The Modern Gay and Lesbian Political Movement
The modern movement to gain civil and political rights for sexual minority persons has been operating at some level throughout this century. However, there was no significant progress culturally and legally until the 1970s. At that point, the gay/lesbian movement built upon the surging African-American civil rights movement and feminist rights movement and began to gain success.
The sexual minority political movement, as it has developed in the United States during the last thirty years, has helped articulate a new politics. This movement rejected the sharp distinction between the public and private realms and has largely maintained that politics is deeply personal. The intention in this analysis is to discuss the positive and negative consequences of this stance as articulated by the sexual minority community.
The personal has always been political, although it is only during the past few decades that this has been acknowledged and made visible. The personal beliefs of adherents, their personal values and personal social locations, have always affected the way that people vote and the kinds of legislation that they support. There is no neutral public sphere in which all personal qualities drop away from the individual, replaced by an objective persona that operates solon-like to make political judgments. The sexual, too, has always been part of politics, although hidden. Clearly the United States is now preoccupied with sexuality as it has been forced into the open at the highest levels.
Sexuality has always been a subject of legislation. This most private of matters has long been regulated by the state, with contraception, for example, only recently made available to the public after the repeal of anti-contraceptive laws in many states. Gay/lesbian sexual practice has been strictly forbidden, generally under the rubric of sodomy statutes or laws that forbid certain...