Gay Rights

 

About the FAIR Education Act

The FAIR Education Act*, SB 48 (Leno), was signed into law on July 14, 2011, and went into effect on January 1, 2012. It amends the California Education Code to include the Fair, Accurate, Inclusive and Respectful reference to contributions by people with disabilities and members of the LGBTQ community in history and social studies curriculum.

 The Stonewall riots were a series of spontaneous, violent demonstrations by members of the gay community.against a police raid that took place in the early morning hours of June 28, 1969, at the Stonewall Inn, located in the Greenwich Village neighborhood of Manhattan, New York City.

The Stonewall Inn, taken September 1969. The sign in the window reads: "We homosexuals plead with our people to please help maintain peaceful and quiet conduct on the streets of the Village

https://www.history.com/topics/gay-rights/the-stonewall-riots

https://www.history.com/news/stonewall-riots-timeline
https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/americanexperience/features/stonewall-milestones-american-gay-rights-movement/

The clandestine gay club Stonewall Inn was an institution in Greenwich Village because it was large, cheap, allowed dancing and welcomed drag queens and homeless youths.

But in the early hours of June 28, 1969, New York City police raided the Stonewall Inn. Fed up with years of police harassment, patrons and neighborhood residents began throwing objects at police as they loaded the arrested into police vans. The scene eventually exploded into a full-blown riot, with subsequent protests that lasted for five more days.

December 15, 1973

https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/americanexperience/features/stonewall-milestones-american-gay-rights-movement/
The board of the American Psychiatric Association votes to remove homosexuality from its list of mental illnesses.

The Official HARVEY MILK Biography

OFFICIAL BIOGRAPHY OF HARVEY MILK

https://milkfoundation.org/about/harvey-milk-biography/

Harvey Milk, was a visionary civil and human rights leader who became one of the first openly gay elected officials in the United States when he won a seat on the San Francisco Board of Supervisors in 1977. Milk’s unprecedented loud and unapologetic proclamation of his authenticity as an openly gay candidate for public office, and his subsequent election gave never before experienced hope  to Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgendered (LGBT) people everywhere at a time when the community was encountering widespread hostility and discrimination. His remarkable career was tragically cut short when he was assassinated nearly a year after taking office.

The White Night riots were a series of violent events sparked by an announcement of a lenient sentencing of Dan White for the assassinations of San Francisco Mayor George Moscone and of Harvey Milk, a member of the city's Board of Supervisors who was one of the first openly gay elected officials in the United States. The events took place on the night of May 21, 1979 (the next night would have been Milk's 49th birthday) in San Francisco. Earlier that day, White had been convicted of voluntary manslaughter, the lightest possible conviction for his actions. That White was not convicted of first-degree murder (with which he was originally charged) had so outraged the city's gay community that it set off the most violent reaction by gay Americans since the 1969 Stonewall riots in New York City (which is credited as the beginning of the modern gay rights movement in the United States).

Twinkie defense

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The term "Twinkie defense" is an umbrella term that, in the most general sense, refers to an unconventional defensive argument. The term originated from the 1979 trial of Dan White, a San Francisco politician, who was charged with first-degree murder. A testifying psychiatrist pointed out that White's consumption of sugary foods, such as Twinkies, could lead to diminished capacity. Using this testimony, White's lawyer was successfully able to persuade the jury that White lacked the premeditation and deliberation elements necessary to establish first-degree murder. As a result, White was ultimately convicted of a lighter offense of involuntary manslaughter. 

https://www.history.com/news/what-were-the-white-night-riots

1993, when President Bill Clinton signed the policy

 known as “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” into law, it represented a compromise between those who wanted to end the longstanding ban on gays serving in the U.S. military and those who felt having openly gay troops would hurt morale and cause problems within military ranks. Under the new policy, gay, lesbian and bisexual Americans could serve their country, as long as they kept their sexual identity under wraps.

Project Inform, an American advocacy group dedicated to empowering people with HIV, marches in the San Francisco Lesbian and Gay Freedom Day Parade in 1988.

August 18, 1990
President george Bush signs the Ryan White Care Act, a federally funded program for people living with AIDS. Ryan White, an Indiana teenager, contracted AIDS in 1984 through a tainted hemophilia treatment. After being barred from attending school because of his HIV-positive status, Ryan White becomes a well-known activist for AIDS research and anti-discrimination.

https://www.ucsf.edu/news/2021/06/420686/40-years-aids-timeline-epidemic 

Brenda Gee, of the Office of the Executive Vice Chancellor and Provost, and Jennifer Dowd, of Campus Life Services, added some extra color to the foggy San Francisco morning at AIDS Walk 2016. Photo by Noah Berger

The Names Project AIDS Memorial Quilt on display near the Washington Monument in Washington D.C. in October 1992. Then 21,000 panels, the quilt has more than doubled by 2019.

Pink triangle - Nazi Germany

The White House was illuminated in rainbow colors on the evening of the ruling.
 President Barack Obama praised the decision and called it a "victory for America".

Obergefell v. Hodges

Obergefell v. Hodges, 576 U.S. ___ (2015), is a landmark United States Supreme Court case in which the Court held in a 5–4 decision that the fundamental right to marry is guaranteed to same-sex couples by both the Due Process Clause and the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution.^{[2][3]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Obergefell_v._Hodges 
Decided on June 26, 2015, Obergefell overturned Baker and requires all states to issue marriage licenses to same-sex couples and to recognize same-sex marriages validly performed in other jurisdictions.[4] This legalized same-sex marriage throughout the United States, and its possessions and territories. The Court examined the nature of fundamental rights guaranteed to all by the Constitution, the harm done to individuals by delaying the implementation of such rights while the democratic process plays out, and the evolving understanding of discrimination and inequality that has developed greatly since Baker.}

 Justice Clarence Thomas wrote a dissent rejecting substantive due process

<sup>Furthermore, Thomas insisted that "liberty has long been understood as individual freedom from governmental action, not as a right to a particular governmental entitlement" such as a marriage license.[141] According to Thomas, the majority's holding also undermines the political process and threatens religious liberty.[142] Lastly, Thomas took issue with the majority's view that marriage advances the dignity of same-sex couples. In his view, government is not capable of bestowing dignity; rather, dignity is a natural right that is innate within every person, a right that cannot be taken away even through slavery and internment camps.[143]



http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2016/05/29/gay-lesbian-transgender-religious-exemption-supreme-court-north-carolina/84908172/</sup>