LGBT In The United States
LGBT rights in the US has evolved over time and varies on a state-by-state basis. Sexual acts between persons of the same sex have been legal nationwide in the U.S. since 2003, pursuant to the U.S. Supreme Court ruling in Lawrence v. Texas.
Family, marriage, and anti-discrimination laws vary by state. Six states and one district currently offer marriage to same-sex couples. Other states do not offer same-sex marriages but do recognize same-sex marriages performed elsewhere. Additionally, some states offer civil unions or other types of recognition which offer some of the legal benefits and protections of marriage.
Twenty states plus one district outlaw discrimination based on sexual orientation, and twelve states plus one district outlaw discrimination based on gender identity or expression. Hate crimes based on sexual orientation or gender identity are also punishable by federal law under the Matthew Shepard and James Byrd, Jr. Hate Crimes Prevention Act of 2009.
Adoption policies in regards to gay and lesbian parents also vary greatly from state to state. Some allow adoption by same-sex couples, while others ban all "unmarried couples" from adoption.
Read more about LGBT In The United States: Violence Against LGBT People, LGBT Interest Groups, See Also
Famous quotes containing the words united states, united and/or states:
“What chiefly distinguishes the daily press of the United States from the press of all other countries is not its lack of truthfulness or even its lack of dignity and honor, for these deficiencies are common to the newspapers everywhere, but its incurable fear of ideas, its constant effort to evade the discussion of fundamentals by translating all issues into a few elemental fears, its incessant reduction of all reflection to mere emotion. It is, in the true sense, never well-informed.”
—H.L. (Henry Lewis)
“An alliance is like a chain. It is not made stronger by adding weak links to it. A great power like the United States gains no advantage and it loses prestige by offering, indeed peddling, its alliances to all and sundry. An alliance should be hard diplomatic currency, valuable and hard to get, and not inflationary paper from the mimeograph machine in the State Department.”
—Walter Lippmann (1889–1974)
“Action from principle, the perception and the performance of right, changes things and relations; it is essentially revolutionary, and does not consist wholly with anything which was. It not only divides States and churches, it divides families; ay, it divides the individual, separating the diabolical in him from the divine.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)