Anyone who has seen the rainbow flag flying above the Guildhall in Market Square won't be surprised to discover that February is LGBT History Month in the UK. The occasion, inspired by Black History Month, has been celebrated in the US since 1994, and made its way to our shores in 2005.

The 2013 edition of the event is likely to feel special to many, since Wednesday 5th February saw the gay marriage bill pass its second reading in the House of Commons.

In Cambridge, the Encompass Network has organised a full and varied programme of events, which range from theatre performances to club nights, film screenings and a church service.

CUSU's LGBT campaign is one of the main sponsors of the month, and launched an Awareness Week on Wednesday 5th with a new edition of its [no definition] magazine. An awareness poster campaign is also planned to launch next week.

Just how aware Cambridge students are of the series of events is questionable, however.

Among students interviewed for this article, Emily Black of Gonville & Caius, did not feel that CUSU LGBT had done a great deal in the way of publicising the month, a view echoed by other students (LGBT and not). There is no mention of it on the campaign's website.

Harry Prance, CUSU LGBT Communications Officer, acknowledged that awareness levels among non-LGBT students were far too low. He suggested, however, that the diversity of the LGBT community and the huge variety of expectations meant that the campaign would never be able to please everyone.

For Black, it is this diversity which CUSU LGBT does well at accommodating. In fact, she speculated whether a specific 'history month' might work in an anti-inclusive way - while accepting that the experience of being LGBT at Cambridge was easier than in most of the country.

The University of Cambridge was the highest-ranking higher education institution in the 2013 edition of gay rights charity Stonewall's annual Top 100 Employers list. The University can in fact boast a long history of openness in LGBT affairs, at least as far as was possible under the legal framework of the past.

'Buggery' was a capital offence until 1861 in England, and homosexual sex between adult men was not legal until 1967.

Yet, as Graeme Grant wrote for CAM magazine in 2008, the University of Cambridge was an entirely same-sex environment 'for the best part of 600 years'. And homosexuality is hardly a modern invention, although that word itself wasn't used until the 1860s.

So perhaps it shouldn't be too surprising that Dr John Gostlin, a 17th-century Master of Gonville & Caius, should be buried next to one Dr Thomas Legge under the inscription:

'Love joined them living. So may the earth join them in their burial. Oh Legge, Gostlin’s heart you still have with you’. Their tomb can be found in the college's chapel.

The list of famous LGBT alumni in the following centuries is too long to reproduce here. A name worth mentioning, however, is Edward Carpenter (Trinity Hall, 1864), who was one of the first pioneers of homosexual equality, writing daring books such as Love's Coming of Age. Carpenter had a strong influence on future generations at Cambridge, particularly at King's in the figures of Goldsworthy Lowes Dickinson (1881) and writer E.M. Forster (1897).

Cambridge's LGBT history is not all so happy, however. Alan Turing, a student at King's in the 1930s, is undoubtedly the best known of those who suffered as a result of their sexual orientation.

Amnesty International is holding a speaker event on Turing on Sunday 24th February, as part of the city LGBT History Month programme.

Other events will include a talk by former actor and MEP Michael Cashman entitled ‘From first kiss to human rights defender’, in which he will speak about challenging homophobia.