An LGBT Person's Guide to the Contemporary History of the United States: 1981-present

The 1980s started out with an LGBT rights bang, with one of the first successful court cases being decided on behalf of a gay high school student. Aaron Fricke, an 18-year-old senior from Cumberland, Rhode Island, sued his high school for not allowing him to bring his boyfriend to the Senior Prom. Fricke said at the time: “The simple thing would have been to go to the senior prom with a girl. But that would have been a lie – a lie to myself, to the girl, and to all the other students.”

The case, Aaron Fricke v. Richard B. Lynch, was taken up by the organization Gay and Lesbian Advocates. Counsel argued that the school's actions violated Fricke’s First Amendment rights of association and free speech, and his Fourteenth Amendment right to equal protection of the laws. The presiding judge ruled in Fricke’s favor, requiring the school district to allow Fricke and his boyfriend to attend the prom, and to provide enough security to ensure their protection. The case would go on to have major implications for LGBT teenagers around the country (for an excellent interview with the lead attorney for Fricke, John Ward, check out this YouTube clip).

Sadly, gay rights in the 1980s saw very few victories like Fricke’s. In fact, issues of gay rights in the 1980s are seemingly synonymous with one monumental event: the outbreak of HIV/AIDS. A larger history of HIV/AIDS and its impact on the gay community is available here on this site (link to background piece on HIV/AIDS). Suffice it to say, HIV/AIDS devastated the gay community starting in 1981, when the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) first reported five gay men suffering from the disease in Los Angeles. The following year, more than 450 cases were reported to the CDC. By 1983, more than 3,000 cases were known in the U.S., and 1,300 people (mostly gay men) had died from the disease. Thousands more remained undiagnosed.

The infection rate and death toll from HIV/AIDS continued to climb throughout the 1980s, causing widespread panic and prevalent discrimination toward LGBT people, especially gay men. The health care and political systems were unprepared to deal with such an immediate and socially controversial crisis, creating a massive gap that would eventually be filled by activist and support organizations formed by HIV/AIDS victims, uninfected gay men, and allies. In 1982, one of the first organizations to address HIV/AIDS was founded by six gay men, the Gay Men’s Health Crisis (GMHC). The GMHC ran a free hotline to help educate about HIV/AIDS, and serve as a clearinghouse of facts and information for those affected by the disease. Years later, a splinter group from GMHC, Act Up (the AIDS Coalition to Unleash Power) was founded by Larry Kramer, who split with GMHC over the Crisis’ hesitation in taking on the politics of HIV/AIDS. Act Up became one of the defining organizations of the HIV/AIDS battle in the 1980s, organizing direct actions on Wall Street, at the Post Office on Tax Day, and infamously storming the set of the CBS Evening News during Operation Desert Storm with signs saying, “Fights AIDS, not Arabs!”

Many other groups formed during the course of the 1980s and 1990s to focus on HIV/AIDS and its impact in the gay community. Among them included the Treatment Action Campaign (which famously “condomized” Sen. Jesse Helms’ house), Queer Nation, Lesbian Avengers, and hundreds of regional and local organizations working on HIV/AIDS. In 1991, the red ribbon became an international symbol for AIDS awareness thanks to the work of Broadway Cares/Equity Fights AIDS, and Visual AIDS in New York. By ’91, more than 1.3 million people were estimated to have been infected by HIV/AIDS in North America.

In the early to mid-1990s, LGBT rights also saw a string of statewide and federal actions that placed the civil rights of LGBT Americans at the fore of politics. The Justice Department was required for the first time in the early 1990s to collect information on hate crimes committed against victims because of their sexual orientation. Hate crimes would later become a focal point in the 1990s, with the 1998 brutal murder of Matthew Shepard outside Laramie, Wyoming. Despite the fact that the Justice Department collects statistics on crimes committed against victims because of their sexual orientation, there is no federal law requiring prosecution of hate crimes committed because of one’s actual or perceived gender or sexual orientation. Since Shepard’s 1998 murder, the Matthew Shepard Foundation and other organizations have championed an act named after him in Congress, which would afford hate crimes protections to victims because of sexual orientation. The Matthew Shepard Act passed both houses of Congress in 2007, but never made it to the President’s desk.

Another issue, that came to light during the 1992 Presidential campaign between President George H.W. Bush and Bill Clinton, was the issue of gays and lesbians serving openly in the military. Clinton ran on a platform of overturning the ban, affording gays and lesbians the right to serve in the U.S. military. However, upon his election, Clinton struck a compromise deal with conservative legislators and Pentagon officials, and in 1994 the U.S. military enacted a “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” policy. Under this policy, anyone who “demonstrate(s) a propensity or intent to engage in homosexual acts” is banned from entering the military, or is subject to discharge if they are currently on active service. To respond to “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell,” the Servicemembers Legal Defense Network (SLDN) launched, to represent gays and lesbians discharged from the military and to lobby legislators to push for full integration of gays and lesbians in all branches of the U.S. military. According to SLDN, more than 12,500 women and men have been discharged from the military under “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell,” with 800 of these individuals being categorized as “mission critical specialists.”

The 1990s also saw many statewide and federal debates over the role of discrimination toward LGBT people. In 1992, Colorado citizens narrowly voted to pass a statewide amendment – known as “Amendment 2” – that prevented any city, town or county in the state from passing anti-discrimination ordinances aimed at protecting LGBT citizens. The amendment effectively overturned gay rights measures in Aspen, Boulder, and Denver. LGBT rights groups appealed Amendment 2, and the case reached the U.S. Supreme Court in 1996. In a 6-3 decision, the U.S. Supreme Court overruled Amendment 2 (in a case known as Romer v. Evans), arguing that the amendment would have placed a “special disability” on LGBT citizens of Colorado. However, the U.S. Supreme Court allowed a similar law, passed in Cincinnati in 1993, to stand.

New strategies emerged in the 1990s over how best to obtain anti-discrimination measures that applied to LGBT citizens, especially in the wake of Amendment 2. One such strategy advocated by gay rights groups was the push for a workplace anti-discrimination bill on a federal level. That push became a reality in 1994, when then Massachusetts Rep. Gerry Studs (himself openly gay) introduced the first version of the “Employment Non-Discrimination Act” in the U.S. House of Representatives. Though it took 13 years, as well as the stripping of language from the Act that sought to protect gender identity, the Employment Non-Discrimination Act passed the U.S. House in 2007, with a version in the U.S. Senate expected to be debated soon.

Discrimination wasn’t the only gay rights issue that made its way to the courts or the ballot box in the 1990s. LGBT adoption became a contentious issue in several states in the 1990s, including in a landmark 1993 Virginia case, Bottoms vs. Bottoms. In this case, a lesbian mother, Sharon Bottoms, was sued by her mother, Kay Bottoms, for custody of her child. In the case, the mother contended that Sharon’s sexual orientation made her an unfit mother. A Virginia circuit court judge agreed, and awarded custody of the son to Sharon’s mother.

The case set off widespread debate about the role of LGBT parents, with many fearing that their identity as parents could be threatened by the Bottoms ruling. In more conservative circles, debate about whether gays and lesbians could serve as adequate parents led to pushes for ballot initiatives and calls for bans on LGBT adoption. Today, despite numerous studies affirming that children raised by LGBT parents are equally as adjusted as children raised by heterosexual parents, several states still have laws prohibiting forms of gay adoption. Florida has an outright ban on adoption by LGBT people, while a ballot initiative that poses the same law in Arkansas is slated for November 2008. Meanwhile, in states like Utah and Mississippi, LGBT single people may adopt children, but same-sex partners are unable to jointly petition for adoption.

All of these issues – adoption, anti-discrimination, hate crimes, “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” – all seem to pail in comparison to one issue in terms of attention, both from the media, politicians and LGBT activists alike over the past ten to twelve years: same-sex marriage. The debate over gay marriage in the United States has galvanized political factions on both sides of the issue, starting in 1996 with the signing of the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA). The Act has two provisions spelled out in it: (1) No state needs to treat a relationship by two people of the same-sex as marriage, even if the relationship is considered marriage in another state; and (2) the federal government can not treat relationships by same-sex couples as marriage, no matter if they are recognized in a particular state.

The impact of DOMA has resulted in a flood of statewide legislation. Since 1996, twelve states have banned any form of same-sex marriage, twenty-five states have adopted measures to their statewide constitution banning same-sex marriage, and another twenty states have enacted statutory “defense of marriage” laws. Toward the beginning of the 21^st century, gay marriage had become the wedge issue with which political conservatives sought to bolster their electoral strength, as well as the issue that would slowly start to define the agenda of many in the gay rights movement. As Andrew Sullivan wrote in the New Republic, “Homosexuality, at its core, is about the emotional connection between two adult human beings. And what public institution is more central — more definitive — to that connection than marriage? The denial of marriage to gay people is therefore not a minor issue. It is the entire issue.”

The first states to buck the legacy enacted by the federal government’s DOMA were California and Vermont. In 1999, the Vermont Supreme Court ruled that gays and lesbians were entitled to the same benefits and protections afforded by state law to married heterosexual couples. And thus, civil unions were born. That same year, California enacted a domestic partnership registry that sought to give many of the same benefits afforded to heterosexual married couples to same-sex couples.

Following suit, many other states began to recognize civil unions and domestic partnerships, including Maine (2004), Connecticut (2005), New Jersey (2007), Washington (2007), Oregon (2007), and New Hampshire (2008). But despite these successes, many in the LGBT rights movement saw (and continue to see) civil unions and domestic partnerships as “separate but equal” policies, going so far as to call them “Gay Apartheid.” The real issue, as Andrew Sullivan said, is the denial of marriage.

In the wake of Vermont’s passage of civil unions, another New England state pushed the debate over same-sex marriage one step further, becoming the first state in the U.S. to legally recognize gay marriage. In an historic decision, the Massachusetts Supreme Court ruled in November 2003 that the state’s ban on same-sex marriage was unconstitutional, giving the state 180 days to change the law. On May 17, 2004, then Governor Mitt Romney ordered town clerks to begin issuing marriage laws.

Though conservative activists were successful in blocking out-of-state gay couples from marrying in Massachusetts, anti-same-sex marriage advocates have been unable to persuade the Massachusetts legislature to put the legalization of same-sex marriage on a statewide ballot. Support for gay marriage has increased dramatically in Massachusetts over the past four years, as well, making it less and less likely that efforts to repeal same-sex marriage will advance in the state. Current Governor Deval Patrick also recently signed legislation that will now allow out-of-state couples to marry in Massachusetts, removing the last major impediment to same-sex marriage in the Bay State.

Until 2008, Massachusetts was the only state to recognize same-sex marriage, although various cities and counties, including San Francisco, New Paltz (NY), and Sandoval County (New Mexico) all legalized gay marriage at some point, only to have the recognition of same-sex marriage rescinded by courts. But within the course of one month, May 2008, California’s State Supreme Court ruled that gays and lesbians had the right to marriage under the state Constitution, and New York’s governor, David Patterson, ruled that his state must recognize gay marriages that take place in jurisdictions where same-sex marriage is legal.

From its darkest periods in the 1980s to its most celebrated victories of the early 21^st century, the history of gay rights over the past thirty years is built on a foundation of organizing, community, perseverance and liberation. As author Quentin Crisp once said, “In an expanding universe, time is on the side of the outcast.” And in that respect, LGBT people – long pushed to the outskirts of society on policy issues from health care to marriage – have won impressive victories over the past three decades, and have succeeded in changing public perceptions about civil rights and equality.