Gay American Rights

Taking to the Streets
1. The Gay Liberation Front was set up in the weeks following the Stonewall Inn riots.
  1. Many people joined, while others set up their own local gay rights groups.
2. Gay liberation groups sprang up all over the USA.
3. 1977: polls suggested that over 50% of people believed in equal rights for gays.
  1. Certain groups were still very anti-gay, the Ku Klux Klan being one of the more extreme of them, and there was hostility to gays in part of the country such as the rural 'Bible' Belt' where religious fundamentalism fuelled hostility.
4. Groups worked both individually and together in an initial climate of mutual acceptance.
5. They took to the streets in protest, and a combination of public support and the predominantly liberal climate of the late 1960s and 1970s meant that the gay rights movement expanded very rapidly.
6. Highly visible gay communities sprang up in cities such as San Francisco, New York, Chicago and Seattle.
  1. Tended to form in, or near, areas with a significant counter-culture community, such as Greenwich Village, New York; these were areas where levels of welcome acceptance were high.
7. The pressure of this exerted had an effect on both public opinion and government reaction.
8. Most people discovered that people whom they knew and liked were gay, and many of the prejudices against gays dissolved in the lights of what they knew about actual gay friends and acquaintances.
Gains and Limitations
1. Proposition 6 (Briggs Initiative)
  1. Rejected by voters in California but set off a spate of similar or local proposals.
2. Gay support at federal level was slow coming.
3. Gay pressure in some states led to positive gay initiatives at state and local level on issues both political and personal.
4. Between 1979 and 1981, the governor of California appointed four openly gay state judges.
5. 1980: A gay teenage boy in Rhode Island sued his high school for the right to bring a male date to the school prom. He won.
6. 1970s: As part of the conservative backlash, people began to campaign against gay rights.
7. In Dade County, Florida, in 1977, a law was proposed to stop discrimination in housing, public facilities (e.g. hotels and restaurants) and employment.
8. Anita Bryan, famous as the spokeswoman for the Citrus Commission in Florida, set up Save Our Children (SOC) and collected petitions against the law- saying gay integration meant 'normal' children would become corrupted.
  1. This law was rejected, and several similar laws proposed in other states were rejected after action by SOC or similar local groups.
  2. These groups projected an image of gay people as, not self-contained, but actively recruiting by preying on the young.
  3. This led to 1978 Proposition 6 (Briggs Initiative).
9. Religious right became more outspoken in its opposition and gained more outspoken support from conservatives, and increasing support from some Republicans, including Ronald Reagan.
Success
1. 1974: Kathy Kozachenko became the first openly gay candidate elected to public office.
2. 1977: Harvey Milk was elected to office in San Francisco.
  1. Not just openly gay, but also supported other kinds of minority rights and took an open stand against Proposition 6: this was a move at state level that proposed firing gay teachers and teacher who spoke out in favour of gay rights.
  2. Milk was the first gay official who made it clear that being gay affected his political activities as well as being private life.
  3. Milk and the pro-gay mayor of San Francisco were both assassinated on 27th November 1979.
Some restaurants and bars wouldn't serve them.
Their invisibility (meaning people cannot see that they are gay by looking at them) made some people fearful, just as they feared communism- another invisible 'disease'.
Some hotels wouldn't let them have a room.
The gay rights movement
1. The gay rights movement was formed after the incident at the Stonewall Inn in Greenwich Village, New York on 28th June 1969.
  1. Police raided the bar, which they did regularly, under the pretence that the bar was breaking some liquor licensing laws, but was really because it was a known gay bar.
  2. People who went to the bar were used to the raids and had a routine for slipping away, but that night something snapped when a policeman was too rough with one of the customers.
  3. About 400 people began to fight back, throwing things and yelling at the police (who were forced to barricade themselves in the bar for safety).
2. After Stonewall, it was found possible to gather enough people to have a sizeable protest march, and that marching and visible protest gained gay rights organisations more and more support.
3. For several nights running, the issues of gay rights exploded: the Gay Liberation Front was set up and a spate of large, peaceful protests for gay rights and against gay oppression were organised.
4. Gay Pride marches were held in several cities on 28th August 1970.
  1. The New York march alone had about 10,000 marchers.
A 'Lavender Scare' ran parallel to the 'Red Scare' to root out homosexuals; thousands lost their jobs.
Until Illinois repealed its anti-gay laws in 1962, homosexuality was illegal in every state in the USA.
Homosexuality was not decriminalised across the country until 2003.
Campaigners had to use human rights law or argue that the 1964 Civil Rights Act, which said no discrimination for race or gender, also applied to gays.

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Gay American Rights

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