The LGBT Movement

For the Encyclopedia of Activism and Social Justice, Sage Publications (2007)

This acronym for “the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender movement” refers to a social movement for civil rights and social equality for those of minority sexual orientation and gender identity. The movement is often represented by a rainbow flag, created in 1978 by artist Gilbert Baker. Other popular symbols include the Greek letter lambda (λ), standing for “liberation,” first adopted by the Gay Activist Alliance in 1970, the pink triangle, reclaimed in the 1980s as a sign of liberation from its first use to designate gay concentration camp prisoners by the Nazis during World War II, and the red AIDS Ribbon, first used by the Visual AIDS artist caucus in 1991.

The movement is based both on reform principles, seeking formal equality through changes in legal norms, and radical principles, seeking substantive equity by changing the cultural value systems that regard minority sexual orientation and gender identity as shameful. The global movement as a whole has, as its primary focus, the decriminalization of gay relationships (i.e., repeal of sodomy laws), but in some places also includes expanded goals, such as laws prohibiting discrimination in employment, housing, and public accommodations, and effective public health programs to combat HIV and AIDS. Some activists also seek the establishment of enhanced penalties for assaults based on sexual orientation or gender identity (i.e., “hate crimes”), acceptance by religious organizations, youth education about sexual orientation and gender identity, and support of candidates for public office who support these principles. In the late 1990s, however, activists, primarily in Western countries, have pushed access to marriage to the fore, seeing it as a touchstone for many other rights, because marriage provides more than 1000 government rights and benefits to the couple. There are LGBT groups working on these issues in every area of the world, though the stigma and criminalization of gay relationships requires that some of these act in secret.

History

While same-sex sexual behavior and transgender identity have existed since at least the beginning of recorded human history, and oppression based thereon began with Biblical proscriptions, collective, organized, and sustained challenges to oppressive legal authorities and cultural beliefs did not begin until the late eighteenth century, when the idea of natural rights began to emerge. It is important to note that the history of such social movements has been suppressed, resulting in some erasure of history. One of the first social movements for LGBT civil rights occurred after the French Revolution, when groups of 'sodomite-citizens' successfully petitioned the French national assembly for the decriminalization of gay relationships, though “decency” laws continued to be used against homosexuals. (Blasius 1997) This decriminalization in the Code Napolean also affected Belgium, the Dutch Netherlands, the Rhineland, and Italy. Others followed suit, including Bavaria in 1813 and Spain in 1822.

No other movements occurred, however, until the end of the nineteenth century, when a few brave souls worked for civil rights, beginning in Germany in 1862 with the writings of Karl Heinrich Urichs and in Britain in 1897 with the establishment of the secret British organization “Order of Charonea.” Magnus Hirschfeld in Germany organized decriminalization efforts starting in 1897 and lasting through the 1920s. His Institut für Sexualwissenschaft (Institute of Sexology) advanced these causes until destroyed by the Nazis in 1933. In 1924, Henry Gerber formed the Chicago-based Society for Human Rights, though it was quickly suppressed by the authorities. Little further activity occurred prior to World War II, although Denmark decriminalized gay relationships in 1933.

In the decade after the war, “homophile” rights groups formed in Britain (Homosexual Law Reform Society), France (Arcadie), Germany, Holland (COC, now the oldest surviving LGBT organization), Sweden (RFSL), Denmark (Forbundet af 1948) Norway and the United States (Mattachine Society, Daughters of Bilitis). As their first task, they sought the decriminalization of gay relationships. In order to do so, they had to reduce the social stigma that portrayed the gay community as pedophiles and sexual deviants. This was successful in Britain, where the influential 1957 Wolfenden Report recommended decriminalization, though it took a decade before the reommendation was enacted into law by a narrow margin of Parliamentary votes. Some disparage the methods of these groups as “accommodationist,” attempting to portray the community as accommodating to class and gender norms, with the sole exception of partner choice. This had the effect of placing transgender people at odds with the larger gay community, since some transgender identities do not accommodate to gender norms, and others involve a heterosexual lifestyle. A stigma also affected bisexuals, who were seen as both promiscuous and able to hide in a heterosexual lifestyle.

By the mid-1960s, more radical elements gained ground in the U.S. movement, and it began to change from a “homophile” movement to a “protest” movement. In 1965, a gay march held in front of Independence Hall in Philadelphia; in 1966, transgender street prostitutes in the poor Tenderloin neighborhood of San Francisco rioted against police harassment at a popular all-night restaurant, Compton's Cafeteria; in 1969, a group of transgender, lesbian and gay male patrons at the Stonewall Inn in New York resisted a police raid. Stonewall has become a legendary icon of LGBT resistance to oppression. Immediately after Stonewall, the Gay Liberation Front (GLF), the Gay Activists' Alliance (GAA), RadicaLesbians and the first gay student organization (FREE) were formed.

Continuing into the 1970’s and 1980’s, the radicalization caused by these and other events spawned a network of law reform and legal defense organizations, starting with Lambda Legal Defense and Education Fund. Lambda, a U.S. civil rights organization that focuses impact litigation, education, and public policy work nationally, was originally denied a nonprofit organization charter in 1971 on the grounds that its activities were contrary to public policy. Gay & Lesbian Advocates & Defenders, an organization with similar goals, but focused on the New England area of the U.S., was founded in 1978. LGBT law reform organizations have gradually spread to other countries, particularly in the wake of government repression, and there are thousands of such organizations around the world today.

The 1970s also ushered in a move into traditional politics, with the election of several gay politicians. Harvey Milk, who was assasinated in 1978 after his election as San Francisco city-county supervisor, is the most famous, though not the first of these. In that year also, the U.S. Democratic National Convention became the first major political party in America to endorse a gay rights platform plank. A U.S. Republican party group supporting gay rights, the Log Cabin Republicans, began in 1977. In 1980, the Human Rights Campaign Fund was established to raise money for gay-supportive congressional candidates. Today, there are hundreds of openly LGBT politicians around the globe.

The LBGT movement also began a global spread, symbolized by the 1978 formation of the International Lesbian and Gay Association, an international organization now bringing together more than 400 lesbian and gay groups from around the world. It is active in campaigning for gay rights on the international human rights and civil rights scene and regularly petitions the United Nations and governments. ILGA is represented in around 90 countries across the world. Its website contains information about LGBT rights in each of those countries. Human rights organizations like Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch also have similar information on their websites. While many countries have made gains in civil rights, many LGBT communities are still subject to widespread judicial and extrajudicial execution, assault and imprisonment if their LGBT identities become known to the authorities or the public.

AIDS activism began in the late 1980s, when the disease began to cause illness and death of many gay men. This activism was directed primarly toward stimulating governmental funding for fighting the disease, and not gay rights. It included gay rights as an important secondary focus, however, because of the sexual transmission vector, requiring public education about preventing spread of the disease through safer gay sex, and about the need to eliminate the homophobia that contributed to silence about the disease. Organizations such as ACTUP (AIDS Coalition to Unleash Power), GMHC (Gay Men’s Health Crisis) and the San Francisco AIDS Foundation worked to protest government inaction and to provide assistance for AIDS victims. The Names Project created the AIDS Memorial Quilt, which was conceived as a means of commemorating the lives of those who succumbed to the disease, which debuted at the 1987 March on Washington for Lesbian and Gay Rights. The Gay & Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation (GLAAD) was founded in 1985 to protest homophobic U.S. media coverage of the AIDS crisis. Its mission has enlarged to promoting and ensuring fair, accurate and inclusive representation of people and events in the media as a means of eliminating homophobia and discrimination based on gender identity and sexual orientation.

The LGBT movement is also active in education. The University of Michigan in the U.S. established the first collegiate “Gay Advocate’s Office” in 1977. Such collegiate LGBT programs offices are now found in hundreds of colleges around the world. In 1990, the Gay and Lesbian Independent School Teachers Network (GLSTN) was founded by gay and lesbian educators to foster understanding of LGBT rights in the U.S. public schools. It has created a network of “Gay-Straight Alliances” in public schools across the country, as well as promoting the creation of school board policies to protect LGBT students. It has created successful national campaigns to raise awareness of these issues, such as the Day of Silence, National Coming Out Day, and No Name Calling Week. In 2006, Soulforce, an organization dedicated to eliminating homophobia in military colleges in the U.S., held a “freedom ride” to military colleges around the U.S. to engage in peaceful protest against rules infringing on the rights of LGBT students.

The movement is also concerned wth issues of religious equality. A number of organizations were formed in the 1970s to address discrimination against LGBT members in various religious denominations: DIGNITY (Catholic), Integrity USA (Episcopal), Affirmation (Mormon), Lesbian and Gay Christians (Anglican), Rainbow Sash International (Catholic). In 1979, the Radical Faeries group was formed to promote spirituality among LGBT persons

Prior to the 1990s, the terms “bisexual” and “transgender” were not included in the names of gay rights groups, nor were people of bisexual orientation and transgender identity considered to be part of the gay and lesbian movement. There were separate bisexual groups and transgender groups that had little interaction with gay and lesbian groups. During the 1990s, however, the movement began to widen to include all people discriminated against because of their sexual orientation and/or gender identity. Many gay and lesbian activist leaders began to consider their inclusion important to the politics of the movement. This was controversial because many gays and lesbians felt that bisexuals and transgenders were not, in fact, of gay or lesbian sexual orientation. Nonetheless, many began to speak of the “LGBT movement.”

The acronym itself is intended to be more inclusive than the former usage: “the gay rights movement.” It is also more accepted than “the homosexual movement,” both because it “homosexual” is a term originally coined to describe a psychiatric condition, and because “homosexual” has narrowed in meaning to refer only to those who have same-sex sexual orientation, excluding some groups traditionally considered socially and politically important in the community. When the movement entered its protest phase in the 1970s, many lesbian radicals felt that they received less recognition than gay men due to the patriarchial nature of society. As part of their struggle against invisibility, lesbians sought inclusion in the name of the community, and “the gay community” became “the gay and lesbian community.”

Some questioned the significance of this ordering of the names, which put lesbians last. Many began to refer to the “lesbian and gay community” in order to remove any implication that lesbian women were secondary in importance or value to gay men. The inclusion of bisexuals and transgenders created the appellation “lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender community” and the acronym LGBT. Some now refer to “the BLGT community” and “the TLBG community,” though this usage is uncommon. Despite this attempt to reduce the importance of the order of the letters representing community names, there is great historical and political significance to the original order “GLBT.” Some claim that gay men are more important to the modern GLBT movement, particularly in highly visible institutions of social activism such as HRC, due to the greater earning power and leadership perceptions of males in patriarchal culture. In addition, some argue that bisexuals and transgenders are less important to the movement due to the effects of biphobia and transphobia in the lesbian and gay community. Thus, the reordering may result in an unintentional reinforcement of these power relations by obscuring it.

Recently, some have included “queer,” “questioning” and “intersex,” making the acronym “LGBTQQI.” “Queer” refers to anyone whose sexual orientation or gender identity is not heteronormative, and is an attempt to reclaim a pejorative referent for a positive purpose. “Questioning” refers to those who are questioning their sexual orientation or gender identity. “Intersex” refers to persons who have a disorder of sexual differentiation, in which sex chromosomes and anatomy contain a mixture of male and female characteristics at birth. Many intersex advocates have stated that they do not consider themselves part of the LGBT community, and that their movement is separate from the LGBT movement.

Resources:

Beemyn, Brett. Creating a Place for Ourselves: Lesbian, Gay, and Bisexual Community Histories. Routledge 1997.

Blasius, Mark. We Are Everywhere. Routledge 1997.

D’Emilio, John. Sexual Politics, Sexual Communities. University Of Chicago Press 1989.

D'Emilio, John, Turner, William B., Vaid, Urvashi. Creating Change: Sexuality, Public Policy, and Civil Rights. Stonewall Inn Editions 2002.

Engel, Stephen M., Alexander, Jeffrey C., Seidman, Steven. The Unfinished Revolution: Social Movement Theory and the Gay and Lesbian Movement. Cambridge University Press 2001.

Katz, Jonathan. Gay American History. Plume 1992.

Marcus, Eric. Making Gay History: The Half Century Fight for Lesbian and Gay Equal Rights. Harper Collins 2002.