The Legal Situation of Gays & Lesbians

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 th

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minor could lead to an eight year sentence. These prohibitions were not extended to sexual relations between women. Repression eased during the era of glasnost and perestroika in the late 1980s eased, though prosecutions did continue. Homosexuality was decriminalized in 1993 under the Russian government of Boris Yeltsin, and the same thing took place in the newly independence Baltic republics of Latvia, Lithuania, and Estonia. However, a number of gays previously placed in prison remained there, and any gay or lesbian movement was only in its infancy (Miller 483-485). China has a history filled with references to male homosexuality, but homosexuality was all but erased from Chinese history and culture by the Communists after 1948. After that, homosexuality did not officially exist in China. By 1992, an increasing number of AIDS cases caused the government to become more repressive. The government continues to pretend that homosexuality has been eliminated (Miller 485-488). In Cuba, Fidel Castro made it a priority to root out homosexuality and used tactics ranging form purges to public humiliation to a short-lived experiment with internment camps. There are traditional Latin attitudes against homosexuality, at least fo
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Approximate Word count = 4149
Approximate Pages = 17 (250 words per page)

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