Summary: The Gay Rights Movement

The sexual revolution has given rise to the prominence of “out” homosexuals and helped to increase cultural acceptance of gays, lesbians, and transsexuals. The Gay Rights Movement started in the late 1960s and drastically changed the meaning of being gay. Prior to the sexual revolution it was extremely uncommon for a gay individual to “come out;”

Life for most homosexuals during the first half of the Twentieth century was one of hiding, being ever so careful to not give away their true feelings and predilections. Although the 1920s saw a brief moment of openness in American society, that was quickly destroyed with the progress of the Cold War, and by default, that of McCarthyism. The homosexuals of the 50s “felt the heavy weight of medical prejudice, police harassment and church condemnation … [and] were not able to challenge these authorities.” They were constantly battered, both physically and emotionally, by the society that surrounded them. The very mention or rumor of one’s homosexuality could lead to the loss of their family, their livelihood and, in some cases, their

Over the next two decades, half the states decriminalized homosexual behavior, and police harassment grew less frequent and obvious to the public. Also in 1975, it became legal for gays to hold federal jobs. However all this headway also made room for more opposition. In 1977, Anita Bryant was so successful at obtaining a repeal of a recent gay ordinance in her home state of Florida that by 1980, a league of anti gay clubs had come together to make a force, led in part by Jesse Helms. The AIDS scare that began in the eighties did not help the gay image either, but more citizens joined their ranks in order to combat the oppression and fund a search for the cure, so in the end it actually made the movement stronger. According to the Columbia Electronic Encyclopedia (2000), by 1999, the anti-sodomy laws of 32 states had been repealed, and in 1996 Vermont granted its gay citizens the right to same sex marriages. Gay rights has come a long way as a social movement, and though it still has a long way to go, it makes a good topic to analyze the process of the social movement.

“Sex was something mysterious which happened to married couples and Homosexuality was never mentioned; my mother told me my father did not believe it existed at all ‘until he joined the army’. As a child, I was warned about talking to ‘strange men’, without any real idea what this meant. I was left to find out for myself what it was all about.” Mike Newman, who was a child during the 1950s America recalls how homosexuality was perceived during the post-World War II era (F). This sexual oppression was not only in Newman’s household, but in almost everyone’s. While the civil rights movement began in the mid-1950s and ended late 1960s, the LGBT community started to come out of the closet slowly. The gay rights movement stemmed from the civil rights movement

Fifty years ago, in the early sixties, being gay was illegal in every providence in Canada, and in every single state in the United States. In the 1950’s, many gay individuals saw the men who had devoted their lives to being out and they knew what a horrible life that made for those men. This caused many gay men to “pass,” or live their entire lives in the closet. They would marry women for the soul purpose of protecting their secret. Before the stonewall riots, many Americans did not even believe gay people existed. Due to the lack of education and bigotry amongst Americans, being gay was very dangerous. Sexual acts in the gay community were commonly done in unsafe places and in public because they simply had nowhere else to go. Homosexuality was not just criminalized it was medicalized (Bawer). If you were gay, you could be subject to go into hospitals and were viewed by society as having a disability and a disease. In April of 1965, the very first gay protest took place in Washington DC. This protest was revolutionary and it began to pave the way for the future of gay men and women and reshape gay culture. In 1969, not long after the first gay protests of 1965, Canada decriminalized homosexual sexual acts in the privacy of one’s own home (Guerre). This was groundbreaking and gave the gay community hope that change was coming. Also, taking place in 1969 were the historic stonewall

“[W]orking-classes people in the capital of black America were stunningly open about their homosexuality” as it was “evident in urban blues lyrics of the time,” but it was not accepted in the middle-class and upper-class communities (Russell 103, 105). Some influential, elite/upper- or middle-class people during the Harlem Renaissance, such as Claude McKay, George Chauncey, Alain Locke, and others were “extraordinarily open about homosexuality and about the repressive nature of heterosexual norms” (103). Even James Baldwin was open about his sexuality and “claimed to have felt accepted as a homosexual” in Harlem (108). However, this did not stop the elitists, middle- and upper-class individuals, and the media from having their say. Under government policy, “President Eisenhower banned homosexuals from federal jobs, prospective employees were required to undergo screenings of their sexual histories,

Johnson wrote: “In 1950 many politicians, journalists, and citizens thought that homosexuals posed more of a threat to national security than Communists…. By November… the “purge of the perverts” resulted in the dismissal of nearly six hundred federal servants. In the state Department alone, security officials boasted that on average they were firing one homesexual per day, more than double the rate of those suspected of political disloyalty.” (Eaklor 87) tells of how this mentality affected the heteronormative society of a war torn world and how that brought about the genocide of federal, minority employees. As seen in the text above, homosexual individuals were seen as worse than their heterosexual counterparts because they were thought to be destroying the American way of life as well as, traditional values given by the society brought about by conservative, warmonger-esque tendencies. Therefore, they were banned from federal employment which, made it difficult to find other work because of the severity of losing federal work.

Both the LGBT movement and the Religious Right movement attempted to make their mark by having someone run for public office. These politicians were in the

The next thing I will be talking about is the Mattachine Society. The Mattachine Society was founded in 1950, and it was considered one of the earliest gay rights movement in the United States. Harry Hay and some of his friends had started this group to protect and form a

This paper analyzes the coverage of gay issues in the Laurel Leader Call, a paper in a small city in the generally conservative state of Mississippi between the years of 1960 and 1979, a time that was of crucial importance to the LGBT national movement. The analysis of more than 200 wire stories indicates that the Laurel Leader Call seemed to have included a combination of positive and negative themes throughout the articles almost tending to create an equal balance between informative, educational and emotional scenarios of the gay community between the 1960s and 1970s. For that reason, Laurel Leader Call became a reliable barometer in providing a national image on the issue of homosexuality to the locals of Jones County

History is a complex chain of reactions; everything is the result of one event and the causation of another. Thus, if traced back decades, the Stonewall riots were the result of building social tensions in the United States and the approaches taken towards unearthing the psychology behind homosexuality. Following the upheaval caused during World War II, the people of the United States were eager to restore order in all elements of society. Security became the most valuable asset, making anyone who posed even a remote threat to the “American way” a target. An emphasis on anti-communism spurred by Senator Joseph McCarthy led to the onset of a national state of paranoia and disorder, alongside anarchists, supporters of radical revolution, and communists, the queer population was lumped into a category of people considered a threat to the United States government. Homosexuality was just short of a death sentence for those concealing their sexuality, so much so that during the late 1940s nearly 5,000

In the past decades, the struggle for gay rights in the Unites States has taken many forms. Previously, homosexuality was viewed as immoral. Many people also viewed it as pathologic because the American Psychiatric Association classified it as a psychiatric disorder. As a result, many people remained in ‘the closet’ because they were afraid of losing their jobs or being discriminated against in the society. According to David Allyn, though most gays could pass in the heterosexual world, they tended to live in fear and lies because they could not look towards their families for support. At the same time, openly gay establishments were often shut down to keep openly gay people under close scrutiny (Allyn 146). But since the 1960s, people

Queer as Folk: Over the extent of of the United States’ history, we have had a lot of social movements. One of the most notable being the fight for equality for LGBTQI — that is, lesbian, gays, bisexual, transgender, questioning, and inter-sexual. The LGBTQ started its uprise in the ‘50s as homosexuals started to become more well known — not necessarily accepted, however — among society. The LGBTQI community has quickly progressed since the ‘50s and ‘60s, bringing along with it many social changes, transgressions, feelings of hate, misconceptions, and a plethora of stereotypes — changing society’s views on sex, marriage, love, and what it is to be human. It is important to understand the impact the LGBTQI community has had on our society, and which titles have made the greatest impact. Out of all six titles, one has became the most prominent in today’s society: gay men.

The climate of the 1960s was turbulent. This decade was marked by many political movements, which reflected support for non-establishment themes. During this time the “sexual liberation movement” became a popular cause. This intensified social and political interest helped many disadvantaged groups to receive support and attention that previously had never been received. As part of the nation’s desire for sexual political liberation, gay liberation became visible.

The realization of the homosexuality in the modern western world as a cultural, sexual and a social category has been a result of complex power relations that surround sexuality and gender. The acceptance of homosexuality in the society has met its fair share of resistance and skepticism. The view that homosexuality can be in the same league as heterosexual has led it to be viewed as a normal behavioral and moral standard (Gallagher & Baker, 2006). Inasmuch as the skeptics may not want to accept the existence of homosexuality studies show that the habit is rampant today with many gay people coming out in the open. Of interest is the political acceptance of homosexuality with passing gay rights so that it can be recognized by law. This move has given homosexuals the ability to engage in legal entities like marriage (Gallagher & Baker, 2006).