Lgbtq movement 1960s

LGBTQ+ Living History: The Transformative ’60s and ’70s

In a six-part series, we highlight a rare of the moments, movements, and people that made their mark on Cal&#;s LGBTQ+ history. We change position through the decades, start 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 perception, in June with the Stonewall Riots in Brand-new 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 Homosexual Bears Collection in the University Archives), the Lgbtq+ Liberation Front was very radical for its day. &#;They were too &#;out&#; for me and most of us at that time,&#; he says. &#;Being in the closet is about controlling your story. I felt I couldn&#;t trust them with my story. They were very courageous people though.&#;

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 Queer 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 Municipality, 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 connected 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 crowd overwhelmed police, who were forced to call in reinforcements. The conflict lasted into the ne

The Year of Male lover Liberation

The Right to Be

Mattachine Society of New York. "Homosexuals Are Different . . ." Poster, s. NYPL, Manuscripts and Archives Division, Mattachine Society of New York Records.

The year marked a major turning point in the politics of sexuality in America. Same-sex relationships were discreetly tolerated in 19th-century America in the create of romantic friendships, but the 20th century brought increasing legal and medical regulation of homosexuality, which was considered a perilous illness. This change in attitude was accompanied by pockets of resistance, spaces that gays and lesbians carved out for their erotic self-expression. Sometimes these spaces were hidden, love the gay bars in Greenwich Village and Harlem that were frequented only by those in the know. Sometimes they were in plain sight, appreciate the homoerotic subtexts and in-jokes of Hollywood movies. The repression of homosexuality reached its peak in the s with the McCarthy era. During the paranoia of the Cool War, gays, lesbians, and transgender people were seen as a corrupt, lurking menace, easily used as pawns by communists.

Gays and lesbians began to organiz

How the Stonewall Uprising Ignited the Modern LGBTQ Rights Movement

In , police raids of gay bars in Manhattan followed a template. Officers would pour in, threatening and beating block staff and clientele. Patrons would pour out, lining up on the lane so police could arrest them.

But when police raided the Stonewall Inn in the early morning hours of June 28, , things didn’t go as expected. Patrons and onlookers fought back—and the days-long melee that ensued, characterized then as a riot and now known as the Stonewall Rebellion, helped spark the modern LGBTQ civil rights movement.

Each June, Pride Month honors the history of Stonewall with parades and events. In the years since the uprising, LGBTQ activists pushed for—and largely achieved—a broad expansion of their the legal rights, and in June , the Supreme Court issued a landmark ruling guaranteeing same-sex couples the right to marry.

Before these gains, however, LGBTQ people had long been subject to social sanction and legal harassment for their sexual orientation, which had been criminalized on the pretexts of religion and morality. By the s, homosexuality was clinically classified as a mental disorder, and most munici
lgbtq movement 1960s