gay-rights movement

Home > Social Sciences and the Law > Sociology and Social Reform > Social Reform

Gay and Lesbian Rights Movement. The movement to protect gay and lesbian civil rights emerged in the wake of World War II.Thousands of men and women who had thrived in the military's same‐sex worlds began understanding their sexual activities as central to their identities. They settled in the nation's cities, constructing social lives for themselves that dramatically expanded the previously small homosexual subcultures. Although in the past those subcultures—of private parties; select bars; and, for men, certain parks and bathhouses—were occasionally glimpsed and even celebrated by the larger public, from the mid‐1930s onward homosexuality and cross‐dressing were increasingly penalized. Bars were raided and patrons arrested, the military instituted an elaborate homosexual‐exclusion process, and states vigorously enforced sex‐crime laws. The gay and lesbian civil rights movement was born of that simultaneous expansion and repression.

Its first phase, the homophile movement, started in 1950 when several homosexual men, most former communist and progressive activists, founded the Mattachine Society in Los Angeles. Drawing on leftist theory, they created a network of discussion groups where men and women shared their experiences and constructed a common identity as an oppressed minority. Mattachine's membership peaked in the thousands with groups meeting across southern California, and as far east as Chicago and New York City; other homophile groups soon appeared, including the lesbian Daughters of Bilitis. Members were generally middle‐class with integrationist goals: They encouraged homosexuals to conform to social standards and sought out experts to convince society that homosexuals were otherwise normal. While never numerous, these groups for two decades held annual conventions, circulated newsletters, and even successfully appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court the right to mail their literature. During the 1960s, they became somewhat more visible, staging small pickets in front of the White House and Philadelphia's Independence Hall to protest dismissals of homosexual federal employees. In New York, they even successfully challenged antihomosexual liquor laws and police entrapment.

These more public actions foreshadowed the dramatic explosion of aggressive, visible activism that erupted in 1969, marking the beginning of gay liberation, the movement's second wave. Fifty homophile organizations that year had turned into eight hundred gay liberation groups by 1973, and thousands by 1979. Inspired by other rights movements and by the counterculture, gay liberationists demanded “gay power” and insisted that homosexuals “come out of the closet” by announcing their homosexuality to friends, families, and colleagues. Younger and often less socially established than their homophile predecessors, gay liberationists forcibly resisted sanctions against homosexuality. Most famously, on 27 June 1969, at New York's Stonewall Inn bar, patrons refused to disperse after a police raid and instead fought back; street rioting ensued. Joining groups like the Gay Activists Alliance and Gay Liberation Front, activists around the country interrupted city council meetings and psychiatric conferences, sat in at magazine offices and political campaign headquarters, and marched through the streets. Subsequently, the American Psychiatric Association removed homosexuality from its disease list, countless editorial policies were modified, and several cities and Congress deliberated antidiscrimination legislation. Within the movement, often in reaction to its own sexism, strong lesbian‐centered organizations also developed.

These political achievements produced a sharp backlash. In 1977, singer and orange‐juice publicist Anita Bryant led a successful campaign in Florida to overturn Dade County's new gay‐rights legislation, and other cities followed. In 1978, Harvey Milk, a gay city supervisor in San Francisco, was assassinated, and California voters debated whether to deny homosexuals employment as public school teachers. These reactions drew into the fold of gay activism a conservative constituency that fought the backlash, and in some cases, including California, defeated it with traditional political actions. Lobbying groups established a gay presence in government, working to elect openly gay politicians and forging formal relationships with various administrations.

Much of the energy that might have augmented those efforts in the 1980s was instead lost to fighting AIDS (acquired immunodeficiency syndrome). Only late in the decade, after suffering from inadequate treatment and devastating governmental disregard, did gay men and women return to the streets. Often led by ACT UP, the AIDS Coalition to Unleash Power, they fought successfully for improved care. That fight galvanized them with an energy that translated into political influence and inspired a cohort of proudly “queer” activists. At century's end, as the movies and television portrayed gay characters and hundreds of cities and eleven states had antidiscrimination statutes, activism dissipated. Nevertheless, in the 1990s, the federal government reaffirmed the ban on military service by homosexuals and defined marriage as exclusively heterosexual for benefits purposes; seventeen states continued to criminalize gay sex; and antigay violence increased, most visibly in the 1998 murder of college student Matthew Shepard in Laramie, Wyoming. Vital protections still required action.

The gay and lesbian rights movement made notable gains in the early twenty‐first century, though not without controversy. In 2003, reversing a position it had taken in 1986, the Supreme Court struck down a Texas law barring consensual sexual relations between adults of the same sex. Also in 2003, the Episcopal Church's New Hampshire diocese consecrated an openly gay priest, Gene Robinson, as its bishop. This action caused profound repercussions among U.S. Episcopalians and Anglicans worldwide.

Gay marriage emerged as a subject of controversy in 2003 when the Massachusetts supreme judicial court ruled that nothing in Massachusetts law forbade same‐sex couples from marrying. Early in 2004, San Francisco mayor Gavin Newsom, a supporter of gay rights, ordered the city clerk to issue marriage licenses to gay couples. Thousands applied and city officials performed many marriages.

As the movement spread, conservatives reacted. In 2004 the Massachusetts legislature, meeting as a constitutional convention, amended the state constitution to bar gay marriage while permitting civil unions granting same‐sex couples “the same benefits, protections, rights, privileges, and obligations” as married couples. The amendment was slated to appear on the Massachusetts ballot in 2006 for approval or rejection. Meanwhile, the California supreme court, prodded by Governor Arnold Schwartzenegger, ordered an immediate end to same-sex marriages in San Francisco, and promised to hear arguments on the matter in the near future. In January 2004, President George W. Bush, courting the religious Right, called for a constitutional amendment barring same‐sex marriage. As the controversy continued, many Americans endorsed the idea of civil unions granting same-sex couples all the legal rights and privileges of marriage‐an outcome unthinkable several decades earlier.
See also Civil Rights Movement; Sexual Harassment; Sexual Morality and Sex Reform; Sixties, The.

Bibliography

Leigh W. Rutledge , The Gay Decades: From Stonewall to the Present, 1992. Dudley Clendinen and and Adam Nagourney , Out for Good: The Struggle to Build a Gay Rights Movement in America, 1999

Daniel Hurewitz

Paul S. Boyer

gay-rights movement organized efforts to end the criminalization of homosexuality and protect the civil rights of homosexuals. While there was some organized activity on behalf of the rights of homosexuals from the mid-19th through the first half of the 20th cent., the modern gay-rights movement in the United States is usually said to have begun with the Stonewall riot (June, 1969) in New York City, which resulted from a police raid on an illegal gay bar. A number of groups formed to work for the repeal of laws prohibiting consensual homosexual conduct; for legislation barring discrimination against gays in housing and employment; and for greater acceptance of homosexuals among the rest of the population. By 1999 the antisodomy laws of 32 states had been repealed or declared unconstitutional; in all but five of the remaining states, the antisodomy laws applied to both heterosexuals and homosexuals. The Supreme Court overturned all state antisodomy laws in 2003; it ruled that a Texas law applying only to homosexuals was unconstitutional, but at the same time the Court repudiated a 1986 decision in which it had refused to extend the right of privacy to consensual sexual acts.

Laws protecting homosexuals from discrimination also have been enacted, but largely at the local level; by 1999 only 11 states had such laws. Opposition to such laws, particularly from conservative religious groups, has often been strong, and opponents of gay-rights measures have frequently gained their repeal. In 1992, Colorado became the first state to nullify existing civil-rights protection for homosexuals by amending its constitution; the provision was stuck down by the U.S. Supreme Court in 1996. By means of a statewide public referendum in 1998, Maine became the first state to repeal its gay-rights statute.

In 1993 the Defense Dept., at President Clinton's order, changed the ban on homosexuals in the military to a ban on homosexual activity. The much discussed policy, known as "don't ask, don't tell," was presented as a way to allow gays in the military to serve without fear of discharge or other penalty as long as they did not reveal their sexual orientation. The policy, however, did not significantly change the precarious status of gay soldier, and in 2010 it was repealed. Most other NATO nations already permitted openly homosexual men and women to serve in their armed forces. Beginning in 1995, homosexuals were no longer automatically denied U.S. government security clearances.

Spousal benefits, such as health insurance and pension plans for long-term domestic partners, and the legal recognition of same-sex couples ( "gay marriages" ) also became important gay-rights issues in the 1990s. A number of American corporations now offer same-sex partners of employees medical benefits comparable to those offered to employees' spouses; about one fifth of all workers are employed by these businesses. However, beginning in the mid-1990s, many states began explicitly banning same-sex marriages; more than four fifths of the states now do so. The Vermont supreme court declared in 1999 that the state must grant homosexual couples the same rights and protections that married heterosexuals have, and in 2000 the state legislature backed "civil unions" for same-sex couples that offer many benefits similar to those of heterosexual marriage. Legislation permitting gay marriage was passed in Vermont in 2009. Massachusetts' highest court ruled in 2003 that homosexual couples have the constitutional right to marry, and the state began issuing licenses for same-sex marriages in May, 2004. At the same time, however, in 11 states voters approved (Nov., 2004) state constitutional amendments restricting marriage to a man and a woman and in some cases also banning same-sex civil unions; more than half the states now have such amendments. After New Jersey's supreme court ruled in 2006 that the state must extend equal rights to same-sex couples, the state enacted civil-union legislation. The supreme courts in California and Connecticut overturned those states' bans on same-sex marriage in 2008, as did the court in Iowa in 2009. Voters in California subsequently passed a constitutional amendment banning it, but that was overturned in federal court in 2010. Same-sex marriage was legalized in 2009 in Maine (subsquently overturned by referendum) and New Hampshire, in 2010 in the District of Columbia, and in 2011 by New York. Several other states recognize same-sex civil unions or domestic partnerships, which offer fewer rights than civil unions.

At the national level the Defense of Marriage Act (1996) restricts the federal definition of marriage to heterosexual couples, but some conservatives have called for a constitutional amendment to ban same-sex marriages. Meanwhile, some religions and churches have been struggling with the issues of gay marriage and of the ordination of gay clergy. Worldwide, laws relating to homosexuality vary widely; some nations (Canada; many European nations; South Africa, New Zealand and some Australian states, Argentina, Brazil, Ecuador, Uruguay, and parts of Mexico) offer some form of official recognition to homosexual couples. Many non-Western countries consider consensual homosexual acts crimes (in some Islamic nations, capital crimes). In 2011 the UN Human Rights Council for the first time adopted a resolution criticizing discrimination and violence against individuals because of their sexual orientation or gender identity.

See also homosexuality .

Bibliography: See D. Clendinen and A. Nagourney, Out for Good: The Struggle to Build a Gay Rights Movement in America (1999).