Lgbtq rights history
LGBTQ Rights
The ACLU has a long history of defending the LGBTQ community. We brought our first LGBTQ rights case in Founded in , the Jon L. Stryker and Slobodan Randjelović LGBTQ & HIV Venture brings more LGBTQ rights cases and advocacy initiatives than any other national organization does and has been counsel in seven of the nine LGBTQ rights cases that the U.S. Supreme Court has decided. With our arrive into the courts and legislatures of every state, there is no other organization that can match our document of making progress both in the courts of statute and in the court of widespread opinion.
The ACLU’s current priorities are to end discrimination, harassment and violence toward transgender people, to close gaps in our federal and state civil rights laws, to avoid protections against discrimination from being undermined by a license to discriminate, and to protect LGBTQ people in and from the criminal legal system.
Need help?
fill out our confidential online form
For non-LGBTQ issues, please contact your local ACLU affiliate.
The ACLU Lesbian Gay Multi-attracted Transgender Pro
Written by: Jim Downs, Connecticut College
By the end of this section, you will:
- Explain how and why various groups responded to calls for the expansion of civil rights from to
After World War II, the civil rights movement had a profound impact on other groups demanding their rights. The feminist movement, the Black Might movement, the environmental movement, the Chicano movement, and the American Indian Movement sought equality, rights, and empowerment in American culture. Gay people organized to resist oppression and ask for just treatment, and they were especially galvanized after a New York Urban area police raid on the Stonewall Inn, a homosexual bar, sparked riots in
Around the same moment, biologist Alfred Kinsey began a massive study of human sexuality in the United States. Like Magnus Hirschfield and other scholars who studied sexuality, including Havelock Ellis, a prominent British scholar who published research on transgender psychology, Kinsey believed sexuality could be studied as a science. He interviewed more than 8, men and argued that sexuality existed on a spectrum, sa
Gay Rights
One day after that landmark ruling, the Boy Scouts of America lifted its ban against openly gay leaders and employees. And in , it reversed a century-old ban against genderqueer boys, finally catching up with the Girl Scouts of the USA, which had long been inclusive of LGBTQ+ leaders and children (the organization had acknowledged its first transgender Girl Scout in ).
In , the U.S. military lifted its ban on transgender people serving openly, a month after Eric Fanning became secretary of the Army and the first openly gay secretary of a U.S. military branch. In March , President Donald Trump announced a new transgender policy for the military that again banned most transgender people from military service. On January 25, —his sixth day in office—President Biden signed an executive arrange overturning this ban.
Though LGBTQ+ Americans now have same-sex marriage rights and numerous other rights that seemed farfetched years ago, the work of advocates is far from over.
Universal workplace anti-discrimination laws for LGBTQ+ Americans is still lacking. Gay rights propo
The s, "Don't Ask, Don't Tell," and DOMA
The 90's were a pivotal day for gay rights. While LGBTQ people were treated unequally, and often faced violence within their communities, a younger generation began to realize that LGBTQ people were entitled to the same rights as anyone else. While it would take another 20 years or so for those rights to be realized, the 90's were a time when lgbtq+ rights began to be on the forefront of political conversations.
In , the “Don't Ask, Don't Tell” policy was instituted within the U.S. military, and permitted gays to serve in the military but banned homosexual activity. While President Clinton's intention to revoke the prohibition against gays in the military was originally met with stiff opposition, his compromise led to the discharge of thousands of men and women in the armed forces.
In response to "Don't Ask Don't Tell", Amendment 2 in Colorado, rising hate crimes, and on-going discrimination against the LGBTQ community an estimated , to one million people