LGBT Milestones In The United States

I found an article by CNN that included background information about lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender milestones in the United States. At first I felt enormous pride at how far we have come in gaining our human rights so we can live the life we were born to live. Then a sinking feeling took over as I thought about how our acceptance and rights are currently being challenged. May we stand together with hope and solidarity through threatening times looming on the horizon...

Timeline:
1924 - The Society for Human Rights is founded by Henry Gerber in Chicago. It is the first documented gay rights organization.

1950 - The Mattachine Society is formed by activist Harry Hay and is one of the first sustained gay rights groups in the United States. The Society focuses on social acceptance and other support for homosexuals.

April 1952 - The American Psychiatric Association's diagnostic manual lists homosexuality as a sociopathic personality disturbance.

April 27, 1953 - President Dwight D. Eisenhower signs an executive order that bans homosexuals from working for the federal government, saying they are a security risk.

September 1955 - The first known lesbian rights organization in the United States forms in San Francisco. Daughters of Bilitis (DOB). They host private social functions, fearing police raids, threats of violence and discrimination in bars and clubs.

July 1961 - Illinois becomes the first state to decriminalize homosexuality by repealing their sodomy laws.

September 11, 1961 - The first US documentary about homosexuality airs on a local station in California.

June 28, 1969 - Police raid the Stonewall Inn in New York City. Protests and demonstrations begin, and it later becomes known as the impetus for the gay civil rights movement in the United States.

1969 - The Los Angeles Advocate founded in 1967 is renamed "The Advocate." It is considered the oldest continuing LGBT publication that began as a newsletter published by the activist group Personal Rights in Defense and Education (PRIDE).

June 28, 1970 - Community members in New York City march through the local streets to recognize the one-year anniversary of the Stonewall riots. This event is named Christopher Street Celebration Day, and is now considered the first gay pride parade.

1973 - Lambda Legal becomes the first legal organization established to fight for the equal rights of gays and lesbians. Lambda also becomes their own first client after being denied non-profit status; the New York Supreme Court eventually rules that Lambda Legal can exist as a non-profit.

January 1, 1973 - Maryland becomes the first state to statutorily ban same-sex marriage.

March 26, 1973 - First meeting of "Parents and Friends of Gays which goes national as Parents, Families and Friends of Lesbians and Gays (PFLAG) in 1982.

December 15, 1973 - By a vote of 5,854 to 3,810, the American Psychiatric Association removes homosexuality from its list of mental disorders in the DSM-II Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders.

1974- Kathy Kozackenko becomes the first openly LGBT American elected to any public office when she wins a seat on the Ann Arbor, Michigan City Council.

1974- Elaine Nobel is the first openly gay candidate elected to a state office when she is elected to the Massachusetts State legislature.

January 14, 1975 - The first federal gay rights bill is introduced to address discrimination based on sexual orientation. The bill later goes to the Judiciary Committee but is never brought for consideration.

March 1975 - Technical Sergeant Leonard P. Matlovich reveals his sexual orientation to his commanding officer and is forcibly discharged from the Air Force six months later. Matlovich is a Viet Nam war veteran and was awarded both the Purple Heart and the Bronze Star. In 1980, the Court of Appeals rules that the dismissal was improper. Matlovich is awarded his back pay and a retroactive promotion.

1976 - After undergoing gender reassignment surgery in 1975, ophthalmologist and professional tennis player Renee Richards is banned from competing in the women's US Open because of a "women-born-women" rule. Richards challenges the decision and in 1977, the New York Supreme Court rules in her favor. Richards competes in the 1977 US Open but is defeated in the first round by Virginia Wade.

1977-1981 - Billy Crystal plays one of the first openly gay characters in a recurring role on a prime time television show in "Soap."

January 9, 1978 - Harvey Milk is inagurated as San Francisco city supervisor and is the first openly gay man to be elected to a political office in California. In November Milk and Mayor George Moscone and murdered by Dan White, who had recently resigned from his San Francisco board position and wanted Moscone to reappoint him. White later serves just over five years in prison for voluntary manslaughter.

1978 - Inspired by Milk to develop a symbol of pride and hope for the LGBT community, Gilbert Baker designs and stitches together the first rainbow flag.

October 14, 1979 - The first National March on Washington for Lesbian and Gay Rights takes place. It draws an estimated 75,000 to 125,000 individuals marching for LGBT rights.

March 2, 1982 - Wisconsin becomes the first state to outlaw discrimination based on sexual orientation.

1983 - Lambda Legal wins People v. West 12 Tenants Corp., the first HIV/AIDS discrimination lawsuit. Neighbors attempted to evict Dr. Joseph Sonnabend from the building because he was treating HIV-positive patients.

November 30, 1993 - President Bill Clinton signs a military policy directive that prohibits openly gay and lesbian Americans from serving in the military, but also prohibits the harassment of "closeted" homosexuals. The policy is known as "Don't Ask, Don't Tell."

November 1995 - The Hate Crimes Sentencing Enhancement Act goes into effect as part of the Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act of 1994. The law allows a judge to impose harsher sentences if there is evidence showing that a victim was selected because of the "actual or perceived race, color, religion, national origin, ethnicity, gender, disability, or sexual orientation of any person."

September 21, 1996 - President Bill Clinton signs the Defence of Marriage Act banning federal recognition of same-sex marriage and defining marriage as "a legal union between one man and one woman as husband and wife."

December 3, 1996 - Hawaii's Judge Chang rules that the state does not have a legal right to deny same-sex couples the right to marry, making Hawaii the first state to recognize that gay and lesbian couples are entitled to the same privileges as heterosexual married couples.

April 1997 - Comedian Ellen DeGeneres comes out as a lesbian on the cover of Time magazine, stating, "Yep, I'm Gay".

April 30, 1997 - DeGeneres' character, Ellen Morgan, on her self-titled TV series "Ellen," becomes the first leading character to come out on a prime time network television show.

April 1, 1998 - Martin Luther King Jr.'s widow, Coretta Scott King, asks the civil rights community to help in the effort to extinguish homophobia.

October 6-7, 1998 - Matthew Shepard is tied to a fence and beaten near Laramie, Wyoming. He is eventually found by a cyclist, who initially mistakes him for a scarecrow. He later dies due to his injuries sustained in the beating.

October 9, 1998 - Russell Henderson and Aaron McKinney from Laramie, Wyoming, make their first court appearance after being arrested for the attempted murder of Shepard. Eventually, they each receive two life sentences for killing Shepard.

April 26, 2000 - Vermont becomes the first state to legalize civil-unions between same-sex couples.

June 2003 - The United States Supreme Court strikes down the "homosexual conduct" law, which decriminalizes same-sex sexual conduct, with their opinion in Lawrence v. Texas. The decision also reverses Bowers v. Hardwick, a 1986 US Supreme Court ruling that upheld Georgia's sodomy law.

May 17, 2004 - The first legal same-sex marriage in the United States takes place in Massachusetts.

September 6, 2005 - The California legislature becomes the first to pass a bill allowing marriage between same-sex couples.

October 25, 2006 - The New Jersey Supreme Court rules that state lawmakers must provide the rights and benefits of marriage to gay and lesbian couples.

May 15, 2008 - The California Supreme Court rules in re: Marriage Cases that limiting marriage to opposite-sex couples is unconstitutional.

November 4, 2008 - Voters approve Proposition 8 in California, which makes same-sex marriage illegal.

August 12, 2009 - Milk is posthumously awarded the Medal of Freedom by President Barack Obama.

October 28, 2009 - President Barack Obama signs the Matthew Shepard and James Byrd Jr. Hate Crimes Prevention Act into law.

August 4, 2010 - Proposition 8 is found unconstitutional by a federal judge.

September 20, 2011 - "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" is repealed, ending a ban on gay men and lesbians from serving openly in the military.

May 9, 2012 - In an ABC interview, Barack Obama becomes the first sitting US president to publicly support the freedom for LGBT couples to marry.

September 4, 2012 - The Democratic Party becomes the first major US political party in history to publicly support same-sex marriage on a national platform at the Democratic National Convention.

November 6, 2012 - Tammy Baldwin becomes the first openly gay politician and the first Wisconsin woman to be elected to the US Senate.

June 26, 2013 - In United States vs. Windsor, the US Supreme Court strikes down section 3 of the Defense of Marriage Act, ruling that legally married same-sex couples are entitled to federal benefits. The high court also dismisses a case involving California's proposition 8.

October 6, 2014 - The United States Supreme Court denies review of five same-sex marriages, allowing lower court rulings to stand, and therefore allowing same-sex couples to marry in Utah, Oklahoma, Virginia, Indiana and Wisconsin. The decision opens the door for the right to marry in Colorado, Kansas, North Carolina, South Carolina, West Virginia and Wyoming.

June 9, 2015 - Secretary of Defense Ash Carter announces that the Military Equal Opportunity Act has been adjusted to include gay and lesbian military members.

April 28, 2015 - The US Supreme Court hears oral arguments on the question of the freedom to marry in Kentucky, Tennessee, Ohio and Michigan. On June 26 the Supreme Court rules that states cannot ban same-sex marriage. The 5-4 ruling had Justice Anthony Kennedy writing for the majority. Each of the four conservative justices writes their own dissent.

July 27, 2015 - Boy Scouts of America President Robert Gates announces "the national executive board ratified a resolution removing the national restriction on openly gay leaders and employees."

May 17, 2016 - The Senate Confirms Eric Fanning to be Secretary of the Army, making him the first openly gay secretary of a US military branch. Fanning previously served as Defense Secretary Carter's chief of staff, and also served as undersecretary of the Air Force and deputy undersecretary of the Navy.

June 24, 2016  President Barack Obama announces the designation of the first national monument for lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) rights. The Stonewall National Monument will encompass Christopher Park, the Stonewall Inn and the surrounding streets and sidewalks that were the sites of the 1969 Stonewall uprising.

June 30, 2016 - Secretary of Defense Carter announces that the Pentagon is lifting the ban on transgender people serving openly in the US military.

August 5-21, 201 - a record number of "out" athletes compete in the summer Olympic Games in Rio de Janeio. The Human Rights Campaign estimates that there are at least 41 openly lesbian, gay and bisexual Olympians -- up from 23 that participated in London 2012.

November 9, 2016 - Kate Brown is sworn in as governor of Oregon, a day after she was officially elected to the office. Brown becomes the highest-ranking LGBT person elected to office in the United States. Brown took over the governorship in February 2016 (without an election), after Democrat John Kitzhaber resigned amidst a criminal investigation.

April 4, 2017 - The 7th Court of Appeals rule that the Civil Rights Act prohibits workplace discrimination against LGBT employees, after Kimberly Hively sues Ivy Tech Community College for violating Title VII of the act by denying her employment.

June 27, 2017- District of Columbia residents can now choose a gender neutral option of the drivers lisence. DC residents become the first people in the United States to be able to choose X as their gender marker instead of male or female on driver's licenses and identification cards. Similar policies exist in Canada, India, Bangladesh, Australia, New Zealand and Nepal.

June 30, 2017 - The US Department of Defense announces a six-month delay in allowing transgendered individuals to enlist in the United States military. Defense Secretary Jim Mattis writes that they "will use this additional time to evaluate more carefully the impact of such accessions on readiness and lethality."

July 26, 2017 - President Donald Trump announces via Twitter that "After consultation with my Generals and military experts please be advised that the United States Government will not accept or allow Transgender individuals to serve in any capacity in the US Military".

October 4, 2017 - In a memo to all US prosecutors, Attorney General Jeff Sessions says that a 1964 federal civil rights law does not protect transgender workers from employment discrimination and the department will take this new position in all "pending and future matters."

November 7, 2017 - Virginia voters elect the state's first openly transgender candidate to the Virginia House of Delegates. Danica Roem unseats incumbent delegate Bob Marshall, who has been elected 13 times over 26 years. Roem becomes the first openly transgender candidate elected to a state legislature in American history.

December 11, 2017 - A second federal judge rules against Trump's prohibition on transgender individuals serving in the military. The Pentagon announces it will begin processing transgender applicants to the military on January first, while the Department of Justice continues to appeal the ruling.

LGBT Lives Net Yet Free, Equal or Secure

The question of what comes after the marriage cases ignores the reality that lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people’s lives are not yet free, equal, secure even with the positive outcome of the Supreme Court decisions.

So what should we do now? First, reframe the LGBT political and legal agenda to positively address the life chances and lived experience of every queer person. Second, build infrastructure, coalitions and political strategy to advance LGBT people’s interests in the Southern and Midwestern US. Third, create a political strategy with allies (labor, POC, women) to win and secure progressive outcomes in key states over the next two decades. Fourth, put massive amounts of funds into developing the leadership of young progressives—queer and straight. Fifth, create a specific anti-fascist infrastructure of social media, legal, research and watchdog groups to expose and defeat the right wing culturally and politically.

In sum, the work ahead for queers is to be transformative, not transfixed.

Confused? Spinning around from outrage to glee to WTF? Progressive Supreme Court watchers have good reason to be perplexed. During the past few days we have been stunned, if not surprised, by the stream of awful decisions flowing forth from SCOTUS including the erosion of the right to remain to silent, a further weakening of affirmative action and the evisceration of the Voting Rights Act. Then we greet two happier decisions eroding legal discrimination against same-sex couples in the DOMA and Proposition 8 cases. What’s going on?

It’s tempting to chalk up these split decisions to a divided court in general, and the quirks of one Justice Anthony Kennedy in particular, or to understand these results as the uneven ups and downs of overlapping social movements. Neither of these assessments is wrong. But there is a broader context that we must consider if we want to create a broad and effective movement for social and economic justice.

Since the 1980s, US public policy has moved in a more or less coherent direction—toward the deregulation of corporations, the privatization of social welfare, the strengthening of the security and surveillance functions of the state. While maintaining the formal legal equality won by social movements during the 1960s and ’70s, policy-makers have undercut the substantive, though limited, redistribution of political and economic power accomplished in the US since the 1930s. For instance, rather than continue affirmative steps to democratize public education from pre-school through college, governments at all levels have eroded access in myriad ways, by raising tuition, narrowing curricula and privatizing schools. We still have a public education system open to all, but the experience of schooling is increasingly unequal across divides of race and class. We are barely maintaining the basic right to early-term abortion, but this and other reproductive rights are also increasingly eroding via differential access to reproductive healthcare.

This is the context within which to grasp the logic of the recent Supreme Court decisions. The undermining of affirmative action and the frontal attack on voting rights are based on the formal legal neutrality of supposedly color-blind policy. Such formal equality leaves the history of racism and the current reality of persistent wide racial disparities out of the frame. The decisions on DOMA and California’s Proposition 8 move haltingly toward very limited formal legal equality for same-sex conjugal couples. Marital privilege in general is maintained. Myriad historical and current sources of queer social and economic misery are not addressed—homeless queer youth, elder poverty and isolation, transgender healthcare. Looked at this way, this stream of decisions is basically consistent despite the flip-flopping role of Justice Kennedy.

The implications for the future of LGBT social movements are clear. Sure, when legal inequalities are eroded (the two same-sex marriage cases did not fully eliminate formal inequality) there is cause for celebration. But the history of civil rights struggles in the United States shows us that formal legal equality does not provide more resources, greater political power or better lives. Too often, legal equality is an empty shell that hides expanded substantive inequalities. To move forward toward a better world for queers we need to form broad alliances for the achievement of real social justice: Get money out of politics, fight for universal social benefits (healthcare, child care, retirement) not tied to marriage or employers, expand the power of working people, demand government transparency, go to the root causes of persistent racial inequalities, endorse sexual and gender freedom. Queer people are affected by all of these issues, not only the last ones. We can’t be the mostly single-issue movement that our major organizations have been. We don’t lead single-issue lives.

Gay marriage quotes: Reaction to 2013 Supreme Court rulings

The United States Supreme Court delivered a landmark victory for gay rights on June 26, 2013 by forcing the federal government to recognize same-sex marriages in states where it is legal and paving the way for it in California, the most populous state. The two cases, both decided on 5-4 votes, concerned the constitutionality of a key part of a federal law, the 1996 Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA), that denied benefits to same-sex married couples, and a voter-approved California state law enacted in 2008, called Proposition 8, that banned gay marriage.

The following are reaction quotes to the Supreme Court’s decisions in the two gay marriage cases gathered by Associated Press Politico.com:

“The laws of our land are catching up to the fundamental truth that millions of Americans hold in our hearts: when all Americans are treated as equal, no matter who they are or whom they love, we are all more free.” – President Barack Obama.

“While I am obviously disappointed in the ruling, it is always critical that we protect our system of checks and balances. A robust national debate over marriage will continue in the public square, and it is my hope that states will define marriage as the union between one man and one woman.” – House Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio.

“The Supreme Court’s decision affirms that all couples, regardless of their sexual orientation, deserve the same rights and opportunities under the law that my wife and I enjoy. The Defense of Marriage Act was a discriminatory law that unfairly treated LGBT couples differently, and has rightly been relegated to the dust bin of history.” – Sen. Michael Bennet, D-Colo.

“While we are disappointed in the Supreme Court’s decision to strike down part of the federal Defense of Marriage Act, the court today did not impose the sweeping nationwide redefinition of natural marriage that was sought. Time is not on the side of those seeking to create same-sex ‘marriage.’ As the American people are given time to experience the actual consequences of redefining marriage, the public debate and opposition to the redefinition of natural marriage will undoubtedly intensify.” – Tony Perkins, president of the Family Research Council.

“This is a watershed moment for equality and a clear statement from the highest court in the land that discrimination and hatred have no place in a country founded on the principles of liberty, justice and equality.” – Rick Jacobs, chair of the California-based CourageCampaign.org.

“At the heart of the gay marriage argument is an untruth: unions of two men or women are not the same as unions of husband and wife. The law cannot make it so, it can only require us to paint pretty pictures to cover up deep truths embedded in human nature.” – Maggie Gallagher, fellow at the American Principles Project and co-founder of the National Organization for Marriage.

“Today’s ruling affirms what we stand for as Americans – the guarantee that every person and every family is given equal respect under the law. It means that married same-sex couples can participate fully in federal programs that provide much-needed security for American families.” –Rep. Jerrold Nadler, D-N.Y.

“We are devastated that the Supreme Court succumbed to political pressure by voting to weaken the sacred institution. They neglected our most precious children who need a mother and a father united in marriage for healthy development.” – Rev. William Owens, president of Coalition of African-American Pastors.

“Marriage is the true foundation for strong families. Every loving, committed couple deserves the basic human right to get married, start a family, and be treated equally under the law. No politician from this day forward should try to stand in the way of this fact.” – Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand, D-N.Y.

“The U.S. Supreme Court’s decision today puts the court on the right side of history. DOMA is unjust, un-American, and out of step with the values of our country.” – Rep. Jim Moran, D-VA.

“The Supreme Court bent the arc of history once again toward justice. The court placed itself on the right side of history by discarding Section 3 of the defenseless Defense of Marriage Act and by allowing marriage equality for all families in California. The highest court in the land reaffirmed the promise inscribed into its walls: ‘equal justice under law.” – House Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif.

“Today’s rulings advance civil marriage equality, but they should also serve as a call for Christians to embrace religious marriage equality. Countless faithful Christians have lived out their lives in committed same-sex relationships, and we have seen the fruits of their fidelity in our families, our congregations and our communities. If we use this historic moment to see more clearly how their faithfulness contributes to the common good, we will better be able to walk with our LGBT sisters and brothers as an act of Christian faith.” – Rev. Gary Hall, dean of Washington National Cathedral.