Enlightenment era In
eighteenth- and
nineteenth-century Europe, same-sex sexual behavior and
cross-dressing were widely considered to be socially unacceptable, and were serious crimes under
sodomy and
sumptuary laws. There were, however, some exceptions. For example, in the 17th-century cross-dressing was common in plays, as evident in the content of many of
William Shakespeare's plays and by the actors in actual performance (since female roles in
Elizabethan theater were always performed by males, usually
prepubescent boys).
Thomas Cannon wrote what may be the earliest published defense of homosexuality in English, ''Ancient and Modern
Pederasty Investigated and Exemplify'd'' (1749). Although only fragments of his work have survived, it was a humorous anthology of homosexual advocacy, written with an obvious enthusiasm for its subject. It contains the argument: "Unnatural Desire is a Contradiction in Terms; downright Nonsense. Desire is an amatory Impulse of the inmost human Parts: Are not they, however, constructed, and consequently impelling Nature?" , an early advocate for the decriminalization of homosexuality Social reformer
Jeremy Bentham wrote the first known argument for homosexual law reform in England around 1785, at a time when the legal penalty for
buggery was death by hanging. His advocacy stemmed from his
utilitarian philosophy, in which the morality of an action is determined by the net consequence of that action on human well-being. He argued that homosexuality was a
victimless crime, and therefore not deserving of social approbation or criminal charges. He regarded popular negative attitudes against homosexuality as an irrational prejudice, fanned and perpetuated by religious teachings. However, he did not publicize his views as he feared reprisal; his essay was not published until 1978. In 1791, France became the first nation to decriminalize homosexuality, probably thanks in part to
Jean Jacques Régis de Cambacérès, who was one of the authors of the
Napoleonic Code. With the introduction of the Napoleonic Code in 1808, the
Duchy of Warsaw also decriminalized homosexuality. In 1830, the new Penal Code of the
Brazilian Empire did not repeat the title XIII of the fifth book of the "Ordenações Philipinas", which made
sodomy a crime. In 1833, an anonymous English-language writer wrote a poetic defense of Captain Nicholas Nicholls, who had been sentenced to death in London for sodomy: Whence spring these inclinations, rank and strong? And harming no one, wherefore call them wrong? which criminalized 'any act of gross indecency with another male person'; a charge that was successfully invoked to convict playwright
Oscar Wilde in 1895 with the most severe sentence possible under the Act. The first person known to describe himself as a
drag queen was
William Dorsey Swann, born enslaved in
Hancock, Maryland. Swann was the first American on record who pursued legal and political action to defend the
LGBTQ community's
right to assemble. During the 1880s and 1890s, Swann organized a series of
drag balls in Washington, D.C. Swann was arrested in police raids numerous times, including in the first documented case of arrests for female impersonation in the United States, on April 12, 1888.
Karl Heinrich Ulrichs was one of the earliest men to publicly state their homosexuality. He wrote many essays defending homosexuality, establishing scientific terms and categories for the groups that now make up the LGBTQ+ community. Homosexual men were Urnings or Uranians, while homosexual women were Dionings. In 1867, he staged the first public gay rights protest. The
Uranian poets and prose writers, who sought to rehabilitate the love between men and boys and in doing so often appealed to Ancient Greece, formed a rather cohesive group with a well-expressed philosophy. A secret British society called the
Order of Chaeronea campaigned for the legalization of homosexuality. The society was founded in 1897 by
George Cecil Ives, one of the earliest gay rights campaigners, who had been working for the end of oppression of homosexuals, what he called the "Cause".
Charles Kains Jackson,
Samuel Elsworth Cottam,
Montague Summers, and
John Gambril Nicholson. Ives met Wilde at the
Authors' Club in London in 1892. Wilde was taken by his boyish looks and persuaded him to shave off his mustache, and once kissed him passionately in the
Travellers' Club. In 1893,
Lord Alfred Douglas, with whom he had a brief affair, introduced Ives to several Oxford poets whom Ives also tried to recruit.
John Addington Symonds was a poet and an early advocate of male love. In 1873, he wrote
A Problem in Greek Ethics, a work of what would later be called "
gay history." Although the
Oxford English Dictionary credits the medical writer
C.G. Chaddock for introducing "homosexual" into the English language in 1892, Symonds had already used the word in
A Problem in Greek Ethics. Symonds also translated classical poetry on homoerotic themes, and wrote poems drawing on ancient Greek imagery and language such as
Eudiades, which has been called "the most famous of his homoerotic poems". While the taboos of Victorian England prevented Symonds from speaking openly about homosexuality, his works published for a general audience contained strong implications and some of the first direct references to male-male sexual love in English literature. By the end of his life, Symonds' homosexuality had become an open secret in Victorian literary and cultural circles. In particular, Symonds' memoirs, written over a four-year period, from 1889 to 1893, form one of the earliest known works of self-conscious homosexual autobiography in English. The recently decoded autobiographies of Anne Lister are an earlier example in English. Another friend of Ives was the English
socialist poet
Edward Carpenter. Carpenter thought that homosexuality was an innate and natural human characteristic and that it should not be regarded as a sin or a criminal offense. In the 1890s, Carpenter began a concerted effort to campaign against discrimination on the grounds of
sexual orientation, possibly in response to the recent death of Symonds, whom he viewed as his campaigning inspiration. His 1908 book on the subject,
The Intermediate Sex, would become a foundational text of the LGBTQ movements of the 20th century. Scottish anarchist
John Henry Mackay also wrote in defense of same-sex love and
androgyny. English
sexologist Havelock Ellis wrote the first objective scientific study of homosexuality in 1897, in which he treated it as a neutral sexual condition. Called
Sexual Inversion, it was first printed in German and then translated into English a year later. In the book, Ellis argued that same-sex relationships could not be characterized as a
pathology or a crime and that its importance rose above the arbitrary restrictions imposed by society. He also studied what he called 'inter-generational relationships' and that these also broke societal
taboos on age difference in sexual relationships. The book was so controversial at the time that one bookseller was charged in court for holding copies of the work. It is claimed that Ellis coined the term 'homosexual', but in fact he disliked the word due to its
conflation of Greek and Latin. These early proponents of LGBTQ rights, such as Carpenter, were often aligned with a broader socio-political movement known as '
free love'; a critique of
Victorian sexual morality and the traditional institutions of family and marriage that were seen to enslave women. Some advocates of free love in the early 20th century, including Russian anarchist and feminist
Emma Goldman, also spoke in defense of same-sex love and challenged repressive legislation. An early LGBTQ movement also began in Germany at the turn of the 20th century, centering on the doctor and writer
Magnus Hirschfeld. In 1897 he formed the
Scientific-Humanitarian Committee campaign publicly against the notorious law "
Paragraph 175", which made sex between men illegal.
Adolf Brand later broke away from the group, disagreeing with Hirschfeld's medical view of the "
intermediate sex", seeing male-male sex as merely an aspect of manly virility and male social bonding. Brand was the first to use "
outing" as a political strategy, claiming that German
Chancellor Bernhard von Bülow engaged in homosexual activity. The 1901 book
Sind es Frauen? Roman über das Dritte Geschlecht (English:
Are These Women? Novel about the Third Sex) by Aimée Duc was as much a political
treatise as a novel, criticizing pathological theories of homosexuality and gender inversion in women.
Anna Rüling, delivering a public speech in 1904 at the request of Hirschfeld, became the first female
Uranian activist. Rüling, who also saw "men, women, and homosexuals" as three distinct genders, called for an alliance between the women's and sexual reform movements, but this speech is her only known contribution to the cause. Women only began to join the previously male-dominated sexual reform movement around 1910 when the German government tried to expand Paragraph 175 to outlaw sex between women. Heterosexual feminist leader
Helene Stöcker became a prominent figure in the movement.
Friedrich Radszuweit published LGBTQ literature and magazines in
Berlin (e.g.,
Die Freundin). Hirschfeld, whose life was dedicated to social progress for people who were transsexual, transvestite and homosexual, formed the
Institut für Sexualwissenschaft (Institute for Sexology) in 1919. The institute conducted an enormous amount of research, saw thousands of transgender and homosexual clients at consultations, and championed a broad range of sexual reforms including sex education, contraception and women's rights. The Swiss journal
Der Kreis was the only part of the movement to continue through the Nazi era. USSR's Criminal Code of 1922 decriminalized homosexuality. This was a remarkable step in the USSR at the time – which was very backward economically and socially, and where many conservative attitudes towards sexuality prevailed. This step was part of a larger project of freeing sexual relationships and expanding women's rights – including legalizing abortion, granting divorce on demand, equal rights for women, and attempts to socialize housework. During Stalin's era, however, USSR reverted all these progressive measures – re-criminalizing homosexuality and imprisoning gay men and banning abortion. In 1928, English writer
Radclyffe Hall published a novel titled
The Well of Loneliness. Its plot centers on Stephen Gordon, a woman who identifies herself as an invert after reading Krafft-Ebing's
Psychopathia Sexualis, and lives within the homosexual subculture of Paris. The novel included a foreword by Havelock Ellis and was intended to be a call for tolerance for inverts by publicizing their disadvantages and accidents of being born inverted. Hall subscribed to Ellis and Krafft-Ebing's theories and rejected (conservatively understood version of) Freud's theory that
same-sex attraction was caused by childhood trauma and was curable. In the United States, several secret or semi-secret groups were formed explicitly to advance the rights of homosexuals as early as the turn of the 20th century, but little is known about them. A better documented group is
Henry Gerber's
Society for Human Rights formed in Chicago in 1924, which was quickly suppressed.
Homophile movement (1945–1969) '' from October 1957. The motif of masks and unmasking was prevalent in the
homophile era, prefiguring the political strategy of
coming out and giving the
Mattachine Society its name. Immediately following
World War II, a number of homosexual rights groups came into being or were revived across the Western world, in Britain, France, Germany, the Netherlands, the Scandinavian countries and the United States. These groups usually preferred the term
homophile to
homosexual, emphasizing love over sex. The homophile movement began in the late 1940s with groups in the Netherlands and Denmark, and continued throughout the 1950s and 1960s with groups in Sweden, Norway, the United States,
France, Britain and elsewhere.
ONE, Inc., the first public homosexual organization in the U.S., was bankrolled by the wealthy transsexual man
Reed Erickson. A U.S. transgender rights journal,
Transvestia: The Journal of the American Society for Equality in Dress, also published two issues in 1952. The homophile movement lobbied to establish a prominent influence in political systems of social acceptability. Radicals of the 1970s would later disparage the homophile groups for being
assimilationist. Any demonstrations were orderly and polite. By 1969, there were dozens of homophile organizations and publications in the U.S., and a national organization had been formed, but they were largely ignored by the media. (MUA), possibly the first LGBTQ organization in
Latin America, on the cover of the sensationalist magazine
Ahora, November 1958. In late 1940s and 1950s Argentina, amid intensified state repression of homosexuals during the government of
Juan Perón, a small clandestine mutual-aid network known as
Maricas Unidas Argentinas (MUA) operated in Buenos Aires. Composed of
maricas or
locas—a social category that historically encompassed both
effeminate homosexual men and people who would today be identified as
travestis or trans women— the group provided solidarity and material support to those affected by police persecution and imprisonment, particularly in connection with the
Devoto prison. Although its existence remained largely unknown for decades and was reconstructed only through later testimonies and press rediscovery, Meanwhile, in San Francisco, the LGBTQ youth organization Vanguard was formed by Adrian Ravarour to demonstrate for equality, and Vanguard members protested for equal rights during the months of April–July 1966, followed by the August 1966 Compton's riot, where transgender street prostitutes in the poor neighborhood of
Tenderloin rioted against police harassment at a popular all-night restaurant,
Gene Compton's Cafeteria. The
Wolfenden Report was published in Britain on September 4, 1957, after publicized convictions for homosexuality of well-known men, including
Edward Montagu-Scott, 3rd Baron Montagu of Beaulieu. Disregarding the conventional ideas of the day, the committee recommended that "homosexual behaviour between consenting adults in private should no longer be a criminal offence". All but James Adair were in favor of this and, contrary to some medical and psychiatric witnesses' evidence at that time, found that "homosexuality cannot legitimately be regarded as a disease, because in many cases it is the only symptom and is compatible with full mental health in other respects." The report added, "The law's function is to preserve public order and decency, to protect the citizen from what is offensive or injurious, and to provide sufficient safeguards against exploitation and corruption of others ... It is not, in our view, the function of the law to intervene in the private life of citizens, or to seek to enforce any particular pattern of behavior." The report eventually led to the introduction of the
Sexual Offences Bill 1967 supported by
Labour MP
Roy Jenkins, then the Labour
Home Secretary. When passed, the
Sexual Offenses Act decriminalized homosexual acts between two men over 21 years of age
in private in England and
Wales. The seemingly innocuous phrase 'in private' led to the prosecution of participants in sex acts involving three or more men, e.g. the
Bolton 7 who were so convicted as recently as 1998. Bisexual activism became more visible toward the end of the 1960s in the United States. In 1966 bisexual activist
Robert A. Martin (also known as Donny the Punk) founded the Student Homophile League at Columbia University and New York University. In 1967 Columbia University officially recognized this group, thus making them the first college in the United States to officially recognize a gay student group. Activism on behalf of bisexuals in particular also began to grow, especially in San Francisco. One of the earliest organizations for bisexuals, the Sexual Freedom League in San Francisco, was facilitated by Margo Rila and Frank Esposito beginning in 1967. According to Gay Lib writer
Toby Marotta, "their Gay political outlooks were not homophile but liberationist". "Out, loud and proud," they engaged in colorful
street theater. The GLF's "A Gay Manifesto" set out the aims for the fledgling gay liberation movement, and influential intellectual
Paul Goodman published "
The Politics of Being Queer" (1969). Chapters of the GLF were established across the U.S. and in other parts of the Western world. The
Front homosexuel d'action révolutionnaire was formed in 1971 by lesbians who split from the
Mouvement Homophile de France. The
Gay liberation movement overall, like the gay community generally and historically, has had varying degrees of gender nonconformity and assimilationist platforms among its members. Early marches by the Mattachine society and Daughters of Bilitis stressed looking "respectable" and mainstream, and after the Stonewall Uprising the Mattachine Society posted a sign in the window of the club calling for peace. Gender nonconformity has always been a primary way of signaling homosexuality and bisexuality, and by the late 1960s and mainstream fashion was increasingly incorporating what by the 1970s would be considered "unisex" fashions. In 1970, the
drag queen caucus of the GLF, including
Marsha P. Johnson and
Sylvia Rivera, formed the group
Street Transvestite Action Revolutionaries (STAR), which focused on providing support for gay prisoners, housing for homeless gay youth and street people, especially other young "street queens". In 1969,
Lee Brewster and Bunny Eisenhower formed the
Queens Liberation Front (QLF), partially in protest to the treatment of the drag queens at the first
Christopher Street Liberation Day March. cover version of
Ink magazine, printed in London In the United Kingdom the GLF had its first meeting in the basement of the
London School of Economics on October 13, 1970.
Bob Mellors and Aubrey Walter had seen the effect of the GLF in the United States and created a parallel movement based on revolutionary politics and alternative lifestyle. By 1971, the UK GLF was recognized as a political movement in the national press, holding weekly meetings of 200 to 300 people. The GLF Manifesto was published, and a series of high-profile direct actions, were carried out. The disruption of the opening of the 1971
Festival of Light was the best organized of
GLF action. The Festival of Light, whose leading figures included
Mary Whitehouse, met at
Methodist Central Hall. Groups of GLF members in
drag invaded and spontaneously kissed each other; others released mice, sounded horns, and unveiled banners, and a contingent dressed as workmen obtained access to the basement and shut off the lights. In 1972, Sweden became the first country in the world to allow people who were transsexual by legislation to surgically change their sex and provide free
hormone replacement therapy. Sweden also permitted the age of consent for same-sex partners to be at age 15, making it equal to heterosexual couples.
Bisexuals became more visible in the LGBTQ rights movement in the 1970s. In 1972 a Quaker group, the Committee of Friends on Bisexuality, issued the "Ithaca Statement on Bisexuality" supporting bisexuals. In that same year the
National Bisexual Liberation Group formed in New York. In 1976 the San Francisco Bisexual Center opened. In May 1974 the
American Psychiatric Association, after years of pressure from activists, changed the wording concerning homosexuality in the
Sixth printing of the
Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders from a "mental disorder" to that of a "
sexual orientation disturbance", which took gay people out of the category of being automatically considered mentally ill simply for their sexual orientation. By 1974, internal disagreements had led to the movement's splintering. Organizations that spun off from the movement included the
London Lesbian and Gay Switchboard,
Gay News, and
Icebreakers. The GLF Information Service continued for a few further years providing gay related resources. In Japan, LGBTQ groups were established in the 1970s. In 1971,
Ken Togo ran for the Upper House election.
LGBTQ rights movement (1974–present) 1974–1986 From the radical Gay Liberation movement of the early 1970s arose a more
reformist and single-issue Gay Rights movement, which portrayed gays and lesbians as a
minority group and used the language of civil rights—in many respects continuing the work of the homophile period. In Berlin, for example, the radical was eclipsed by the . Gay and lesbian rights advocates argued that one's sexual orientation does not reflect on one's gender; that is, "you can be a man and desire a man... without any implications for your gender identity as a man," and the same is true if you are a woman. Gays and lesbians were presented as identical to heterosexuals in all ways but private sexual practices, and butch "bar dykes" and flamboyant "street queens" were seen as negative stereotypes of lesbians and gays. Veteran activists such as
Sylvia Rivera and
Beth Elliot were sidelined or expelled because they were transgender. In 1974,
Maureen Colquhoun came out as the first Lesbian
Member of Parliament (MP) for the
Labour Party in the UK. When elected she was married in a heterosexual marriage. In 1975, the groundbreaking film portraying homosexual gay icon
Quentin Crisp's life,
The Naked Civil Servant, was transmitted by
Thames Television for the British Television channel
ITV. The British journal
Gay Left also began publication. After
British Home Stores sacked an openly gay trainee Tony Whitehead, a national campaign subsequently picketed their stores in protest. In 1977,
Harvey Milk was elected to the
San Francisco Board of Supervisors becoming the first openly gay man in the State of California to be elected to public office. Milk was assassinated by a former city supervisor
Dan White in 1978. In 1977, a former Miss America contestant and orange juice spokesperson,
Anita Bryant, began a campaign "Save Our Children", in Dade County, Florida (greater Miami), which proved to be a major setback in the Gay Liberation movement. Essentially, she established an organization which put forth an amendment to the laws of the county which resulted in the firing of many public school teachers on the suspicion that they were homosexual. In 1979, a number of people in Sweden called in sick with a case of
being homosexual, in protest of homosexuality being classified as an illness. This was followed by an activist occupation of the main office of the
National Board of Health and Welfare. Within a few months, Sweden became the first country in the world to remove homosexuality as an illness. Between 1980 and 1988, the international gay community rallied behind
Eliane Morissens, a Belgian lesbian who had been fired from her teaching post for coming out on television and bringing attention to employment discrimination. The case prompted protests, articles, and fundraising events throughout Europe and the Americas. Articles were carried in Toronto's
The Body Politic, the
Gay Community News of Boston; and the
San Francisco Sentinel. The French magazine
Gai pied created a support network to organize demonstrations and launched a petition drive for subscribers and members of the
International Gay Association (IGA) to call on the
Council of Europe to renounce discrimination against homosexuals. The
International Lesbian Information Service (ILIS) published information in their newsletter about letter-writing campaigns, and organized fund-raisers and solidarity protests to help pay for Morissens' legal and personal expenses and bring attention to the case. Both ILIS and IGA lobbied European teachers' unions in support of Morissens. Though Morissens appealed the school board decision to the local council; the highest court in Belgium,
Council of State; and the
European Court of Human Rights, her termination was upheld at every level.
Lesbian feminism, which was most influential from the mid-1970s to the mid-1980s, encouraged women to direct their energies toward other women rather than men, and advocated lesbianism as the logical result of feminism. As with Gay Liberation, this understanding of the lesbian potential in all women was at odds with the minority-rights framework of the Gay Rights movement. Many women of the Gay Liberation movement felt frustrated at the domination of the movement by men and formed separate organisations; some who felt gender differences between men and women could not be resolved developed "
lesbian separatism," influenced by writings such as
Jill Johnston's 1973 book
Lesbian Nation. Organizers at the time focused on this issue.
Diane Felix, also known as DJ Chili D in the Bay Area club scene, is a Latino American lesbian once joined the Latino American queer organization GALA. She was known for creating entertainment spaces specifically for queer women, especially in Latino American community. These places included gay bars in San Francisco such as A Little More and Colors. Disagreements between different political philosophies were, at times, extremely heated, and became known as the
lesbian sex wars, clashing in particular over views on
sadomasochism, prostitution and
transsexuality. The term "gay" came to be more strongly associated with homosexual males. In Canada, the coming into effect of
Section 15 of the
Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms in 1985 saw a shift in the gay rights movement in Canada, as Canadian gays and lesbians moved from liberation to litigious strategies. Premised on Charter protections and on the notion of the immutability of homosexuality, judicial rulings rapidly advanced rights, including those that compelled the Canadian government to legalize same-sex marriage. It has been argued that while this strategy was extremely effective in advancing the safety, dignity and equality of Canadian homosexuals, its emphasis of sameness came at the expense of difference and may have undermined opportunities for more meaningful change.
Mark Segal, often referred to as the dean of American gay journalism, disrupted the CBS evening news with
Walter Cronkite in 1973, an event covered in newspapers across the country and viewed by 60% of American households, many seeing or hearing about homosexuality for the first time. Another setback in the United States occurred in 1986, when the
US Supreme Court upheld a Georgia anti-sodomy law in the case
Bowers v. Hardwick. (This ruling would be overturned two decades later in "
Lawrence v. Texas").
1987–2000 AIDS pandemic Some historians posit that a new era of the gay rights movement began in the 1980s with the emergence of AIDS. As gay men became seriously ill and died in ever-increasing numbers, and many lesbian activists became their caregivers, the leadership of many organizations was decimated. Other organizations shifted their energies to focus their efforts on AIDS. The closing statement of the conference set out a plan for a media campaign: The statement also called for an annual planning conference "to help set and modify our national agenda." On June 24, 1994, the first Gay Pride march was celebrated in Asia in the Philippines. In the Middle East, LGBTQ organizations remain illegal, and LGBTQ rights activists face extreme opposition from the state. The 1990s also saw the emergence of many LGBTQ youth movements and organizations such as LGBTQ youth centers,
gay–straight alliances in high schools, and youth-specific activism, such as the
National Day of Silence. Colleges also became places of LGBTQ activism and support for activists and LGBTQ people in general, with many colleges opening LGBTQ centers. The 1990s also saw a rapid push of the
transgender movement, while at the same time a "sidelining of the identity of those who are transsexual." In the English-speaking world,
Leslie Feinberg published
Transgender Liberation: A Movement Whose Time Has Come in 1992. Gender-variant peoples across the globe also formed minority rights movements.
Hijra activists campaigned for recognition as a
third sex in India and
Travesti groups began to organize against police brutality across Latin America while activists in the United States formed direct-confrontation groups such as the
Transexual Menace.
21st century Same-sex marriage during debate on a same sex marriage bill , same-sex marriages are recognized in
Andorra,
Argentina,
Australia,
Austria,
Belgium,
Brazil,
Canada,
Chile,
Colombia,
Costa Rica,
Cuba,
Denmark,
Ecuador,
Estonia,
Finland,
France,
Germany,
Greece,
Iceland,
Ireland,
Liechtenstein,
Luxembourg,
Malta,
Mexico,
the Netherlands,
New Zealand,
Norway,
Portugal,
Slovenia,
South Africa,
Spain,
Sweden,
Switzerland,
Taiwan,
Thailand,
the United Kingdom,
the United States, and
Uruguay. The Netherlands was the first country to allow
same-sex marriage in 2001. Following with Belgium in 2003 and Spain and Canada in 2005. South Africa became the first African nation to legalize same-sex marriage in 2006, and is currently the only African nation where same-sex marriage is legal. Despite this uptick in tolerance of the LGBTQ community in South Africa, so-called corrective rapes have become prevalent in response, primarily targeting the poorer women who live in townships and those who have no recourse in responding to the crimes because of the notable lack of police presence and prejudice they may face for reporting assaults. including the use of the term marriage, ("matrimony").
Iceland became the first country in the world to legalize same-sex marriage through a unanimous vote: 49–0, on June 11, 2010. A month later,
Argentina became the first country in Latin America to legalize same-sex marriage. On June 26, 2015, in
Obergefell v. Hodges, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled 5-to-4 that the Constitution requires that same-sex couples be allowed to marry no matter where they live in the United States. With this ruling, the United States became the 17th country to legalize same-sex marriages entirely. Between September 12 and November 7, 2017, Australia held a
national survey on the subject of same sex marriage; 61.6% of respondents supported legally recognizing same-sex marriage nationwide. This cleared the way for a private member's bill to be debated in the federal parliament. In 2019, Taiwan became the first country in Asia to allow same-sex marriage. There has been a legal movement attempting to recognise
marriage equality in Japan.
Other rights In 2003, in the case
Lawrence v. Texas, the
Supreme Court of the United States struck down
sodomy laws in fourteen states, making consensual homosexual sex legal in all 50 states, a significant step forward in LGBTQ activism and one that had been fought for by activists since the inception of modern LGBTQ social movements. From November 6 to 9, 2006,
The Yogyakarta Principles on application of
international human rights law in relation to
sexual orientation and
gender identity was adopted by an international meeting of 29 specialists in
Yogyakarta, the
International Commission of Jurists and the
International Service for Human Rights. in 2015 carrying a banner with the flags of 70 countries where
homosexuality is illegal During this same period, some municipalities have been enacting laws against homosexuality. For example,
Rhea County, Tennessee, unsuccessfully tried to "ban homosexuals" in 2006. The 1993 "Don't ask, don't tell" law, forbidding homosexual people from serving openly in the United States military, was repealed in 2010. This meant that gays and lesbians could now serve openly in the military without any fear of being discharged because of their sexual orientation. In 2012, the
United States Department of Housing and Urban Development's
Office of Fair Housing and Equal Opportunity issued a regulation to prohibit discrimination in federally-assisted housing programs. The new regulations ensure that the department's core housing programs are open to all eligible persons, regardless of sexual orientation or gender identity. The
UN declaration on sexual orientation and gender identity gathered 66 signatures in the
United Nations General Assembly on December 13, 2008. In early 2014 a series of protests organized by
Add The Words, Idaho, and former state senator
Nicole LeFavour, some including
civil disobedience and concomitant arrests, took place in
Boise, Idaho, which advocated adding the words "sexual orientation" and "gender identity" to the state's Human Rights act. On September 6, 2018, consensual gay sex was legalized in India by their Supreme Court. In June 2020, the United States Supreme Court ruled that the 1964 Civil Rights Act could protect gay and transgender people from workplace discrimination. The Bostock v. Clayton County decision found that protections guaranteed on the basis of sex could extend to sexual orientation and identity in areas like housing and employment. Democrats such as then-presidential candidate Joe Biden praised the decision. In October 2020, the Council of Europe's Sexual Orientation and Gender Identity (SOGI) Unit, along with the
European Court of Human Rights, held a conference to mark the 70th anniversary of the
European Convention on Human Rights on October 8, 2020. The entity announced launching an event called "A 'Living Instrument' for Everyone: The Role of the European Convention on Human Rights in Advancing Equality for LGBTI persons", focused on the progress achieved in equality for LGBTQ persons in Europe through the European Convention mechanism. President Biden signed an executive order barring LGBTQ discrimination on his first day in office. Later the same year, Biden reversed a
Trump-era policy of banning transgender people from the military, authorized embassies to fly the pride flag, and officially recognized June as Pride Month. == LGBTQ and human rights ==