of October 17 lies in its capacity to thread together epochs – religious admonishment, human rights development, Black lesbian organizing, and contemporary queer cultural practice.

On this October 17, as queer communities gather, perform, display, and remember, the throughline is clear: queerness persists, reappears, and reclaims. Each generation writes its own lineage into places, dates, and symbols.