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The Rainbow Clause:
Giving us the right to choose who; where; when; why; and how.
The Gay and Lesbian American
A timeline of the gay and lesbian rights
movement in the United States
The struggle for equal rights for gay and lesbian
Americans may seem like a relatively new development, especially in a time
when gay and/or lesbian marriage and gay and/or lesbian adoption have
featured so prominently in political elections. The reality is that the American
gay and lesbian community is as old as the United States itself, and that
an organized effort to gain equal rights began more than a century ago.
At the end of the 19th century, large cities
began to sprout up across the United States. Looking for work, people left
behind their friends and families and moved into neighborhoods where they
knew no one. For the first time, people found that they were able to live
large parts of their lives in anonymity. As a result, many gay and lesbian
American began to seek each other out, forming social networks that allowed
them a freedom of expression they had not encountered before. By 1915, a
gay community was well established in many U.S. cities; by the 1920s and
30s, gay / lesbian subcultures in urban environments were common. The 20s
and 30s also saw the earliest gay and lesbian rights organizations form.
The Society for Human Rights was the first, opening its doors in Chicago
in 1924.
World War II changed the way Americans lived,
worked and socialized, and the gay and lesbian community was not immune to
these changes. Young people left their homes and families to serve overseas
in the military, or moved into cities to support the war effort by working
in factories. When the war ended, many of them chose to stay in their
newly-adopted cities, San Francisco and New York City among them. Gay men
and lesbians quickly made friends, found jobs and opened small businesses
in this city. A vibrant gay and lesbian community thrived, and by the 1940s
most major cities had a number of gay and lesbian bars and social clubs.
While homosexuality had never been widely accepted
in the United States, it was considered rare and not an issue of concern.
The emergence of gay- and lesbian-centered bars and businesses drew attention
to the homosexual community and caused a wave of prejudice. In the 1950s
hundreds of people who were homosexual or presumed to be homosexual were
fired from government jobs or ousted from the military. In 1953, President
Eisenhower signed an order barring all homosexuals from holding federal jobs,
prompting many state agencies and private companies to do the same. Police
officers were encouraged to harass and even arrest patrons of gay and lesbian
bars and the FBI began a gay and lesbian surveillance program.
The gay and lesbian community reacted. In 1951,
Henry Hay formed the Mattachine Society, the first national gay rights
organization. Considered by many to be the father of the gay rights movement,
Hay and another man, Chuck Rowland, began the Society in Los Angeles with
a small group of mostly male members. They were joined shortly thereafter
in 1956 by the Daughters of Bilitis, a lesbian group founded by Del Martin
and Phyllis Lyon. Chapters of both organizations were established in cities
across the country, and while their memberships were small, their impact
was great. By publishing magazines and providing support to gay and lesbian
citizens in their communities, the Mattachine Society and Daughters of Bilitis
served as symbols of hope for what could one day be.
Small and widespread groups of activists transformed
into an organized national movement in the 1960s, as gay and lesbian rights
groups took a page from the book of those fighting for civil rights for African
Americans. Calling themselves the "Homophile Movement," members picketed
in protest of policies that banned gays and lesbians from employment and
the harassment of homosexuals by the police. By 1969 there were more than
50 homophile groups in the United States. When the New York City Police
Department raided a gay bar in Greenwich Village in June 1969, the patrons
had had enough. They fought back, and a three-day riot ensued. The riots
birthed a massive effort on behalf of gay and lesbian rights as well as the
appearance of gay / lesbian power slogans and banners. Gays and lesbians
came out in droves, demanding equality under the law.
The changes that resulted were significant.
Over the next twenty years, nearly half of all U.S. states decriminalized
homosexual behavior (Illinois had done so in 1962) and in 1982 Wisconsin
was the first state to outlaw the discrimination against individuals based
on sexual orientation. The American Psychological Association, which had
once considered homosexuality to be a mental disorder, repealed that
classification in 1973. And in 1987, more than 600,000 people marched in
Washington D.C. to demand equal rights for gay and lesbian Americans.
With all of this progress came new obstacles.
The ground gained by gay and lesbian activists made those who were against
equality work even harder to prevent it. In 1977 singer Anita Bryant led
a highly visible campaign in Florida to repeal a gay rights ordinance in
Dade County. She succeeded, and this success created a legal precedence that
encouraged others to participate in anti-gay campaigns. Fundamentalist ministers
and politicians joined forces to create such organizations as the Moral Majority,
which spoke out about the "evils" of homosexuality and fought to keep gays
and lesbians from receiving the rights that were due to them. The beginning
of the AIDS epidemic in the 1980s both helped and hurt the cause: the
life-or-death immediacy of AIDS helped to mobilize the gay communities to
action; however, the distinction of AIDS by many as a 'gay disease' isolated
many gay and lesbian citizens and fostered a new kind of fear and discrimination.
Today, the fight continues. In 2000 Vermont
became the first state to grant civil union benefits to same-sex couples;
Massachusetts legalized gay marriage in 2004 and civil unions became legal
in Connecticut in October 2005. In 2003 the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that
anti-sodomy laws are unconstitutional, and states across the country are
beginning to allow gay and lesbian couples to adopt children. The process
is slow, and can sometimes seem like every step forward is accompanied by
a step back. But little by little, gay and lesbian Americans are being recognized
as the equally-deserving citizens they are. The American gay and lesbian
rights movement, 100 years in the making, is still going strong in communities
nationwide.
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