The Pink Panthers Patrol (often shortened to Pink Panthers) were a civilian patrol group based in New York City, founded by members of Queer Nation in the summer of 1990 in order to combat anti-LGBT violence in Manhattan's West Village. [1] [2] They received notoriety when they were successfully sued in 1991 by MGM Pictures, the owner of the rights to the Pink Panther cartoon. [3] The neighborhood watch group would patrol areas that had a large number of gang assaults on LGBT people. In NYC, where the Pink Panthers was founded these patrols would generally be in the East and West Village. There was a number of patrols in the rambles (Central Park).[ citation needed ]
In 2012, Todd A Haley II resurrected the group and formed the LGBT Pink Panthers Movement, establishing headquarters in Denver, Colorado. [4]
Lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) movements are social movements that advocate for LGBT people in society. Although there is not a primary or an overarching central organization that represents all LGBT people and their interests, numerous LGBT rights organizations are active worldwide. The first organization to promote LGBT rights was the Scientific-Humanitarian Committee, founded in 1897 in Berlin.
The Stonewall riots, also known as the Stonewall uprising, Stonewall rebellion, or simply Stonewall, were a series of spontaneous, violent demonstrations against a police raid that took place in the early morning hours of June 28, 1969, at the Stonewall Inn, in the Greenwich Village neighborhood of New York City. Although the demonstrations were not the first instance in American history when people in the homosexual community fought back against a government-sponsored system that persecuted sexual minorities, they have become the defining event that marked the start of the gay rights movement in the United States and around the world.
A pink triangle has been a symbol for the LGBT community, initially intended as a badge of shame, but later reappropriated as a positive symbol of self-identity. In Nazi Germany in the 1930s and 1940s, it began as one of the Nazi concentration camp badges, distinguishing those imprisoned because they had been identified by authorities as gay men or trans women. In the 1970s, it was revived as a symbol of protest against homophobia, and has since been adopted by the larger LGBT community as a popular symbol of LGBT pride and the LGBT movements and queer liberation movements.
The LGBT community is a loosely defined grouping of lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender individuals united by a common culture and social movements. These communities generally celebrate pride, diversity, individuality, and sexuality. LGBT activists and sociologists see LGBT community-building as a counterweight to heterosexism, homophobia, biphobia, transphobia, sexualism, and conformist pressures that exist in the larger society. The term pride or sometimes gay pride expresses the LGBT community's identity and collective strength; pride parades provide both a prime example of the use and a demonstration of the general meaning of the term. The LGBT community is diverse in political affiliation. Not all people who are lesbian, gay, bisexual, or transgender consider themselves part of the LGBT community.
Queer Nation is an LGBTQ activist organization founded in March 1990 in New York City, by HIV/AIDS activists from ACT UP. The four founders were outraged at the escalation of anti-gay violence on the streets and prejudice in the arts and media. The group is known for its confrontational tactics, its slogans, and the practice of outing.
The Stonewall Inn is a gay bar and recreational tavern at 53 Christopher Street in the Greenwich Village neighborhood of Manhattan in New York City. It was the site of the 1969 Stonewall riots, which led to the gay liberation movement and the modern fight for LGBT rights in the United States. When the riots occurred, Stonewall was one of a relative few gay bars in New York City. The original gay bar occupied two structures at 51–53 Christopher Street, which were built as horse stables in the 1840s.
Gay Liberation Front (GLF) was the name of several gay liberation groups, the first of which was formed in New York City in 1969, immediately after the Stonewall riots. Similar organizations also formed in the UK, Australia and Canada. The GLF provided a voice for the newly-out and newly radicalized gay community, and a meeting place for a number of activists who would go on to form other groups, such as the Gay Activists Alliance, Gay Youth New York, and Street Transvestite Action Revolutionaries (STAR) in the US. In the UK and Canada, activists also developed a platform for gay liberation and demonstrated for gay rights. Activists from both the US and UK groups would later go on to found or be active in groups including ACT UP, the Lesbian Avengers, Queer Nation, Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence, and Stonewall.
Opposition to legal rights for lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) people exists throughout the world. LGBT rights opponents may be opposed to the decriminalization of homosexuality; laws permitting civil unions or partnerships or supporting LGBT parenting and adoption, LGBT military members, access to assisted reproductive technology, and access to sex reassignment surgery and hormone replacement therapy for transgender individuals.
The gay liberation movement was a social and political movement of the late 1960s through the mid-1980s in the Western world, that urged lesbians and gay men to engage in radical direct action, and to counter societal shame with gay pride. In the feminist spirit of the personal being political, the most basic form of activism was an emphasis on coming out to family, friends, and colleagues, and living life as an openly lesbian or gay person.
Queer nationalism is a phenomenon related both to the gay and lesbian liberation movement and nationalism. Adherents of this movement support the notion that the LGBT community forms a distinct people due to their unique culture and customs.
Sylvia Rivera was an American gay liberation and transgender rights activist who was also a noted community worker in New York. Rivera, who identified as a drag queen for most of her life and later as a transgender person, participated in demonstrations with the Gay Liberation Front.
Lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) people in Russia face severe challenges not experienced by non-LGBT residents. Although sexual activity between consenting adults of the same sex is legal, homosexuality is disapproved of by most of the population and pro-LGBT advocacy groups are deemed "extremist" and banned. It is illegal for individuals to "promote homosexuality" and same-sex couples and households headed by same-sex couples are ineligible for the legal protections available to opposite-sex couples. Russia provides no anti-discrimination protections for LGBT people and does not have a designation for hate crimes based on sexual orientation and gender identity. Transgender people are not allowed to change their legal gender and all gender-affirming care is banned. There are currently no laws prohibiting discrimination based on gender identity or expression, and recent laws could be used to discriminate against transgender residents.
LGBT+ Labour, the Labour Campaign for Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender Rights, is a socialist society related to the Labour Party in the United Kingdom. Originally called the Gay Labour Group, the purpose of this organisation is to campaign within the Labour Party and wider Labour movement to promote the rights of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) people, and to encourage members of the LGBT community to support the Labour Party.
Lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) rights in Malta rank among the highest in the world. Throughout the late 20th and early 21st centuries, the rights of the LGBT community received more awareness and same-sex sexual activity was legalized on 29 January 1973. The prohibition was already dormant by the 1890s.
LGBT movements in the United States comprise an interwoven history of lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and allied social movements in the United States of America, beginning in the early 20th century. A commonly stated goal among these movements is social equality for LGBT people. Some have also focused on building LGBT communities or worked towards liberation for the broader society from biphobia, homophobia, and transphobia. LGBT movements organized today are made up of a wide range of political activism and cultural activity, including lobbying, street marches, social groups, media, art, and research. Sociologist Mary Bernstein writes: "For the lesbian and gay movement, then, cultural goals include challenging dominant constructions of masculinity and femininity, homophobia, and the primacy of the gendered heterosexual nuclear family (heteronormativity). Political goals include changing laws and policies in order to gain new rights, benefits, and protections from harm." Bernstein emphasizes that activists seek both types of goals in both the civil and political spheres.
LGBT pride is the promotion of the self-affirmation, dignity, equality, and increased visibility of lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) people as a social group. Pride, as opposed to shame and social stigma, is the predominant outlook that bolsters most LGBT rights movements. Pride has lent its name to LGBT-themed organizations, institutes, foundations, book titles, periodicals, a cable TV channel, and the Pride Library.
LGBT conservatism refers to LGBT individuals with conservative political views. It is an umbrella term used for what is bifurcated into two specific sub-categories, each with its own term and meaning. The first sub-categorical term, Pre-Stonewall LGBT Conservatism, refers to LGBT individuals embracing and promoting the ideology of a traditional conservatism in either a general or specifically-LGBT social context or environment. The second sub-categorical term, Post-Stonewall LGBT Conservatism, refers to self-affirming LGBT persons with fiscally, culturally, and politically conservative views. These post-Stonewall conservatives' social views, though generally conservative too, at the same time reflect a self-determination-stemmed and more recent socio-historical "gay-affirmation" on issues like marriage equality for same-sex couples, gay family recognition, civic equality generally for LGBT people in society, and also a positive role for (gay-affirming) religion in LGBT life, though there is not complete unanimity of opinion among them on all issues, especially those regarding the dynamics and politics of the closet and "identity management," and various legal and political issues The first term can include LGBT people who are opposed to same-sex marriage or other LGBTQ rights while the second term, contrastingly, usually refers to self-affirming gay people who unequivocally favor marriage as a legal institution for both heterosexuals and gays and who simultaneously prefer economic and political conservatism more generally. The number of self-affirming LGBT advocates for conservative ideas and policies became more apparent only after the advent of the modern LGBT civil rights movement in the 1970s even as many gay conservatives, labelled as "self-hating" at the time, did remain closeted in areas where anti-gay socially conservative politicians then led the most organized opposition to LGBT rights. The Realpolitik and ideology situations for LGBT conservatives today vary by their own self-definition, and each country's sociopolitical, cultural, and legal LGBT rights landscape.
New York City has been described as the gay capital of the world and the central node of the LGBTQ+ sociopolitical ecosystem, and is home to one of the world's largest and most prominent LGBTQ+ populations. Brian Silverman, the author of Frommer's New York City from $90 a Day, wrote the 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-rise buildings, 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 advocate and entertainer Madonna stated metaphorically, "Anyways, not only is New York City the best place in the world because of the queer people here. Let me tell you something, if you can make it here, then you must be queer."
Rainbow capitalism is the involvement of capitalism, corporatism, and consumerism in appropriating and profiting from the LGBT movement. It developed in the 20th and 21st centuries as the LGBT community became more accepted in society and developed sufficient purchasing power, known as pink money. Early rainbow capitalism was limited to gay bars and gay bathhouses, though it expanded to most industries by the early-21st century.
Lavender Panthers was an armed self-defence group for the LGBTQ+ community in San Francisco, active from the summer of 1973 until the spring of 1974. Its leader was Raymond Broshears, a gay Pentecostal Evangelist preacher and activist.
