Framing the Struggle for Queer Rights
The history of lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) acceptance is complex, as it greatly depends on the public’s perceptions and the narrative propagated by the media and government. After World War II (WWII), activists began reimagining and reforming various types of civil rights. The changes in the American lifestyle following the war and economic expansion also led to people’s outspoken behavior and the formation of LGBT communities.
However, such development was not met with positivity from society. LGBT individuals faced persecution from the police, fought with the justice system, and demanded equal rights in government, healthcare, and daily life. While many cases can be discussed to represent the struggles that defined queer history in the post-war period, several cases can be selected to discuss the issues that were common in the community as a whole.
First, the fight of gay men against police persecution and brutality in the 1950s and 1960s is presented. Second, the paper discusses the combination of homophobia and racism that influenced the AIDS epidemic in the 1980s. Finally, the term “obscenity” and its use for transgender people in the 1960s is explored.
Post-WWII Era (1945–1960): Surveillance, Silence, and Early Defiance
The view of homosexuality in the times after WWII was largely negative, with the act of gay sex and people seeking it being considered a crime. Thus, any person suspected of having or even looking for gay sex was at risk of incarceration, physical abuse, and police brutality. Several cases of both gay and straight men exposed to entrapment – police activity to manufacture a crime – show how the official systems in the United States discriminated against gay people. Horace Martinez was a young man who got arrested in 1952 for entering a bathroom that was believed to be a common spot for homosexual activity (Hobson, 2014, p. 188). An undercover police officer beat Martinez as well as his friends, shot one of the teenagers, and arrested the young men (Hobson, 2014, p. 188).
The second case tells the story of Dale Jennings, a homosexual man, who was arrested in his own home after an undercover police officer followed him and accused him of searching for sex (Hobson, 2014, p. 189). In both cases, activists from LGBT organizations and defenders had to build entrapment cases and spread awareness among the public of such injustice. The discrimination of queer individuals was not limited to the police in this and later periods. In the 1980s, although gay clubs and other social spaces were becoming a part of major cities, the view of homosexual men and women was still largely negative.
Additionally, segregation, although fought against by many activists, was still prevalent in communities, including queer spaces. In particular, black gay men created their communities and embraced their separation from white-dominated bars (Bost, 2015, p. 2). This separation also led to misinformation when AIDS started spreading inside the LGBT community. While gay men were already undermined by society and doctors, and their health was dismissed as a major concern, black gay men also held an erroneous belief that AIDS was a disease for white people (Bost, 2015, p. 5).
The 1960s–1980s: Activism in the Face of Violence and AIDS
The combination of these issues resulted in a low degree of preparedness for the condition and devastating consequences for a generation of gay people (Bost, 2015, p. 1). LGBT organizations and activists had to raise awareness about the spread of this disease and its impact on white and black gay people. The visual aspect of making AIDS recognizable was vital to fighting misconceptions among queer communities of color.
The fight against negative perception was similar among gay and transgender people. The latter also faced the issue of “obscenity” – being perceived as sexually deviant for their gender expression and presentation (Stryker, 2008, p. 50). The laws rooted in anti-homosexual or transgender views dictated specific limits of morality, not allowing people to dress in a way that did not conform to strict heterosexual, cisgender norms. Before the war, the destruction of materials about transgender people disrupted medical and psychological research (Stryker, 2008, p. 40).
After WWII, the perception of transgender people started to shift slowly, regaining importance in the healthcare field. Nevertheless, the legal system still viewed the public existence of transgender people as breaking obscenity laws. In the 1960s, Virginia Price, a transgender woman and a publisher of a transgender-focused magazine, was persecuted for her private mail exchange with another self-described lesbian (Stryker, 2008, p. 50).
An intimate conversation that contained descriptions of lesbian sex was seen as criminal by the government. It was a challenging fight for activists, but their work in promoting medical services for transgender people and creating communities for legal, medical, financial, and social support has led to the eventual change in the perception of obscenity.
1990s–Present: Legal Battles, Visibility, and Ongoing Resistance
The fight against discrimination against LGBT individuals after WWII was not limited to changing people’s perceptions. It was a legal battle against the establishment, including the police, the legal system, and healthcare. Gay men and women were met with a brutal assault on their health and privacy, and were denied proper medical treatment. Interestingly, the instances of police entrapment affected gay and straight people alike, signifying that the police were acting based on biased suspicions of homosexual activity rather than proven facts. As a result of activists bringing awareness to such injustice, the laws were eventually changed to decriminalize gay sex.
However, misconceptions also affected the community from within, as segregation separated black and white LGBT individuals and contributed to misinformation surrounding AIDS. Health activists from black gay spaces had to focus on sharing correct information, as the medical industry was ineffective in helping the LGBT community fight the disease. Lastly, sexual orientation and gender identity were often intermixed in society’s perception of obscenity, and transgender individuals had to fight both stigmas in their daily lives. Privacy invasion, brutality, injustice, and dismissal of the value of one’s life unite the described stories.
References
Bost, D. (2015). At the club: Locating early black gay AIDS activism in Washington, DC. Occasion, 8, 1-9.
Hobson, E. K. (2014). Policing gay LA: Mapping racial divides in the homophile era, 1950-1967. In M.-H. Jung (Ed.), The rising tide of color (pp. 188-212). Center for the Study of the Pacific Northwest.
Johnson, E. P. (2015). Southern (dis)comfort: Creating and consuming homosex in the black South. In M. Bone (Ed.), Creating and consuming the U.S. South (pp. 97-116). University Press of Florida.
Stryker, S. (2008). Transgender history. Da Capo Press.