Opposition Throughout Movements History
Though gay and lesbians struggled to go public with their efforts in the U.S, they still were met with opposition. Despite participating in very few public activities in the early 19th century, many gays and lesbians were targeted by police who kept list of the bars and restaurants that were known to cater to the population. Many were arrested for sodomy or hospitalized in mental facilities for homosexuality. They were also fired from many jobs for their lifestyles. States had many laws that made homosexuality a crime and the government would often support the states, as in the 1917 Immigration Act which denied homosexuals entry into the country.Homosexual organizations were disrupted as they were said to be breaking disorderly-conduct laws and Gay bars and business had their licenses illegitimately suspended or revoked. This persecution seemed to only intensify after World War II, because many gays and lesbians were living more openly. Thousands of federal employees including soldiers were discharged and fired for suspicions of being homosexuals. Though since that time, there has been more activism by the LGBT Community, through an increasing number of organizations coupled with more visibility and aggressive protest. However, many rights are withheld today along with the inability to get married in most states (with the exception of Massachusetts, Vermont, Connecticut, and Iowa). Activist of the modern Gay Rights Movement still struggle to seek full equality.
Read more about this topic: LGBT Movements In The United States
Famous quotes containing the words opposition, movements and/or history:
“A man with your experience in affairs must have seen cause to appreciate the futility of opposition to the moral sentiment. However feeble the sufferer and however great the oppressor, it is in the nature of things that the blow should recoil upon the aggressor. For God is in the sentiment, and it cannot be withstood.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“The short lesson that comes out of long experience in political agitation is something like this: all the motive power in all of these movements is the instinct of religious feeling. All the obstruction comes from attempting to rely on anything else. Conciliation is the enemy.”
—John Jay Chapman (1862–1933)
“History does nothing; it does not possess immense riches, it does not fight battles. It is men, real, living, who do all this.... It is not “history” which uses men as a means of achieving—as if it were an individual person—its own ends. History is nothing but the activity of men in pursuit of their ends.”
—Karl Marx (1818–1883)