There’s no denying 2011 was the year of the protester. From “Occupy Wall Street” to the “Arab Spring,” the people have declared that they’ve had enough. That’s why TIME magazine named 2011’s person of the year “The Protester.” The cover, designed by Shepard Fairey, is a tribute to everyone who has stood on their soap box, no matter how big or small, to fight for what they see as right. After the jump, see a larger version of the cover, followed by 11 of the most impactful LGBT protest images from 2011.
Cover of Time magazine’s 2011 Person of the Year issue
January 18: Act-Up activists demonstrate outside the Constitutional Council in Paris, as the French government examines the matter of same-sex marriage, which is illegal in France.
February 14: A gay couple kiss on Athens’ Ermou Street, during a protest against the Greek state’s refusal to recognize same-sex marriage.
February 14: Police officers place handcuffs on lesbian couple Davina Kotulski (left) and Molly McKay, who were among a dozen same-sex couples to stage a sit-in protest after they were denied marriage licenses from the San Francisco county clerk.
March 17: A handful of gay activist display signs along the St Patrick’s Day parade route in protest for being excluded from the event on Fifth Avenue in New York. Irish gays have been battling for two decades to be allowed to join the parade as an official contingent.
April 15: Gay couples kiss during a group protest outside the John Snow pub in London, where Jonathan Williams and James Bull (not pictured) were ejected by a staff member for kissing.
May 28: Police struggle to detain a gay rights activist during an attempt to hold an unauthorized rally in central Moscow. Three prominent global gay rights leaders, including Dan Choi and Nikolay Alexeyev, were detained as violence broke out at an unprecedented rally that activists tried to stage near the Kremlin wall.
June 28: A college student from the University of the Philippines takes part in a LGBT pride march to protest an increase in hate crimes in Quezon City. The protesters marched against a recent study that was released claiming that over 100 members of the LGBT community in the Philippines have been murdered since 1996, 23 in 2011 alone.
June 25: A crowd marches during the 11th LGBT visibility march in Paris. French people, including political leaders and artists like movie star Catherine Deneuve, signed a petition this week to ask for “the universal depenalization for homosexuality.”
August 13: Transgender activists protest in Mexico City against crimes towards members of the LGBT community, like Christian Sanchez, who was killed last July.
October 19: Serbian gay activists crowd in front of a government building in Belgrade to protest against a weekend attack on a lesbian woman, just weeks after a gay pride parade was banned for “security concerns.”
December 1: AIDS protesters stand in the street after marching up Broadway from Zuccotti Park on World AIDS Day in New York City. About a half-dozen protesters, part of a larger group of over 100, were arrested after refusing to move from the street while calling for Mayor Michael Bloomberg and members of Congress to tax Wall Street trade to raise money for AIDS treatment.
