Research Paper On Gay Rights

Against the emerging backdrop of national power and Christian faith, what might have been learned about same-sex love or gender identity was buried in scandal.

White, male and Western activists whose groups and theories gained leverage against homophobia did not necessarily represent the range of racial, class and national identities complicating a broader LGBT agenda. We know that homosexuality existed in ancient Israel simply because it is prohibited in the Bible, whereas it flourished between both men and women in Ancient Greece.

Substantial evidence also exists for individuals who lived at least part of their lives as a different gender than assigned at birth.

Morris, Ph D On June 12, 2016, the popular gay dance club Pulse in Orlando was the site of a mass shooting by one assailant. It occurred during what was LGBT Pride weekend for towns and cities in and beyond the United States.

With at least 49 dead and another 50 injured, this hate crime is being called the worst mass shooting in U. The immediate, caring response from mayors, police and FBI authorities, local and national politicians, and the President of the United States, who reached out to express outrage and concern, demonstrates the enormous shift toward acceptance and public support for the LGBT community.

Women and girls, economically oppressed by the sexism which kept them from jobs and economic/education opportunities designated for men only, might pass as male in order to gain access to coveted experiences or income.

This was a choice made by many women who were not necessarily transgender in identity.Where homosexual activity or deviance from established gender roles/dress was banned by law or traditional custom, such condemnation might be communicated through sensational public trials, exile, medical warnings and language from the pulpit.These paths of persecution entrenched homophobia for centuries—but also alerted entire populations to the existence of difference.Same-sex companionship thrived where it was frowned upon for unmarried, unrelated males and females to mingle or socialize freely.Women’s relationships in particular escaped scrutiny since there was no threat of pregnancy.By the 20th century, a movement in recognition of gays and lesbians was underway, abetted by the social climate of feminism and new anthropologies of difference.However, throughout 150 years of homosexual social movements (roughly from the 1870s to today), leaders and organizers struggled to address the very different concerns and identity issues of gay men, women identifying as lesbians, and others identifying as gender variant or nonbinary. Most historians agree that there is evidence of homosexual activity and same-sex love, whether such relationships were accepted or persecuted, in every documented culture. Morris, Ph D George Washington University Washington, D. An earlier version of this essay was written as an appendix for a lesson plan for high school psychology teachers called The Psychology of Sexual Orientation: a modular lesson plan/teaching resource for high school psychology teachers (login required).The full lesson plan is part of a series of 19 unit lesson plans developed as a benefit for APA members, which are available in the members-only section of the APA website.Early efforts to understand the range of human sexual behavior came from European doctors and scientists including Carl von Westphal (1869), Richard von Krafft-Ebing (1882) and Havelock Ellis (1897).Their writings were sympathetic to the concept of a homosexual or bisexual orientation occurring naturally in an identifiable segment of humankind, but the writings of Krafft-Ebing and Ellis also labeled a “third sex” degenerate and abnormal.