Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, And Transgender Politics Essay ⋆ Political Science Essay Examples ⋆ EssayEmpire

The lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender (LGBT) movement is a modern coalitional movement of people with a same-sex or bisexual sexual orientation, transgender people, and their allies. The movement has legal, social, cultural, and political dimensions. Those who identify with it seek a wide range of ends that include equal protection under the law, social recognition, and self-determination in their intimate association. The dimensions and practices of the movement have changed considerably over its history, and in addition, they vary globally by nation and geographical region. A wide variation of laws, policies, cultural representations, and social attitudes affect LGBT people worldwide and make it difficult to draw conclusions that characterize either the state of the LGBT movement or the welfare or rights status of LGBT people.

Social and political activism on behalf of people with a same-sex sexual orientation began in Germany in the midnineteenth century. Activism emerged in Great Britain soon after, and by the early decades of the twentieth century a variety of groups and individuals advocated for social tolerance and the decriminalization of same-sex relations. Not all of these advocates were homosexual; psychoanalyst Sigmund Freud and the political philosopher John Stuart Mill were prominent Europeans whose attitudes toward same-sex sexuality were relatively tolerant for their time. However, the modern lesbian and gay movement did not begin until after World War II (1939–1945). The homophile movement of the 1950s and early 1960s was motivated by a diverse set of ideas, but it was assimilationist in its objectives when compared with the liberationist activism that followed. A key moment in LGBT rights history occurred in New York City in 1969 when police raided the Stonewall Inn and patrons fought back. Their resistance became a touchstone of an uncompromising gay liberation movement that influenced LGBT people in the United States, the United Kingdom, and elsewhere in Europe.

A decade after Stonewall, the first mass public rally for gay and lesbian civil rights was held in Washington, DC. The demonstration was largely ignored by mainstream media and policy makers. However, by the mid-1980s the movement became more visible because of its activism associated with the AIDS epidemic and the unresponsiveness of governments in the face of the epidemic. By the late 1980s, a social and political backlash inspired by the AIDS epidemic matured into a coordinated movement to contest civil and human rights claims lodged by LGBT people. In the 1980s and 1990s, groups such as OutRage!, ACT UP, and Lesbian Avengers practiced a confrontational form of political activism that relied on spectacle and rejected interest group politics.

Since the 1980s, the dominant mode of LGBT activism in many Western nations has invoked liberal philosophic ideals of toleration and individual rights as grounds for equality claims. Activists for LGBT rights have come to rely on an ethnic model of sexuality that treats minority gender and sexual orientations as immutable. This immutability thesis is strongly contested, albeit for different reasons, by some LGBT people and by religious conservatives who oppose gay rights. Another model of LGBT activism is associated with a “queer” movement that for many is allied with the academic subfield of queer theory. Taking its name from a common English language epithet for homosexuals of both sexes, queer theory repudiates the status of heterosexuality as a binary referent for a stable homosexual identity. As a result, queer theory and its related conception of political practice reject a lesbian and gay rights paradigm that is premised on the idea of stable sexual identity and that seeks social and political inclusion.

Some lesbian feminists reject queer theory and the political struggles that may be perceived to arise from it, understanding these as masculine-identified and potentially antifeminist. Many lesbians have pointed out that, although lesbians, gay and bisexual men, and transgender people have common interests in ending discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identification, women who partner with women also have interests that diverge from those of other groups. Some issue areas in which women’s and men’s political interests have diverged are parental rights, sodomy laws, and women’s health.

One complication in considering LGBT people as a group or as the subjects of a political movement is that many individuals engage in same-sex sexuality or gender-variant behavior but do not understand themselves as gay, lesbian, bisexual, or transgender. Scholars argue that although same-sex desire has existed throughout history, the identity homosexual is a relatively recent one that is the product of social and economic changes in modern life. In some cultures same-sex sexuality may be socially acceptable under prescribed circumstances, but this reality does not imply the existence of a movement that advocates for the civil or human rights of homosexuals or bisexuals as a group. An LGBT movement rests on two premises: the conceptualization of LGBT people as people who possess a stigmatized—if not immutable—identity, and the willingness of people to be characterized as bearers of a particular kind of identity for the purpose of advocacy in the public sphere. Many people who might be classified as lesbian, gay, bisexual, or transgender are skeptical of the collective conception of gender or sexual identity upon which rights claims are predicated. As a result, the existence of a “movement” of LGBT people is uneven around the world at the same time that human rights organizations advocate globally on behalf of LGBT people.

In addition to supporting the rights claims of LGBT people, feminists link rigid gender role expectations with normative heterosexuality and, thus, with opposition to LGBT rights. Feminists analyze the ways in which the maintenance of gender hierarchy and male dominance requires the suppression and stigmatization of same-sex sexuality. Besides gender, in heterogeneous societies, LGBT movements have had to confront identity differences of race, ethnicity, and religion among those with an LGBT identity. These differences challenge LGBT organizations to diversify their leadership as well as to recognize the ways in which people with dominant forms of identity may find it easier to use the movement to enact their political interests. In the United States, for example, African Americans have criticized the disproportionate influence of white people in LGBT institutions.

Bisexual and transgender people have always been part of the movement, but it was not until the late 1990s that the gay and lesbian movement began to explicitly incorporate such members and issues. Bisexuals argued that the traditional aims of a lesbian and gay movement did not encompass the particularities of bisexuality and challenged lesbians and gay men to acknowledge bisexual identity and to incorporate bisexuals’ interests and perspectives into the movement’s agenda. Likewise, transgender people—a category that includes people who have undergone sex reassignment surgery, those who transgress traditional gender regimes, and some intersex people—have worked to expand the goals of the lesbian and gay rights movement beyond sexual orientation. Transgender rights activism is apparent around the world, most notably in Europe, North and South America, and South Asia.

Opposition To Gay Rights

Like the LGBT movement itself, opposition to social recognition and rights claims has taken many different forms. Those who oppose rights and recognition for LGBT people most often point to traditional values, authentic cultural or national identity, or religious belief as grounds for their position that discrimination is a social good. Opponents of LGBT rights engage in a variety of practices that are consistent with the social contexts in which they are located. These include lobbying government officials, executing grassroots campaigns to influence law and policy for mation, organizing public campaigns against same-sex sexuality and transgender identity, creating instructional materials that instruct followers in their view of same-sex sexuality and transgenderism, and engaging in formal and informal kinds of violence against LGBT people.

The most common foundations for opposition to LGBT rights emerge from the traditional wings of many world religions, including Judaism, Islam, and Christianity. An important political innovation in religious organization is that by the 1990s, opposition to LGBT rights encouraged an unusual degree of transnational cooperation between groups from these faith traditions to inhibit state recognition of LGBT identity and to uphold forms of legal discrimination. One public forum for gay identity that has come under criticism in many nations is the gay pride march, an event usually held in major cities. In 2006 alone, government officials in Latvia canceled a gay pride march after protests and threats of violence by a conservative Christian political party, and march organizers in Jerusalem bowed to violence and threats of violence by ultraorthodox Jewish protesters, substituting a rally outside the city for a march. In cases such as these, social pressures, rather than formal legal processes, are brought to bear to discourage mass demonstrations that either highlight LGBT identity or advocate for rights for LGBT people.

In some nations, opponents of gay rights operate in social and political environments in which rising tolerance for LGBT people threatens traditional forms of gender identity and heterosexual dominance. Hence, these social and religious conservatives work to reinforce the stigma associated with same-sex sexual behavior and identity and with nonnormative gender identity. The degree of stigma attached to LGBT identity varies widely. In the United States, some forms of tolerance have been rising, especially support for protection against discrimination in housing and employment. However, the lessened stigma associated with LGBT identity has not translated into public or official demand for laws such as the Employment Non-discrimination Act, first introduced in Congress in 1994.

In the United States, those who oppose LGBT rights mobilize supporters to influence public opinion as well as political processes. One component of the struggle against LGBT rights and recognition is the ex-gay movement, which advertises its ability to rehabilitate homosexuals and transgender people and return them to normative gender identity and heterosexual functioning. This movement is central to the struggle for LGBT rights because proponents of reparative therapies tend to decry the 1973 decision of the American Psychiatric Association to reclassify homosexuality from a mental disorder to a sexual orientation. In addition, leaders of the movement reject the legitimacy of both LGBT identity and civil rights. The ex-gay movement began in the United States in the 1970s, but branches are now active throughout North and South America and in many other parts of the world, including Brazil, the Caribbean, Germany, Hong Kong, the Philippines, Scandinavia, and the United Kingdom.

The Current State Of LGBT Rights

In the United States, the struggle for LGBT rights takes place simultaneously at all levels of government in a federal system, with local ordinances and state and federal laws and court decisions constituting the multiple battle grounds for progay and antigay forces. Two Supreme Court decisions have had a profound effect on gay rights in recent decades. In 1986, in Bowers v. Hardwick, the court declined to find a Georgia statute outlawing sodomy unconstitutional. However, in 2003, the court issued a decision in Lawrence v. Texas that reversed the Bowers decision and located a right to sexual privacy in the due process clause of the Fourteenth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution. The Lawrence decision was a factor in mobilizing social conservatives to campaign against “judicial activism” and to pass laws and state constitutional amendments banning same-sex marriage.

Today, LGBT groups campaign for a broad array of issues: the repeal of discriminatory legislation, equal treatment in public institutions such as the military, hate crimes legislation, protection of LGBT youth, and equality in family policies and public entitlements. Around the world, LGBT people confront discrimination in employment, housing, education, public accommodations, and medical care. A principal arena for the struggle over gay rights in many democracies is same-sex marriage. Proponents of same-sex marriage point to a variety of grounds for extending marriage to same-sex couples: the central place of the institution of marriage in democratic citizenship; the importance of marriage—and the stability it fosters—for long-term adult relations and for the rearing of children; and the role of marriage in some countries in sponsoring eligibility for social welfare entitlements.

In the United States, a majority of citizens oppose extending marriage to same-sex couples, including some critics within the LGBT movement. For example, some queers and political supporters of LGBT rights have linked a political interest in marriage with gay shame or with a moralism that stigmatizes nonconforming individuals. And some feminists have sounded a note of caution about same-sex marriage, arguing that enrolling same-sex partners in marriage as it is currently constituted threatens to reinforce social hierarchies and exclusionary forms of intimate association. These critics do not campaign against the right to same-sex marriage as a matter of policy but, rather, encourage members of the LGBT movement to be aware of the ways in which rights claims may result in the secondary marginalization of vulnerable members of LGBT communities.

In 2010, seven countries permit legal marriage between same-sex couples: Belgium, Canada, the Netherlands, Norway, South Africa, Spain, and Sweden. In the United States, samesex partners have the right to marry in Connecticut, Iowa, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Vermont, and Washington, DC. However, there remains vigorous opposition to same-sex marriage in the United States. The Defense of Marriage Act (1996) guarantees that American states are under no obligation to recognize same-sex marriages performed in any state that permits same-sex marriage. And in 2008, voters in the state of California supported Proposition 8, reversing a court ruling that had permitted same-sex marriages in that state.

Today, LGBT people enjoy the most legal protection of their rights in some states of the European Union. In early 2006, the European Parliament issued a resolution condemning member countries that do not protect gay rights. Members of the European Parliament from states that have legislated against lesbians and gay men remained intractable in the face of parliamentary criticism. Some countries of eastern Europe are sites of antigay harassment and open antigay mobilization on the part of political parties. By contrast, the United Kingdom’s Civil Partnership Act of 2004 confers on same-sex couples parity of treatment on legal issues with opposite-sex couples who enter into civil marriage. A variety of other nations and jurisdictions, including some U.S. states, provide some version of civil union as a substitute for marriage for same-sex couples. Though civil unions provide many of the same benefits as heterosexual marriage, they are often contested by those who oppose LGBT rights, as well as by some LGBT people who believe that the civil union alternative to marriage stigmatizes same-sex couples and institutionalizes second-class citizenship for LGBT people.

Human rights organizations such as Amnesty International track violations of human rights that involve LGBT people. For example, sodomy laws criminalize same-sex sexual behavior in many nations, but LGBT people may be punished for a range of other offenses as well. Currently, LGBT people in many countries are at risk of legal punishments, including torture and the death penalty, for engaging in same-sex sexual behavior, being a transgender person, advocating for LGBT rights, or engaging in HIV/ AIDS activism. Some countries, such as Bahrain, Grenada, Guyana, Jamaica, Lesotho, Namibia, Nigeria, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, and Zambia, only criminalize sex between men. In addition to formal legal sanctions for LGBT people and activism, LGBT people are frequently subjected to informal threats and violence from individuals and groups. At times, transgender people have been subjected to forcible sex reassignment surgery or subjected to violence because of their gender identity or expression. To commemorate and protest violence against transgender people, November 20 is recognized in cities around the world as an International Transgender Day of Remembrance.

Some nongovernmental organizations support the rights and welfare of LGBT people in the societies in which they operate and in international forums. However, organizations that advocate for LGBT people often do not occupy the same status as organizations that advocate against the interests of LGBT people. One site of struggle over LGBT politics has been the Non-governmental Organization Committee of the United Nations Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC), which has often voted to deny consultative status to national and transnational organizations that advocate for LGBT rights. While organizations that oppose the interests of LGBT people have attained consultative status with the ECOSOC and used the status to advocate for conservative morality politics at the United Nations, countries whose antigay practices have been criticized by organizations such as the International Lesbian and Gay Association have often opposed consultative status for LGBT groups.

The LGBT movement continues to publicize and confront the forms of discrimination and violence that affect the lives of LGBT people. The movement also provides support to LGBT people and their families. To these ends, members engage in a wide variety of activities that include lobbying and legal advocacy, marches and community events, therapies and support groups, and the production and dissemination of news and culture.

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