Gay rights movement 1960s
Written by: Jim Downs, Connecticut College
By the end of this section, you will:
- Explain how and why various groups responded to calls for the expansion of civil rights from to
After Planet War II, the civil rights movement had a profound impact on other groups demanding their rights. The feminist movement, the Inky Power movement, the environmental movement, the Chicano movement, and the American Indian Movement sought equality, rights, and empowerment in American world. Gay people organized to resist oppression and demand just treatment, and they were especially galvanized after a Recent York City police raid on the Stonewall Inn, a gay bar, sparked riots in
Around the same second, biologist Alfred Kinsey began a substantial study of human sexuality in the United States. Love Magnus Hirschfield and other scholars who studied sexuality, including Havelock Ellis, a prominent British scholar who published analyze on transgender psychology, Kinsey believed sexuality could be studied as a science. He interviewed more than 8, men and argued that sexuality existed on a spectrum, sa
Barbara Gittings Helps Lead First 'Annual Reminder' Protests
Vice squads–police units devoted to “cleaning up” undesirable parts of urban life–routinely raided the bars frequented by Homosexual people. Laws against people of the same sex dancing together or wearing clothing made for the opposite sex were used as justification to arrest patrons. By the s in New York Capital, the mafia owned many of these establishments and its members would bribe officers in order to avoid fines. Sometimes the arrangement meant that patrons would be forewarned of a pending raid in time to change their clothing and stop dancing. That wasn’t true during the early morning hours of June 28 , when the NYPD raided the Stonewall Inn in Greenwich Village.
When they arrived at Stonewall, the police locked the doors so that no one could escape as they conducted arrests. As certain patrons were released, they linked a large crowd that had been gathering outside the bar. Those chosen for arrest started resisting the police officers with the encouragement of the jeering crowd. Violence broke out and the
Historical Essay
by Will Roscoe
Two Castro Couples -- Love, sweet love.
Photo: Crawford Barton, Gay and Lesbian Historical Society of Northern California
| An intersectional gay rights movement came to light in the s when the gay community united with the momentum of the civil rights movement, anti-war protestors, and feminists. This communal queer rights movement was prefaced by two events. Firstly, a much-debated “Homosexual Bill of Rights” was drafted and acted as a prototype for the gay civil rights agenda of the s. Secondly, the incumbent mayor Christopher was re-elected in by a landslide even after the opposite candidate ran a smear campaign criticizing the mayor of harboring “sexual deviates” in the town. There were many new political efforts by the early same-sex attracted community, including the Tavern Guild, the Society for Individual Rights, and the Council on Religion and Homosexuality, that together helped curb rampant anti-gay police brutality. |
In the s, the gay movement absorbed the profound and successive influences of the civil rights, anti-war, feminist and
LGBTQ+ Living History: The Transformative ’60s and ’70s
In a six-part series, we highlight a limited of the moments, movements, and people that made their mark on Cal&#;s LGBTQ+ history. We action through the decades, commencement in an era of secrecy and continuing through today.
The transformative &#;60s and &#;70s
The gay rights movement saw some forward motion in the s. Dr. John Oliver coined the term &#;transgender&#; in his book Sexual Hygiene and Pathology. Activism percolated. It exploded, in a meaning, in June with the Stonewall Riots in Fresh York City—a response to a police raid that took place at the Greenwich Village bar The Stonewall Inn.
In , two groups formed on the UC Berkeley campus: Students for Gay Power and Gay Liberation Front. According to William Benemann ’71, M.L.S. ’75 (former Berkeley Law archivist, author, and founder of the Queer Bears Collection in the University Archives), the Queer Liberation Front was very radical for its period. &#;They were too &#;out&#; for me and most of us at that time,&#; he says. &#;Being in the closet is about controlling you