40 LGBTQ+ quiz questions with answers for a Pride night

Forty questions for a Pride night, a company network social or a bar quiz, in four rounds of ten. They're celebratory, the answers are checked, and they stick to what's on the record: laws with years, films and songs with dates. Nobody's identity is guessed at; where a question touches someone's life, it's something they have said publicly themselves. There's a UK thread through the history round. Answers under each round.

Round 1: history and milestones

1. In which year did the Sexual Offences Act partly decriminalise sex between men in England and Wales?
2. The Stonewall uprising of 1969 began at a bar in which city?
3. In which year did London hold the first UK Pride march?
4. In which year did the first same-sex weddings take place in England and Wales?
5. Which country became the first in the world to open marriage to same-sex couples, in 2001?
6. Section 28 was repealed in Scotland in 2000. In which year was it repealed in England and Wales?
7. Which wartime code-breaker, convicted in 1952, received a royal pardon in 2013 and now appears on the £50 note?
8. Which 2004 UK act gave trans people a way to have their gender legally recognised?
9. In which year did the UK lift its ban on lesbian, gay and bisexual people serving in the armed forces?
10. Who designed the original rainbow flag, first flown in San Francisco in 1978?

Answers: 1. 1967. 2. New York (the Stonewall Inn, Greenwich Village). 3. 1972. 4. 2014. 5. The Netherlands. 6. 2003. 7. Alan Turing. 8. The Gender Recognition Act. 9. 2000. 10. Gilbert Baker.

Round 2: music and icons

1. Elton John and Kiki Dee had a UK number one in 1976 with which duet?
2. Which George Michael single of 1998 made light of his arrest in Los Angeles that year?
3. "Smalltown Boy" (1984) was the debut single of which band, fronted by Jimmy Somerville?
4. Which Frankie Goes to Hollywood single was banned by BBC Radio 1 in 1984 and went to number one anyway?
5. Which 1998 Cher single, a UK number one for seven weeks, made the Auto-Tune vocal effect famous?
6. Which Gloria Gaynor song, released in 1978, became one of the great gay anthems?
7. Which Village People hit of 1978 is named after a youth organisation?
8. Who won the Eurovision Song Contest for Austria in 2014?
9. Which duo had UK number ones with "West End Girls" and "It's a Sin"?
10. Sam Smith shared the 2016 Oscar for Best Original Song for which Bond theme?

Answers: 1. "Don't Go Breaking My Heart". 2. "Outside". 3. Bronski Beat. 4. "Relax". 5. "Believe". 6. "I Will Survive". 7. "Y.M.C.A.". 8. Conchita Wurst. 9. Pet Shop Boys. 10. "Writing's on the Wall", from Spectre.

Round 3: film and TV

1. Which film won Best Picture at the 2017 Oscars, after La La Land was announced by mistake?
2. Which 2005 Ang Lee film stars Heath Ledger and Jake Gyllenhaal as two cowboys?
3. Which 1999 Channel 4 drama by Russell T Davies was set on Manchester's Canal Street?
4. Which 2021 Russell T Davies drama, about a group of friends in London from 1981, takes its name from a Pet Shop Boys song?
5. Who won the first series of RuPaul's Drag Race UK, in 2019?
6. Which 2014 British film tells the story of Lesbians and Gays Support the Miners?
7. In The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert (1994), what is Priscilla?
8. Which Sarah Waters novel, set in Victorian London, did the BBC adapt in 2002 with Rachael Stirling and Keeley Hawes?
9. Which 1996 British film follows two teenage boys falling for each other on a Thamesmead estate?
10. Heartstopper (2022) is adapted from whose graphic novels?

Answers: 1. Moonlight. 2. Brokeback Mountain. 3. Queer as Folk. 4. It's a Sin. 5. The Vivienne. 6. Pride. 7. A tour bus. 8. Tipping the Velvet. 9. Beautiful Thing. 10. Alice Oseman.

Round 4: flags, words and places

1. How many stripes did Gilbert Baker's original 1978 rainbow flag have?
2. Which three colours make up the bisexual Pride flag?
3. The transgender Pride flag, designed by Monica Helms in 1999, uses which three colours?
4. The word "lesbian" comes from which Greek island, home of the poet Sappho?
5. In LGBTQIA+, what does the "I" stand for?
6. In Polari, the slang of Britain's gay subculture, what does "bona" mean?
7. Old Compton Street is in which part of London?
8. In the UK, LGBT+ History Month is held in which month?
9. Which Australian city's Gay and Lesbian Mardi Gras began in 1978?
10. In 1989, which country became the first to give same-sex couples registered partnerships?

Answers: 1. Eight. 2. Pink, purple and blue. 3. Light blue, pink and white. 4. Lesbos. 5. Intersex. 6. Good. 7. Soho. 8. February. 9. Sydney. 10. Denmark.

How to run it

• Teams of four to six, mixed on purpose. At a company network night, split the regulars up and put newcomers and allies on every team. Nobody should feel the quiz is a test of whether they belong.
• Keep it a party. The history round carries real weight; read it plainly, then let the music round lift the room. Play the songs from round two between rounds.
• Swap answer sheets to mark, and decide in advance what counts: "Greenwich Village" for question two of round one deserves the point.
• Add a round nobody can Google. A Speed Drawing round of icons, a lip-sync, or a picture round of looks from the decade. Our guide to a phone-proof quiz has more ideas.
• Finish on something loud. Round two works as a finale too.

For the whole night run for you, the Pride quiz is one of the themes of our hosted quiz, and Games Night is the bigger, louder version for Pride and community groups: party games played in teams, with quiz rounds between. If you're writing the rest of the night yourself, our step-by-step on how to host a quiz night covers rounds, scoring and tie-breaks, and our sports quiz questions are free too.