Sandra Day O'Connor has called the gay rights movement "the first important civil rights struggle of the twenty-first century." Recent court decisions to overturn sodomy laws and to recognize gay marriage have emboldened activists, but have also resulted in a tremendous backlash, not the least of which has been a call for a constitutional amendment defining marriage as only between members of the opposite sex. Through its historical and legal contextualization of these decisions The Future of Gay Rights in America is essential for understanding an epochal moment in the history of gay rights.
Examines the impact of marriage equality on the future of LGBT rights In persuading the Supreme Court that same-sex couples have a constitutional right to marry, the LGBT rights movement has achieved its most important objective of the last few decades. Throughout its history, the marriage equality movement has been criticized by those who believe marriage rights were a conservative cause overshadowing a host of more important issues. Now that nationwide marriage equality is a reality, everyone who cares about LGBT rights must grapple with how best to promote the interests of sexual and gender identity minorities in a society that permits same-sex couples to marry. This book brings together 12 original essays by leading scholars of law, politics, and society to address the most important question facing the LGBT movement today: What does marriage equality mean for the future of LGBT rights? After Marriage Equality explores crucial and wide-ranging social, political, and legal issues confronting the LGBT movement, including the impact of marriage equality on political activism and mobilization, antidiscrimination laws, transgender rights, LGBT elders, parenting laws and policies, religious liberty, sexual autonomy, and gender and race differences. The book also looks at how LGBT movements in other nations have responded to the recognition of same-sex marriages, and what we might emulate or adjust in our own advocacy. Aiming to spark discussion and further debate regarding the challenges and possibilities of the LGBT movement’s future, After Marriage Equality will be of interest to anyone who cares about the future of sexual equality.
"Martin Duberman is a national treasure." —Masha Gessen, The New Yorker The past fifty years have seen significant shifts in attitudes toward LGBTQ people and wider acceptance of them in the United States and the West. Yet the extent of this progress, argues Martin Duberman, has been more broad and conservative than deep and transformative. One of the most renowned historians of the American left and the LGBTQ movement, as well as a pioneering social-justice activist, Duberman reviews the half century since Stonewall with an immediacy and rigor that informs and energizes. He revisits the early gay movement and its progressive vision for society and puts the left on notice as failing time and again to embrace the queer potential for social transformation. Acknowledging the elimination of some of the most discriminatory policies that plagued earlier generations, he takes note of the cost—the sidelining of radical goals on the way to achieving more normative inclusion. Illuminating the fault lines both within and beyond the movements of the past and today, this critical book is also hopeful: Duberman urges us to learn from this history to fight for a truly inclusive and expansive society.
A chronicle of the modern struggle for gay, lesbian and transgender rights draws on interviews with politicians, military figures, legal activists and members of the LGBT community to document the cause's struggles since the 1950s.
With precision and passion, David Blankenhorn offers a bold new argument in the debate over same-sex marriage: that it would essentially deny all children, not just the children of same-sex couples, their birthright to their own mother and father. If we change marriage, we change parenthood - for all families. Altering marriage to accommodate same-sex couples would mean weakening in culture and eliminating in law the idea that children need both their mother and their father. The Future of Marriage analyzes recent survey data from 35 countries, offering the first scientific evidence that support for marriage is weakest in those nations where support for gay marriage is strongest. Blankenhorn explains how same-sex marriage would transform our most pro-child social institution into a purely private relationship (''an expression of love'') between adults, defined by each couple as they wish. Changing marriage laws to include same-sex couples, he argues, would require us to ''deinstitutionalize'' marriage, ''amputating from the institution one after another of its core ideas, until the institution itself is like a room with all the furniture removed and everything stripped from the walls.'' For Blankenhorn, the main question concerning the future of marriage in the United States is not whether we will adopt gay marriage. The main question is whether the social institution of marriage will become stronger or weaker. If we wish to strengthen marriage on behalf of children, there is no shortage of ideas for doing so. What matters is whether we as a society regard this as a worthy and urgent goal.
American public opinion tends to be sticky. Although the news cycle might temporarily affect the public's mood on contentious issues like abortion, the death penalty, or gun control, public opinion toward these issues has remained remarkably constant over decades. There are notable exceptions, however, particularly with regard to divisive issues that highlight identity politics. For example, over the past three decades, public support for same-sex marriage has risen from scarcely more than a tenth to a majority of the population. Why have people's minds changed so dramatically on this issue, and why so quickly? It wasn't just that older, more conservative people were dying and being replaced in the population by younger, more progressive people; people were changing their minds. Was this due to the influence of elite leaders like President Obama? Or advocacy campaigns by organizations pushing for greater recognition of the equal rights of Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender (LGBT) people? Listen, We Need to Talk tests a new theory, what Brian Harrison and Melissa Michelson call The Theory of Dissonant Identity Priming, about how to change people's attitudes on controversial topics. Harrison and Michelson conducted randomized experiments all over the United States, many in partnership with equality organizations, including Equality Illinois, Georgia Equality, Lambda Legal, Equality Maryland, and Louisiana's Capital City Alliance. They found that people are often willing to change their attitudes about LGBT rights when they find out that others with whom they share an identity (for example, as sports fans or members of a religious group) are also supporters of those rights-particularly when told about support from a leader of the group, and particularly if they find the information somewhat surprising. Fans of the Green Bay Packers football team were influenced by hearing that a Packers Hall-of-Famer is a supporter of LGBT rights. African Americans were influenced by hearing that the Black president of the United States is a supporter. Religious individuals were influenced by hearing that a religious leader is a supporter. And strong partisans were influenced by hearing that a leader of their party is a supporter. Through a series of engaging experiments and compelling evidence, Listen, We Need to Talk provides a blueprint for thinking about how to bring disparate groups together over contentious political issues.
A compelling and timely vision for gay reparations in the United States In the last two decades many nations have adopted "gay reparations," or policies intended to make amends for a history of discrimination, stigmatization, and violence on the basis of sexual orientation and gender identity. Far from being a homogenous or uniform phenomenon, gay reparations encompass a small constellation of approaches including a formal apology to the LGBT community for past wrongdoing, financial compensation for victims of anti-LGBT laws and actions, and the erection of monuments to the memory of those who suffered because of structural homophobia. The United States, however, has been reluctant to embrace gay reparations, making the country something of an outlier among Western democracies. Beyond making the case for gay reparations in the United States, this book explores a wide range of questions provoked by the rise of the gay reparations movement. Among these questions, three stand out for what they reveal about the puzzling and complex nature of this new front in the struggle for LGBT equality. Why, after centuries of attempts to marginalize, dehumanize, and even eradicate LGBT people, are governments coming around to confront this dark and painful historical legacy? How do we make sense of the diversity of gay reparations being implemented by governments around the world? And, finally, what would an American policy of gay reparations look like? Omar G. Encarnación draws upon the rich history of reparations to confront the legacies of genocide, slavery, and political repression and argue that gay reparations are a moral obligation intended to restore dignity to those whose human rights have been violated because of their sexual orientation and gender identity. Reparations are also necessary to close painful chapters of anti-LGBT discrimination and violence and to remind future generations of past struggles for LGBT equality. To this end, he traces America's dark and painful LGBT history--from colonial-era laws criminalizing homosexual conduct, to a postwar ban on homosexuals working in the federal bureaucracy, to the government's support of the junk-science underpinning the practice of "gay conversion" therapy promoted by the Christian Right. The book also examines how other Western democracies notorious for their repression of homosexuals--specifically Spain, Britain, and Germany--have implemented gay reparations. These foreign experiences reveal potential pathways for gay reparations in the United States. More importantly, they show that while there is no universal approach to gay reparations it is never too late for countries to seek to right past wrongs.
Why should Americans who are not gay care about gay rights? In Created Equal, Michael Nava and Robert Dawidoff argue that the movement for gay equality is central to the continuing defense of individual liberty in America. Beginning with an examination of the determined assault on gay issues by the religious right, the authors show how this sectarian movement to legislate private religious morality into law undermines the purpose of American constitutional government: the protection of the individual's right to determine how best to live his or her life. The book starts from the premise that gay men and lesbians are, first and foremost, American citizens, and then looks to what rights belong to every individual American citizen, arguing from the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution. Addressing their argument to the great majority of their fellow Americans, Dawidoff and Nava emphasize that what is at stake is not the fate of the gay community, but the future of constitutional principle and the rights of free individuals in American society.
The riveting story of the fight for same-sex marriage in the United States--the most important civil rights breakthrough of the new millennium. On June 26, 2015, the United States Supreme Court ruled that state bans on gay marriage were unconstitutional, making same-sex unions legal throughout the United States. But the road to victory was much longer than many know. In this seminal work, Sasha Issenberg takes us back to Hawaii in the 1990s, when that state's supreme court first started grappling with the issue, and traces the fight for marriage equality from the enactment of the Defense of Marriage Act in 1996 to the Goodridge decision that made Massachusetts the first state to legalize same-sex marriage, and finally to the seminal Supreme Court decisions of Windsor and Obergefell. This meticulously reported work sheds new light on every aspect of this fraught history and brings to life the perspectives of those who fought courageously for the right to marry as well as those who fervently believed that same-sex marriage would destroy the nation. It is sure to become the definitive book on one of the most important civil rights fights of our time.
At a time when lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender individuals-often referred to under the umbrella acronym LGBT-are becoming more visible in society and more socially acknowledged, clinicians and researchers are faced with incomplete information about their health status. While LGBT populations often are combined as a single entity for research and advocacy purposes, each is a distinct population group with its own specific health needs. Furthermore, the experiences of LGBT individuals are not uniform and are shaped by factors of race, ethnicity, socioeconomic status, geographical location, and age, any of which can have an effect on health-related concerns and needs. The Health of Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender People assesses the state of science on the health status of LGBT populations, identifies research gaps and opportunities, and outlines a research agenda for the National Institute of Health. The report examines the health status of these populations in three life stages: childhood and adolescence, early/middle adulthood, and later adulthood. At each life stage, the committee studied mental health, physical health, risks and protective factors, health services, and contextual influences. To advance understanding of the health needs of all LGBT individuals, the report finds that researchers need more data about the demographics of these populations, improved methods for collecting and analyzing data, and an increased participation of sexual and gender minorities in research. The Health of Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender People is a valuable resource for policymakers, federal agencies including the National Institute of Health (NIH), LGBT advocacy groups, clinicians, and service providers.
