Gay Liberation

Following World War II was a period of challenge to homosexuals. Senator Joseph McCarthy, who became famous for trying to purge America of commu­nists, also relentlessly hunted homosexuals. Homosexuals were portrayed as perverts, lurking in schools and on street corners ready to pounce on unsus­pecting youth, and many were thrown out of work or imprisoned in jails and mental hospitals. The news media participated in this view, as in a 1949 Newsweek article that identified all homosexuals as “sex murderers.” Doctors tinkered with a variety of “cures,” including lobotomies and castration. Churches were either silent or encouraged the witch hunts, and Hollywood purged itself of positive references to homosexuality. Many laws initiated dur­ing this period, such as immigration restrictions for homosexuals and policies banning gays from the military, have lasted in some form until today (Adam,

1987) .

In 1951, an organization for homosexual rights, the Mattachine Society, was founded in the United States by Henry Hay. The Daughters of Bilitis, the first postwar lesbian organization, was founded by four lesbian couples in San

Francisco in 1955. Though these groups began with radical intentions, the ve­hement antihomosexuality of American authorities forced the groups to lay low throughout the late 1950s.

Though gay activism had been increasing in America with protests and sit-ins throughout the 1960s, modern gay liberation is usually traced to the night in 1969 when New York police raided a Greenwich Village gay bar called Stonewall. For the first time, the gay community erupted in active re­sistance, and the police were greeted by a hail of debris thrown by the gay pa­trons of the bar. Though there had been previous acts of resistance, the Stonewall riot became a symbol to the gay community and put the police on notice that homosexuals would no longer passively accept arrest and police brutality.

Following Stonewall, gay activism began a strong campaign against preju­dice and discrimination all over the country. Groups and businesses hostile to gays were picketed, legislators were lobbied, committees and self-help groups were founded, legal agencies were formed, and educational groups tried to change the image of homosexuality in America. For example, in 1973 strong gay lobbying caused the American Psychiatric Association to remove homo­sexuality from the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual (DSM), the official refer­ence of psychiatric disorders. Almost overnight, people who had been consid­ered “sick” were suddenly “normal.” The DSM change removed the last scientific justification for treating homosexuals any differently than other citizens and demon­strated the new national power of the movement for homosexual rights. Soon the gay movement was a powerful presence in the United States, Canada, Australia, and Western Europe (Adam, 1987).

The 1970s were, in many ways, the golden age of gay life in America. In cities like San Francisco and New York, gay bathhouses and bars became open centers of gay so­cial life, and gay theater groups, newspapers, and magazines sprang up. In 1979, the National March on Washington for Lesbian and Gay Rights was a symbolic step forward for the gay movement (Ghaziani, 2005). Other marches would follow in 1987, 1993, and 2000. The gradual discovery of the AIDS epidemic in the United States and Europe in the beginning of the 1980s ended the excitement of the 1970s, as thousands of gay men began to die from the disease (see Chapter 15). Historically, when such fearsome epi­demics arise, people have been quick to find a minority group to blame for the disease, and homosexuals were quickly blamed by a large segment of the public (Perrow & Guillen, 1990; Shilts, 2000).

In 1990, queer theory developed and grew out of lesbian and gay studies. We will discuss queer theory more in Chapter 2. In summary, the gay rights movement has been at the forefront of trying to change sexual attitudes in the country, not only by pressing for recognition of homosexuality as a legitimate sexual choice, but also by arguing that all sexual minorities have a right to sexual happiness. Although a handful of states allow gay couples to register as “domestic partners” and allow them certain health and death benefits that married couples have, the issue of gay marriage is still controversial in American society. In 2004 Massachusetts became the first U. S. state to grant marriage licenses to same-sex couples. Still, gays and lesbians are subject to prejudices in America, and some states are passing laws making it illegal for homosexuals to be considered a mi­nority group worthy of special protections.

We are the sum total of our history. Our attitudes and beliefs reflect all of our his­torical influences, from the ancient Hebrews and Greeks to the Christianity of the Middle Ages to the modern feminist and gay liberation movements. The great difficulty most of us have is in recognizing that our own constellation of beliefs, feelings, and moral positions about sex are a product of our particular time and place, and are in a con­stant state of evolution. It is important to keep this in mind as we explore the sexual be­haviors of other people and other cultures throughout this book.