About LGBTQ+ Los Angeles
West Hollywood (WeHo) is a small incorporated city of about 1.9 square miles inside the Los Angeles metropolitan area. It became an independent city in 1984 with a majority-LGBTQ+ City Council and is sometimes cited as the first U.S. city to elect a majority-gay council. The historic gay-bar strip runs along Santa Monica Boulevard between approximately Doheny Drive and La Cienega Boulevard.
Silver Lake, in northeast LA, has a smaller, longer-established queer nightlife cluster centered on Sunset Boulevard. The Black Cat tavern at 3909 Sunset Boulevard was the site of one of the earliest documented gay-rights protests in the United States, in February 1967 (about two years before Stonewall). It is a California Historical Landmark.
Downtown Los Angeles has a smaller cluster of queer venues, including bars catering to Latinx queer nightlife. Long Beach, a separate city about 25 miles south, has its own established gay-bar strip on Broadway between Cherry and Junipero.
The Mattachine Society, one of the first sustained gay-rights organizations in the United States, was founded in Los Angeles in November 1950 by Harry Hay. ONE Magazine, the first openly gay-themed U.S. publication, launched in 1953 and won a landmark First Amendment case at the U.S. Supreme Court (One, Inc. v. Olesen) in 1958. The ONE Archives at USC Libraries holds one of the largest collections of LGBTQ+ historical material in the United States.
Christopher Street West, the parade that became LA Pride, was first held in June 1970, the same weekend as the inaugural Christopher Street Liberation Day march in New York. It is one of the first permitted Pride parades in the world. LA Pride moved its main parade and festival from West Hollywood to Downtown Los Angeles in 2023.
Outfest, the LA-based queer film festival, is held annually in July and was founded in 1982. DragCon, the official RuPaul's Drag Race convention, takes place at the Los Angeles Convention Center each spring.
California legalized same-sex marriage in 2008. The right was briefly rescinded by Proposition 8, then reinstated by federal court ruling in 2013. Gender identity is a protected class under California state nondiscrimination law.
LA Metro's bus and rail network connects most of the gay nightlife districts. The Regional Connector subway expansion, completed in 2023, connects Downtown LA to Long Beach and to the Wilshire/Vermont line with quicker access to West Hollywood-adjacent stations. Bars in California stop service at 2am.