Conservative Backfire, 1980s and 1990s
The AIDS-HIV epidemic struck the nation hard in the early eighties. Not only were doctors not ready for the epidemic, but they also had no idea as to how people developed the virus or where the illness was coming from. Five pneumonia deaths rapidly became forty-one incidents of a “rare cancer,” and the CDC purposely documented that all the victims were homosexual men.
So, early on, Americans tagged the HIV virus “the gay disease,” and a panic began to develop in the LGBT community, as most worried that the federal government would soon sequester them to control the epidemic.
AIDS hysteria during the 80s also involved the notion that HIV was contracted through kissing and hugging LGBT people or that someone could even get the virus from using public bathrooms or from mosquitoes that previously bit homosexual people.
“I know one man who was impotent who gave AIDS to his wife,
and the only thing they did was kiss.”
–Pat Robertson, 1982.
None of the urban legends materialized, but the HIV epidemic in the 80s absolutely caused heterosexual people to fear the LGBT community even more, and the disease also altered the way the LGBT observed themselves as a free-loving society.
Even after the general public learned what HIV was about and learned how to avoid infection, the silly preconception that LGBT folks were somehow responsible for bringing the virus to America stuck.
This stigma, in addition to the fact that homosexual men and women did not quit championing their civil rights, is what triggered an escalation of hate crimes against the LGBT community, which rose significantly from the late 80s into the mid-90s.
In 1987, one LGBT hate crime was committed approximately every hour.
LGBT men and women were assaulted, murdered, harassed, and victimized in practically every state in the union during this period. However, the LBGT community did not lie down; they soon created aNational Gay Task Force to organize an anti-violence initiative.
The Task Force’s objective was to release hard facts, numbers and testaments, which US lawmakers and US Supreme Court Justices could not ignore. Their efforts soon result in the Hate Crimes Statistics Act of 1988, which President George H. W. Bush endorsed into law in 1990, making it a federal crime for any violent act that involves hatred based on sexual orientation.
The Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act of 1994 quickly followed, which included harsher punishments for individuals associated with hate crimes.
“From the deepest desires often come the deadliest hate.”
–Socrates.
It really seemed like things were looking up for the LGBT civil liberties initiative; unfortunately, along came what was most likely the country’s final “conservative” full-force effort at limiting gay rights.
President Bill Clinton signed the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA) into law in 1996, which allowed states to nullify same-sex marriages; socially conservative organizations like the Family Research Council were responsible for pushing the DOMA bill through Congress.
Now, are you saying I can never marry the one who I love?
The Supreme Court of Hawaii demanded that the federal government take a position on same-sex marriages, or else the states would begin to take matters in their own hands, which gave birth to the DOMA (a.k.a. the civil liberties killer among the LGBT community).
Although the new law did offer a sense of relief for those Americans who worried that LGBT couples would soon have the right to wed in their own state, the measure itself would quickly become short-lived.
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It is without question that the turn of the century not only extended LGBT civil rights, but it also ended up being the decade where the most change would happen for gay rights.
The DOMA act gradually began to loosen up after 2000 when the Supreme Court concurred to strike down Colorado’s pursuit to unprotect LGBT people from sexual orientation discrimination. The justices conceded that all American homosexual, bisexual and transgender men and women are sheltered under the Constitution’s Fourteenth Amendment.
This was the first time America’s highest court favorably addressed the issue of LGBT rights after ordering that sodomy laws were constitutional in 1986; a significant indicator that the law, which does hinge on society, was undoubtedly changing.
Public reaction to the Supreme Court’s decision was, initially, favorable. The Vermont Legislator was the first in the United States to successfully pass a law that established civil unions for same-sex couples.
LBGT couples in Vermont soon possessed the exact same liberties and benefits of marriage that heterosexual men and women did under state legislation. The Vermont Supreme Court sustained the statute immediately after, acknowledging that LGBT couples should be granted equal civil liberties as others in the state.
The judges are now on board!
The Supreme Court supercharged the LGBT civil rights movement once again, in 2003, when it announced that every single sodomy law in the United States was unconstitutional. The ruling made homosexual activity between consenting adults legal in every state by revoking all sodomy laws in Texas and in thirteen other states that continued to honor them.
Right away, after the Supreme Court’s verdict, conservative lawmakers voted in opposition to modify the Constitution for disallowing gay marriage. However, a federal government ban on same-sex marriage was encouraged by President George Bush, who soon set up a committee to explore amending the Constitution to reflect “opposite-sex-marriage-only.” in 2004.
“I do not support a constitutional amendment to prohibit gay marriage.”
–Corrine Brown, US Congresswoman.
After a couple of encouraging Supreme Court opinions and some unexpected assistance from a conservative Congress, it appeared that setting up equal rights for all LTBT folks was no longer a becoming a “non-issue” in America, but rather a “when-is-it-going-to-happen” issue.