The American Gay Rights Movement - Research Paper Example

Early in the morning hours of Saturday, June 28, 1969, plainclothes officers and uniformed patrolmen from the New York City Police Department’s Public Morals Squad raided the Stonewall Inn, a popular but illegal gay bar in Greenwich Village. The raid sparked several days of demonstrations and clashes with police, ranging in intensity from passive to confrontational. The demonstrations culminated in the first gay pride march from Washington Square Park to Central Park (Teal, 2010). The riots that followed the Stonewall Inn event are regarded as the beginning of the transformation of the gay rights movement.

Since then, the gay rights movement evolved into a controversial and powerful social and political force in today’s society. In 1973, the American Psychiatric Association removed homosexuality from its official list of mental disorders. In January 1978, Harvey Milk, an openly gay man, was sworn in as a member of the San Francisco Board of Supervisors. Mr Milk’s first feat was to sponsor a bill that would outlaw sexual orientation discrimination. The same year in the month of November, Mayor George Moscone and Harvey Milk were assassinated by Dan White, another member of the board who recently resigned and who wanted back in. (www.infoplease.com) After 40 years of fighting, political leaders are embracing the movement and are knocking down walls such as lifting the ban on participation in the Armed Forces and legalizing gay marriage in support of what has evolved to be the LGBT community.

The evolution of the movement has had such a tremendous influence in the political arena that it has led to “nominating at least two transgender officials, for the first time in history, to senior posts in the federal government under the Obama administration” (Teal, 2010). The intensity of homophobia in America has led to many gays being viewed as mentally ill in medical terms, sinners in religious terms and criminals in legal terms. 

Gays have been murdered because of this type of judgment and hatred towards them.  The segregation that gays have faced in the past and are still experiencing today is just a sign that segregation is still very much alive in America.  Segregation based on gender, race or sexuality is wrong because it is a form of discrimination.  People need to be educated on this topic in order to expand their knowledge and understanding of the rising LGBT community and to prevent the same mistakes encountered during the civil rights movement.