Gay Rights

Figure 1. The window under the Stonewall sign reads: “We homosexuals plead with our people to please help maintain peaceful and quiet conduct on the streets of the Village–Mattachine.” Stonewall Inn 1969, Wikimedia.

Combined with the sexual revolution and the feminist movement of the 1960s, the counterculture helped establish a climate that fostered the struggle for gay and lesbian rights. Many gay rights groups were founded in Los Angeles and San Francisco, cities that were administrative centers in the network of U.S. military installations and the places where many gay men suffered dishonorable discharges. The first postwar organization for homosexual civil rights, the Mattachine Society, was launched in Los Angeles in 1950. The first national organization for lesbians, the Daughters of Bilitis, was founded in San Francisco five years later. Both groups sought to incorporate gay men and lesbian women, respectively, into polite society, and even their names referred to homosexuality only in the most oblique manner. In 1966, San Francisco also became home to the world’s first organization for transsexual people, the National Transsexual Counseling Unit, and in 1967, the Sexual Freedom League of San Francisco was born.

Through these organizations and others, gay and lesbian activists fought against the criminalization and discrimination of their sexual identities on a number of occasions throughout the 1960s, employing strategies of both protests and litigation. However, the most famous event in the gay rights movement took place not in San Francisco but in New York City. Early in the morning of June 28, 1969, police raided a Greenwich Village gay bar called the Stonewall Inn. The sweltering heat of that summer, combined with the recent death of gay icon Judy Garland and an epidemic of police raids on other gay-friendly establishments set the scene for an antagonistic confrontation. As the police prepared to arrest many of the customers, especially transsexuals and cross-dressers, who were particular targets for police harassment, a crowd began to gather. Angered by the brutal treatment of the prisoners, the crowd attacked. Beer bottles and bricks were thrown. The police barricaded themselves inside the bar and waited for reinforcements, as the rioting continued for hours.

When the riot itself ended, Greenwich Village’s gay community began marching openly in the street, both publicly and proudly. One participant, Mark Segal, remembered, “We were joyous. We were so happy that night! Because we were fighting back! And we have never done so before.”^[1] Shortly thereafter, the Gay Liberation Front and Gay Activists’ Alliance were formed, and began to protest discrimination, homophobia, and violence against gay people, promoting gay liberation and gay pride.

With a call for gay men and women to “come out,” a consciousness-raising campaign that shared many principles with the counterculture, gay and lesbian communities moved from the urban underground into the arena of public debate. Gay rights activists protested strongly against the official position of the American Psychiatric Association (APA), which categorized homosexuality as a mental illness, a seemingly authoritative designation that often resulted in job loss, loss of custody, and other serious personal consequences. By 1974, the APA had ceased to classify homosexuality as a form of mental illness but continued to consider it a “sexual orientation disturbance.” Nevertheless, in 1974, Kathy Kozachenko became the first openly lesbian woman voted into office in Ann Arbor, Michigan. In 1977, Harvey Milk became California’s first openly gay man elected to public office, although his service on San Francisco’s board of supervisors, along with that of San Francisco mayor George Moscone, was cut short by the bullet of disgruntled former city supervisor Dan White. In 1982, Wisconsin became the first state to ban discrimination based on sexual orientation. More than eighty cities and nine states followed suit over the following decade. But progress proceeded unevenly, and gay Americans continued to suffer hardships from a hostile culture.

Like all social movements, the sexual revolution was not free of division. Transgender people were often banned from participating in Gay Pride rallies and lesbian feminist conferences. They, in turn, mobilized to fight the high incidence of rape, abuse, and murder of transgender people. A 1971 newsletter denounced the notion that transgender people were mentally ill and highlighted the particular injustices they faced in and out of the gay community, declaring, “All power to Trans Liberation.”^[2]

As events in the 1970s broadened sexual freedoms and promoted greater gender equality, so too did they generate sustained and organized opposition. Evangelical Christians and other moral conservatives, for instance, mobilized to reverse gay victories. In 1977, activists in Dade County, Florida, used the slogan “Save Our Children” to overturn an ordinance banning discrimination based on sexual orientation. A leader of the ascendant religious right, Jerry Falwell, said in 1980, “It is now time to take a stand on certain moral issues. . . . We must stand against the Equal Rights Amendment, the feminist revolution, and the homosexual revolution. We must have a revival in this country.”^[3]

Much to Falwell’s delight, conservative Americans did, in fact, stand up against many such movements, including defeating the Equal Rights Amendment (ERA), their most stunning social victory of the 1970s.

The Women’s Movement

The feminist push for greater rights continued through the 1970s. The media often ridiculed feminists as “women’s libbers” and focused on more radical organizations like W.I.T.C.H. (Women’s International Terrorist Conspiracy from Hell), which engaged in street theatre tactics, such as placing a “hex” on Wall Street. Many reporters stressed the most unusual goals of the most radical women—calls for the abolition of marriage and demands that manholes be renamed “personholes.”

Figure 2. In 1970, supporters of equal rights for women marched in Washington, DC.

The majority of feminists, however, sought meaningful accomplishments. In the 1970s, they opened battered women’s shelters and successfully fought for protection from employment discrimination for pregnant women. They sought the reform of rape laws (such as the abolition of laws requiring a witness to corroborate a woman’s report of rape), criminalization of domestic violence, and phasing out “head of household” policies that often restricted the economic independence of married women.

The 1970s saw the reform of divorce laws. Between 1959 and 1979 the American divorce rate doubled. Close to half of all marriages formed in the 1970s ended in divorce. The longtime stigma attached to divorce evaporated and American culture encouraged individuals to leave abusive or unfulfilling marriages. Before 1969, most states required one spouse to prove that the other was guilty of a specific offense, such as adultery. The difficulty of getting a divorce under this system encouraged widespread lying in divorce courts. Even couples desiring an amicable split were sometimes forced to claim that one spouse had cheated on the other even if neither (or both) had. Other couples temporarily relocated to states with more lenient divorce laws, such as Nevada. Widespread recognition of such practices prompted reforms. In 1969, California adopted the first no-fault divorce law. By the end of the 1970s, almost every state had adopted some form of no-fault divorce. The new laws allowed for divorce on the basis of “irreconcilable differences,” even if only one party felt that he or she could not stay in the marriage. While these reforms allowed many unhappy or abusive marriages to end, social conservatives worried that these changes undermined the strength of the American nuclear family.

Roe v. Wade

In 1973, the U.S. Supreme Court in Roe v. Wade affirmed a number of state laws under which abortions obtained during the first three months of pregnancy were legal. The Supreme Court’s 7-1 ruling struck down a Texas law that prohibited abortion in all cases when a mother’s life was not in danger. The Court’s decision built upon precedent from a 1965 ruling that struck down a Connecticut law prohibiting married couples from using birth control, recognizing a constitutional “right to privacy.” In Roe, the Court reasoned that “this right of privacy . . . is broad enough to encompass a woman’s decision whether or not to terminate her pregnancy.” The Court held that states could not interfere with a woman’s right to an abortion during the first trimester of pregnancy and could only fully prohibit abortions during the third trimester. This made nontherapeutic abortion a legal medical procedure nationwide.

Furthermore, new laws prohibiting employment discrimination increased opportunities for women to make a living outside of the home. Women—haltingly and with significant disparities—advanced into traditionally male occupations, including politics and corporate management.

Women in Politics

Many advances in women’s rights were the result of women’s greater engagement in politics. For example, Patsy Mink of Hawaii, the first Asian American woman elected to Congress, was the co-author of the Education Amendments Act of 1972, Title IX, which prohibits sex discrimination in education. Mink had been interested in fighting discrimination in education since her youth, when she opposed racial segregation in campus housing while a student at the University of Nebraska. She went to law school after being denied admission to medical school because of her gender. Like Mink, many other women sought and won political office, many with the help of the National Women’s Political Caucus (NWPC). In 1971, the NWPC was formed by Bella Abzug, Gloria Steinem, Shirley Chisholm, and other leading feminists to encourage women’s participation in political parties, elect women to office, and raise money for their campaigns.

Figure 3. Patsy Mink (a), a Japanese American from Hawaii, was the first Asian American woman elected to the House of Representatives. In her successful 1970 congressional campaign, Bella Abzug (b) declared, “This woman’s place is in the House… the House of Representatives!”

The Equal Rights Amendment

The National Organization for Women (NOW), which predated most of these organizations, focused its efforts on the passage of an Equal Rights Amendment (ERA). Versions of the Amendment, which declared, “Equality of rights under the law shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or any state on account of sex,” were introduced to Congress each year since 1923. It finally passed amid the revolutions of the sixties and seventies and went to the states for ratification in March 1972, with a deadline of seven years for passage; if the amendment was not ratified by thirty-eight states by 1979, it would die.

With high approval ratings, the ERA seemed destined to swiftly pass through state legislatures and become the Twenty-Seventh Amendment. Hawaii ratified the Amendment the same day it was passed by Congress. At first, with broad support from both Democrats and Republicans, it looked as though ratification was inevitable. With thirty-eight states needed for ratification, thirty-five ratified the amendment by 1977, but progress stalled there. In 1979, still four votes short, the amendment received a brief reprieve when Congress agreed to a three-year extension, but it never passed, as the result of the well-organized opposition of Christian and other socially conservative, grassroots organizations.

The failed battle for the ERA uncovered the limits of the feminist crusade. And it illustrated the women’s movement’s inherent incapacity to represent fully the views of fifty percent of the country’s population, a population troubled by class differences, racial disparities, and cultural and religious divisions.

The Anti-ERA Movement

By 1977, anti-ERA forces had gathered and deployed their strength against the new Amendment. At a time when many women shared Betty Friedan’s frustration that society seemed to confine women to the role of homemaker, Phyllis Schlafly’s STOP ERA organization (“Stop Taking Our Privileges”) trumpeted the value and advantages of homemakers and mothers. Schlafly worked tirelessly to stymie the ERA’s progress through state legislatures. She lobbied lawmakers, encouraged mass letter-writing campaigns, and organized counter-rallies to ensure that Americans heard “from the millions of happily married women who believe in the laws which protect the family and require the husband to support his wife and children.”

Schlafly made the novel argument that the Equal Rights Amendment would, in fact, put women at a disadvantage by nullifying laws granting women special protections. While feminism thrived in educated, secular, and cosmopolitan circles, opposition to the ERA tended to be more working and middle-class, strongly religious, and suspicious of liberal overreach. For them, the postwar ideal of the housewife meant liberation from the toil of salaried work. Often, Schlafly’s organization exploited racialized fears to raise doubts about the ERA; one booklet asked a loaded question about public restrooms: “Do you want the sexes fully integrated like the races?”^[4]