On June 26, 2015, the Supreme Court of the United States declared same-sex marriage legal in all fifty states. This momentous ruling took place two days before the forty-sixth anniversary of the Stonewall Riots. The Stonewall Riots were a series of violent confrontations and demonstrations by gay men and lesbians in New York City from June 28 to July 3, 1969. These riots were a turning point in history for the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender (LGBT) community in the United States and has contributed to current political views in regards to LGBT rights. During the 1950s and ‘60s, sodomy was a felony in every state except Illinois, where consensual homosexual acts were legalized in 1961. Homosexuality was listed as a mental illness
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Five years after The Mattachine Society began, The Daughters of Bilitis was formed to provide a safe meeting place for lesbians but later adopted the same objectives as The Mattachine Society. In 1956, a psychologist, Evelyn Hooker, studied the mental wellness of homosexuals in comparison to heterosexuals and found that self-accepting homosexuals were just as well adjusted as heterosexuals. Hooker’s study shocked the medical community while giving gay men and lesbians more reason to continue fighting for civil rights. In 1965, Frank Kameny, the founder of The Mattachine Society, organized pickets at the White House and other government buildings in protest of employment discrimination against …show more content…
Several smaller riots and protests had occurred in the years leading up to the Stonewall Riots. One of these riots took place in 1959 in Los Angeles. The riot was in response to police discrimination and harassment and was composed of gay men and transgender people. In 1966 in San Francisco, a group of cross-dressers, drag queens, and transgender people gathered at the Compton’s Cafeteria in protest of laws banning people from wearing clothes made for the opposite sex. When the police arrived to arrest the people for transvestism they began to hurl dishes and broke the windows. The reason these smaller riots, protests, and organizations in the LGBT rights movement were not as influential as the Stonewall riots was because they were, by comparison, mild in nature. The Stonewall Riots was an explosive event that grabbed the attention of American citizens across the
Five years after The Mattachine Society began, The Daughters of Bilitis was formed to provide a safe meeting place for lesbians but later adopted the same objectives as The Mattachine Society. In 1956, a psychologist, Evelyn Hooker, studied the mental wellness of homosexuals in comparison to heterosexuals and found that self-accepting homosexuals were just as well adjusted as heterosexuals. Hooker’s study shocked the medical community while giving gay men and lesbians more reason to continue fighting for civil rights. In 1965, Frank Kameny, the founder of The Mattachine Society, organized pickets at the White House and other government buildings in protest of employment discrimination against …show more content…
Several smaller riots and protests had occurred in the years leading up to the Stonewall Riots. One of these riots took place in 1959 in Los Angeles. The riot was in response to police discrimination and harassment and was composed of gay men and transgender people. In 1966 in San Francisco, a group of cross-dressers, drag queens, and transgender people gathered at the Compton’s Cafeteria in protest of laws banning people from wearing clothes made for the opposite sex. When the police arrived to arrest the people for transvestism they began to hurl dishes and broke the windows. The reason these smaller riots, protests, and organizations in the LGBT rights movement were not as influential as the Stonewall riots was because they were, by comparison, mild in nature. The Stonewall Riots was an explosive event that grabbed the attention of American citizens across the