The 60-Year Struggle for Gay Rights

Part 2 Legal Victories

• During the 1970s many states repealed their sodomy laws.

• The absolute ban on federal employment of gays began to be modified.

• Many cities passed laws prohibiting discrimination against gays. Election of Gays to Public Office

Kathy Kozachenko Elaine Noble Ann Arbor City Council Massachusetts Legislature Harvey Milk San Francisco Board of Supervisors. Setback

Anita Bryant led the campaign against the Dade County, Florida ordinance that prohibited discrimination against gays. She labeled her crusade “Save our Children.” She was supported by: Reverend Jerry Falwell Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Miami President of Miami’s B’nai Brith

• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dS91gT3XT_A Gay Response to “Save Our Children” Briggs Initiative • Briggs Initiative would have allowed the firing of all gay and lesbian teachers and any teacher who referred positively to gays and lesbians. • Ronald Reagan helped defeat it with an op-ed in the Los Angeles Herald Examiner: "Whatever else it is, homosexuality is not a contagious disease like the measles. Prevailing scientific opinion is that an individual's sexuality is determined at a very early age and that a child's teachers do not really influence this." AIDS: Long-term Devastating Disease Leading Organization: Gay Men’s Health Crisis AIDS à New Focus on National Issues • Fight for development of Life Saving Drugs

• • Form Political Action Organizations

GLAD AIDS Law Project Director Ben Klein testifies in support of An Act Relative to HIV-Associated Lipodystrophy Treatment

• Fight for Recognition of Relationships 1990’s to the Present Increasing Social Acceptance

Changes in Beliefs • Support of Gay Marriage 2001 - 35% 2016 - 55% • Gay relations should be legal 1997 - 43% 2016 - 68% • Gays are born gay 1982 - 17% 2016 - 46%

Positive Portrayal in movies and TV

• 1972 “That Certain Summer” • 1975 “Hot L Baltimore” • 1993 “Philadelphia” • 1998 “Will and Grace” Ellen DeGeneres Receives Presidential Medal of Freedom

• “At a pivotal moment, her courage and candor helped change the hearts and minds of millions of Americans, accelerating our Nation’s constant drive toward equality and acceptance for all. Again and again, Ellen DeGeneres has shown us that a single individual can make the world a more fun, more open, more loving place -- so long as we “just keep swimming.” Barack Obama

DeGeneres, 57, came out on the Oprah Winfrey Show back in February 1997, and her character on her popular sitcom, Ellen, came out to her therapist (played by Winfrey) the following April. Gay men in power roles

Cyrus’ husband James is Chief White House Correspondent for The DC Times. Cyrus is White House Chief of Staff Gays in Prominent Positions

CNN’s Anderson Cooper

Senator Tammy Baldwin

MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow

Congressman Barney Frank CEO of Apple, Tim Cook

Gays Gain Political Power through Democratic Party 2016 Hillary Strongly Supports Gay Rights

As president, Hillary will: • Fight for full federal equality for LGBT Americans. • Support LGBT youth, parents, and elders. • Honor the military service of LGBT people. • Fight for an AIDS-free generation. • Protect transgender rights. • Promote human rights of LGBT people around the world. Hillary’s Policy Paper on Gay Rights, 2016 Karl Rove Strategy Helps Elect W in 2004

Conservatives turn out big in 11 states to reject gay marriage. Areas of Progress Since 1990

• Discrimination in employment • Right to serve in the military • Laws against hate crimes • Sodomy Laws declared unconstitutional • Marriage Equality Protection Against Discrimination in Private Employment A Mixed Bag Don’t Ask -- Don’t Tell

Colin Powell 1992 Robert Gates 2010 Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Secretary of Defense Hate Crimes Prevention Act, 2009 State Sodomy Laws Declared Unconstitutional Supreme Court Upholds Ban on Gay Sex

Bowers v. Hardwick: 1986

Michael Hardwick was observed by a Georgia police officer while engaging in the act of consensual homosexual sodomy with another adult in the bedroom of his home. After being charged with violating a Georgia statute that criminalized sodomy, Hardwick Michael J. Bowers: challenged the statute's Georgia Attorney General constitutionality. Michael Hardwick Opinion, Justice Byron White: Bowers v. Hardwick

Protecting gay sex within the home would lead to claims that the court should also protect “adultery, incest, and other sexual crimes even though they are committed in the home.”

“The law, however, is constantly based on notions of morality, and if all laws representing essentially moral choices are to be invalidated under the Due Process Clause, the courts will be very busy indeed. Even respondent makes no such claim, but insists that majority sentiments about the morality of homosexuality should be declared inadequate. We do not agree, and are unpersuaded that the sodomy laws of some 25 States should be invalidated on this basis.” Supreme Court Rules Ban on Gay Sex Unconstitutional Lawrence v. Texas 2003

SEPTEMBER 1998 : police arrest John Lawrence and Tyron Garner in Lawrence’s private apartment for violation of Texas “Homosexual Conduct” law. Opinion, Justice Anthony Kennedy: Lawrence v. Texas

“The case does involve two adults who, with full and mutual consent from each other, engaged in sexual practices common to a homosexual lifestyle. The petitioners are entitled to respect for their private lives. The State cannot demean their existence or control their destiny by making their private sexual conduct a crime. Their right to liberty under the Due Process Clause gives them the full right to engage in their conduct without intervention of the government. Significance of Lawrence Decision

“As a practical matter . sodomy statutes had not been widely enforced for years. The fact, however, that the Supreme Court had given these statutes constitutional sanction in Bowers, in effect permitting the State to criminalize normal gay sexual activity, hung ominously over every legal and political argument in favor of gay rights. After all, what right did a group have to claim protection or recognition when their basic act of intimacy was criminal. Lawrence blotted that line of argument because the majority held that homosexuals were entitled to respect for their private choices.”

Walter Frank: Law and the Gay Rights Story, 2014 The Struggle for Marriage Equality 1993- 2015

In Hawaii, Step Toward Legalized Gay Marriage By JEFFREY SCHMALZ Published: May 7, 1993

Hawaii's highest court has taken a long step toward making the state the first in the country to recognize marriages between couples of the same sex, ruling that a ban on such marriages may well violate the State Constitution's prohibition against sex discrimination. Setbacks: 1993 - 2008

• 1996 Congress passes Defense of Marriage Act

• 1993 – 2006 Twenty seven states pass constitutional amendments banning gay marriage. Eighteen additional states banned gay marriage by statute.

• 2008 California voters adopt Proposition 8 to limit marriage to a man and a woman Defense of Marriage Act Declared Unconstitutional United States v. Windsor 2013

Edith Windsor and Thea Spyer Supreme Court à Constitutional Right Marriage Equality for Gays

Jim Obergefell and John Arthur Opinion, Justice Anthony Kennedy: Obergefell v. Hodges 2015

• “The right to marry is a fundamental right inherent in the liberty of the person, and under the Due Process and Equal Protection Clauses of the 14th Amendment couples of the same-sex may not be deprived of that right and that liberty. The court now holds that same sex couples may exercise the fundamental right to marry. No longer may that liberty be denied to them.” • “No union is more profound than marriage, for it embodies the highest ideals of love, fidelity, devotion, sacrifice, and family. In forming a marital union, two people become something greater than once they were. As some of the petitioners in these cases demonstrate, marriage embodies a love that may endure even past death. It would misunderstand these men and women to say they disrespect the idea of marriage. Their plea is that they do respect it, respect it so deeply that they seek to find its fulfillment for themselves. Their hope is not to be condemned to live in loneliness, excluded from one of civilization’s oldest institutions. They ask for equal dignity in the eyes of the law. The Constitution grants them that right.” Pat Buchanan at 1992 Convention Major developments since 1990

• Sexual orientation is one of the categories against which The Federal government cannot discriminate in employment. ( Others are: race, color, religion, sex, national origin, disability, & age)

• 21 states have laws banning employment discrimination against gays in private employment.

• Federal Hate Crimes Act now includes crimes motivated by sexual orientation.

• Supreme Court decision in 2003 (Lawrence v. Texas) ruled it unconstitutional for a state law to outlaw private gay sexual activity.

• Supreme Court ruling in 2015 for Marriage Equality