The Bay Area Reporter's 50 years in 50 weeks feature continues with this front page from September 20, 1972. Headlined "Sex laws fall," the article was about a court ruling in Southern California that said the state's oral copulation laws were unconstitutional.
The article noted that the judge's decision could be appealed. In 1975, then-Assemblyman Willie Brown and then-state Senator George Moscone would go on to pass the Consenting Adults Bill, which was signed into law and went into effect in 1976.
Moscone, who became mayor of San Francisco shortly afterward, was assassinated along with gay supervisor Harvey Milk in November 1978.