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LGBT rights in the United States

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And the attacks on queer people just keep coming. We're not paranoid. They really do want us to disappear. ~ Rebecca Gordon

Lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) rights in the United States have evolved in recent decades, with California becoming the first state to legalize same-sex marriage under the California State Supreme Court's decision, In re Marriage Cases, on 15 May 2008, and the United States Supreme Court ruling all same-sex marriage bans as unconstitutional under Obergefell v. Hodges on 26 June 2015, and the U.S. Supreme Court further deciding under Bostock v. Clayton County in 2020 that Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 protects Americans from being fired by an employer on the basis of sexual orientation or gender identity. However, LGBT Americans may still face some legal and social challenges not experienced by non-LGBT residents, particularly in states with large conservative populations.

See also:
LGBT
Homosexuality
Bisexuality
Homophobia
Transphobia
Transphobia in the United States
For those who don’t happen to fall into one of MAGA’s target groups, let me close by paraphrasing Donald Trump: In the end, they’re coming after you. We’re just standing in the way. ~ Rebecca Gordon
Graphic
Rescind regulations prohibiting discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation, gender identity, transgender status, and sex characteristics. The President should direct agencies to rescind regulations interpreting sex discrimination provisions as prohibiting discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation, gender identity, transgender status, sex characteristics, etc. ~ Jonathan Berry
Anti-Trans Bathroom Bills Are Legalized Segregation. - Outdoor Sign at Glendale United Methodist Church Nashville, TN, in May 2021


Arranged alphabetically by author or source:
A · B · C · D · E · F · G · H · I · J · K · L · M · N · O · P · Q · R · S · T · U · V · W · X · Y · Z · See also · External links

A

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  • If the Supreme Court were to overturn Obergefell, the new federal law guarantees that a same-sex couple who was married in Illinois, for example, would still be recognized as married if they moved to Virginia, which has a ban on same-sex marriage that could be reactivated. But a same-sex couple wishing to be married in Virginia might have to travel out of state to get their marriage license. The Respect for Marriage Act also provides similar protections for interracial marriages. The dynamic could create a challenge for couples who want to get married but can’t afford to travel to another state for the license. That would exclude such couples from accessing the benefits that come with marriage, including inheritance, tax benefits, and the ability to make health care decisions for a spouse who is unable to make them themselves. “You will start to see a real economic justice problem,” Carpenter says.
    Bryan Wilson, who co-founded the Pride Center West Texas in Odessa, Texas, says the Respect for Marriage Act is a win for him and his husband, and other LGBTQ couples who are already married, but worries it doesn’t do enough for young or unmarried people in states like Texas. “I have youth who go, ‘Well, if on the off chance I ever want to get married in about six, seven years, 10 years, 15 years, I’m probably not going to be able to do it here anyway, so I hope I’ve moved to California, New York, or Washington,'” Wilson says.
    “There will be enough respect for marriage when every state in the union, every territory, has legalized it as well as enshrined it in their constitution, that same-sex marriage is allowed,” Wilson adds.For LGBTQ people living in states with dormant bans on the books who are vulnerable to financial insecurity, face discrimination, or struggle with their mental health, overruling Obergefell could cause a different kind of fallout, experts warn. “It would be a deep psychological and emotional blow to a lot of gay, lesbian, and bisexual people to be told that even if their state has to recognize a marriage formed out of the state, that their state nonetheless disapproves of their relationship and effectively considers them second class citizens,” says Michael Boucai, a law professor at the University of Buffalo.

B

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  • Sex Discrimination. The Biden Administration, LGBT advocates, and some federal courts have attempted to expand the scope and definition of sex discrimination, based in part on the Supreme Court’s decision in Bostock v. Clayton County. Bostock held that “an employer who fires someone simply for being homosexual or transgender” violates Title VII’s prohibition against sex discrimination. The Court explicitly limited its holding to the hiring/firing context in Title VII and did not purport to address other Title VII issues, such as bathrooms, locker rooms, and dress codes, or other laws prohibiting sex discrimination. Notably, the Court focused on the status of the employees and used the term “transgender status” rather than the broader and amorphous term “gender identity.”
    * Restrict the application of Bostock. The new Administration should restrict Bostock’s application of sex discrimination protections to sexual orientation and transgender status in the context of hiring and firing.
    *Withdraw unlawful “notices” and “guidances.” The President should direct agencies to withdraw unlawful “notices” and “guidances” purporting to apply Bostock’s reasoning broadly outside hiring and firing.
    *Rescind regulations prohibiting discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation, gender identity, transgender status, and sex characteristics. The President should direct agencies to rescind regulations interpreting sex discrimination provisions as prohibiting discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation, gender identity, transgender status, sex characteristics, etc.
    *Direct agencies to refocus enforcement of sex discrimination laws. The President should direct agencies to focus their enforcement of sex discrimination laws on the biological binary meaning of “sex.”
  • Provide robust protections for religious employers. America’s religious diversity means that workplaces include people of many faiths and that many employers are faith-based. Nevertheless, the Biden Administration has been hostile to people of faith, especially those with traditional beliefs about marriage, gender, and sexuality. The new Administration should enact policies with robust respect for religious exercise in the workplace, including under the First Amendment, the Religious Freedom Restoration Act of 1993 (RFRA), Title VII, and federal conscience protection laws.
  • Provide Robust Accommodations for Religious Employees. Title VII requires reasonable accommodations for an employee’s sincerely held religious beliefs, observances, or practices unless it poses an undue hardship on the employer’s business. These accommodation protections also apply to issues related to marriage, gender, and sexuality.

C

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G

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  • And the attacks on queer people just keep coming. In May 2023, the Human Rights Campaign listed anti-queer bills introduced and passed in this year alone:
    • Over 520 anti-LGBTQ+ bills have been introduced in state legislatures, a record;
    • Over 220 bills specifically target transgender and non-binary people, also a record; and
    • A record 74 anti-LGBTQ laws have been enacted so far this year, including:
    • Laws banning gender affirming care for transgender youth: 16
    • Laws requiring or allowing misgendering of transgender students: 7
    • Laws targeting drag performances: 2
    • Laws creating a license to discriminate: 3
    • Laws censoring school curricula, including books: 13
    We’re not paranoid. They really do want us to disappear.
  • It’s not all that uncommon today for right-wing Christians in the United States to publicly demand that LGBT people be put to death. As recently as Pride month (June) * Though they’re starting to say the quiet part out loud, even in this country, they’ve been so much less careful in Africa for decades now.
    It’s not all that uncommon today for right-wing Christians in the United States to publicly demand that LGBT people be put to death. As recently as Pride month (June) of last year, in a sermon that went viral on Tik-Tok, Pastor Joe Jones of Shield of Faith Baptist Church in Boise, Idaho, called for all gay people to be executed. Local NBC and CBS TV stations, along with some national affiliates, saw fit to amplify Jones’s demand to “put them to death. Put all queers to death” by interviewing him in prime time.
    In keeping with right-wing propaganda that treats queer people as child predators, Jones sees killing gays as the key to preventing the sexual abuse of children. “When they die,” he said, “that stops the pedophilia. It’s a very, very simple process.” (The reality is that most sexual abuse of children involves male perpetrators and girl victims and happens inside families.)
    Though American “Christians” like Jones may be years away, if ever, from instituting the death penalty for queer people here, they have already been far more successful in Africa. On May 29, Ugandan president Yoweri Museveni signed perhaps the world’s harshest anti-LGBT law, criminalizing all homosexual activity, providing the death penalty for “serial offenders,” and according to the Reuters news agency, for the “transmission of a terminal illness like HIV/AIDS through gay sex.” It also “decrees a 20-year sentence for ‘promoting’ homosexuality.”
    While Uganda’s new anti-gay law may be the most extreme on the continent, more than 30 other African countries already outlaw homosexuality to varying degrees.
  • Now, however, there’s a new extermination campaign stalking this country that would definitely include me among its targets: the right-wing Republican crusade against “sexual predators” and “groomers,” by which they mean LGBTQI+ people. (I’m going to keep things simple here by just writing “LGBT” or “queer” to indicate this varied collection of Americans who are presently a prime target of the right wing in this country.)
    You may think “extermination campaign” is an extreme way to describe the set of public pronouncements, laws, and regulations addressing the existence of queer people here. Sadly, I disagree. Ambitious would-be Republican presidential candidates across the country, from Florida Governor Ron DeSantis to the less-known governor of North Dakota, Doug Burgum, are using anti-queer legislation to bolster their primary campaigns. For Florida, it started in July 2022 with DeSantis’s Parental Rights in Education act (better known as his “Don’t Say Gay” law), which mandated that, in the state’s public schools, “classroom instruction by school personnel or third parties on sexual orientation or gender identity may not occur in kindergarten through grade 3 or in a manner that is not age-appropriate or developmentally appropriate for students in accordance with state standards.
  • In April 2023, DeSantis doubled down, signing a new law that extended the ban all the way up through high school. Florida teachers at every level now run the very real risk of losing their jobs and credentials if they violate the new law. And queer kids, who are already at elevated risk of depression and suicide, have been deprived of the kind of affirming space that, research shows, greatly reduces those possibilities.
    Is Florida an outlier? Not really. Other states have followed its lead in restricting mentions of sexual orientation or gender identity in their public schools. By February of this year, 42 such bills had been introduced in a total of 22 states and are creating a wave of LGBT refugees.
    But the attacks against queer people go well beyond banning any discussion of gayness in public schools. We’re also witnessing a national campaign against trans and nonbinary people that, in effect, aims to eliminate such human beings altogether, whether by denying their very existence or denying them the medical care they need. This campaign began with a focus on trans youth but has since widened to include trans and nonbinary people of all ages.
  • What I failed to emphasize then—perhaps because I thought it went without saying (but it certainly needs to be said today)—is that fascism is almost by definition deadly. It needs enemies on whom it can focus the steaming rage of its adherents, and it is quite content for that rage to lead to literal extermination campaigns.
    The creation of such enemies invariably involves a process of rhetorical dehumanization. In fascist propaganda, target groups cease to be actual people, becoming instead vermin, viruses, human garbage, communists, Marxists, terrorists, or, in the case of the present attacks on LGBT people, pedophiles and groomers. As fascist movements develop, they bring underground streams of hatred into the light of “legitimate” political discourse.
    All those decades ago, I suggested that the Christian fundamentalists represented an incipient fascist force. I think it’s fair to say that today’s Make America Great Again crew has inherited that mantle, successfully incorporating right-wing Christianity into a larger proto-fascist movement. All the elements of classic fascism now lurk there: adulation of the leader, subordination of the individual to the larger movement, an appeal to mythical past glories, a not-so-subtle embrace of white supremacy, and discomfort with anything or anyone threatening the “natural” order of men and women. You have only to watch a video of a Trump rally to see that his is a mass (even if not a majority) movement.
  • Why should it matter whether Donald Trump’s MAGA movement and the Republican Party he’s largely taken over represent a kind of fascism? The answer: because the logic of fascism leads so inexorably to the politics of extermination. Describing his MAGA movement as fascism makes it easier to recognize the existential threat it truly represents—not only to a democratic society but to specific groups of human beings within it.
    I know it may sound alarmist, but I think it’s true: proto-fascist forces in this country have shown that they are increasingly willing to exterminate queer people, if that’s what it takes to gain and hold on to power. If I’m right, that means all Americans, queer or not, now face an existential threat.
    For those who don’t happen to fall into one of MAGA’s target groups, let me close by paraphrasing Donald Trump: In the end, they’re coming after you. We’re just standing in the way.
  • Avery told us how gay people used to not be allowed to touch. At bars, clubs, wherever, you’d be arrested for touching. So people danced with two feet of space between them and scattered even farther when the cops came. But he said they took up a lot of space when they were dancing, used their whole bodies.
    • Reina Gossett and Grace Dunham, talk at Williams College, April 30th, 2015

  • I saw a Gay Liberation Front flier from the 70’s that said: “Touch One Another.” I didn’t quite understand its meaning until Grace and I were at Jewel’s, and Avery told us about the no-touch laws.

    Then, we understood that the state had existed in the space between two people. I thought about how law creates forcefields between us, isolating us from the touch we need and want. I thought about the after-life of these laws, the way that forcefields still exist all around us and between us.

    It was profound, and scary, to think about about the way those anti-touch laws still affect my experience of myself.

    • Reina Gossett and Grace Dunham, talk at Williams College, April 30th, 2015

L

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  • In 2006, following the horrific murder of Gwen Araujo, California became the first state to pass legislation limiting the LGBTQ+ “panic” defense. The law, named in Gwen’s honor, aimed to “curtail the use of so-called ‘panic strategies’... most widely used in criminal cases involving bias based on sexual orientation and gender identity.” More specifically, The Gwen Araujo Justice For Victims Act (AB 1160) allows parties to request “the court instruct jurors not to allow bias based on sexual orientation, gender identity or other protected bases to influence their decision.” While this bill was pending in the state legislature, Vice President Kamala Harris, at that time San Francisco District Attorney, called for a national conference on combating the LGBTQ+ “panic” defense – an action that was also undertaken in Georgia a year earlier by the Fulton County District Attorney in response to the murder of Ahmed Dabarran. Despite this flurry of action regarding the LGBTQ+ “panic” defense, for years The Gwen Araujo Justice For Victims Act remained the only legislation in the country limiting the heinous defense strategy. In 2014, California further restricted use of the LGBTQ+ “panic” defense when the state legislature passed Assembly Bill No. 2501. While the 2006 Gwen Araujo Justice for Victims Act focused on juror instruction, Assembly Bill No. 2501 codified the illegality of the LGBTQ+ “panic” defense. The new law amended Section 192 of California’s Penal Code to prohibit “the discovery of, knowledge about, or potential disclosure of the victim’s actual or perceived gender, gender identity, gender expression, or sexual orientation” from being considered objectively reasonable circumstances for a sudden altercation. This means that murder charges cannot be reduced to voluntary manslaughter through the LGBTQ+ “panic” defense in California. Importantly, the law also clarifies that this ban includes “circumstances in which the victim made an unwanted non-forcible romantic or sexual advance towards the defendant, or if the defendant and victim dated or had a romantic or sexual relationship.” Assembly Bill No. 2501 was groundbreaking as the first successful piece of legislation specifically prohibiting the use and limiting the effectiveness of the LGBTQ+ “panic” defense. For three years, it was the only legislation in the nation that acted to curtail the use of this heinous courtroom tactic.

M

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  • Reverse policies that allow transgender individuals to serve in the military. Gender dysphoria is incompatible with the demands of military service, and the use of public monies for transgender surgeries or to facilitate abortion for servicemembers should be ended.
  • Gay people, we are painted as child molestors. I want to talk about that. I want to talk about the myth of child molestations by gays. I want to talk about the fact that in this state some 95 percent of child molestations are heterosexual and usually committed by a parent.
    I want to talk about the fact that all child abandonments are heterosexual.
    I want to talk about the fact that all abuse of children is by their heterosexual parents.
    I want to talk about the fact that some 98 percent of the six million rapes committed annually are heterosexual.
    I want to talk about the fact that one out of every three women who will be murdered in this state this year will be murdered by their husbands.
    I want to talk about the fact that some 30 percent of all heterosexual marriages contain domestic violence.
    And finally, I want to tell the John Briggs and the Anita Bryants that they talk about the myths of gays, but today I’m talking about the facts of heterosexual violence and what the hell are you going to do about that? Clean up your own house before you start telling lies about gays. Don’t distort the Bible to hide your own sins. Don’t change facts to lies. Don’t look for cheap political advantage in playing upon people’s fears! Judging by the latest polls, even the youth can tell you’re lying! Anita Bryant, John Briggs: Your unwillingness to talk about your own house, your deliberate lies and distortions, your unwillingness to face the truth, chills my blood. It reeks of madness!
  • There is a difference between morality and murder. The fact that more people have been slaughtered in the name of religion than for any other single reason. That, that, my friends, is the true perversion! For the standards that we set, should we look to next week’s headlines? Well, I’m tired of the lies of the Anita Bryants and the John Briggs. I’m tired of their myths. I’m tired of their distortions. I’m speaking out about it.
  • Gay brothers and sisters, what are you going to do about it? You must come out. Come out to your parents. I know that it is hard and that it will hurt them, but think of how they will hurt you in the voting booth! Come out to your relatives. I know that it is hard and will upset them but think of how they will upset you in the voting booth. Come out to your friends. If indeed, they are your friends. Come out to your neighbors, to your co-workers, to the people who work where you eat and shop. Come out only to the people you know, and who know you. Not to anyone else. But once and for all, break down the myths, destroy the lies and distortions. For your sake. For their sake. For the sake of the youngsters who are being terrified by the votes coming from Dade County to Eugene. If Briggs wins, he will not stop. They never do. Like all mad people, they are forced to go on, to prove they were right.
  • Speculation of whether the U.S. Supreme Court will take a case to overturn same-sex marriage at the federal level is mounting after embattled Kentucky Clerk Kim Davis pushed the effort as far up the legal chain as possible.
    Davis' attorney, Matthew Staver, previously told Newsweek he is optimistic the court will again rule on Obergefell v. Hodges, the landmark case that guaranteed the right to same-sex marriage nationwide. William Powell, the attorney who represented the couple that sued Davis, previously wrote in a statement provided to Newsweek that he is "confident the Supreme Court will likewise agree that Davis' arguments do not merit further attention." Obergefell v. Hodges, as part of a 5-4 Supreme Court ruling in June 2015, guaranteed that same-sex couples can marry by the Due Process Clause and the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment of the Constitution. Prior the Court's ruling, equal rights and protections for same-sex marriage was already established in 36 states by statutes, court rulings, or voter initiatives.
    Davis made national headlines just two months after the Obergefell v. Hodges decision when she defied a U.S. federal court order to issue marriage licenses to same-sex couples. After being elected clerk of Rowan County, Kentucky, in 2014, she was defeated by Democratic challenger Elwood Caudill Jr. in 2018.
  • In an interview at Catholic University last week, Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas said what he’s clearly been thinking for the past 30 years: Supreme Court precedents don’t matter, and he’s making things up as he goes along to fulfill his own political agenda. He didn’t say it in that way, of course. People would have noticed that. Instead, he couched his self-serving philosophy in legal jargon that will fly under the radar of most people, including journalists. Here’s what he said: “At some point we need to think about what we’re doing with stare decisis.… [I]t’s not some sort of talismanic deal where you can just say ‘stare decisis’ and not think, turn off the brain, right?”
    To translate: “Stare decisis” is a foundational legal principle in this country and all countries that follow a “common law” system. What it means, in simple terms, is that prior judicial rulings govern future judicial rulings. If a court rules, for instance, that “gay people have the same basic rights as everyone else in this country, including the right to marry other people,” then that ruling is supposed to govern all future cases concerning the rights of gay people.
    Thomas, apparently, doesn’t agree. Instead of respecting stare decisis and precedent, he is saying that older cases shouldn’t have the power to control newer ones. For Thomas, just because courts ruled that LGBTQ people should have rights in the past, including the right to marry, doesn’t mean he feels compelled to rule that they should keep them.
  • We’ve seen this in Thomas’s opinions in recent years. In 2022, he declared, in a separate but supporting opinion in the Dobbs case, that Roe v. Wade was not respectful of our legal traditions, but Loving v. Virginia is. Why? Well because Roe gave women rights, while Loving gave Thomas the right to marry his white wife, and if you have a better legal difference between those cases other than Thomas’s own personal preferences, I’d love to hear you explain it. Thomas has also decided (in this case, writing for the majority) that simple gun registration laws are not respectful of our traditions in this country, but he signed on to an opinion giving the president the powers of the very king we revolted against. You simply cannot chart a course through what passes for logic in Thomas’s head without understanding his preferred policy outcomes.
    If Thomas were the only justice who thought like this, it would be a containable problem. But the entire Republican cabal on the Supreme Court rules exactly in the way Thomas is talking about, with no respect for precedent or stare decisis. This coming term, the Republicans on the court are likely to overturn a voting rights precedent they set for themselves only a couple of years ago. The Republicans literally cannot be trusted to respect their own rulings.

R

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  • Today the Left is threatening the tax-exempt status of churches and charities that reject woke progressivism. They will soon turn to Christian schools and clubs with the same totalitarian intent.
    The next conservative President must make the institutions of American civil society hard targets for woke culture warriors. This starts with deleting the terms sexual orientation and gender identity (“SOGI”), diversity, equity, and inclusion (“DEI”), gender, gender equality, gender equity, gender awareness, gender-sensitive, abortion, reproductive health, reproductive rights, and any other term used to deprive Americans of their First Amendment rights out of every federal rule, agency regulation, contract, grant, regulation, and piece of legislation that exists.
    • Kevin Roberts, "Foreword: A Promise to America", in Mandate for Leadership: The Conservative Promise: 2025 Presidential Transition Project (2023),[5], edited by Paul Dans & Steven Groves, Washington: The Heritage Foundation, paperback, p. 4-5

S

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  • Protect faith-based grant recipients from religious liberty violations and maintain a biblically based, social science–reinforced definition of marriage and family. Social science reports that assess the objective outcomes for children raised in homes aside from a heterosexual, intact marriage are clear: All other family forms involve higher levels of instability (the average length of same-sex marriages is half that of heterosexual marriages); financial stress or poverty; and poor behavioral, psychological, or educational outcomes.
    For the sake of child well-being, programs should affirm that children require and deserve both the love and nurturing of a mother and the play and protection of a father. Despite recent congressional bills like the Respect for Marriage Act that redefine marriage to be the union between any two individuals, HMRE [Healthy Marriage and Relationship Education] program grants should be available to faith-based recipients who affirm that marriage is between not just any two adults, but one man and one unrelated woman.

V

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  • Be it enacted by the General Assembly of Virginia:
    1. That the Code of Virginia is amended by adding in Article 1 of Chapter 4 of Title 18.2 a section numbered 18.2-37.1 and by adding in Article 4 of Chapter 4 of Title 18.2 a section numbered 18.2-57.5 as follows:
    §18.2-37.1. Certain matters not to constitute defenses.
    A. Notwithstanding any other provision of law, the discovery of, perception of, or belief about another person's actual or perceived sex, gender, gender identity, or sexual orientation, whether or not accurate, is not a defense to any charge of capital murder, murder in the first degree, murder in the second degree, or voluntary manslaughter and is not provocation negating or excluding malice as an element of murder.
    B. Nothing in this section shall be construed to prevent a defendant from exercising his constitutionally protected rights, including his right to call for evidence in his favor that is relevant and otherwise admissible in a criminal prosecution.
    §18.2-57.5. Certain matters not to constitute defenses.
    A. Notwithstanding any other provision of law, the discovery of, perception of, or belief about another person's actual or perceived sex, gender, gender identity, or sexual orientation, whether or not accurate, is not a defense to any charge brought under this article.
    B. Nothing in this section shall be construed to prevent a defendant from exercising his constitutionally protected rights, including his right to call for evidence in his favor that is relevant and otherwise admissible in a criminal prosecution.
    • Virginia House Bill 2132, introduced by Delegate Danica Roem, passed the State House 58-42 and the Virginia Senate 23-15 in February 2021, signed into law by Governor Ralph Northam on 31 March 2021, taking effect on 1 July 2021[6]. Virginia is the first Southern state to pass legislation banning the "gay panic defense" in history.
  • The President should immediately revoke Executive Order 1402041 and every policy, including subregulatory guidance documents, produced on behalf of or related to the establishment or promotion of the Gender Policy Council and its subsidiary issues. Abolishing the Gender Policy Council would eliminate central promotion of abortion (“health services”); comprehensive sexuality education (“education”); and the new woke gender ideology, which has as a principal tenet “gender affirming care” and “sex-change” surgeries on minors. In addition to eliminating the council, developing new structures and positions will have the dual effect of demonstrating that promoting life and strengthening the family is a priority while also facilitating more seamless coordination and consistency across the U.S. government.
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