Gays and lesbians in the United States have made considerable progressin recent years in their fight for the same legal rights asheterosexual Americans.
With a flick of his pen this week,U.S. President Barack Obama extended more job benefits to the partnersof gay government employees than many had ever had before.
"Manyof our government's hard-working and dedicated, patriotic publicservants have long been denied basic rights that their colleaguesenjoy, for one simple reason: The people they love are of the samesex," President Obama said.
The president was not alone when hesigned the memorandum. Frank Kameny, 84, a pioneer in the gay rightsmovement, was peering over his shoulder. It was a vastly different viewfrom the one Kameny had in 1965, when he was picketing outside theWhite House to be treated just like everyone else.
"Here I wasas a welcome guest, standing on one side of the president, while thevice president stood on the other side," Kameny said. "So it was justan utterly different world. It was like a storybook tale having cometrue."
In 1957, Kameny was fired from his job as an astronomerwith the Army Map Service for being gay. He was among thousands of menand women dismissed from their federal jobs in the 1950s because oftheir sexuality.
During the same period, U.S. senators were conducting investigations into suspected communist infiltration of the government.
MichaelKazin, a historian at Georgetown University in Washington, DC, says thegovernment considered homosexuals to be top security risks.
"Thethinking was, from the government's point of view, they could beblackmailed for communist agents in order to get them to spy forcommunist government because they were at risk of being exposed," Kazinsaid.
As the fear of communism subsided inthe U.S., the effort to keep homosexuals out of the government eased.But it was not until 1995 that then-President Bill Clinton signed anexecutive order barring the federal government from denying securityclearances to people simply on the basis of their sexual orientation.
Thedevelopment was due in large part to the persistent lobbying ofactivists like Kameny, who appealed his firing by the U.S. CivilService Commission up to the Supreme Court. The court did not hear thecase.
"That ended my own case in a formal sense, but it wasclear enough to me that there were fundamental societal issues thatneeded to be addressed," Kameny said.
Kameny's activism alsocontributed to another key achievement in the fight for equality. In1973, the American Psychiatric Association removed homosexuality fromits official list of mental disorders.
That decision came justfour years after gays and lesbians took to the streets in their firstmass demonstrations for respect. On June 27, 1969, police raided a gaybar in New York called the Stonewall Inn. Tired of being harassed, thepatrons fought back, sparking days of riots.
Historian Kazin says the political environment of the U.S. in the 1960s made it an ideal time to protest.
"Theatmosphere of the '60s was an atmosphere of increasing demand forrights from African Americans, Latino Americans, women, students,"Kazin explained. "It made sense that gay men and women who were part ofthese movements, or even if they weren't part of these movements, ifthey were inspired by these movements would have begun to demand rightsfor themselves as well."
Today, gays and lesbians do not sufferthe discrimination they did decades ago. President Obama recentlyappointed an openly gay man to head the Office of Personnel Management,the same institution that fired Kameny for being gay 52 years ago.
Despite that, there is still a strong movement against gay rights, and in some cases, against homosexuality.
TheFamily Research Council in Washington is among the concerned groups.The council's policy analyst, Peter Sprigg, says he believes homosexualconduct is harmful to society.
"We should be discouraging itrather than encouraging it," Sprigg said. "And any time you give abenefit or a subsidy for a particular behavior, you're obviouslyencouraging it. We just feel that that's bad public policy."
Sprigg says people should not be afforded special rights for what he considers to be their chosen way of life.
"Wedo not believe that anyone is born gay. Evidence for genetic orbiological origin for homosexuality from birth is weak tonon-existent," Sprigg said.
But Paul Cates of the American CivilLiberties Union says both gay and straight people do not choose theirsexuality. He says, even if it was a choice, civil rights still shouldbe upheld, like in the case of religion.