Jenny's Argumentative Essay: The Lesbian Rights

When reminiscing on her childhood, Jenny Rain could recall the injustices and skepticism that her family would face on a day-to-day basis. Jenny remembers overhearing hurtful slurs that were directed towards her and her family during one of their visits to the Virginia Beach boardwalk. The remarks that Jenny overheard people say ignited a fire in her, whereas her two dads were oblivious to the snide comments. Later in life, Jenny came to the realization that the fate of same-sex couples to be able to legally marry and parent children rested on the shoulders of those in her generation that experienced the same upbringing by gay parents as she did. In the fight for marriage equality, children like Jenny account for a huge part of the debate to show how completely ordinary the upbringing of a …show more content…
In 1974 a similar ruling occurred, but this time it involved a New Jersey superior court judge’s ruling that the sexual orientation of a father is not a valid reason to deny him child visitation. This in turn marked the first time that a court in the United States acknowledged the constitutional rights of gay fathers (Rudolph). In 1976 it was decided that judges’ custody decisions were no longer to be determined based solely on a parent’s sexual orientation. The Lesbian Rights Project, otherwise known as LRP, formed in San Francisco by lawyers Donna Hitchens and Roberta Achtenberg in 1977. The Lesbian Rights Project evolved over time into the National Center for Lesbian Rights (Rudolph). The National Center for Lesbian Rights continues to help lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender parents (as well as many others) today. In a custody case in 1978, the Washington Supreme Court issued the first ruling in favor of a lesbian couple. Also in 1978, the first state to begin to accept adoption applications from LGBT parents, without disregarding them simply because of the parents’ homosexuality, was New York (Rudolph). The first known gay couple in the country to