June marks LGBT Pride Month. It's also the 50th anniversary of the Stonewall Riot,

when members of the gay community rose up in defiance of a police raid at a Greenwich Village Tavern,

launching the modern LGBT rights movement in the United States.

In the past five decades, we've seen that movement make great strides,

the mainstreaming of homosexuality, the legalization of gay marriage, the repeal of don't ask,

don't tell, and now in about a dozen states, gender neutral IDs. The conversation around

gay rights has moved so quickly, in fact, that it can be

hard to remember where we were in the very recent past. Well, here's a reminder from our archives.

After the 2012 death of Sally Ride, the first American woman to go into space, the world learned

something new about the pioneering astronaut,

that Ride was, in fact, a lesbian, survived by her partner of 27 years, a woman by the name of Tam O'Shaughnessy.

This previously unknown detail of Ride's life was mentioned in one line at the end of a lengthy obituary in the New York

Times. Reaction to the Times obit ranged from criticism for posthumously outing Ride to criticism

for not outing her enough, raising the question of just how deeply an obituary should delve

into the private life of a public person.

Back then, I spoke with Bill McDonald, the obituary editor at the Times,

about the ethics and obligations of Obit writers in telling the story of the dead.

Now, the Obit didn't reference her sexual preference.

It just simply made reference to her longtime

partner, who happens to be a woman. That's right. When we were trying to find out who

her survivors might be, the only information we could go on was a statement released on her

website, which described Dr. O'Shaughnessy as her companion of 27 years. And of course, we reported that.

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