The following is the timeline of lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer (LGBTQ) people's history.

Before the Common Era

9th millennium BCE – 3rd millennium BCE

101st century BCE – 50th century BCE

70th century BCE – 17th century BCE

3rd millennium BCE

29th century BCE – 25th century BCE

24th century BCE

23rd century BCE or 23rd century BCE – 22nd century BCE

2nd millennium BCE

18th century BCE

15th century BCE – 12th century BCE

"'If a man tells another man, either privately or in a brawl, 'Your wife is promiscuous; I will bring charges against her myself,' but he is unable to substantiate the charge, and cannot prove it, he is to be caned, be sentenced to a month's hard labor for the king, be cut off, and pay one talent of lead.'" "'If a man has secretly started a rumour about his neighbor saying, 'He has allowed men to have sex with him,' or in a quarrel has told him in the presence of others, 'Men have sex with you,' and then, 'I will bring charges against you myself,' but is then unable to substantiate the charge, and cannot prove it, that man is to be caned, be sentenced to a month's hard labour for the king, be cut off, and pay one talent of lead.'" "'If a man has had sex with his neighbor he has been charged and convicted, he is to be considered defiled and made into a eunuch.'" "'If a man violates his own mother, it is a capital crime. If a man violates his daughter, it is a capital crime. If a man violates his son, it is capital crime.'"

1st millennium BCE

10th century BCE – 6th century BCE

"'Ahura Mazda answered: 'The man that lies with mankind as man lies with womankind, or as woman lies with mankind, is the man that is a Daeva; this one is the man that is a worshipper of the Daevas, that is a male paramour of the Daevas, that is a female paramour of the Daevas, that is a wife to the Daeva; this is the man that is as bad as a Daeva, that is in his whole being a Daeva; this is the man that is a Daeva before he dies, and becomes one of the unseen Daevas after death: so is he, whether he has lain with mankind as mankind, or as womankind.'" The guilty may be killed by any one, without an order from the Dastur, and by this execution an ordinary capital crime may be redeemed.

7th century BCE

6th century BCE

5th century BCE

4th century BCE

3rd or 2nd century BCE

1st century BCE

Common Era

1st millennium

1st century

2nd century

2nd century – 3rd century

3rd century

4th century

"'When a man marries in the manner of a woman, a woman about to renounce men, what does he wish, when sex has lost all its significance; when the crime is one which it is not profitable to know; when Venus is changed to another form; when love is sought and not found? We order the statutes to arise, the laws to be armed with an avenging sword, that those infamous persons who are now, or who hereafter may be, guilty may be subjected to exquisite punishment.'" "'We cannot tolerate the city of Rome, mother of all virtues, being stained any longer by the contamination of male effeminacy, nor can we allow that agrarian strength, which comes down from the founders, to be softly broken by the people, thus heaping shame on the centuries of our founders and the princes, Orientius, dearly and beloved and favoured. Your laudable experience will therefore punish among revenging flames, in the presence of the people, as required by the grossness of the crime, all those who have given themselves up to the infamy of condemning their manly body, transformed into a feminine one, to bear practices reserved for the other sex, which have nothing different from women, carried forth – we are ashamed to say – from male brothels, so that all may know that the house of the manly soul must be sacrosanct to all, and that he who basely abandons his own sex cannot aspire to that of another without undergoing the supreme punishment.'" "'All persons who have the shameful custom of condemning a man's body, acting the part of a woman's to the sufferance of alien sex (for they appear not to be different from women), shall expiate a crime of this kind in avenging flames in the sight of the people.'"

6th century

"'In criminal cases public prosecutions take place under various statutes, including the Lex Julia de adulteris, '...which punishes with death, not only those who violate the marriages of others, but also those who dare to commit acts of vile lust with men.'"

7th century

8th century

9th century

2nd millennium

11th century

12th century

13th century

14th century

15th century

15th century – 16th century

16th century

17th century

18th century

19th century

20th century

3rd millennium

21st century

Sources