The Triumphs and Drawbacks of the 1970s
The LGBT civil freedom movement plunged into the 70s with full force after Stonewall; and even so, homosexual men and women may have been a tad excessively optimistic that the American people were shifting their attitudes; there were still a substantial majority of folks in 1970 who trembled at the notionof offering constitutional freedoms for couples of the same sex.
We demand a new cause-give us one!
Many protestors, educationists, and college students who championed a wide array of reforms on civil controversies during the 60s and the 70s longed for some fresh movements to add to their programs. LGBT rights were installed immediately into “New Leftist’s” and hippie demonstrations that tore across major cities and college campuses around the nation.
The New Leftist was a semi-organized party of young people, primarily Caucasian, who started turning up to propose civil rights for minorities and to object to the Vietnam War. It was not too long afterwards that many middle-class moms and dads living in US suburban areas, who sent their children off to college year before, started to hear their kids discuss gay marriage and domestic partnership during Thanksgiving break.
These topics were taboo a few years back, and conventional parents mistakenly assumed that the LGBT civil rights movement was in some way contaminating their children.
News Bulletin: Gay Lawmaker Wins Local Government Seat
Even the country’s most liberal cities like San Francisco, California, encountered their share of conservative opposition to LGBT causes. Harvey Milk became San Francisco’s first openly-gay supervisor in 1978.
Milk was recognized for unlocking doors for LGBT folks across the city by campaigning for their civil liberties. He entered into the civic sector expecting to generate change, but on one warm day in front of City Hall, “the Mayor of Castro Street” wasmurdered together with Mayor Moscone, shot by former city superintendent, Dan White.
White had dropped out of the city counsel days before to oppose Moscone’s acceptance of the city’s very first LGBT rights bill.
“If a bullet should enter my brain, let that bullet destroy every closet door.”
–Harvey Milk, 1978.
Nearly one year after Milk’s death, over one-hundred-thousand LGBT men and women rallied and marched in Washington DC to petition civil rights legislation.
The National March on Washington for Lesbian and Gay Rights was a grassroots initiative to assemble gay and lesbian people and their advocates from all over the nation to carry out a manifestation. Some of the ultimatums that organizers wished government officials to address were:
- Passing an all-encompassing LGBT bill of rights.
- Issuing an executive order that prohibits bias based on sexual orientation.
- Eliminating all anti-LGBT laws.
- Stopping constitutional discrimination in lesbian-mother and gay-father guardianship litigation.
This also was the very first time that the American public witnessed an ambitious LGBT action on national television, which may have added to the conservative retaliation that prevented LGBT advances, which was to take place over the next fifteen years.