Today's Social Issues by Kneeland Timothy W.;

Author:Kneeland, Timothy W.;
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: ABC-CLIO, LLC
Published: 2016-06-14T16:00:00+00:00

Democrats on LGBT Rights

The Democratic Party began embracing the LGBT movement in the 1970s. President Jimmy Carter made a signature move in the history of civil rights in 1977, when his special assistant, Midge Costanza, met with representatives from the National Gay Task Force (NGTF) to hear their grievances about discriminatory federal policies. The meeting led to more high-level meetings and Carter enacted new policies at the Bureau of Prisons and the Public Health Service to assist and protect the rights of people who were LGBT. The meeting initiated further policy discussions that ultimately led the Democratic Party to incorporate gay rights within the Democratic Party (Mattingly and Boyd 2013).

During the 1980s, openly gay candidates became comfortable running for office as Democrats in some parts of the country. In 1983, Democratic congress member Gerry Studds of Massachusetts publicly proclaimed his sexual identity and became the first openly gay member of Congress. He was followed by Barney Frank, another Massachusetts Democrat, who revealed his sexual orientation in 1987. Both men used their political platform to advocate for more equitable treatment for the LGBT community. This was especially important during the Reagan years when gay advocates castigated the Reagan administration for not paying enough attention to the AIDS crisis (Endean 2006).

Studies by political scientist Donald Haider-Markel find that the presence of LGBT legislators increases the likelihood of laws prohibiting discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation (Haider-Markel 2010). LGBT legislators played a leading role in promoting and advocating for bills that advance LGBT civil rights and educating other policy makers on the issue (Reynolds 2013). By 2015, 20 Democratic leaning states, which also had higher than average LGBT representation in their state legislatures, enacted bans on discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity.

LGBT Democrats and civil rights organizations such as the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) and Human Rights Campaign put pressure on state and national party leaders to pass legislation banning discrimination against individuals based on sexual orientation and to include a plank recognizing gay rights in the party platform. Responding to what had become an important constituency in the Democratic Party, the Democrats in 1992 included for the first time in their program an openly gay official, Bob Hattoy, who said, “AIDS knows no class or gender, race or religion, or sexual orientation, AIDS does not discriminate, but George Bush’s White House does” (Human Rights Campaign 2007).

In the 1990s, President Clinton took an incremental step to end discrimination in the military based on sexual orientation. Clinton instituted the Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell policy, a practice whereby the government no longer asked candidates for military service if they were homosexual, but it required members of the gay community to keep their sexual orientation secret or face court martial and dismissal from the service. This policy remained in effect until 2010, when it was repealed by Democratic members of Congress over the objections of many Republicans. Clinton also disappointed members of the LGBT community by supporting DOMA, which defined marriage as a heterosexual institution.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.