THE POLITICAL PROTEST THAT RESULTED FROM THE STONEWALL RIOTS AND THE DETERMINATION TO IMPROVE THE RIGHTS FOR LGBT COMMUNITIES IN THE U.S
SUPREME COURT CASES
In the trend of advancing LGBT and civil rights in the US, many cases that went against the improvement of this trend, were taken to higher matters- the Supreme Court. There were many significant LGBT rights cases taken to the Supreme court,and not all of them were successful. The Bowers vs Hardwick cases in 1986 was one of the first cases to take place. Bowers, a homosexual man, was criminally charged for committing consensual sodomy with another male adult in the bedroom of his home, and at this time, the law states that “there is no constitutional right to engage in consensual homosexual sodomy”. This case was fought with no success and the case was lost. Another case that was sent to the Supreme court in order to advance the rights for the LGBT community in America was the case of the Boy Scouts of America vs Dale in 2000. Boy Scouts of America dismissed their assistant scoutmaster James Dale's membership when the organization found out that he was a homosexual and a gay rights activist. In 1992, Dale filed suit against the Boy Scouts, claiming that the Boy Scouts had “violated the New Jersey statute prohibiting discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation in places of public accommodation.” Unfortunately, this was another unsuccessful case. However, in 2013, votes to end the ban on gay scouts started taking place, leading to fifteen years later, when the ban on homosexuals in Boy Scouts of America was lifted permanently. This was a big positive step towards equal civil and social rights for the LGBT community in U.S. PROTEST ACTION! 1970 - The first Gay Liberation Day March is held in New York City. It commemorates the one-year anniversary of the Stonewall riots. Thousands of members of the LGBT community march through New York into Central Park, this is considered as America's first gay pride parade. In the coming decades, the annual gay pride parade will spread to dozens of countries around the world. - The first LGBT Pride Parade is held in Los Angeles -The first "Gay-in" held in San Francisco 1973 - The board of the American Psychiatric Association votes to remove homosexuality from its list of mental illnesses. 1979 - An estimated 75,000 people participate in the National March on Washington for Lesbian and Gay Rights. LGBT people and straight allies demand equal civil rights and urge for the passage of protective civil rights legislature.