Gay rights in the 1960s

This is a list of notable events in the history of LGBT rights that took place in the s. January 20 – The United States Court of Federal Claims overturns the Other Than Honorable discharge issued by the United States Air Force to Fannie Mae Clackum for her alleged homosexuality. The s marked a turning point for the LGBTQ community from José Sarria's historic bid for public office to the Stonewall Rebellion.

Learn about these historic moments. s timeline of major events in LGBT (lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender) rights history, including homosexuality, gay marriage, gay adoption, serving in the military, sexual orientation discrimination protection, changing legal gender, donating blood, age of consent, and more. The s were a pivotal decade in the history of LGBTQ+ rights. While the community faced widespread discrimination and legal persecution, the period also saw the emergence of a powerful movement for equality and visibility.

We move through the decades, beginning in an era of secrecy and continuing through today. The gay rights movement saw some forward motion in the s. Dr. John Oliver coined the term “transgender” in his book Sexual Hygiene and Pathology. Activism percolated. Each of our resources is free, scholar reviewed, and easy to implement.

Browse our full collection by subject, grade-level, era, or term. MyImpact Challenge accepts projects that are charitable, government intiatives, or entrepreneurial in nature. Open to students aged Make the most immediate impact through a gift to BRI today to promote freedom and opportunity for students and teachers across America. We seek an America where we more perfectly realize the promise of liberty and equality expressed in the Declaration of Independence.

lgbtq movement 1960s-70s

This calls for civic education that helps students examine the story of our country and exercise the skills of citizenship. After World War II, the civil rights movement had a profound impact on other groups demanding their rights. The feminist movement, the Black Power movement, the environmental movement, the Chicano movement, and the American Indian Movement sought equality, rights, and empowerment in American society.

Gay people organized to resist oppression and demand just treatment, and they were especially galvanized after a New York City police raid on the Stonewall Inn, a gay bar, sparked riots in Around the same time, biologist Alfred Kinsey began a massive study of human sexuality in the United States. Like Magnus Hirschfield and other scholars who studied sexuality, including Havelock Ellis, a prominent British scholar who published research on transgender psychology, Kinsey believed sexuality could be studied as a science.

He interviewed more than 8, men and argued that sexuality existed on a spectrum, saying that it could not be confined to simple categories of homosexual and heterosexual. To evaluate sexual activities, Kinsey used a scale that assigned a number from zero to six to rate sexual urges. Kinsey broke ground by discussing a taboo subject in frank terms. His analysis broke down rigidly held categories of sexuality and empowered many gay people to fight for social change.

By the s, a new wave of social activism, fueled by the civil rights movement and other social movements, inspired them to resist oppression and discriminatory laws. The customers fought the police, throwing coffee cups, smashing plates, and breaking windows. Rocks and bottles were thrown, a car was overturned, garbage was set on fire, and police and bystanders were injured. Although members of the gay community were divided in their opinions about the riot, hundreds of people returned to the scene for the next several nights, some to continue violent opposition to the police and others to express their sexuality in public for the first time.

The Stonewall Inn, shown here in , was designated on the State and National Registers of Historic Places in to commemorate the importance of the uprising in the gay liberation movement. At the time, gay bars were often hidden and vulnerable to attacks by police, who were authorized by city governments to shut down establishments that promoted what was considered lewd behavior.

Many gay bars, including the Stonewall Inn, were also run by the mafia, which paid off corrupt police officers to stay open. Although this sometimes worked, municipal officials also frequently urged police to clamp down on gay bars by asserting that they did not have proper liquor licenses. Before Stonewall, LGBTQ people lacked political clout and had no recourse even if their bars were attacked, so the police often did not even need to justify their raids.

Consequently, the Stonewall Uprising has come to symbolize the start of the modern gay liberation movement. Before Stonewall, a gay political effort known as the homophile movement had brought gay men and lesbians together to form a political coalition. Members of the movement staged the first gay protest in Philadelphia on July 4, , in front of Independence Hall. During the demonstration, they followed the politics of respectability, a strategy learned from the black civil rights movement, and dressed in suits and skirts.

After Stonewall, however, a more radical political consciousness developed that resulted from the formation of many new groups, including the Gay Liberation Front and Radicalesbians, whose members rejected these strategies and called for a more militant response to homophobia. These groups were interested not just in gaining rights but also in challenging systems of power like capitalism, which they believed oppressed them.

They viewed Stonewall as an opportunity to revolutionize society and to rethink the meaning of sexuality. They drew on theories advanced by early twentieth-century sexologist Magnus Hirschfield and others to conceptualize their relationships and identities.