By Katerina Svoronos, Summer 2023 Power in Place Collaborator
Image from: LGBTQ Foundation
In the news recently there has been a lot of discussion about the rights and freedoms that are protected for the LGBTQ+ community. There was a Supreme Court case in which a woman argued she had the right to deny making websites for people in the community. The case was called 303 Creative v. Elenis. She argued that making the website would be a violation of her first amendment right and her religious freedom. Unfortunately, the court ruled in her favor. This is unfortunate because it becomes a gateway for people to freely discriminate against members of the LGBTQ+ community. Even just yesterday a woman who owns a Michigan hair salon referred to trans and non-binary people as “pet groomers”, and told them to take their business elsewhere. This is just the first case of many to come because of this ruling. However, not all decisions made by the government have harmed LGBTQ+ individuals. Some were positive. So let us take a look at the history of the community in the United States and the rights that they have so far.
People of different sexualities and gender identities have existed since the start of time. There is evidence that gay and lesbian couples existed in Ancient Rome and Ancient Greece. However, those relationships were in a very different capacity to the way they are today. The first concrete example of support for this community was in 1924, when Henry Gerber founded the Society for Human Rights, the first gay rights organization. A large part of the next few decades was the attempt to integrate LGBTQ+ people into mainstream society, and to encourage people to not treat them like second class citizens. This was a difficult uphill battle, with lots of bumps in the road. In the early 1950s, many jobs were taken from LGBTQ+ people in an event known infamously as the lavender scare. Most of the jobs were in government service and it was known as the lavender scare because it mirrored the red scare in a lot of ways. People were afraid of communism and were also afraid of LGBTQ+ people. President Eisenhower signed an executive order that banned people in the community from working any government jobs. Homosexuality was declared a mental illness and the LGBTQ+ community was facing mass discrimination across the United States.
In 1956, however, the LGBTQ+ community faced a massive turning point, which became a milestone in their history. A psychologist concluded that there were no real differences between a heterosexual person and a homosexual person besides who they were sexually attracted to. This caused some people to begin to reconsider their previous notions. Finally in 1962, Illinois was the first state to repeal their sodomy laws and the movement began to shift. Integration into society was still a large goal of the movement, but now people in the community started to feel that they could express themselves more freely than they were able to before. Then finally, what may be known as the most famous event in LGBTQ+ history in America, occurred: the Stonewall riots. The LGBTQ+ movement gained more traction as people began to feel fired up and angry about the discrimination and bad treatment they had faced. People within the movement started to band together to make a more material movement. One year after the Stonewall riots occurred, thousands of people gathered in the park to protest and also celebrate, which then became known as the first pride parade. In 1973, the American Psychological Association removed homosexuality as a mental illness from their manual, and thus began some open acceptance of the community.
Unfortunately, there was a pretty severe turn in the 1980s when a lot of gay men contracted AIDS. It reinforced homophobia and although sodomy laws were pretty much completely repealed, it made some people believe the laws should be reinstated. Former President Ronald Reagan, who was president during a large part of the epidemic, did not take AIDS seriously in any way. His staff and he pretty much laughed it off and made almost no efforts to solve it. Eventually he began to take it a bit more seriously and began to act on it, but many people died at his hands. The AIDS epidemic was a dark moment in history for the LGBTQ+ community, but they came out of it quite resilient.
In 1993 the don’t ask, don't tell policy was put into place. This barred anyone hiring from discriminating against a job applicant based on their sexuality. While this policy was problematic, the intentions behind it changed a lot of things for the movement, mostly in a positive way. And while President Clinton signed a law into place stating that marriage is between a man and a woman, some states began to repeal their marriage laws, allowing homosexual couples to get married. Vermont was the first state to do so. Finally, in the landmark supreme court Obergefell v. Hodges, gay marriage was finally legalized in 2015.
The LGBTQ+ community still faces many challenges today. From the Don’t Say Gay bill introduced in Florida by Governor Ron de Santis to the limits on health protection for transgender individuals, there are still many battles to be won. While people in the community are protected against acts of discrimination or hate, they are still treated as second class citizens in a variety of ways. The recent supreme court case is a testament to that. Voting and protesting are so important nowadays in order for these issues to change. Hopefully, with those two things in place the community will have a brighter future.
References
Gresko, Jessica. “The Supreme Court rules for a designer who doesn’t want to make wedding websites for gay couples.” AP News. June 30, 2023. https://apnews.com/article/supreme-court-gay-rights-website-designer-aa529361bc939c837ec2ece216b296d5
“Milestones in the American Gay Rights Movement.” PBS. https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/americanexperience/features/stonewall-milestones-american-gay-rights-movement/
Boboltz, Sara. “This Michigan Hair Salon Owner Will Apparently Refuse Trans and Queer Clients.” Huffington Post. July 11, 2023. https://www.huffpost.com/entry/michigan-hair-salon-lgbtq-discrimination_n_64adb6a6e4b03d308d97e287
Lopez, German. “The Reagan administration’s unbelievable response to the HIV/AIDS epidemic.” Vox. December 1, 2016.
https://www.vox.com/2015/12/1/9828348/ronald-reagan-hiv-aids
Katerina Svoronos is a rising sophomore at Haverford College. She is an intended political science major with a concentration in international relations and law. She hopes to be a journalist one day and would love to work for the New York Times. In her free time she loves watching movies, hanging out with family and friends, and exploring new places.