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The state of Georgia mostly improved in its treatment of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender residents in the years after 1970, when LGBT residents began to openly establish events, organizations and outlets for fellow LGBT residents and increase in political empowerment.
The state of Georgia, upon independence from the United Kingdom, retained most laws imposed under British rule, but did not explicitly retain a sodomy law from the period until 1817, when the first sodomy law in the jurisdiction's 85 years was enforced. A further amendment of the law took place in 1833, when "carnal knowledge and connection against the order of nature by man with man, or in the same unnatural manner with woman" [1] was outlawed on force of life imprisonment with labor.
The first sodomy case in the state occurred in 1894, when Hodges v. State reached the State Supreme Court; the case of an appeal against a lower court conviction of a boy "under 14 years of age" for sodomy upon another boy resulted in a two-sentence judgement: "Judgment reversed." [2]
In 1949, the state amended its sodomy law, reducing the compulsory life sentence to 1–10 years. The breadth of the law, however, was gradually expanded by both judicial and legislative redefinitions over the decades. The law was formally challenged in 1986 by Bowers v. Hardwick , which was taken to as high as the US Supreme Court before the court ruled against Michael Hardwick, the defendant who was arrested while performing consensual fellatio upon another male. [3]
Ultimately, however, as a larger number of states repealed their sodomy laws through judicial or legislative action, Georgia was one of the last to do so. In 1993, Senator Ronald Slotin (D-Atlanta) unsuccessfully introduced a bill to the Senate to repeal the sodomy law, The Georgia Supreme Court struck down the state's sodomy law in Powell v. Georgia (1998), a 6-1 decision.
In the meantime, LGBT life began to develop in various districts of Atlanta, including Midtown, Little Five Points, and Candler Park districts. In September 1953, 20 gay men were arrested in the Atlanta Public Library following a police stakeout, an event widely covered by the media known as the Atlanta Public Library perversion case. [4] In 1969, the police raid a screening of the film Lonesome Cowboys, targeting "known homosexuals". [5] In 1971, the first Atlanta Gay Pride parade was organized by the Georgia Gay Liberation Front, and was held between Peachtree Street to Piedmont Park. In 1972, the first Atlanta area Metropolitan Community Church congregation was established.
In 1974, local activist Bill Smith founded the Atlanta Barb, the state's first gay newspaper. In 1976, the Atlanta Gay Center was first opened. In 1978, the Southern Baptist Convention's hosting of a speaking engagement by anti-gay activist Anita Bryant at the Georgia World Congress center drew a rally of over 4,000.
In 1983, the Atlanta Campaign for Human Rights (now Georgia Equality) was established. In 1985, the first officially LGBT-welcoming synagogue, Congregation Bet Haverim (Reconstructionist), opened.
In 1988, Southern Voice was established. [6] In 1992, Emory University opened its Gay and Lesbian Student Life office. The Atlanta Gay and Lesbian Visitors Center was opened in 1996, opening Atlanta's Olympics to LGBT tourists.
The history of government recognition of LGBT people in Georgia began in 1972. That year, Atlanta mayor Sam Massell appointed Charlie St. John, an archivist and journalist from the Atlanta Journal-Constitution (where he was fired for his activities by 1973), to his Community Relations Commission, becoming the first LGBT liaison in Atlanta city government. [7] In 1982, an official proclamation for Pride was issued by the Atlanta city government, but it was not signed by Mayor Andrew Young; but in 1984, Young inaugurated the first "Gay and Lesbian Civil Rights Day". In 1988, Mayor Maynard Jackson became the first mayor of Atlanta to attend Pride. In 1993, Fulton County's government became the first county in the state to issue an official Pride proclamation, joining the city of Atlanta in doing so.
In 1997, Cathy Woolard became the first openly gay politician elected to the Atlanta city council.
In the years since, legal victories for lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender residents of Georgia have been few and far between, while historic firsts have taken place more frequently outside of the Atlanta metropolitan area. In 2000, the Atlanta Gay Center was closed due to lack of funding. In 2005, Wesley Chenault opened an exhibit titled The Unspoken Past: Atlanta Lesbian and Gay History, 1940–1970. In 2010, a couple made state headlines for being the first gay couple allowed to dance at a Bleckley County High School prom.
In 2000, Karla Drenner became the first openly gay member of the Georgia House of Representatives; in 2011, already-elected House member Rashad Taylor came out, becoming the first-openly-gay-male member of the Georgia House of Representatives. In 2001, Cathy Woolard was elected the first openly gay City Council President of Atlanta.
In 2010, Simone Bell became the first openly lesbian African American woman to be elected to the Georgia General Assembly.
The 2004 passage of a constitutional ban on same-sex marriage hindered the recognition of same-sex relationships by the state government.
In 2005, the General Assembly passed a law which legalized the ability of counties to establish domestic partnership benefits for gay and lesbian county workers. The City of Atlanta achieved a victory in 1997 when the Georgia Supreme Court, in City of Atlanta v. Morgan ruled domestic partnership registration by the City to be legal, [8] but it took until 1999, when the Georgia Supreme Court ruled against Insurance Commissioner John Oxendine for blocking the city's provision of domestic partnership benefits to city workers for the provisions to commence. [9] In 2003, Fulton County became the first county to pass domestic partnership registration for county residents and municipal employees in same-sex relationships. On December 6, 2007, the city-county government of Athens, Georgia, legalized health benefits for unmarried domestic partners. [10]
Bowers v. Hardwick, 478 U.S. 186 (1986), was a landmark decision of the U.S. Supreme Court that upheld, in a 5–4 ruling, the constitutionality of a Georgia sodomy law criminalizing oral and anal sex in private between consenting adults, in this case with respect to homosexual sodomy, though the law did not differentiate between homosexual and heterosexual sodomy. It was overturned in Lawrence v. Texas (2003), though the statute had already been struck down by the Georgia Supreme Court in 1998.
This is a list of notable events in the history of LGBT rights that took place in the year 1986.
This is a list of notable events in the history of LGBT rights that took place in the year 1972.
This is a list of notable events in the history of LGBT rights that took place in the year 1985.
Lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) persons in the U.S. state of Minnesota have the same rights and responsibilities as non-LGBT people. Minnesota became the first U.S. state to outlaw discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity in 1993, protecting LGBT people from discrimination in the fields of employment, housing, and public accommodations. In 2013, the state legalized same-sex marriage, after a bill allowing such marriages was passed by the Minnesota Legislature and subsequently signed into law by Governor Mark Dayton. This followed a 2012 ballot measure in which voters rejected constitutionally banning same-sex marriage.
Baker v. Wade 563 F.Supp 1121, rev'd 769 F.2nd 289 cert denied 478 US 1022 (1986) is a federal lawsuit challenging the legality of the sodomy law of the state of Texas. Plaintiff Donald Baker contended that the law violated his rights to privacy and equal protection. After a victory at trial, an appellate court reversed the lower court's decision and in the wake of its decision in Bowers v. Hardwick the Supreme Court of the United States refused to review it.
The history of LGBT residents in California, which includes centuries prior to the 20th, has become increasingly visible recently with the successes of the LGBT rights movement. In spite of the strong development of early LGBT villages in the state, pro-LGBT activists in California have campaigned against nearly 170 years of especially harsh prosecutions and punishments toward gays, lesbians, bisexuals, and transgender people.
Lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) people in the U.S. state of Georgia enjoy most of the same rights and liberties as non-LGBT people. LGBT rights in the state have been a recent occurrence, with most improvements occurring from the 2010s onward. Same-sex sexual activity has been legal since 1998, although the state legislature has not repealed its sodomy law. Same-sex marriage has been legal since 2015. In addition, the state's largest city Atlanta, has a vibrant LGBT community and holds the biggest Pride parade in the Southeast. The state's hate crime laws, effective since June 26, 2020, explicitly include sexual orientation.
Lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBTQ+) people in the U.S. state of Wisconsin have many of the same rights and responsibilities as heterosexuals; however, the transgender community may face some legal issues not experienced by cisgender residents, due in part to discrimination based on gender identity not being included in Wisconsin's anti-discrimination laws, nor is it covered in the state's hate crime law. Same-sex marriage has been legal in Wisconsin since October 6, 2014, when the U.S. Supreme Court refused to consider an appeal in the case of Wolf v. Walker. Discrimination based on sexual orientation is banned statewide in Wisconsin, and sexual orientation is a protected class in the state's hate crime laws. It approved such protections in 1982, making it the first state in the United States to do so.
Lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) people in the U.S. state of Pennsylvania enjoy most of the same rights as non-LGBT residents. Same-sex sexual activity is legal in Pennsylvania. Same-sex couples and families headed by same-sex couples are eligible for all of the protections available to opposite-sex married couples. Pennsylvania was the final Mid-Atlantic state without same-sex marriage, indeed lacking any form of same-sex recognition law until its statutory ban was overturned on May 20, 2014.
New York state, a state in the northeastern United States, has one of the largest and the most prominent LGBTQ populations in the world. Brian Silverman, the author of Frommer's New York City from $90 a Day, wrote that New York City has "one of the world's largest, loudest, and most powerful" LGBT communities", and "Gay and lesbian culture is as much a part of New York's basic identity as yellow cabs, high-rises, and Broadway theatre". LGBT travel guide Queer in the World states, "The fabulosity of Gay New York is unrivaled on Earth, and queer culture seeps into every corner of its five boroughs". LGBT Americans in New York City constitute by significant margins the largest self-identifying lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender communities in the United States, and the 1969 Stonewall riots in Greenwich Village are widely considered to be the genesis of the modern gay rights movement.
LGBT history in the United States spans the contributions and struggles of lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) people, as well as the LGBT social movements they have built.
The state of Texas, located in the south in the United States, contains a large community of LGBTQ+ citizens. More specifically, the city Austin, Texas has the third largest population of LGBTQ+ people based on the size of the city. Austin, Texas, and Texas in general, is home to several icons of the LGBTQ+ community such as Karamo Brown, co-founder of the LGBTQ+ group "Queer Eye" and Demi Lovato, a queer artist and activist. There is history of heavy violence against the LGBTQ+ community within Texas such as riots, as well as liberation and parades celebrating those within the community.
This article concerns LGBT history in Florida.
The history of LGBT residents in South Dakota spans back to precolonial Native American times, but has become much more visible in the 21st century.
Doe v. Commonwealth's Attorney of Richmond, 425 U.S. 901 (1976), is a decision by the Supreme Court of the United States which gave summary affirmation of a lower court ruling which upheld the U.S. state of Virginia's ban on homosexual sodomy.
This is a timeline of notable events in the history of non-heterosexual conforming people of African ancestry, who may identify as LGBTIQGNC, men who have sex with men, or related culturally specific identities. This timeline includes events both in Africa, the Americas and Europe and in the global African diaspora, as the histories are very deeply linked.
This is a timeline of notable events in the history of the lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender community in the United States.
Lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) persons have been present throughout the history of the US state of Massachusetts. A 2018 report by Boston Indicators and The Fenway Institute found that Massachusetts had the second-largest LGBT population in the country by percentage, behind Vermont, at roughly 5% of the state population.
