Anti-Violence Project (AVP)

A national organization dedicated to reducing violence and its impacts on lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) individuals in the United States

assimilationist
Fixing the system from within, trying hard to fit into the status quo; integrating.

Bill of Rights
The first ten amendments to the United States Constitution containing specific guarantees of personal freedoms and rights, clear limitations on the government’s power in judicial and other proceedings, and explicit declarations that all powers not specifically granted to the U.S. Congress by the Constitution are reserved for the states or the people.
chattel
Property that is movable; in terms of slavery, people are treated as the personal property of the owner and are bought and sold as commodities.

Compton’s Cafeteria

The Compton’s Cafeteria Riot occurred in August 1966 in the Tenderloin district of San Francisco. The incident was one of the first LGBT-related riots in United States history, preceding the more famous 1969 Stonewall Riots in New York City. It marked the beginning of transgender activism in San Francisco.

couverture

A legal doctrine whereby, upon marriage, a woman’s legal rights and obligations were subsumed by those of her husband.

Defense of Marriage Act of 1996 [DOMA]

A United States federal law passed by the 104th United States Congress and signed into law by President Bill Clinton, defining marriage for federal purposes as the union of one man and one woman, and allowed states to refuse to recognize same-sex marriages granted under the laws of other states. However, the provisions were ruled unconstitutional or left effectively unenforceable by Supreme Court decisions in the cases of United States v. Windsor (2013) and Obergefell v. Hodges (2015).

Enforcement Act of 1871

An Act of the United States Congress which empowered the President to suspend the writ of habeas corpus to combat the Ku Klux Klan (KKK) and other white supremacy organizations.

Federally Protected Activities

The portion of Section 245 of Title 18 that makes it unlawful to willfully injure, intimidate or interfere with any person, or to attempt to do so, by force or threat of force, because of that other person’s race, color, religion or national origin and because of his/her activity as a student at a public school or college, participant in a state or local government program, job applicant, juror, traveler, or patron of a public place.

Fourteenth Amendment

Adopted on July 9, 1868 as one of the Reconstruction Amendments, this amendment to the US Constitution addresses citizenship rights and equal protection of the laws and is one of the most litigated parts of the Constitution.

Ku Klux Klan Act

See Enforcement Act of 1871.

Ninth Amendment

A part of the Bill of Rights, this amendment addresses rights, retained by the people, that are not specifically enumerated in the Constitution.

Stonewall riots

A series of spontaneous, violent demonstrations by members of the gay (LGBT) community against a police raid that began in the early morning hours of June 28, 1969, at the Stonewall Inn in the Greenwich Village neighborhood of Manhattan, New York City.

United States v. Harris

United States v. Harris, 106 U.S. 629 (1883), or the Ku Klux Case, was a case in which the Supreme Court of the United States held that it was unconstitutional for the federal government to penalize crimes such as assault and murder. It declared that the local governments have the power to penalize these crimes.