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

Gay rights are also referred to as LGBT rights or LGBTQ rights to encompass lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer identities within gay communities. The gay rights movement in the United States can be traced from 1924 with the first known gay rights organization, the Society for Human Rights in Chicago. An objective of the Society for Human Rights was to draw together gay communities and to educate lawyers and lawmakers on gay-related issues.

Since 1924, gay rights in the United States have witnessed setbacks and achievements. In 1951, the Mattachine Society was formed by Harry Hay, a worker on the Henry Wallace presidential campaign. Hay likened the plight of homosexuals in America to an oppressed minority. Though the concept of gays and lesbians as minorities is still debated today, the “minority concept” brought cohesion to the gay rights movement. The Mattachine Society and its pioneering lesbian counterpart organization, The Daughters of Bilitis, are credited as being the first national gay rights organizations in the United States.

After the formation of national, organized groups, there was civil unrest within gay communities for recognition. The Stonewall riots in 1969 in New York’s Greenwich Village moved gay rights from a localized effort and focus to a more widespread movement for gay civil rights, equality, and societal acceptance. Approximately four years after Stonewall, the American Psychiatric Association removed homosexuality from its list of mental disorders in 1973 and issued a strong statement supporting gay rights. Twenty years later, the U.S. military established the policy of “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell,” allowing gays and lesbians to serve in the military but banning the open practice of homosexuality.

The politics of gay rights in the United States is played out by various actors, including legislators, individual actors, the state, and the courts. In the early 1980s, for example, the state of Wisconsin was the first to include sexual orientation in the list of prohibited discrimination. Supreme Court cases have had a particular impact on the gay rights movement in terms of setbacks and triumphs. In Bowers v. Hardwick (1986), the Supreme Court upheld the constitutionality of a Georgia sodomy law that criminalized oral and anal sex between consenting adults in private when applied to homosexuals, but seventeen years later, in Lawrence v. Texas (2003), the court struck down a Texas sodomy law, thereby overruling Bowers v. Hardwick. The Lawrence v. Texas ruling invalidates laws in the United States that criminalize oral and anal sex between consenting adults acting in private, whether homosexual or heterosexual. In Romer v. Evans (1996) the Supreme Court banned a Colorado state constitutional amendment that would have prevented sexual orientation from being included in lists of prohibited discrimination under Colorado law.

While much of the battle for gay rights has been contested in courts, states also have been actively involved in shaping the legal rights of LGBT persons, especially in regards to the question of marriage. In 2000, the state of Vermont was the first state to recognize and legalize civil unions between gay or lesbian couples, giving them entitlements to the same benefits, privileges, and responsibilities as spouses. Several states have followed Vermont in recognizing same-sex civil unions, including Connecticut in 2005. Other states have pushed beyond civil unions to recognize same-sex marriage, beginning in 2004 with the state of Massachusetts. As of 2010, the federal government seemed to prefer to leave the issue to individual states, although Congress did approve a law legalizing same-sex marriage in the District of Columbia, the nation’s capitol.

This increase in gay rights has brought on a conservative backlash led by religious activists, particularly opposing the “redefinition of marriage.” Referenda to legally recognize gay marriages have been repeatedly defeated. As of 2010, thirty states have passed amendments to their state constitutions to ban same-sex marriage, including California, where voters narrowly overturned a prior California Supreme Court ruling. States like Arkansas have adopted measures to bar gay men and lesbians from adopting children.

As authors Haider-Markel and Meier discuss in “The Politics of Gay and Lesbian Rights: Expanding the Scope of Conflict” (1996), as the scope of the conflict of gay rights expands in the United States, then we most likely will see a morality politics model (where policy is a function of religious forces, party competition, partisanship, and education) where political influence is played out at the ballot box.

Bibliography:

Bowers v. Hardwick, 478 U.S. 186 (1986).
Fleury-Steiner, Benjamin, and Laura Beth Nielsen. The New Civil Rights Research: A Constitutive Approach. Aldershot, U.K.: Ashgate, 2006.
Haider-Markel, Donald P., and Kenneth J. Meier. “The Politics of Gay and
Lesbian Rights: Expanding the Scope of the Conflict.” The Journal of Politics 88 (1996): 332–349.
Lawrence v.Texas, 539 U.S. 558 (2003).
Mezey, Susan Gluck. Queers in Court: Gay Rights Law and Public Policy. Lanham, Md.: Rowman and Littlefield, 2007.
Romer v. Evans, 517 U.S. 620 (1996).
Smith, Miriam Catherine. Political Institutions and Lesbian and Gay Rights in the United States and Canada. London: Routledge, 2008.

This example Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, And Transgender Rights Essay is published for educational and informational purposes only. If you need a custom essay or research paper on this topic please use our writing services. EssayEmpire.com offers reliable custom essay writing services that can help you to receive high grades and impress your professors with the quality of each essay or research paper you hand in.