Pre-Stonewall Era Following World War II, fears of Communist infiltration into American national security institutions combined with pervasive homophobia led both conservative and liberal politicians to endorse policies to remove homosexuals from administrative and military positions within the American government. The same fears led to ideological divisions within early homophile movement organizations such as the
Mattachine Society. Mid-20th-century homophile activists, who pursued civil rights for gays and lesbians in the United States, were primarily informed by
Marxist political ideology and had ties to the Communist Party of the United States. During an era dominated by anti-communist rhetoric, governmental, and social ideological policing, homophile movement organizations experienced pressure to deny communist affiliations. For the Mattachine Society, the divisions publicly erupted in 1953, when, at the organization's "Constitutional Convention," a majority of the delegates supported resolutions to disavow 'leftist' ideologies and elect new leaders without ties to the Communist Party. strategies, reflect a willingness to work within the structures and institutions of a particular political system and include activities such as lobbying or litigation. Liberationist strategies, otherwise defined as "outsider" and after becoming president,
Dwight Eisenhower – elected as a Republican – signed
Executive Order 10450 which had the effect of barring gays and lesbians from administrative service in the federal government. Even close associates of the president were not exempt from investigation. In the year before signing the executive order,
Arthur H. Vandenberg, Jr. was named Eisenhower's
Appointments Secretary. On January 13, 1953, however, a week before Eisenhower's inauguration, the White House announced that Vandenberg was taking a leave of absence for health reasons. In April, the same month Executive Order 10450 was signed, he resigned from his position blaming "an attack of stomach ulcers." He told the press that he was uncertain of his prognosis and "the uncertainty was unfair to the President." It was later revealed that
J. Edgar Hoover, the director of the
Federal Bureau of Investigation, had come into possession of information that implicated Vandenberg in the bureau's Sex Deviants Program. Republican Senator
Joseph McCarthy included suspected homosexuals in his investigation into communist infiltration of the American Government. An exchange between witnesses during a series of
hearings in 1954 implied the presence of homosexuals in the U.S. military and referred to them using the derogatory terminology "pixie" and "fairy".
Post-Stonewall Era While early homophile activists primarily pursued a politics of social assimilation, shared perceptions of social problems such as violence and physical assault, employment discrimination, police entrapment, and harassment of businesses catering to gay and lesbian clientele helped solidify a sexual minority identity throughout the 1950s and 1960s. By the end of the latter decade, LGBTQ+ politics was on the brink of a paradigm shift. The most widely-known example of the liberationist perspective in practice is exemplified by the
Stonewall Riots. However, such tactics were deployed as early as the
Cooper Do-nuts Riot in 1959 in response to police harassment of LGBTQ+ people. The events taking place in New York's West Village throughout late June 1969 had far-reaching repercussions and further exacerbated the divide between those holding assimilationist and liberationist ideologies. The
Gay Liberationist and
Lesbian Feminist Movements took shape in the decade of the 1970s. Gender-based tensions fueled by sexism within male-dominated organizations associated with the Gay Liberation Movement led to the formation of a separate Lesbian Feminist Movement that advocated for both gender and sexual equality. Despite the liberationist protest and demonstrative tactics of Gay Liberation Movement organizations, they were dominated by a single-issue advocacy strategy which contributed to the identity politics approach of later 20th and 21st-century LGBTQ+ rights organizations. In 1972, San Francisco's Gay Activists Alliance disbanded and formed the
Gay Voter's League, a group that campaigned for the reelection of President Richard Nixon In October 1972, a representative of the
Committee to Re-elect the President addressed gay voters on behalf of Richard M. Nixon's campaign in San Francisco. The event was organized by the Gay Voters League of San Francisco. The first chapter of what would become the national
Log Cabin Republicans (LCR) was formed in 1978 to fight California's
Briggs Initiative, a ballot initiative that would have banned homosexuals from teaching in public schools. The chapter worked diligently and successfully convinced Governor
Ronald Reagan to publicly oppose the measure. On August 18, 1984, President Reagan issued a statement on the issue of same-sex unions that read, Reagan made the comment in response to a questionnaire from the conservative publishers of the Presidential Biblical Scoreboard, a magazine-type compilation of past statements and voting records of national candidates. In 1988, the Republican Party's nominee, then-Vice President
George H. W. Bush, endorsed a plan to protect persons with AIDS from discrimination. On November 29, 1990, Bush signed the
Immigration Act of 1990, which withdrew the phrase "sexual deviation" from the Immigration and Nationality Act (INA) so that it could no longer be used as a basis for barring entry of immigration to the U.S. for homosexuals. In May 1992, he appointed
Anne-Imelda Radice to serve as the Acting Chairman of the National Endowment for the Arts. Losing ground in the 1992 Republican presidential primary to President Bush's far-right challenger,
Pat Buchanan, the Bush campaign turned to the right, and President Bush publicly denounced same-sex marriage. The 1992 Log Cabin Republican convention was held in
Spring, Texas, a
Houston exurb. The main issue discussed was whether or not LCR would endorse the re-election of President
George H. W. Bush. The group voted to deny that endorsement because Bush did not denounce anti-gay rhetoric at the
1992 Republican National Convention. Many in the gay community believed President Bush had not done enough on the issue of AIDS.
Urvashi Vaid argues that Bush's anti-gay rhetoric "motivated conservative gay Democrats and loyal gay Republicans, who had helped defeat Dukakis in 1988, to throw their support behind Clinton". On October 5, 1992, Bush signed H.R. 6056 into law, which included the Republican rider to the appropriations bill. The 1992 Republican Party platform adopted support for continuing to
exclude homosexuals from the military as a matter of good order and discipline. The 1992 Republican Party platform also opposed including
sexual preference in anti-discrimination statutes. In August 1995, the campaign of Republican presidential candidate,
Bob Dole, returned the Log Cabin Republican's $1,000 campaign contribution. The campaign returned the contribution after openly lesbian columnist,
Deb Price, of the
Detroit News, asked about it after she saw it on a public report from the
Federal Election Commission. The campaign sent a written statement to Price saying that Dole was in "100% disagreement with the agenda of the Log Cabin Republicans". The finance office of the campaign had solicited the contribution from LCR. At the event where it was given, Dole had personally spoken with LCR's then-executive director,
Rich Tafel, about the group and about AIDS legislation it was promoting in the Senate. Weeks earlier, Dole agreed to co-sponsor the legislation after a meeting with Tafel at the campaign's headquarters. It resulted in a front-page story in
The New York Times, penned by Richard L. Berke, then-chief political reporter for the daily. As reporters, including Berke, were seeking confirmation of the story before it broke, Dole's finance chairman, John Moran, asked Tafel not to speak to the press and that Tafel's "steadfastness and statesmanship at this moment will be handsomely appreciated in the long run by the campaign". Tafel refused. Pundits accused Dole of being a "flip-flopper and a hypocrite". Editorials ran in major newspapers, including the
Washington Post,
The New York Times, the
Boston Globe, the
Atlanta Journal-Constitution, and the
Times of London, condemning Dole's action, joined by radio commentators
Rush Limbaugh and
Don Imus. Under the pressure, Dole admitted during an October 1995 press briefing on Capitol Hill, that he regretted the decision to return the check, and that his campaign was responsible for it without consulting him. "I think if they'd have consulted me, we wouldn't have done that, wouldn't have returned it," Dole said. Dole later told
Washington Post editor and author
Bob Woodward that the LCR episode was a "mistake" because the decision to return the check "gets into Bob Dole the person. It's not so much about Bob Dole the candidate. It's the person. Is he tolerant? Does he tolerate different views? Tolerate someone with a different lifestyle?" He added, "This is basic, this is what people ought to know about you. Are you going to just do this because it sounds good politically?" LCR's leadership met with Dole's coalitions manager to discuss an endorsement after Dole's reversal. Among various items, Tafel demanded there be no gay bashing in the speeches from the podium of the
1996 Republican National Convention, nor any anti-homosexual signs on the convention floor. He also wanted to see a gay person address the convention and a public request from Dole's campaign for the LCR nod. On the closing night of the convention, Stephen Fong, then-president of the San Francisco chapter, spoke at the dais as part of a series of speeches from "mainstreet Americans", but was not publicly identified as gay. Nevertheless, his presence on the podium for the organization and the gay and lesbian community "was something that would have been unimaginable four years earlier", Tafel later wrote. In a 1998 Texas Gubernatorial election political awareness test, Governor Bush answered no to the questions of whether the Texas government should include sexual orientation in Texas' anti-discrimination laws and whether he supports Texas recognizing same-sex marriage. In 1999, the Byrd Jr. Hate Crimes Act, which would have increased punishment for criminals motivated by hatred of a victim's gender, religion, ethnic background or sexual orientation, was killed in committee by Texas Senate Republicans. Governor Bush was criticized for letting the hate crimes bill die in a Texas Senate committee. Bush spokesman Sullivan said the governor never took a position on the bill. According to Louvon Harris, sister of
James Byrd, Bush's opposition to the bill reportedly revolved around the fact that it would cover gays and lesbians. She said that the governor's office "contacted the family and asked if we would consider taking sexual orientation out of the bill, and our answer was no, because the bill is for everybody. Everybody should be protected by the law." said Harris. In a 2000 presidential debate,
Al Gore would attack Bush for allowing the bill to die in committee, with Bush responding that Texas already had a hate crimes statute, and nothing more was needed. Bush would also express his support for bans on gay foster parenting and adoption. During the 2000 campaign, he did not endorse a single piece of
gay rights legislation. In a 2000 Republican presidential debate, George W. Bush said he opposed same-sex marriage but supported
state's rights when it came to the issue of same-sex marriage. During the campaign, he had refused to comment on Vermont's civil unions' law. On August 4, 2000, Bush received the endorsement of the Log Cabin Republicans, the GOP's largest gay group, for president. He also received the endorsement of the newly formed
Republican Unity Coalition. In a 2000 presidential debate with Al Gore, Bush stated he supported the
Defense of Marriage Act and the "
Don't ask, don't tell" policy. However, he stated that he opposed sodomy laws, a reversal of his position as governor of Texas. The 2000 Republican Party platform included the statement: "We support the First Amendment right of
freedom of association and stand united with private organizations, such as the
Boy Scouts of America, and support their positions."
Presidency of George W. Bush George W. Bush did not repeal President Clinton's Executive Order banning discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation in the federal civilian government, but Bush's critics felt as if he failed to enforce the executive order. He retained Clinton's Office of National AIDS Policy and was the first Republican president to appoint an openly gay man to serve in his administration:
Scott Evertz as director of the Office of National AIDS Policy. Bush also became the second President, after President Clinton, to select openly gay appointees to his administration. Bush's nominee for ambassador to Romania,
Michael E. Guest, became the second openly gay male U.S. Ambassador and the first to be confirmed by the Senate. He did not repeal any of the spousal benefits that Clinton had introduced for same-sex federal employees. He did not attempt to repeal Don't ask, don't tell, nor make an effort to change it. In 2003, the United States Supreme Court ruled in
Lawrence v. Texas that sodomy laws against consenting adults were unconstitutional. President Bush's press secretary
Ari Fleischer refused to comment on the decision, noting only that the administration had not filed a brief in the case. In 2004, Bush said, "What they do in the privacy of their house, consenting adults should be able to do". Previously, Bush said that he supported state's rights when it came to marriage; however, after
Goodridge v. Department of Public Health, on February 24, 2004, Bush announced his support for an amendment to the US Constitution banning same-sex marriage. Due to his support of the Federal Marriage Amendment, the
Log Cabin Republicans declined to endorse the reelection of
George W. Bush in 2004. The Palm Beach County chapter in Florida did endorse him, resulting in the revocation of their charter. On September 22, 2004, the Abe Lincoln Black Republican Caucus (ALBRC), a group of young urban Black gay Republicans, voted in a special call meeting in Dallas, Texas to endorse President Bush for re-election. In an October presidential debate, Bush said he did not know whether homosexuality is a choice or not. In 2007, Bush threatened to veto the
Local Law Enforcement Hate Crimes Prevention Act of 2007, which would have included
sexual orientation in hate crimes, and the
Employment Nondiscrimination Act of 2007. In September 2008, Log Cabin Republicans voted to endorse the
John McCain–
Sarah Palin ticket in the
2008 presidential election. LCR President Patrick Sammon said the most important reason for their support was McCain's opposition to the
proposed constitutional amendment to ban
same-sex marriage. The 2008 Republican Party platform supported anti-discrimination statutes based on sex, race, age, religion, creed, disability, or national origin, but the platform was silent on
sexual orientation and
gender identity. In December 2008, the Bush administration refused to support the U.N. declaration on
sexual orientation and gender identity at the United Nations that condemns the use of violence, harassment, discrimination, exclusion, stigmatization, and prejudice based on sexual orientation and gender identity.
Presidency of Barack Obama On April 15, 2009,
Jimmy LaSalvia and
Christopher R. Barron co-founded
GOProud.
Margaret Hoover, a member of the advisory council, added her opinion into the mix, "GOProud has helped force gays out of the conservative establishment—what I would call the 'conser-va-gentsia'—to take on these self-anointed leaders of social conservatism." During a question and answer segment at the 2011
CPAC,
Ann Coulter spoke about GOProud and the importance of a gay presence in the conservative movement. During the segment she said "So for now, I'd just like gays to be part of conservatives the way women are and blacks are without-without a special designation." and ended with "Gays are natural conservatives." Support for the exclusion of homosexuals from military service would remain in the Republican Party platform until the 2012 Republican Party platform, which removed that language from it. The 2012 Republican Party platform also contained language opposing the Obama administration's attempts to impose its "cultural agenda", including a "homosexual rights agenda", in other countries by restricting foreign aid. The 2012 Republican Party platform supported anti-discrimination statutes based on sex, race, age, religion, creed, disability, or national origin, but the platform was silent on
sexual orientation and
gender identity. On October 23, 2012, Log Cabin Republicans officially endorsed Mitt Romney for president. In a public statement, LCR said it supported Mitt Romney due to the "gravity of the economic and national security issues currently at stake". Moreover, LCR expressed its hope that Romney would reconsider his opposition to the
Employment Non-Discrimination Act, but he did not. In 2013, former President George H. W. Bush served as a witness at a same-sex wedding of Bonnie Clement and Helen Thorgalsen, who owns a general store together in Maine. In 2015, the Boston Globe reported that Bush "offered to perform the ceremony but had a scheduling conflict". In June 2014, reports surfaced that the GOProud leadership had decided to dissolve the organization. Executive Director Matthew Bechstein issued a denial of the report, stating that it was untrue and that the organization would continue operating as it had. But the following day he admitted that "I posted what I had to on Facebook so I wouldn't scare our members and thwart our fundraising efforts. I wanted to mitigate a disaster." He then stated that GOProud did indeed plan to file dissolution papers with the government. In October 2014,
Speaker of the House John Boehner fundraised for
Carl DeMaio, an openly gay Republican candidate for the
United States House of Representatives. On February 28, 2015, the
California Republican Party officially recognized the
Log Cabin Republicans, receiving overwhelming support for a charter at the state party's biannual convention in
Sacramento. On August 16, 2015, the
Republican National Committee rejected two anti-gay resolutions. The first one was that "schools that are teaching the homosexual lifestyle in their sexual education class also include the harmful physical aspects of the lifestyle." The second would have encouraged Congress and states to pass laws in an effort to nullify
Obergefell v. Hodges. On September 20, 2015, in a near-unanimous vote, the California Republican Party removed anti-gay communications from its platform and added to the platform that "We support laws prohibiting discrimination in employment and housing based on race, ethnicity, nationality, sex, sexual orientation, disability, or religion." In response to the applause, Trump ad-libbed: "And I have to say, as a Republican, it is so nice to hear you cheering for what I just said. Thank you." Upon taking office in 2017, President Trump decided to keep in place certain federal protections for LGBTQ+ workers implemented during the Obama administration. However, some of these protections were reversed in August 2019. In July 2017, Trump announced that he was reinstating a
ban on openly transgender troops serving in the US military if they were in the process of transitioning. The ban was later allowed to take effect by the U.S. Supreme Court. Shortly after entering office, the Trump Administration removed all references to LGBTQ+ people and all links to content, resources, and programs from all federal websites. The Department of Labor later removed sections from its website about workplace rights and resources for LGBTQ+ workers, including the page on "Advancing LGBTQ+ Workplace Rights". In January 2017, the State Department removed nearly every mention of LGBTQ+ issues. In March 2017, the Census Bureau concluded they no longer needed to ask about sexual orientation and gender identity in their survey, which helps determine how to distribute hundreds of billions of federal dollars. In October 2018, the Trump administration denied visas to the same-sex partners of foreign diplomats, including from nations that only offered some kind of
civil partnership or that banned same-sex marriages. On May 8, 2018,
Richard Grenell was sworn in as the
United States Ambassador to Germany, making him the first openly gay United States Ambassador to Germany to serve under a Republican presidential administration. In July 2019, Trump nominated a third openly gay man, career
Senior Foreign Service Officer
Robert S. Gilchrist, as the ambassador to
Lithuania. In 2020, Trump appointed Richard Grenell as the Acting
Director of National Intelligence, for which he is often cited as first openly gay cabinet-level official despite
Demetrios Marantis's previous service as acting USTR. On May 16, 2019, Trump said that he was "absolutely fine" with the same-sex marriage of Mayor
Pete Buttigieg of South Bend, Indiana, a presidential candidate in the Democratic primaries. Previously, he had sent mixed signals, saying both that he would consider judges who would overturn
Obergefell v. Hodges, the landmark ruling in favor of same-sex marriage, while also saying he was fine with the legalization of same-sex marriage by the Supreme Court. In June 2019, Trump was the first sitting Republican president to recognize
Pride Month. He also announced that he was making the
global decriminalization of homosexuality a policy issue for his administration. Speaking to reporters about his Pride tweet,
Kellyanne Conway, a counselor to the president and spokeswoman, claimed that Trump approves of same-sex marriage. Also in 2019, Log Cabin Republicans endorsed Trump for reelection. In 2020, the GOP retained the language from the 2016 platform including platform planks against same-sex marriage. On June 7, 2019, the Trump administration requested U.S. embassies to discontinue flying the
pride flag during
Pride Month. During the Obama administration, the government granted blanket permission to embassies overseas to fly the pride flag during June. In November 2019, The Trump administration proposed a rule that removed regulations that had banned discrimination based on sexual orientation in Health and Human Services programs – including adoption and foster care agencies. Under the rule, any organization – including foster care and adoption agencies or other entities that get funding from Health and Human Services – would be free to discriminate against gays if such discrimination was based on religious beliefs. In a statement, Alphonso David, the president of the Human Rights Campaign, called the proposal "horrific" and said it would "permit discrimination across the entire spectrum of HHS programs receiving federal funding". "The Trump-Pence White House is relying on the same flawed legal reasoning they've used in the past to justify discrimination against L.G.B.T.Q. people and other communities," he said. At the Supreme Court, in 2019, the Trump administration argued that
Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 does not include or extend to sexual orientation. Instead, the Trump administration argued that Congress needed to pass its own legislation banning discrimination against LGBTQ+ people. However, when Congress proposed the LGBTQ+
Equality Act, which would add sexual orientation and gender identity to federal civil rights law to prevent discrimination against lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and queer people, Trump opposed the bill because he said it would conflict with "conscience and parental rights". After opposing the Equality Act, the Trump administration did not say whether the President would support or oppose the Fairness for All Act, a Republican-proposed alternative to the Equality Act; a spokesperson said that the Trump administration would review it. During the
coronavirus pandemic in 2020, the
FDA, under the Trump administration, eased restrictions by allowing gay men to donate blood if they had refrained from sexual intercourse for three months prior to donation. In June 2020, President Trump rescinded non-discrimination protections for
transgender people's access to healthcare services. In August 2020, a federal court blocked the Trump administration's reversal of those non-discrimination protections citing the
Supreme Court's 6–3 ruling in favor of interpreting the Civil Rights Act to include sexual orientation and gender identity. When the Supreme Court ruled in favor of interpreting the Civil Rights Act of 1964's protection from discrimination based on 'sex' as including sexual orientation and gender identity, President Trump referred to that ruling, as well as other rulings such as on
DACA, as "shotgun blasts" against him and the Republican Party. Also in August 2020, President Trump retweeted that he was honored by the Log Cabin Republicans and
Richard Grenell's endorsement of him. Richard Grenell joined the
Republican National Committee to advise on outreach to LGBTQ+ voters, citing Trump's support of him. However, his record was further criticized over the Trump administration's efforts to deny citizenship to the children adopted or conceived by surrogacy, by same-sex parents. Even after a federal court ruled in favor of the citizenship for same-sex US parents, the Trump administration appealed the ruling. President Trump nominated two openly LGBTQ+ candidates for the federal judiciary. In June 2018, he nominated
Mary Rowland, who is openly lesbian and married, to the U.S. District Court for Northern Illinois. In October 2018, he nominated a prosecutor,
Patrick Bumatay, who is openly gay, to the
Ninth US Circuit Court of Appeals. In July 2019, the Senate confirmed the appointment of Mary Rowland, making her the first LGBTQ+ nominee to be confirmed during the Trump presidency. Also in 2019, Bumatay was confirmed by the Senate. President Trump also nominated judges with openly anti-LGBTQ+ records. Trump nominated, and the Senate confirmed,
Matthew Kacsmaryk, a judge who once said that being transgender is a "mental disorder" and that support for LGBTQ+ rights is based on the "erotic desires of liberated adults". ==Demographics==