Gay and lesbian communities in different parts of the world are subjected to different laws, different cultural traditions, and have achieved differing degrees of success in gaining social and political empowerment as a result. The Western legal tradition has had much to do with the advances made by gays in this part of the world, while legal traditions more bound with religious doctrine or other traditional sources have not been as willing to loosen restrictions on gays and lesbians. An examination of the legal situation in the West and in the non-Western cultures will point out some of these differences.
The present legal situation in much of the West shows a certain ambivalence toward homosexuals rather than an outright hostility, though there are factions in society that do show such hostility. Indeed, this has been a source of legal uncertainty as violence against gays and lesbians increases while at the same time there is uncertainty as to whether or not to pass laws including sexual orientation as a classification for determining when a crime is a hate crime. The gay movement has long fought against government-sanctioned discrimination, and it has done so with some success. At the federal level, the movement has effected the repeal of antigay employment laws and immigration policies but failed on changing the military ban on gay and lesbian service in the armed forces for the most part. Antigay employment laws were instituted in the post-World War II era on the false rationale that federal civil servants who were gay might be blackmailed. These restrictions were eliminated by the U.S. Civil Service Commission in 1975. Immigration reform was also successful with the dilution and eventual deletion of antigay and antilesbian provisions of the Immigration Act in a revision passed in 1991. At the state level, the movement has focused on efforts to overturn criminal laws prohibiting private, adult, consensual same-sex be...