I've just put up a poll to guide where our first discussions should go. Here are the sorts of things we could discuss in the time periods marked out:
Fifties and Sixties (pre-Stonewall) - The initial formation of organizations (the Mattachine Society, Daughters of Bilitis, ONE Inc., The Society for Individual Rights in the U.S.and the Homosexual Law Reform Society in the U.K.) and the people involved in starting these organizations (Harry Hay, Del Martin and Phyllis Lyon). We could also talk about authors who wrote on homosexual topics (Gore Vidal, James Baldwin, etc) and the legal status of LGBT people in this period.
1969 - 1975 - Early Gay Liberation - The Stonewall Riot and its aftermath, the first Gay Liberation newspapers, the formation of the Metropolitan Community Church, the Club Baths (and other bathhouses), the formation of Gay Liberation groups on college campuses and the initial split between radical lesbians and gay men.
1975 -1981 - The attempts to ensure equal rights in cities and the fight against those efforts, including the campaign by Anita Bryant and the Briggs Initiative (which would have prevented gays, lesbians and their supports from teaching in California), the founding of the Log Cabin Republicans and the initial attempts to win political office and their outcome (including the assassination of Harvey Milk and the White Night Riots).
1981 - 1996 - The reactions throughout the country after the onset of AIDS including the political attempts to restrict the rights of people with AIDS and acts of violence against people with AIDS, the rise of ACT-UP, GMHC, and other organizations, the reactions of the gay press, the holistic movements, the attempts to find drugs that would help fight the epidemic and the effects on communities. This section would include a discussion of the people lost to AIDS during this period.
1996 - present - How did the Gay community recover from the AIDS epidemic when people stopped dying in large numbers? When did the 'down-low' become an issue and who has it affected? What was the reaction in media (Gay and straight, electronic, film and print) the the changes. How did the internet affect the LGBT community - including the closing of women's and gay bookstores from competition online.
This is just an initial sketch of the sorts of things we could discuss for these periods. Please feel free to add your own ideas and suggestions - and if the time periods don't seem right to you, let me know! I can alter them.