The Fight for LGBT Rights After World War II

Home , Harvey Milk, LGBT history, LGBT history in Russia, LGBT rights in Texas, Stonewall Uprising

The Fight for LGBT Rights after World War II

The Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History, GLC09866.02

UNIT OVERVIEW

This unit is one of the Gilder Lehrman Institute’s Teaching Literacy through History resources, designed to align with the Common Core State Standards. These units were developed to enable students to understand, summarize, and evaluate original documents of historical significance. Students will learn and practice the skills that will help them analyze, assess, and develop knowledgeable and well-reasoned points of view on texts and visual source materials.

Historians Susan J. Freeman and Leila Rupp recently pointed to the importance of educators in integrating “the changing realities and perceptions of queer people over time” into history classrooms. They noted that “a focus on queer individuals and the LGBT community has become a prominent fixture of public discourse. . . . Yet most students have little grasp of the historical precedents to today’s coming out and gay pride spectacles, and few are critical of the narratives that locate queer liberation as beginning in the present-day United States.”1 This unit is an attempt to illustrate, in part, those historical precedents.

The three lessons in this unit explore some of the social and political structures that oppressed LGBT Americans as well as some responses to these structures of oppression. Students will read and view brief secondary source background material and read or examine, analyze, and evaluate textual and visual primary sources. Students will demonstrate their comprehension through class discussions, activity sheets, and written responses. In a culminating activity, students will select one of the primary sources to represent the most significant turning point in the history of LGBT rights for the given period and develop an essay that argues why that moment was a turning point.

UNIT OBJECTIVES

Students will be able to

• Interpret, analyze, and demonstrate an understanding of textual and visual primary sources

• Draw logical inferences and summarize the essential message of a primary source

• Compose summaries of the major points in a graphic or textual primary source

• Compare and contrast the points of view in different types of evidence

• Develop an argument about a turning point in the history of LGBT rights

ESSENTIAL QUESTIONS

• To what extent did social structures oppress LGBT Americans between 1950 and 1990?

• To what extent did political structures oppress LGBT Americans between 1950 and 1990?

• To what extent did social and political oppression give rise to the movement for LGBT rights in America between 1950 and 1990?

1. Susan K. Freeman and Leila J. Rupp, “The Ins and Outs of US History: Introducing Students to a Queer Past,” in Understanding and Teaching US Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender History, 2nd ed. (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 2017), p. 4.

GRADE LEVEL(S): 9–12

COMMON CORE STATE STANDARDS

CCSS.ELA-Literacy.RH.11-12.2: Determine the central ideas or information of a primary or secondary source; provide an accurate summary that makes clear the relationships among the key details and ideas.

CCSS.ELA-Literacy.RH.11-12.6: Evaluate authors’ differing points of view on the same historical event or issue by assessing the authors’ claims, reasoning, and evidence.

CCSS.ELA-Literacy.RI.9-10.6: Determine an author’s point of view or purpose in a text and analyze how an author uses rhetoric to advance that point of view or purpose.

CCSS.ELA-Literacy.SL.11-12.1: Initiate and participate effectively in a range of collaborative discussions (one-on-one, in groups, and teacher-led) with diverse partners on [grade-level] topics, texts, and issues, building on others’ ideas and expressing their own clearly and persuasively.

CCSS.ELA-Literacy.W.11-12.1: Write arguments to support claims in an analysis of substantive topics or texts, using valid reasoning and relevant and sufficient evidence.

THE LAVENDER SCARE

OVERVIEW

In the first lesson, students will view and read secondary sources on the treatment of LGBT people, particularly those who worked in the federal government. They will then read and view a selection of primary sources, including a speech, an executive order, an oral history interview, a letter, and picket signs. They will learn how to examine and evaluate these sources through the completion of activity sheets and class discussion. Assess student comprehension through their written response to one of the Essential Questions. Depending on the length of your class periods, this lesson may take two days.

OBJECTIVES

Students will be able to

• Demonstrate understanding of both literal and inferential aspects of written text and images

• Summarize the essential message of primary and secondary sources

• Draw conclusions based on direct evidence found in primary and secondary sources

• Analyze and assess the meanings and messages of a selection of primary sources

HISTORICAL BACKGROUND The Fight for LGBT Rights after World War II

by Timothy Stewart-Winter, Associate Professor of American Studies, Women’s and Gender Studies, and History, School of Arts and Sciences, Rutgers University-Newark, and author of Queer Clout: Chicago and the Rise of Gay Politics

The oppression of LGBT Americans did not begin in the post–World War II decades, but they faced increasingly systematic exclusion from public life, in part resulting from the Cold War political climate of fear and distrust of people who deviated from social norms. In response, LGBT Americans challenged their marginalization. The gay and lesbian movement gained steam after the 1969 Stonewall uprising in New York City. By the 1980s, gay and lesbian people gained political influence in a few American cities, even as the HIV/AIDS crisis posed a new threat.

During World War II, military service and jobs in war industries pulled millions of Americans out of their communities of origin, and many gay and lesbian people encountered others like themselves for the first time. In the 1950s, even as Alfred Kinsey’s studies raised awareness about gay life, urban police increasingly spied on, arrested, and jailed LGBT people and closed their establishments. In 1952, in the first Diagnostic and Statistical Manual, American psychiatrists newly labeled homosexuality as a mental illness. Senator Joseph McCarthy’s investigation into communism helped fuel a similar, even larger effort to root out gay and lesbian federal employees. Corporations followed suit in investigating and firing gay employees.

Demonized in the media, most gay and lesbian people concealed their homosexuality from their friends and relatives. Yet the intensity of anti-LGBT oppression also led some gay people to challenge the social and political structures that oppressed them. A few gay people quietly launched gay rights organizations in cities. One leader in this effort was Frank Kameny, a government astronomer fired for being gay in 1957, who challenged his dismissal.

© 2020 The Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History, New York 4 In the mid-1960s, Kameny and other “homophile” activists held the first gay and lesbian pickets against antigay policies, modeled on Black civil rights protests, while other LGBT people fought back against police harassment. In 1969, a routine police raid on a New York City gay bar, the Stonewall Inn, led to several nights of rioting, with homeless street youth and people we would now call transgender the first to fight back. Building on movements against the Vietnam War and for Black Power and women’s liberation, a new generation of activists for “gay liberation” disclosed their homosexuality, which they called “coming out of the closet.” They launched parades through city streets to commemorate “Gay Pride” on the anniversary of Stonewall, challenging the public invisibility of LGBT people.

By the 1970s, a few openly gay and lesbian people ran for political office, including Harvey Milk, elected to the San Francisco Board of Supervisors in 1977. Yet LGBT visibility also inspired backlash. A new movement for traditional family values exploited prejudices and especially demonized gay and lesbian schoolteachers. In the 1980s, the onset of the HIV/ AIDS crisis led to the deaths of many gay and bisexual men, intravenous drug users, and others. The epidemic led to a resurgence of radical gay activism, including the militant organization ACT UP, which challenged government neglect of the crisis.

In the 1990s, the LGBT movement was transformed by a debate over military service by gay and lesbian people, as well as by medical advances in the treatment of HIV, increased visibility in popular culture, and demands by transgender people for inclusion and representation. In a landmark 2003 ruling, Lawrence v. Texas, the US Supreme Court struck down state laws criminalizing gay sex; in the decade after Lawrence, state court decisions legalizing same-sex marriage sparked a major backlash and national debate. During the presidency of Barack Obama, Congress repealed the ban on gay military service, and public opinion shifted dramatically in favor of marriage equality, which was legalized nationwide in Obergefell v. Hodges (2015).

MATERIALS

• Context for Lesson 1

o Video: “The Lavender Scare: How the Federal Government Purged Gay Employees,” Sunday Morning, CBS News, June 9, 2019, https://www.cbsnews.com/news/the-lavender-scare-how-the-federal-government-purged- gay-employees/

o Excerpt from Judith Adkins, “‘These People Are Frightened to Death’: Congressional Investigations and the Lavender Scare,” Prologue 48, no. 2 (Summer 2016), archives.gov/publications/prologue/2016/summer/ lavender.html

• Primary Sources

o Primary Source 1: Excerpts from Joseph McCarthy, Speech to the Republican Women’s Club, Marquette University, Wheeling WV, February 9, 1950, Partial transcript, Joseph R. McCarthy Papers Sound Recordings, 1946– , Special Collections and University Archives, Raynor Memorial Libraries, Marquette University, marquette.edu/library/archives/DC/JRM/JRM_1952_Wheeling_excpt.pdf

o Primary Source 2: Excerpts from President Dwight D. Eisenhower, Executive Order 10450—Security Requirements for Government Employment, Federal Register, National Archives, archives.gov/federal- register/codification/executive-order/10450.html

o Primary Source 3: Captain Joan Cassidy, “The Lavender Scare,” PBS, available on YouTube, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FaZ-LkNy8jk&feature=youtu.be

o Primary Source 4: John Hanes, Administrator, Bureau of Security and Consular Affairs, Department of State, to Dr. Franklin Kameny, November 7, 1960, The Kameny Papers, Library of Congress

© 2020 The Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History, New York 5 o Primary Source 5: Picket Signs Carried by Protesters at the White House, US Civil Service Commission, and Independence Hall in 1965, 1966, and 1968, The Kameny Papers Project, National Museum of American History, Smithsonian Institution, 2006.0223.01, 2006.0223.07, 2006.0223.09, 2006.0223.11

• Activity Sheets

o Document/Artifact Analysis

o Implications/Inferences

• Teacher’s Resources

o For information on Executive Orders, see “Executive Orders 101: What Are They and How Do Presidents Use Them,” Constitution Center, https://constitutioncenter.org/blog/executive-orders-101-what-are-they-and- how-do-presidents-use-them/ or “The Power of the President: The Roles of Executive Orders in American Government,” Lawshelf Educational Media, National Paralegal College, https://lawshelf.com/videos/entry/the- power-of-the-president-the-roles-of-executive-orders-in-american-government

o For information on using oral histories as historical evidence, see “Strengths and Weaknesses of Primary Sources: Oral History,” page 8 in From Smithson to Smithsonian: The Birth of an Institution, Classroom Activities for Grades 9-12, Smithsonian Institute, https://www.sil.si.edu/Exhibitions/Smithson-to- Smithsonian/lesson1.pdf or “Understanding Oral History: Why Do It?” Baylor University Institute for Oral History, https://www.baylor.edu/content/services/document.php/66420.pdf

PROCEDURE

1. Introduce and display the Essential Questions:

• To what extent did social structures oppress LGBT Americans between 1950 and 1990?

• To what extent did political structures oppress LGBT Americans between 1950 and 1990?

• To what extent did social and political oppression give rise to the movement for LGBT rights in America between 1950 and 1990?

2. To set the context for LGBT history, view “The Lavender Scare: How the Federal Government Purged Gay Employees” and read “ ‘These People Are Frightened to Death.’” You may choose to assign the video or reading or both as homework before starting the lesson.

You may choose to “share read” “‘These People Are Frightened to Death’” in class by having the students follow along silently while you begin to read aloud, modeling prosody, inflection, and punctuation. Then ask the class to join in with the reading after a few sentences while you continue to read aloud, still serving as a model. This technique will support struggling readers as well as English language learners (ELL).

3. Distribute Primary Source 1, Joseph McCarthy’s Speech to the Republican Women’s Club. Share read the document as described above. As a whole class, underline or highlight any important details from the text. Circle any words that need to be defined. Give students a chance to discuss the document and ask questions about it.

4. Distribute a copy of the Document/Artifact Analysis activity sheet. As a whole class, answer questions about historical context, intended audience, purpose, and point of view. Ask students if they can use the document to respond to any of the Essential Questions.

© 2020 The Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History, New York 6 5. Distribute Primary Source 2, Executive Order 10450. You may need to provide information about Executive Orders for students. Share read the document. As a whole class, underline or highlight any important details from the text. Circle any words that need to be defined. Give students a chance to discuss the document and ask questions about it.

6. Distribute the Document/Artifact Analysis activity sheets. As a whole class, answer questions about historical context, intended audience, purpose, and point of view. Ask students if they can use the document to respond to any of the Essential Questions.

7. Discuss with the students the strengths and the shortcomings of oral history as historical evidence.

8. Discuss the difference between imply/implication and infer/inference.

9. Show the class Primary Source 3, the video of Captain Joan Cassidy discussing the Lavender Scare from the PBS documentary, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FaZ-LkNy8jk&feature=youtu.be, and distribute the Implications/Inferences activity sheet.

10. Complete the activity sheet as a whole-class exercise by listing examples of details that are implied and those the students can infer from seeing and hearing this oral history. Check for comprehension to make sure students understand the difference between implications and inferences.

11. Distribute Primary Source 4, John Hanes’s letter to Dr. Frank Kameny, a leading gay rights activist. Pair students up and have them read sections of the letter to each other and mark it up as they go. They should underline important words or phrases and circle words that they do not understand.

12. Distribute the Implications/Inferences activity sheet for students to complete with their partner.

13. Distribute Primary Source 5 showing a selection of picket signs. Once again, pair students up and have them closely examine the signs. Distribute the Document/Artifact Analysis activity sheets and have students complete them with their partner.

14. Come back together as a whole class. Go over students’ responses to analyses for Primary Sources 4 and 5. Check for comprehension. Make sure the students are applying their analysis of the sources to the Essential Questions.

ASSESSMENT

Exit Ticket: Ask students to use one of the five primary sources (1–5) to answer one of the three Essential Questions. Students’ answers should be no more than one paragraph.

• To what extent did social structures oppress LGBT Americans between 1950 and 1990?

• To what extent did political structures oppress LGBT Americans between 1950 and 1990?

• To what extent did social and political oppression give rise to the movement for LGBT rights in America between 1950 and 1990?

THE STONEWALL UPRISING, CAUSE AND EFFECT

OVERVIEW

In this lesson, the students will examine the Stonewall Uprising in New York City in 1969, beginning with a short video about the events. They will then carefully examine and interpret a selection of primary sources, using the questions on each activity sheet as a guide. Assess student comprehension through the class discussion, completed activity sheets, and responses to an Essential Question. This lesson should take one class period.

OBJECTIVES

Students will be able to • Demonstrate understanding of both literal and inferential aspects of written text and images • Summarize the essential message of primary and secondary sources • Draw conclusions based on direct evidence found in primary and secondary sources • Analyze and assess the meanings and messages of a selection of primary sources

MATERIALS • Video: “Stonewall Uprising,” Metrofocus, June 11, 2019, Thirteen.org, https://thirteen.org/metrofocus/2019/ stonewall-uprising/ o Primary Source 6: Sylvia Rivera on the Context of the Stonewall Uprising, 1969, excerpts from “Sylvia Rivera’s Talk at LGMNY, June 2001, Lesbian and Gay Community Services Center, New York City,” transcribed by Lauren Galarza and Lawrence La Fountain-Stokes, CENTRO 19, no. 1 (Spring 2007): 117–123, academia.edu/2502474/Sylvia_Rivera_s_Talk_at_LGMNY_June_2001_Lesbian_and_Gay_Community_ Services_Center_New_York_City o Primary Source 7: Stonewall Riots, 1969, New York Daily News, photo by NY Daily News Archive via Getty Images o Primary Source 8: “Stonewall Means Fight Back” Button, ca. 1969, Minnesota Historical Society o Primary Source 9: Come Out! 1, no. 1 (November 14, 1969), p. 1, © 2020 New York Gay Liberation Front, The Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History, GLC09872.01 o Primary Source 10: “Come Out!!” Gay Liberation Front Poster, ACT UP New York, Manuscripts and Archives Division, New York Public Library

• Activity Sheets o Document/Artifact Analysis o Details, Description, Decision o Critical Thinking Questions

1. Introduce and display the Essential Questions:

• To what extent did social structures oppress LGBT Americans between 1950 and 1990?

• To what extent did political structures oppress LGBT Americans between 1950 and 1990?

• To what extent did social and political oppression give rise to the movement for LGBT rights in America between 1950 and 1990?

Have the class watch the clip from “Stonewall Uprising.” You may choose to assign the video as homework before starting the lesson or you may show it in class.

2. Divide the class into small groups of two to four students for the entire lesson.

3. Distribute Primary Source 6, Sylvia Rivera’s talk about what happened at the Stonewall Inn in 1969 along with the Critical Thinking Questions activity sheet. Have students underline or highlight any important details in the text and circle any words that need to be defined. Give students a chance to discuss the document and ask questions about it as a group.

4. Depending on the needs of your students, answer the questions on the activity sheet as a whole class or have them work in their small groups. Remind them to cite evidence directly from the primary sources to answer questions on the activity sheet. Circulate to ensure that all groups understand the exercise and that all students participate in the discussion.

5. Distribute Primary Source 7, the photograph of the Stonewall Riots in New York City, taken on June 28, 1969. Have students examine the photograph and complete the Details, Description, Decision activity sheet.

6. Distribute Primary Source 8, the “Stonewall Means Fight Back” button, and the Document/Artifact Analysis activity sheet.

7. Distribute Primary Source 9, the first issue of the newspaper Come Out!, November 14, 1969, along with the Critical Thinking Questions activity sheet.

8. Distribute Primary Source 10, the Gay Liberation Front poster and the Details, Description, Decision activity sheet.

9. Based on the time available and the needs of your students, reconvene the class for a discussion of the texts and images they examined, ensuring comprehension of the activities and the content.

ASSESSMENT

Exit Ticket: Ask students to use one of the five sources (6–10) to answer one of the three Essential Questions.

• To what extent did social structures oppress LGBT Americans between 1950 and 1990?

• To what extent did political structures oppress LGBT Americans between 1950 and 1990?

• To what extent did social and political oppression give rise to the movement for LGBT rights in America between 1950 and 1990?

OPPRESSION AND LIBERATION, NEW APPROACHES

OVERVIEW

In this lesson, the students will view two videos describing the LGBT rights movement in the 1970s and 1980s and read the background for two landmark Supreme Court cases. They will then carefully examine and interpret a selection of primary sources (11–22) using the questions on each activity sheet as a guide. Assess their comprehension through class discussion, the completed activity sheets, and their evidence-based essay. The lesson should take two class periods, plus additional in-class or out-of-class time for the essay.

OBJECTIVES

Students will be able to

• Demonstrate understanding of both literal and inferential aspects of written text and images

• Summarize the essential message of primary and secondary sources

• Draw conclusions based on direct evidence found in primary and secondary sources

• Analyze and assess the meanings and messages of a selection of primary sources

• Write an evidence-based essay incorporating knowledge gained from primary and secondary sources

ESSENTIAL QUESTIONS

• To what extent did social structures oppress LGBT Americans between 1950 and 1990?

• To what extent did political structures oppress LGBT Americans between 1950 and 1990?

• To what extent did social and political oppression give rise to the movement for LGBT rights in America between 1950 and 1990?

MATERIALS

• In Context

o Lily Faderman, “Harvey Milk’s Radical Vision of Equality,” TED-Ed, https://www.ted.com/talks/lillian_ faderman_harvey_milk_s_radical_vision_of_equality?language=en

o “We Were Here Revisits San Francisco’s 80s AIDS Epidemic,” PBS NewsHour, PBS. Available on YouTube, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ULrqL_aYoW0

o Landmark Supreme Court Cases—Bowers v. Hardwick (1986) and Lawrence et al. v. Texas (2003), Alex McBride, “Supreme Court History: Expanding Civil Rights,” The Supreme Court, Thirteen, thirteen.org/ wnet/supremecourt/pop_landmark_cases/index.html, courtesy of WNET/Thirteen Productions, LLC.

o Primary Source 11, “Who Is Harvey Milk” Campaign Flyer, 1977, The Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History, GLC09871.05

o Primary Source 12, California Ballot Proposition 6, 1978, from School Employees, Homosexuality–Initiative Statute, California Ballot Propositions and Initiatives at UC Hastings Scholarship Repository, repository. uchastings.edu

o Primary Source 13, Harvey Milk, [Hope Speech], “Gay Freedom Day Speech,” June 25, 1978, as published in the Milk Forum, Bay Area Reporter, July 6, 1978, pp. 11–12

o Primary Source 14, “Syllabus,” Slip Opinion, Bowers v. Hardwick, No. 85–140, 1986, The Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History, GLC09868, pp. i–ii

o Primary Source 15: National March on Washington Poster, 1987, The Gilder Lehrman Institute for American History, GLC09866.02

o Primary Source 16: “Syllabus,” Slip Opinion, Lawrence et al. v. Texas, no. 02–102, 2003, The Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History, GLC09869, pp. 1–4

o Primary Source 17: Protesters Being Arrested at City Hall in New York, March 28, 1989, John Sotomayor/The New York Times/Redux

o Primary Source 18: “AIDS Quilt on Display on the Mall,” © 2020 Marc Geller, Los Angeles Herald Examiner Photo Collection, April 1988, Digital Collections of the Los Angeles Public Library, tessa.lapl.org

o Primary Source 19: “Silence = Death” Poster, 1987, ACT UP New York, Manuscripts and Archives Division, New York Public Library

o Primary Source 20: Ronald Reagan, Remarks at the American Foundation for AIDS Research Awards Dinner, May 31, 1987, Ronald Reagan Library & Museum, reaganlibrary.gov

o Primary Source 21: “How Many of Us Will Be Alive for Stonewall 35?” Poster, 1994, ACT UP New York, Manuscripts and Archives Division, New York Public Library

o Primary Source 22: “American Flag” Poster, ca. 1989, ACT UP New York, Manuscripts and Archives Division, New York Public Library

• Activity Sheets

o Document/Artifact Analysis

o Implications/Inferences

o Details, Description, Decision

o Critical Thinking Questions

o Supreme Court Case Analysis

• Teacher’s Resource: This tool from the American Bar Association may be helpful if students are not familiar with Supreme Court decisions: “How to Read a US Supreme Court Decision,” Insights on Law & Society (Fall 2012), American Bar Association, https://www.americanbar.org/groups/public_education/publications/teaching-legal- docs/how-to-read-a-u-s--supreme-court-opinion/

1. Introduce and display the following essential questions:

• To what extent did social structures oppress LGBT Americans between 1950 and 1990?

• To what extent did political structures oppress LGBT Americans between 1950 and 1990?

• To what extent did social and political oppression give rise to the movement for LGBT rights in America between 1950 and 1990?

2. Share the two short videos and brief readings to place the primary sources in context. You may choose to assign the videos and/or reading as homework before starting the lesson. You may also choose to show the videos and/or do the readings in class.

3. Students have already used all the activity sheets in this lesson except the Supreme Court Case Analysis activity sheet. Depending on your students’ familiarity with Supreme Court cases, you may wish to provide them with a brief overview of Supreme Court decisions before examining Primary Sources 14 and 16. If students are struggling to comprehend these Supreme Court decisions, it may be appropriate to read and analyze them as a whole class.

For the other activity sheets, you may opt to have students complete their analyses of the final set of sources independently or in pairs or small groups.

4. Distribute Primary Sources 11–22 as well as activity sheets for each source:

• Document/Artifact Analysis: 11, 15, 19, 21, and 22

• Implications/Inferences: 12

• Details, Description, Decision: 17 and 18

• Critical Thinking Questions: 132 and 20

• Supreme Court Case Analysis: 14 and 16

5. Once the students have had time to examine all the Primary Sources and complete the activity sheets, reconvene the class for a discussion of the LGBT movement in the 1970s and 1980s.

ASSESSMENT

Check for student comprehension by reviewing the activity sheets and the students’ responses in class discussion.

Finally, students should develop an evidence-based essay addressing the following prompt:

Choose one of the sources (1–22) that you consider represents a turning point in the movement for LGBT rights between 1950 and 1990. Explain why it is a turning point using specific evidence from the primary source you chose as well as evidence from the other primary and secondary sources you have studied. In developing your argument, explain what changed and what stayed the same after the turning point you selected.

2. Please be aware that we chose to elide a word in Harvey Milk’s speech due to its offensive nature. It might elicit conversation around use/omission of offensive language in primary sources.

© 2020 The Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History, New York 12 Excerpt from Judith Adkins, “‘These People Are Frightened to Death’: Congressional Investigations and the Lavender Scare,” Prologue 48, no. 2 (Summer 2016)

The Red Scare, the congressional witch-hunt against Communists during the early years of the Cold War, is a well- known chapter of American history. A second scare of the same era has been much slower to make its way into public consciousness, even though it lasted far longer and directly impacted many more lives.

Beginning in the late 1940s and continuing through the 1960s, thousands of gay employees were fired or forced to resign from the federal workforce because of their sexuality. Dubbed the Lavender Scare, this wave of repression was also bound up with anti-Communism and fueled by the power of congressional investigation.

The purge followed an era in which gay people were increasingly finding each other and forming communities in urban America. During World War II, many men and women left behind the restrictions of rural or small-town life for the first time. After the war, young people poured into cities, where density and anonymity made pursuit of same-sex relationships more possible than ever.

By the late 1940s, even the general public was becoming more aware of homosexuality. Alfred Kinsey’s Sexual Behavior in the Human Male, published in 1948, became a bestseller and drew attention for its claim that same-sex experiences were relatively common.

This publicity did not, however, make homosexuality more acceptable, in part because virtually no gay people were open about their sexuality. Also, the country was in the midst of a more general sex-crime panic, stirred up by a few highly publicized cases. In this context, greater public awareness of homosexuality coincided with growing unease and, in many parts of the country, an increase in official repression. Certainly this was true in Washington, DC.

Judith Adkins is an archivist at the Center for Legislative Archives at the National Archives in Washington DC.

There’s another group about which I hesitate to talk, but I think the picture isn’t complete unless we do. Dean Acheson . . . said the State Department is now staffed with good, loyal, clean-living Americans. . . . Since he made that statement, fifty-four individuals who had this unusual State Department affliction—homosexuals—were allowed to resign. . . .

As one of my friends said the other day, he said, “McCarthy, why worry about those individuals. You don’t claim they’re all communists do you?” The answer is obviously no. Some of them are very energetic, very loyal Americans. Some of them have that unusual affliction because of no fault of their own–most, of course, because they are morally weak. The question is, why worry about getting those individuals out of the State Department?

I think the answer was given by a committee headed by Senator Wherry . . . and Senator Hill—a Democrat and a Republican—and they explained very well why those individuals must not be handling top secret material. Let me read it to you. They say, . . . “As has been previously discussed in this report, the pervert is easy prey to the blackmailer. It follows that if blackmailers can extort money from these individuals under the threat of disclosure, espionage agents can use the same type of pressure to extort confidential information or other material they might be seeking.” Listen to this: they say, “A classic case . . . of this type involved one Captain Raydell who became chief of the Austrian Counter-Intelligence Service. He succeeded in building up an excellent intelligence net in Russia and had done considerable damage to Russia’s intelligence net. However, Russian agents soon discovered that Raydell was a homo. And shortly thereafter . . . under the threat of exposure Raydell agreed to furnish and he did furnish the Russians with Austrian military secrets. He also doctored or destroyed the intelligence reports which his own agents were sending in from Russia with the result that the Austrians, at the outbreak of the war, were completely misinformed as to Russia’s mobilization intentions. On the other hand, the Russians had obtained from Raydell the war plans of the Austrians and part of the German plans. Shortly after the outbreak of the war, Captain Raydell’s acts were discovered by his own government and he committed suicide.” So just remember that when you hear the complaint by the liberal elements of press that we should not be disturbed about people because of their morals. We’re not disturbed about them because of their morals, but because they are dangerous to this country.

Source: Joseph McCarthy, Speech to the Republican Women’s Club, Marquette University, Wheeling WV, February 9, 1950, Partial transcript, Joseph R. McCarthy Papers Sound Recordings, 1946– , Special Collections and University Archives, Raynor Memorial Libraries, Marquette University, marquette.edu/library/archives/DC/JRM/JRM_1952_Wheeling_excpt.pdf

© 2020 The Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History, New York 14 Primary Source 2: Excerpts from President Dwight D. Eisenhower, Executive Order 10450 – Security Requirement for Government Employment, April 27, 1953

WHEREAS the interests of the national security require that all persons privileged to be employed in the departments and agencies of the Government, shall be reliable, trustworthy, of good conduct and character, and of complete and unswerving loyalty to the United States; and

WHEREAS the American tradition that all persons should receive fair, impartial, and equitable treatment at the hands of the Government requires that all persons seeking the privilege of employment or privileged to be employed in the departments and agencies of the Government be adjudged by mutually consistent and no less than minimum standards and procedures among the departments and agencies governing the employment and retention in employment of persons in the Federal service. . . .

Sec. 8. (a) The investigations conducted pursuant to this order shall be designed to develop information as to whether the employment or retention in employment in the Federal service of the person being investigated is clearly consistent with the interests of the national security. Such information shall relate, but shall not be limited, to the following:

(1) Depending on the relation of the Government employment to the national security:

(i) Any behavior, activities, or associations which tend to show that the individual is not reliable or trustworthy.

(ii) Any deliberate misrepresentations, falsifications, or omissions of material facts.

(iii) Any criminal, infamous, dishonest, immoral, or notoriously disgraceful conduct, habitual use of intoxicants to excess, drug addiction, sexual perversion.

(iv) Any illness, including any mental condition, of a nature which in the opinion of competent medical authority may cause significant defect in the judgment or reliability of the employee, with due regard to the transient or continuing effect of the illness and the medical findings in such case.

(v) Any facts which furnish reason to believe that the individual may be subjected to coercion, influence, or pressure which may cause him to act contrary to the best interests of the national security. . . .

Source: President Dwight D. Eisenhower, Executive Order 10450—Security Requirements for Government Employment, Federal Register, National Archives, archives.gov/federal-register/codification/executive-order/10450.html

The Kameny Papers, Library of Congress

The Kameny Papers Project, National Museum of American History

The night of the Stonewall [riots], it happened to be the week that Judy Garland had committed suicide. . . . We were all involved in different struggles, including myself and many other transgender people. But in these struggles, in the Civil Rights movement, in the war movement, in the women’s movement, we were still outcasts. The only reason they tolerated the transgender community in some of these movements was because we were gung-ho, we were front liners. We didn’t take no sh— from nobody. We had nothing to lose. You all had rights. We had nothing to lose. I’ll be the first one to step on any organization, any politician’s toes if I have to, to get the rights for my community.

Back to the story: we were all in the bar, having a good time. Lights flashed on, we knew what was coming; it’s a raid. This is the second time in one week that the bar was raided. Common practice says the police from the 6th Precinct would come in to each gay bar and collect their payoff. Routine was, “Faggots over here, dykes over here, and freaks over there,” referring to my side of the community. If you did not have three pieces of male attire on you, you were going to jail. Just like a butch dyke would have to have three pieces of female clothing, or he was going to jail. . . .

Well, it just so happened that that night it was muggy; everybody was being, I guess, cranky; a lot of us were involved in different struggles; and instead of dispersing, we went across the street. Part of history forgets, that as the cops are inside the bar, the confrontation started outside by throwing change at the police. We started with the pennies, the nickels, the quarters, and the dimes. “Here’s your payoff, you pigs! You f---ing pigs! Get out of our faces.” This was started by the street queens of that era, which I was part of, Marsha P. Johnson, and many others that are not here. . . .

One thing led to another. The confrontation got so hot, that Inspector[Seymour] Pine, who headed this raid, him and his men had to barricade themselves in our bar, because they could not get out. The people that they had arrested, they had to take into the bar with them, because there was no police backup for them. But seriously, as history tells it, to this day, we don’t know who cut the phone lines! So they could not get the call to the 6th precinct. Number one, Inspector Pine was not welcome in the 6th precinct because he had just been appointed to stop the corruption and, you know, what they called back then, we were a bunch of deviants, perverts. So he was there for that purpose, so who knows if one of his own men didn’t do it, that was, you know, taking a payoff himself.

The police and the people that were arrested were barricaded inside this bar, with a Village Voice reporter, who proceeded to tell his story, in the paper, that he was handed a gun. The cops were actually so afraid of us that night that if we had busted through that bar’s door, they were gonna shoot. They were ordered to shoot if that door busted open. Someone yanked a parking meter out the floor, which was loose, because it’s very hard to get a parking meter out of the ground (laughter). It was loose, you know, I don’t know how it got loose. But that was being rammed into the door.

People have also asked me, “Was it a pre-planned riot?,” because out of nowhere, Molotov cocktails showed up. I have been given the credit for throwing the first Molotov cocktail by many historians but I always like to correct it; I threw the second one, I did not throw the first one! laughter( ) And I didn’t even know what a Molotov cocktail was; I’m holding this thing that’s lit and I’m like “What the hell am I supposed to do with this?” “Throw it before it blows!” “OK!” (laughter)

The riot did get out of hand, because there was Cookie’s down the street, there was The Haven, there was the Christopher’s End. Once word of mouth got around that the Stonewall had gotten raided, and that there’s a confrontation going on, people came from the clubs. But we also have to remember one thing: that it was not just the gay community and the street queens that really escalated this riot; it was also the help of the many radical straight men and women that lived in the Village at that time, that knew the struggle of the gay community and the trans community.

© 2020 The Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History, New York 18 So the crowds did swell. You know, it was a long night of riots. It was actually very exciting cuz I remember howling all through the streets, “The revolution is here!” (laughter), you know? Cars are being turned over, windows are being broken, fires are being set all over the place. Blood was shed. When the cops did finally get there, the reinforcements, forty five minutes later, you had the chorus line of street queens kicking up their heels, singing their famous little anthem that up to today still lives on, “We are the Stonewall girls/ we wear our hair in curls/ we wear our dungarees/ above our nelly knees/ we show our pubic hairs,” and so on and so forth.

At that time, there were many demonstrations. They were fierce demonstrations back then. I don’t know how many people remember those times, or how many people read of the struggle in this whole country, what was going on. So then the tactical police force came and heads were being bashed left and right. But what I found very impressive that evening, was that the more that they beat us, the more we went back for. We were determined that evening that we were going to be a liberated, free community, which we did acquire that. Actually, I’ll change the “we”: You have acquired your liberation, your freedom, from that night. Myself, I’ve got sh—, just like I had back then. But I still struggle, I still continue the struggle. I will struggle til the day I die and my main struggle right now is that my community will seek the rights that are justly ours.

Source: Sylvia Rivera, “Sylvia Rivera’s Talk at LGMNY, June 2001, Lesbian and Gay Community Services Center, New York City,” transcribed by Lauren Galarza and Lawrence La Fountain-Stokes, CENTRO 19, no. 1 (Spring 2007): 117–123, academia.edu/2502474/Sylvia_Rivera_s_Talk_at_LGMNY_June_2001_Lesbian_and_Gay_Community_ Services_Center_New_York_City

New York Daily News Archive via Getty Images

Minnesota Historical Society

Photo: © 1987 The Peter Hujar Archive LLC. Courtesy The Peter Hujar Archive, Pace Gallery, New York and Fraenkel Gallery, San Francisco; Poster: Manuscripts and Archives Division, The New York Public Library

“In Bowers v. Hardwick (1986), the Supreme Court ruled that the Constitution does not protect the right of gay adults to engage in private, consensual sodomy. The case began in August 1982, when Atlanta police arrived at the residence of Michael Hardwick to arrest him for failing to appear in court on charges of public drinking. A roommate let the police into Hardwick’s home. As the police searched for Hardwick in the house, they noticed a door partly open. Peering in, they found Hardwick and a male companion engaged in oral sex. Hardwick and his partner were arrested on charges of violating the Georgia Sodomy Statute, which stated that “a person commits the offense of sodomy when he performs or submits to any sexual act involving the sex organs of one person and the mouth or anus of another” and “a person convicted of the offense of sodomy shall be punished by imprisonment for not less than one nor more than 20 years.” Hardwick sued the state of Georgia, claiming that the sodomy statute violated the Constitution. After Hardwick prevailed in a federal appellate court, Georgia appealed to the US Supreme Court, which reviewed the case in 1986.”

“Lawrence v. Texas was a paramount case in two regards. First and most obviously, the ruling established that consensual and private homosexual sex is part of a substantive right to liberty as protected by the Constitution. Second, and less obviously, Lawrence held that “fundamental rights” (i.e., “substantive due process,” or activities implicitly protected by the Constitution) are really broad principles of liberty under which numerous and disparate activities may be protected. This was a stark departure from the Court’s conservative methodology in the 1980s and 1990s, which found evidence of fundamental rights only in activities the laws themselves substantially protected (“history and traditions”). In the end, therefore, Lawrence v. Texas both protected the privacy of the bedroom and renewed the Court’s power to identify individual rights above and beyond those historically protected under the law.”

Source: Alex McBride, “Supreme Court History: Expanding Civil Rights,” The Supreme Court, thirteen.org/wnet/supremecourt/ pop_landmark_cases/index.html, courtesy WNET/Thirteen Productions, LLC.

The Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History, GLC09871.05

UC Hastings Scholarship Repository

My name is Harvey Milk—and I want to recruit you for the fight to preserve your democracy from the John Briggs and Anita Bryants who are trying to constitutionalize bigotry. We are not going to allow that to happen. We are not going to sit back in silence as 300,000 of our Gay sisters and brothers did in Nazi Germany. We are not going to allow our rights to be taken away and then march with bowed heads to the gas chambers. On this anniversary of Stonewall, I ask my Gay sisters and brothers to make their commitment to fight. For themselves, for their freedom, for their country. . . .

We will not win our rights by staying quietly in our closets . . . We are coming out! We are coming out to fight the lies, the myths, the distortions! We are coming out to tell the truth about Gays! For I am tired of the conspiracy of silence.

I’m tired of listening to the Anita Bryants twist the language and the meaning of the Bible to fit their own distorted outlook. But I’m even more tired of the silence from the religious leaders of this nation. . . .

And like the rest of you, I’m tired of our so-called “friends” who tell us that we must set standards. What standards? The standards of the rapists? The wife beaters? The child abusers? The people who ordered the bomb to be built? The people who ordered it to be dropped? The people who pulled the trigger? The people who gave us Vietnam? The people who built the concentration camps—right here in California, and then herded all the Japanese-Americans into them during World War II . . . The Jew baiters? The n—3 knockers? The corporate thieves? The Nixons? The Hitlers? . . .

There is a difference between morality and murder. The fact is that more people have been slaughtered in the name of religion than for any other single reason. That, my friends, is the true perversion!

Gay brothers and sisters, what are YOU going to do about it? You must come out. Come out to your parents, your relatives. I know that it is hard and that it will hurt them, but think of how they will hurt you in the voting booth! Come out to your friends, if indeed they are your friends. Come out to your neighbors, to your co-workers, to the people who work where you eat and shop. . . .

And finally, most of all, I’m tired of the silence from the White House. Jimmy Carter, you talk about human rights a lot; in fact, you want to be the world’s leader for human rights. Well, damn it, lead! There are some 15-20 million Lesbians and Gay men in this nation listening and listening very carefully. Jimmy Carter, when are you going to talk about THEIR rights? You talk a lot about the Bible, but when are you going to talk about that most important part: “Love Thy Neighbor”? After all, she may be Gay. . . .

If you don’t—then we will come to you! If you do not speak out, if you remain silent, if you do not lift your voice against Briggs, then I call upon Lesbians and Gay men from all over the nation, your nation, to gather in Washington one year from now on that national day of freedom, the Fourth of July. To gather on the same spot where over a decade ago Dr. Martin Luther King spoke to a nation of his dreams . . . dreams that are fast fading, dreams that to many millions in this country have become nightmares...

Jimmy Carter, listen to us today. Or you will have to listen to all of us from all over the nation as we gather in Washington next year. . . .

On the Statue of Liberty it says, “Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to be free . . .” In the Declaration of Independence it is written, “All men are created equal and they are endowed with certain inalienable rights . . .” And in our national anthem it says: “Oh say does that star spangled banner yet wave o’er the land of the free . . .”

3. In the original document, this word is spelled out. We have chosen to omit it for modern readers.

© 2020 The Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History, New York 27 For Mr. Briggs and Mrs. Green and Mr. Starr and all the bigots out there: That’s what America is. No matter how hard you try, you cannot erase those words from the Declaration of Independence. No matter how hard you try, you cannot chip those words off the base of the Statue of Liberty. And no matter how hard you try, you cannot sing the STAR- SPANGLED BANNER without those words.

THAT’S what America is. LOVE IT OR LEAVE IT!

Source: Harvey Milk’s Hope Speech, June 25, 1978 (Harvey Milk Archives-Scott Smith Collection, San Francisco Public Library) as published in Harvey Milk, “Gay Freedom Day Speech” in the Milk Forum, Bay Area Reporter, July 6, 1978, pp. 11–12.

Syllabus4

After being charged with violating the Georgia statute criminalizing sodomy by committing that act with another adult male in the bedroom of his home, respondent Hardwick (respondent) brought suit in Federal District Court, challenging the constitutionality of the statute insofar as it criminalized consensual sodomy. The court granted the defendants’ motion to dismiss for failure to state a claim. The Court of Appeals reversed and remanded, holding that the Georgia statute violated respondent’s fundamental rights.

Held: The Georgia statute is constitutional.

(a) The Constitution does not confer a fundamental right upon homosexuals to engage in sodomy. None of the fundamental rights announced in this Court’s prior cases involving family relationships, marriage, or procreation bear any resemblance to the right asserted in this case. And any claim that those cases stand for the proposition that any kind of private sexual conduct between consenting adults is constitutionally insulated from state proscription is unsupportable.

(b) Against a background in which many States have criminalized sodomy and still do, to claim that a right to engage in such conduct is “deeply rooted in this Nation’s history and tradition” or “implicit in the concept of ordered liberty” is, at best, facetious.

(c) There should be great resistance to expand the reach of the Due Process Clauses to cover new fundamental rights. Otherwise, the Judiciary necessarily would take upon itself further authority to govern the country without constitutional authority. The claimed right in this case falls far short of overcoming this resistance.

(d) The fact that homosexual conduct occurs in the privacy of the home does not affect the result.5

(e) Sodomy laws should not be invalidated on the asserted basis that majority belief that sodomy is immoral is an inadequate rationale to support the laws.

Source: “Syllabus,” Slip Opinion,6 Bowers v. Hardwick, No. 85–140, 1986, pp. i–ii, The Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History, GLC09868.

4. The “Syllabus” is “no part of the opinion of the Court but has been prepared by the Reporter of Decisions for the convenience of the reader.” 5. Stanley v. Georgia, 394 US 557, distinguished. 6. A “slip opinion” is a preliminary edition of the decision that may be issued before the official publication of the ruling. nI some cases, no official edition is ever published and the slip opinion is the only version available.

The Gilder Lehrman Institute for American History, GLC09866.02

Syllabus7

Responding to a reported weapons disturbance in a private residence, Houston police entered petitioner Lawrence’s apartment and saw him and another adult man, petitioner Garner, engaging in a private, consensual sexual act. Petitioners were arrested and convicted of deviate sexual intercourse in violation of a Texas statute forbidding two persons of the same sex to engage in certain intimate sexual conduct. In affirming, the State Court of Appeals held, inter alia, that the statute was not unconstitutional under the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. The court considered Bowers v. Hardwick8 controlling on that point.

Held: The Texas statute making it a crime for two persons of the same sex to engage in certain intimate sexual conduct violates the Due Process Clause. . . .

(a) Resolution of this case depends on whether petitioners were free as adults to engage in private conduct in the exercise of their liberty under the Due Process Clause. For this inquiry the Court deems it necessary to reconsider its Bowers holding. The Bowers Court’s initial substantive statement—“The issue presented is whether the Federal Constitution confers a fundamental right upon homosexuals to engage in sodomy . . .”9—discloses the Court’s failure to appreciate the extent of the liberty at stake. To say that the issue in Bowers was simply the right to engage in certain sexual conduct demeans the claim the individual put forward, just as it would demean a married couple were it said that marriage is just about the right to have sexual intercourse. Although the laws involved in Bowers and here purport to do not more than prohibit a particular sexual act, their penalties and purposes have more far-reaching consequences, touching upon the most private human conduct, sexual behavior, and in the most private of places, the home. They seek to control a personal relationship that, whether or not entitled to formal recognition in the law, is within the liberty of persons to choose without being punished as criminals. The liberty protected by the Constitution allows homosexual persons the right to choose to enter upon relationships in the confines of their homes and their own private lives and still retain their dignity as free persons.

(b) Having misapprehended the liberty claim presented to it, the Bowers Court stated that proscriptions against sodomy have ancient roots.10 It should be noted, however, that there is no longstanding history in this country of laws directed at homosexual conduct as a distinct matter. Early American sodomy laws were not directed at homosexuals as such but instead sought to prohibit nonprocreative sexual activity more generally, whether between men and women or men and men. Moreover, early sodomy laws seem not to have been enforced against consenting adults acting in private. Instead, sodomy prosecutions often involved predatory acts against those who could not or did not consent: relations between men and minor girls or boys, between adults involving force, between adults implicating disparity in status, or between men and animals. The longstanding criminal prohibition of homosexual sodomy upon which Bowers placed such reliance is as consistent with a general condemnation of nonprocreative sex as it is with an established tradition of prosecuting acts because of their homosexual character. Far from possessing “ancient roots,”11 American laws targeting same-sex couples did not develop until the last third of the 20th century. Even now, only nine States have singled out same-sex relations for criminal prosecution. Thus, the historical grounds relied upon in Bowers are more complex than the majority opinion and the concurring opinion by Chief Justice Burger there indicated. They are not without doubt and, at the very least, are overstated. The Bowers Court was, of course, making the broader point that for centuries there have been powerful voices to condemn homosexual conduct as immoral,but

7. The “Syllabus” is “no part of the opinion of the Court but has been prepared by the Reporter of Decisions for the convenience of the reader.” 8. 478 US 186. 9. 478 US, at 190. 10. 478 US, at 192. 11. 478 US, at 192.

© 2020 The Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History, New York 31 this Court’s obligation is to define the liberty of all, not to mandate its own moral code.12 The Nation’s laws and traditions in the past half century are most relevant here. They show an emerging awareness that liberty gives substantial protection to adult persons in deciding how to conduct their private lives in matters pertaining to sex.13

(c) Bowers’ deficiencies became even more apparent in the years following its announcement. The 25 States with laws prohibiting the conduct referenced in Bowers are reduced now to 13, of which 4 enforce their laws only against homosexual conduct. In those States, including Texas, that still proscribe sodomy (whether for same-sex or heterosexual conduct), there is a pattern of nonenforcement with respect to consenting adults acting in private. Casey, supra, at 851—which confirmed that the Due Process Clause protects personal decisions relating to marriage, procreation, contraception, family relationships, child rearing, and education—and Romer v. Evans14—which struck down class-based legislation directed at homosexuals—cast Bowers’ holding into even more doubt. The stigma the Texas criminal statute imposes, moreover, is not trivial. Although the offense is but a minor misdemeanor, it remains a criminal offense with all that imports for the dignity of the persons charged, including notation of convictions on their records and on job application forms, and registration as sex offenders under state law. Where a case’s foundations have sustained serious erosion, criticism from other sources is of greater significance. In the United States, criticism of Bowers has been substantial and continuing, disapproving of its reasoning in all respects, not just as to its historical assumptions. And, to the extent Bowers relied on values shared with a wider civilization, the case’s reasoning and holding have been rejected by the European Court of Human Rights, and that other nations have taken action consistent with an affirmation of the protected right of homosexual adults to engage in intimate, consensual conduct. There has been no showing that in this country the governmental interest in circumscribing personal choice is somehow more legitimate or urgent. Stare decisis is not an inexorable command.15 Bowers’ holding has not induced detrimental reliance of the sort that could counsel against overturning it once there are compelling reasons to do so.16 Bowers causes uncertainty, for the precedents before and after it contradict its central holding.

(d) Bowers’ rationale does not withstand careful analysis. In his dissenting opinion in Bowers Justice Stevens concluded that (1) the fact a State’s governing majority has traditionally viewed a particular practice as immoral is not a sufficient reason for upholding a law prohibiting the practice, and (2) individual decisions concerning the intimacies of physical relationships, even when not intended to produce offspring, are a form of “liberty” protected by due process. That analysis should have controlled Bowers, and it controls here. Bowers was not correct when it was decided, is not correct today, and is hereby overruled. This case does not involve minors, persons who might be injured or coerced, those who might not easily refuse consent, or public conduct or prostitution. It does involve two adults who, with full and mutual consent, engaged in sexual practices common to a homosexual lifestyle. Petitioners’ right to liberty under the Due Process Clause gives them the full right to engage in private conduct without government intervention.17 The Texas statute furthers no legitimate state interest which can justify its intrusion into the individual’s personal and private life.

Source: “Syllabus,” Slip Opinion,18 Lawrence et al. v. Texas, no. 02–102, pp. 1–4, The Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History, GLC09869.

12. Planned Parenthood of Southeastern Pa. v. Casey, 505 US 833, 850. 13. See County of Sacramento v. Lewis, 523 US 833, 857. 14. 517 US 620, 624. 15. Payne v. Tennessee, 501 US 808, 828. 16. Casey, supra, at 855–856. 17. Casey, supra, at 847. 18. A “slip opinion” is a preliminary edition of the decision that may be issued before the official publication of the ruling. In some cases, no official edition is ever published and the slip opinion is the only version available.

John Sotomayor/The New York Times/Redux

ACT UP New York, Manuscripts and Archives Division, New York Public Library

. . . Those of us in government can educate our citizens about the dangers. We can encourage safe behavior. We can test to determine how widespread the virus is. We can do any number of things. But only medical science can ever truly defeat AIDS. We’ve made remarkable progress. . . .

Science is clearly capable of breathtaking advances, but it’s not capable of miracles. Because of AIDS’ long incubation period, it‘ll take years to know if a vaccine works. These tests require time, and this is a problem money cannot overcome. We will not have a vaccine on the market until the mid- to late 1990s at best. Since we don’t have a cure for the disease and we don’t have a vaccine against it, the question is how do we deal with it in the meantime? . . . .

What our citizens must know is this: America faces a disease that is fatal and spreading. This calls for urgency, not panic. It calls for compassion, not blame. And it calls for understanding, not ignorance. It’s also important that America not reject those who have the disease, but care for them with dignity and kindness. Final judgment is up to God; our part is to ease the suffering and to find a cure. This is a battle against disease, not against our fellow Americans. We mustn’t allow those with the AIDS virus to suffer discrimination. I agree with Secretary of Education [William J.] Bennett: We must firmly oppose discrimination against those who have AIDS. We must prevent the persecution, through ignorance or malice, of our fellow citizens.

As dangerous and deadly as AIDS is, many of the fears surrounding it are unfounded. These fears are based on ignorance. . . .

The Public Health Service has stated that there’s no medical reason for barring a person with the virus from any routine school or work activity. There’s no reason for those who carry the AIDS virus to wear a scarlet A. . . . Education is critical to clearing up the fears. Education is also crucial to stopping the transmission of the disease. Since we don’t yet have a cure or a vaccine, the only thing that can halt the spread of AIDS right now is a change in the behavior of those Americans who are at risk.

As I’ve said before, the Federal role is to provide scientific, factual information. Corporations can help get the information out, so can community and religious groups, and of course so can the schools, with guidance from the parents and with the commitment, I hope, that AIDS education or any aspect of sex education will not be value- neutral. . . .

Just as most individuals don’t know they carry the virus, no one knows to what extent the virus has infected our entire society. AIDS is surreptitiously spreading throughout our population, and yet we have no accurate measure of its scope. It is time we knew exactly what we were facing, and that’s why I support some routine testing.

I’ve asked the Department of Health and Human Services to determine as soon as possible the extent to which the AIDS virus has penetrated our society and to predict its future dimensions. I’ve also asked HHS to add the AIDS virus to the list of contagious diseases for which immigrants and aliens seeking permanent residence in the United States can be denied entry. . . .

I’ve asked the Department of Justice to plan for testing all Federal prisoners, as [well as] looking into ways to protect uninfected inmates and their families. In addition, I’ve asked for a review of other Federal responsibilities, such as veterans hospitals, to see if testing might be appropriate in those areas. This is in addition to the testing already underway in our military and foreign service.

© 2020 The Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History, New York 36 Now let me turn to what the States can do. Some are already at work. While recognizing the individual’s choice, I encourage States to offer routine testing for those who seek marriage licenses and for those who visit sexually transmitted disease or drug-abuse clinics. And I encourage States to require routine testing in State and local prisons. Not only will testing give us more information on which to make decisions, but in the case of marriage licenses, it might prevent at least some babies from being born with AIDS. And anyone who knows how viciously AIDS attacks the body cannot object to this humane consideration. I should think that everyone getting married would want to be tested.

Source: Ronald Reagan, Remarks at the American Foundation for AIDS Research Awards Dinner, May 31, 1987, Ronald Reagan Library & Museum, reaganlibrary.gov/research/speeches/053187a

ACT UP New York, Manuscripts and Archives Division, New York Public Library

Document/Artifact Analysis

Author or Speaker ______Date: ______

Title/Topic ______

1. What is the historical context of this primary source?

______

2. Who is the intended audience for this primary source?

______

3. What is the purpose of this primary source?

______

4. What is the point of view of the author/creator of this primary source?

______

5. How could you use this primary source to respond to one of the Essential Questions?

______

Implications/Inferences

Author or Speaker ______Date: ______

Title/Topic ______

Implications Inferences

How could you use this primary source to respond to one of the Essential Questions?

______

Details, Description, Decision

Primary Source ______Date ______

Choose Box 1, 2, or 3 to complete (Which works best for the primary source you are looking at?) and then complete Box 4.

1. Descriptive Details about People 2. Descriptive Details about Objects

Identify the people in this image. Identify the objects in the image.

Descriptive Summary Sentence: Descriptive Summary Sentence:

3. Action/Activity 4. Overall Assessment: Decision

Identify the action/activity taking place in the image. What have I learned about LGBT rights from the image?

Descriptive Summary Sentence:

Critical Thinking Questions

Author or Speaker ______Date: ______

Title/Topic ______

Critical Thinking Question 1

What is the major claim being made by the author/ What textual evidence supports the author’s/creator’s creator? claim?

Critical Thinking Question 2

Is the text as a whole based on fact or opinion? Identify phrases that demonstrate the fact- or opinion- based nature of the text:

How does the use of fact or opinion make the text more or less effective?

Critical Thinking Question 3

What are the most convincing or most thought- Cite evidence from the text to support your opinion. provoking statements?

Critical Thinking Question 4

Summarize in your own words the overall message of What evidence in the text supports your summary? this text.

Supreme Court Case Analysis

Author or Speaker ______Date: ______

Title/Topic ______

1. What are the facts of the case (who, what, when, where)?

______

2. What are the legal disputes presented in this case? What are the main arguments based on the US Constitution or federal law?

______

3. Is the US Supreme Court upholding or overturning the decision of the lower courts?

______

4. What law(s) are the basis for the Court’s ruling?

______

5. What do you think would be the effect of the Court’s ruling in this case?

______