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LGBT social movements share related goals of social acceptance of Homosexuality , Bisexuality , or Transgender ism. LGBT refers to Lesbian , Gay , Bisexual and Transgender people, and their movements include the '''Gay and Lesbian Rights Movement''', Gay Liberation , Lesbian Feminism , the Queer movement and Transgender Activism . A commonly stated goal is Social Equality for LGBT people; some have also focused on building LGBT communities, or worked towards Liberation for the broader society from Sexual Oppression . LGBT movements organized today are made up of a wide range of Political Activism and cultural activity, such as Lobbying and Street Marches ; social groups, support groups and community events; magazines, films and literature; academic research and writing; and even business activity. GOALS AND STRATEGIES Sociologist Mary Bernstein writes: "For the lesbian and gay movement, then, cultural goals include (but are not limited to) challenging dominant constructions of Masculinity and Femininity , Homophobia , and the primacy of the gendered heterosexual Nuclear Family ( Heteronormativity ). Political goals include changing laws and policies in order to gain new Rights , benefits, and protections from harm."Bernstein, Mary (2002). ''Identities and Politics: Toward a Historical Understanding of the Lesbian and Gay Movement''. Social Science History 26:3 (fall 2002). Bernstein emphasizes that activists seek both types of goals in both the civil and political spheres. As with other social movements, there is also conflict within and between LGBT movements, especially about strategies for change and debates over exactly who comprises the constituency that these movements represent. There is debate over to what extent lesbians, gays, bisexuals, transgendered people, intersexed people and others share common interests and a need to work together. Leaders of the lesbian and gay movement of the 1970s, 80s and 90s often attempted to hide butch lesbians, feminine gay men, transgendered people, and bisexuals from the public eye, creating internal divisions within LGBT communities.Bull, C., and J. Gallagher (1996) Perfect Enemies: The Religious Right, the Gay Movement, and the Politics of the 1990s. New York: Crown. LGBT movements have often adopted a kind of and Gender Identity are innate and cannot be consciously changed, attempts to change gay, lesbian and bisexual people into heterosexuals (" Reparative Therapy ") are generally opposed. However, others within LGBT movements have criticised identity politics as limited and flawed,e.g. ) or have argued that all members of society have the potential for same-sex sexuality (such as Adolf Brand or Gay Liberation ) or a broader range of gender expression (such as the Transgender writing of Kate Bornstein ). Some elements of the Queer movement have argued that the categories of gay and lesbian are restrictive, and attempted to Deconstruct those categories, which are seen to "reinforce rather than challenge a cultural system that will always mark the nonheterosexual as inferior."Bernstein (2002) OPPOSITION See Also: LGBT rights opposition LGBT movements are opposed by a variety of individuals and organizations. They may have a personal, moral or religious objection to homosexuality. Studies have consistently shown that people with negative Attitudes Towards Lesbians And Gays are more likely to be male, older, religious, Politically Conservative , and have little close personal contact with Out gay men and lesbians.Studies finding that heterosexual men usually exhibit more hostile attitudes toward gay men and lesbians than do heterosexual women:
HISTORY See Also: Timeline of LGBT history Before 1860 In who was one of the authors of the Napoleonic Code . In 1833, an anonymous English-language writer wrote a poetic defence 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? Three years later in Switzerland, Heinrich Hoessli published the first volume of ''Eros: Die Mannerliebe der Griechen'' ("Eros: The Male-love of the Greeks"), another defence of same-sex love. 1860 - 1944 ]] Modern historians usually look to German activist Karl Heinrich Ulrichs as the pioneer of the LGBT rights movement. Ulrichs Came Out publicly and began publishing books about same-sex love and gender variance in the 1860s , a few years before the term "homosexual" was first published in 1869 . Ulrichs' '' Uranian s'' were people with a range of gender expressions and same-sex desires; he considered himself "a female psyche in a male body". From the 1870s, social reformers in other countries had begun to take up the Uranian cause, but their identities were kept secret for fear of reprisal. A secret British society called the " poet Edward Carpenter and Scottish Anarchist John Henry Mackay wrote in defense of same-sex love and Androgyny ; Carpenter and British homosexual rights advocate John Addington Symonds contributed to the development of Havelock Ellis 's groundbreaking book ''Sexual Inversion'', which called for tolerance towards "inverts" and was suppressed when first published in England. was a prominent German physician, Sexologist , and gay rights advocate.]] In Europe and America, a broader movement of " Free Love " was also emerging from the 1860s among First-wave Feminists and radicals of the Libertarian Left . They critiqued 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 also spoke in defence of same-sex love and challenged repressive legislation, such as the Russian anarchist and feminist Emma Goldman . In 1898 , German doctor and writer Magnus Hirschfeld formed the Scientific-Humanitarian Committee to 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'' (Are These Women? Novel about the Third Sex) by , 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. Hirschfeld, whose life was dedicated to social progress for homosexual and transgender people, 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. However, the gains made in Germany would soon be Drastically Reversed with the rise of Nazism , and the institute and its library were destroyed in 1933 . The Swiss journal Der Kreis was the only part of the movement to continue through the Nazi era. 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 twentieth century, but little is known about them.Norton, Rictor, (2005), " The Suppression of Lesbian and Gay History " A better documented group is , 2005 ' 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.]] 1945 - 1968 See Also: Homophile Immediately following . 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 within established political systems for social acceptability; radicals of the 1970s would later disparage the homophile groups for being rioted against police harassment at a popular all-night restaurant, Gene Compton's Cafeteria. 1969 - 1974 See Also: Gay Liberation 's links with the counterculture are also evident.]] The New Social Movements of the sixties, such as the Black Power and Anti-Vietnam War movements in the U.S, the May 1968 insurrection in France, and Women's Liberation throughout the Western world, inspired some LGBT activists to become more radical, and the Gay Liberation Movement emerged towards the end of the decade. This new radicalism is often attributed to the Stonewall Riots of 1969 , when a group of transgender, lesbian and gay male patrons at a bar in New York resisted a police raid. Although Gay Liberation was already underway, Stonewall certainly provided a rallying point for the fledgling movement. Immediately after Stonewall, such groups as the 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 in 1971. One of the values of the movement was Gay Pride . Organized by an early GLF leader Brenda Howard , the Stonewall riots were commemorated by annual marches that became known as Gay Pride Parade s. From 1970 activists protested the classification of homosexuality as a mental illness by the American Psychiatric Association in their DSM , and in 1974 it was replaced with a category of "sexual orientation disurbance" then "ego-dystonic homosexuality", which was also deleted, although "gender identity disorder" remains. 1975 - 1986 , 1976.]] From the anarchistic Gay Liberation Movement of the early 1970s arose a more and Beth Elliot were sidelined or expelled because they were transsexual. During this period, the International Lesbian And Gay Association (ILGA) was formed (1978), and it continues to campaign for lesbian and gay Human Rights with the United Nations and individual national governments. , represents Lesbians and Gay men. It is the most recognised symbol of the LGBT rights movement.]] , Prostitution and Transsexuality . The term "gay" came to be more strongly associated with homosexual males. In Canada, the coming into effect of s.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.Lehman, M. (2005). . 1987 - present Some historians consider that a new era of the gay rights movement began in the 1980s with the emergence of AIDS , which decimated the leadership and shifted the focus for many. This era saw a resurgence of militancy with Direct Action groups like ACT UP (formed in 1987), and its offshoots Queer Nation (1990) and the Lesbian Avengers (1992). Some younger activists, seeing "gay and lesbian" as increasingly normative and politically conservative, began using the word Queer as a defiant statement of all Sexual Minorities and gender variant people — just as the earlier liberationists had done with the word "gay". Less confrontational terms that attempt to reunite the interests of lesbians, gays, bisexuals and transpeople also became prominent, including various Acronyms like LGBT , LGBTQ, and LGBTI. As of 2006 , these acronyms have become commonplace descriptors used by organisations that once described themselves as "gay rights" groups. In the 1990s, organizations began to spring up in non-western countries, such as Progay Philippines, which was founded in 1993 and organized the first Gay Pride march in Asia on June 26, 1994. In many countries, LGBT organizations remain illegal (as of 2006 ) and transgender and homosexual activists face extreme opposition from the state. Also, many activists attempted to turn the attention of the West to the situation of queers in non-western countries. The 1990s also saw a rapid expansion of , with the founding of the Intersex Society Of North America by Cheryl Chase . In many cases, LGBTI rights movements came to focus on questions of Intersectionality , the interplay of oppressions arising from being both queer and Underclass , Colored , Disabled , etc. In 2007 United States Congress passed a historic hate crimes bill allowing for federal investigation of hate crimes. This bill serves to help local law enforcement cut down on hate crimes against LGBT people and others that may be targeted. It allows for federal aid in solving hate crime cases and other things. This is a great change and victory for the homosexual community. No longer will cases of those such as Teena Brandon (Brandon Teena), a transgender woman who was raped and then later killed by the free men who raped her, be tolerated. This is the first time a bill has included the words "sexual orientation." SEE ALSO Articles
Categories REFERENCES EXTERNAL LINKS
FURTHER READING
Eisenbach, David, "Gay Power: An American Revolution." New York: Carroll & Graf, 2006. ISBN-10: 0-78671-633-9
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