Famous children’s author Dr. Seuss once said, “Be who you are and say what you feel, because those who mind don’t matter and those who matter don’t mind". Gay rights, at the moment, are one of the most publicized and well known controversial subjects of this decade. The sides clearly drawn one fighting for rights as simple as being married the other stating that it defames their religion and goes against the definition of marriage, being between a man and a woman. The individuals who are fighting for their civil rights are fallowing the same path that African Americans and women have taken, but the change has started and in over 13 states gays have been given their basic rights and more state are joining in the fight both for and against the topic.
History
In the United States, there were few endeavors made to make backing gatherings supporting gay and lesbian connections until after World War II, in spite of the fact that prewar gay life thrived in urban settings, for example, Greenwich Village and Harlem throughout the Harlem Renaissance of the 1920s. The disturbances of World War II permitted at one time separated gay men and ladies to meet as warriors, war laborers, and different volunteers were then removed from residential communities and posted around the world. More stupendous mindfulness, coupled with Senator Joseph Mccarthy's examination of gay people holding government occupations throughout the early 1950s, which then prompted the first American-based political requests for reasonable medicine in mental wellbeing, open strategy, and vocation (Infoplease).
The essential association for recognizing gay men as an oppressed social minority was the Mattachine Society, established in 1950 by Harry Hay and ...
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...ederal employees (making no mention of additional costs such as Social Security and inheritance taxes) would be $596 million in mandatory spending and $302 million in discretionary spending between 2010 and 2019”(procon.org). This vast increase in spending will only contribute to national debt and our dependency on foreign countries giving the U.S loans.
Works Cited
Bernard, Tara Siegel, and Ron Lieber. "The Costs of Being a Gay Couple Run Higher." The New York Times. The New York Times, 02 Oct. 2009. Web.
"Gay Rights Timeline: Key Dates in the Fight for Equality." NBC News. Web.
Hansen, Trayce. "Dr. Trayce Hansen's Writings." Dr. Trayce Hansen's Writings. 8 Dec. 2009. Web. 07 May 2014.
Kathryn Perry, "The Cost of Gay Marriage - In Dollars and Cents," Christian Science Monitor, May 27, 2009
ProCon.org. "Is There a 'Gay' Gene?" ProCon.org. 18 Mar. 2011. Web.
In Vicki L. Eaklor’s Queer America, the experiences of lesbians, gay men, bisexuals, and transgender people in the years since the 1970s gay liberation movement are described as a time of transformation and growth. The antigay movement, threatened, now more than ever, created numerous challenges and obstacles that are still prevalent today. Many of the important changes made associated with the movement were introduced through queer and queer allied individuals and groups involved in politics. Small victories such as the revision of the anti discrimination statement to include “sexual orientation”, new propositions regarding the Equal Rights Amendment and legalized abortion, were met in turn with growing animosity and resistance from individuals and groups opposed to liberal and
Wolf, Richard. “Timeline: Same-Sex marriage through the years.” USA Today, Gannett Satellite Information Network, 26 June 2015,
“The unprecedented growth of the gay community in recent history has transformed our culture and consciousness, creating radically new possibilities for people to ‘come out’ and live more openly as homosexuals”(Herdt 2). Before the 1969 Stonewall riot in New York, homosexuality was a taboo subject. Research concerning homosexuality emphasized the etiology, treatment, and psychological adjustment of homosexuals. Times have changed since 1969. Homosexuals have gained great attention in arts, entertainment, media, and politics. Yesterday’s research on homosexuality has expanded to include trying to understand the different experiences and situations of homosexuals (Ben-Ari 89-90).
In his work about gay life in New York City, George Chauncey seeks to dispel the various myths about the gay lifestyle before the Civil Rights era of the 60’s. He distills the misconceptions into three major myths: “…isolation, invisibility, and internalization” (Chauncey 1994, 2). He believes a certain image has taken in the public mind where gays did not openly exist until the 60’s, and that professional historians have largely ignored this era of sexual history. He posits such ideas are simply counterfactual. Using the city of New York, a metropolitan landscape where many types of people confluence together, he details a thriving gay community. Certainly it is a community by Chauncey’s reckoning; he shows gay men had a large network of bar, clubs, and various other cultural venues where not only gay men intermingled the larger public did as well. This dispels the first two principle myths that gay men were isolated internally from other gay men or invisible to the populace. As to the internalization of gay men, they were not by any degree self-loathing. In fact, Chauncey shows examples of gay pride such a drag queen arrested and detained in police car in a photo with a big smile (Chauncey 1994, 330). Using a series of personal interviews, primary archival material from city repositories, articles, police reports, and private watchdog groups, Chauncey details with a preponderance of evidence the existence of a gay culture in New York City, while at the same time using secondary scholarship to give context to larger events like the Depression and thereby tie changes to the gay community to larger changes in the society.
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 have dedicated themselves in fighting for
creation of the Gay Rights Movement. The power and respect given to a “movement” allowed
Mattachine, an activist group in New York, called for a meeting July 16 to organize around gay liberation. Dick Leitsch, an old time leader, tried to lead the meeting. “ Acceptance of gays and lesbians would take time,” he explained, but one young man shouted, “we don't want acceptance, we have got to radi...
. Gianoulis, Tina. "Gay Liberation Movement." In St. James Encyclopedia of Popular Culture., edited by Thomas Riggs, 438-43. 2nd ed. Vol. 2. Detroit: St. James, 2013. Gale Virtual Reference Library (GALE|CX2735801056).
For many generations, especially in North America, homosexuality was not accepted in any way, shape, or form. Many believed that it was a medical illness that was curable, when in reality, people were, and still are, ignorant and could not come to terms that everyone in this world is different from one another. For many instances of being treated unjust, many individuals in the gay community did not want to “expose” themselves and remained in the “closet”. As means to make gays and lesbians proud and take a stand for who they are, a movement spread across internationally. This movement is known as “The Gay Liberation” movement which occurred between the late 1960s and the early to mid 1970s (“Gay Liberation”). The Gay Liberation movement urged individuals of the gay community to “come out,” revealing their sexuality to their loved ones as a form of activism, and to counter shame with gay pride (“Gay Liberation”). The Stonewall Riots are believed to have been the spark that ignited the rise of the Gay Liberation movement; it influenced the way the gay community is viewed socially and how their rights are politically present day.
Many young, radical gays and lesbians in the late 60’s joined SDS (Students for a Democratic Society) or a Black liberation organization, rather than NACHO (North American Conference of Homophile Organizations) which “struck them as hopelessly bourgeois.” Others may have steered clear of NACHO because of NACHO’s radical (for that time) stance that homosexuality was neither abnormal nor unnatural. Duberman points out the irony of the centrist organization, NACHO, being willing to take a more radical stance on gay liberation than the gay and lesbian activists themselves (Duberman, 1994).
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 lives. Geanne Harwood, interviewed on an National Public Radio Broadcast commemorating the twentieth anniversary of the Stonewall Riots, said that “being gay before Stonewall was a very difficult proposition … we felt that in order to survive we had to try to look and act as rugged and as manly as possibly to get by in a society that was really very much against us.” The age of communist threats, and of Joseph McCarthy’s insistence that homosexuals were treacherous, gave credence to the feeling of most society members that homosexuality was a perversion, and that one inflicted was one to not be trusted.
The history of the gay rights movement goes as far back as the late 19th century. More accurately, the quest by gays to search out others like themselves and foster a feeling of identity has been around since then. It is an innovative movement that seeks to change existing norms and gain acceptance within our culture. By 1915, one gay person said that the gay world was a "community, distinctly organized" (Milestones 1991), but kept mostly out of view because of social hostility. According to the Milestones article, after World War II, around 1940, many cities saw their first gay bars open as many homosexuals began to start a networking system. However, their newfound visibility only backfired on them, as in the 1950's president Eisenhower banned gays from holding federal jobs and many state institutions did the same. The lead taken by the federal government encouraged local police forces to harass gay citizens. "Vice officers regularly raided gay bars, sometimes arresting dozens of men and women on a single night" (Milestones). In spite of the adversity, out of the 1950s also came the first organized groups of gays, including leaders. The movement was small at first, but grew exponentially in short periods of time. Spurred on by the civil rights movement in the 1960s, the "homophile" (Milestones) movement took on more visibility, picketing government agencies and discriminatory policies. By 1969, around 50 gay organizations existed in the United States. The most crucial moment in blowing the gay rights movement wide open was on the evening of July 27, 1969, when a group of police raided a gay bar in New York City. This act prompted three days of rioting in the area called the Stonewall Rio...
In the 1940s, homophobia was extremely prevalent in the United States. People who were openly gay were often stigmatized. “Homosexuality was discussed as ‘an aspect of three personality disorders: psychopaths who were sexual perverts, paranoid personalities who suffered from homosexual panic, and schizoid personalities’ who displayed gay symptoms” (Kaiser 29). Many regulations and practices discriminated against gays. The military found homosexuality to be a direct threat to strength and safety of the U.S. government and the American people, in general. In 1941 the Army and the Selective Service banned homosexuals from participation in the war (Kaiser 29). All major religions considered it sinful and throughout the country, more and more people found it to be immoral. Life was hard for homosexuals in the early and mid-twentieth century. They were forced to hide their sexuality in order to escape derision or imprisonment.
Redlingshafer, JoEllen. "The LGBT Movement Must Look Past Gay Marriage." Policymic. Policymic, 2013. Web. 23 Sept. 2013.
Meeker, Martin. Contacts desired: Gay and lesbian communications and community, 1940s-1970s. Chicago: University of Chicago P, 2006.