LGBT Movements in The United States - History of The Movement in The United States

History of The Movement in The United States

In the United States, what little information scholars have been able to recover about the political sensibilities of transgender people in the early 20th century indicates an acute awareness of their vulnerability to arrest, discrimination against them in housing and employment opportunities, and their difficulties in creating "bureaucratically coherent" legal identities due to a change of gender status. They generally experienced a sense of social isolation, and often expressed a desire to create a wider network of associations with other transgender people. In fact, there are quite a few arguments as to when the true beginning of the American Gay Rights Movement starts. The earliest date being claimed is that of 1924 in Chicago when the Society for Human Rights was founded to declare civil rights for gays. However, it is also argued that the beginning of the Gay Rights Movement, LGBT Movement in the United States, after years of being highly controlled and hidden, successfully began in the 1940s in Los Angeles. One of the initial or founding organizations was the Mattachine Society. A secretive society which later began to be associated with Communist values, the society became involved in politics and made its first appearance by supporting Henry Wall and the Progressive Party during the presidential election of 1948. The Mattachine Society was led by Harry Hay and began to slowly gain national attention and membership. Some historians also mark the beginning of the movement as a 1965 gay march held in front of Independence Hall in Philadelphia to protest the dismissal of homosexual federal employees. An even later occurrence that is also said to have been the beginning of the movement for Gay Rights was the Stonewall Riots, Stonewall Inn of 1969. On June 27, 1969 New York’s Stonewall Inn bar was raided by police. Though this was a regular incident in gay bars like Stonewall, the reaction of its patrons, as they refused to leave and clashed with the raiding police officers, ultimately led to street riots. This event gave way to mass media attention on the issues facing the LGBT community and therefore increased public awareness, making it possible to have an influential movement. Some offer a less specific time for the beginning of the movement and argue that it was during the wake of World War II that the movement to protect gay and lesbian civil rights emerged. Men and women who participated in the military’s homosexual world began to realize that it was a part of their identity. As they moved back to the cities they began to live their new lifestyle openly and in great numbers only to be severely oppressed by the police and the government. Scholars do not pinpoint a mutual and clearly defined beginning of gay rights activism in the U.S and as said before this may be to their unfortunate political and social positions. Though there is much confusion as to the beginning of the movement, there are clearly defined phases throughout the movement for gay rights in the U.S. The first phase of the movement being the homophile phase, which mainly consisted of the activities of the Mattachine Society, the ONE, ONE Inc. publication, and The Daughters of Bilitis. The homophile movement, which stresses love as opposed to sexuality, focused on protesting political systems for social acceptability. Any demonstrations held by homophile organizations were orderly and polite, but these demonstrations had little impact for they were ignored by the media. In 1969 the second phase of the movement, gay liberation, began. During this phase the number of homophile organizations increased rapidly, as many of the LGBT community became inspired by the various cultural movements occurring during the time period, such as the anti- Vietnam War movement or the Black Power movement. Activism during this phase encouraged “gay power” and encouraged homosexuals to “come out of the closet," so as to publicly display their pride in who they are. They were also more forceful about resisting anti-homosexuality sanctions than activists from the previous phase, participating in marches, riots, and sit-ins. These radicals of the 1970s would later call the previous homophile groups assimilationist for their less vigorous methods. Also during this phase there was an increase in lesbian centered organizations within the movement.