[On January 9th,
1978 Harvey Milk
was inaugurated to a seat on San Francisco’s Board of Supervisors, making him
one of America’s first openly gay
elected officials. So this week I’ll AmericanStudy Milk and other
historical moments and events in the early history of the Gay Rights Movement,
leading up to a weekend post on an impressive visual exhibit on the movement at
Fitchburg State University.]
On three 1973
moments that helped advance the movement in distinct but interconnected ways.
1)
Lambda Legal’s lawsuit: In 1971, New
York City lawyer William Thom attempted to incorporate a nonprofit known as
Lambda
Legal, an organization that would be dedicated to addressing the legal,
political, and social needs of LGBTQ Americans and their allies. His application
was denied on the grounds that the organization’s goals were “neither
benevolent nor charitable,” but fortunately Thom and his allies did not back
down. They appealed the decision, and in 1973 the New York Court of Appeals
ruled in Lambda’s favor and the organization was officially incorporated as a
nonprofit, beginning
operations in October. Over the next four decades Lambda has provided vital
legal and social services to LGBTQ Americans around the country, and has played
a significant role in such landmark legal decisions as 2003’s Lawrence v. Texas Supreme Court ruling (which invalidated all
remaining anti-sodomy laws in the US). All of which stems from this crucial 1973
decision.
2)
PFLAG’s origins: On March 26th, 1973, Parents
and Friends of Lesbians and Gays (PFLAG)
held its first official meeting, at Greenwich Village’s Metropolitan-Duane Methodist Church.
PFLAG’s founder, Jeanne
Manford, had over the prior year become the most prominent such parent, as
the beating of her gay activist son Morty had prompted her to join him in his
efforts and participate in the city’s 1972 Gay Pride march (holding
a sign that famously read “Parents of Gays Unite in Support for Our
Children”). From those personal and familial origin points sprang an
organization that was initially similarly intimate—that March meeting had about
20 attendees, and for the next few years other such small groups began to
emerge around the country—but that by 1982 had become substantive enough to be incorporated in California as a
non-profit. PFLAG represented a significant advance in a number of ways,
but I would especially emphasize the importance of an organization dedicated
not to LGBTQ Americans themselves, but rather to their loved ones and social networks.
This was another key step in recognizing the full social presence and participation
of this American community.
3)
APA Small Steps: As this week’s posts have
consistently highlighted, however, civil rights advances can’t and shouldn’t be
separated from concurrent questions of discrimination, prejudice, and oppression.
I wrote on Wednesday about the American Psychiatric Association’s
discriminatory 1953 definition of
homosexuality as a “sociopathic personality disturbance,” a prominent,
frustratingly “scientific” example of such anti-gay prejudice. Two decades
later, the APA finally removed that classification in 1973; in 1975 the American
Psychological Association agreed, publicly announcing that “homosexuality
per se implies no impairment in judgment, reliability or general social and
vocational capabilities, and mental health professionals should take the lead
in removing the stigma of mental illness long associated with homosexual
orientation.” These were small steps along the path toward inclusion, but they
were steps nonetheless, and ones that complement the advances illustrated and
gained by groups like Lambda and PFLAG.
Special post
this weekend,
Ben
PS. What do you
think? Other histories or stories you’d highlight?
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