; Whereas, in October of 1987, thousands of activists took part in the Second National March on Washington for Lesbian and Gay Rights to demand that President Reagan address the AIDS crisis; Whereas, in 1987, Representative Barney Frank of Massachusetts became the first United States Representative to voluntarily come out as an openly gay Member of Congress; Whereas Urvashi Vaid cofounded the Creating Change Conference in 1988, the largest annual LGBTQIA+ conference convening in the United States; Whereas, in 1991, Monica Helms designed the transgender flag and introduced it at the 2000 Phoenix Pride parade to represent the rights and diversity of transgender people; Whereas, in March of 1991, Glen Maxey became the first openly LGBTQIA+ person elected to the Texas State House; Whereas, on April 25, 1993, more than a million people took part in the March on Washington for Lesbian, Gay, and Bi Equal Rights and Liberation, one of the largest protests in United States history; Whereas, on May 20, 1996, the Supreme Court of the United States held in Romer v. Evans that a Colorado constitutional amendment preventing the enactment of nondiscrimination protections for gay, lesbian, and bisexual persons in Colorado was unconstitutional; Whereas, on October 6, 1998, Matthew Shepard, a gay student at the University of Wyoming, was beaten, tortured, and left to die, drawing attention to sexual-orientation related hate crimes and ultimately to the passage of the Matthew Shepard and James Byrd Jr. Hate Crimes Prevention Act; Whereas, on November 28, 1998, Rita Hester, a Black transgender woman, was brutally murdered in her home, sparking the advent of Transgender Day of Remembrance, which is observed every year on November 20, to remember those who have been killed due to transphobia; Whereas, in 2000, Vermont became the first State in the United States to legally recognize civil unions between same-sex couples