Lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) persons in the U.S. state of Ohio have most of the rights non-LGBT residents have. Same-sex sexual activity is legal in Ohio, and same-sex marriage has been legally recognized since June 2015 as a result of Obergefell v. Hodges. Ohio statutes do not address discrimination on account of sexual orientation and gender identity; however, the U.S. Supreme Court's ruling in Bostock v. Clayton County established that employment discrimination against LGBT people is illegal in 2020. In addition, a number of Ohio cities (including Athens, Columbus, Cincinnati, Cleveland, Dayton and Toledo) have passed anti-discrimination ordinances providing protections in housing and public accommodations. Conversion therapy is also banned in a number of cities. In December 2020, a federal judge invalidated a law banning sex changes on an individual's birth certificate within Ohio.
Recent opinion polls have shown that LGBT rights enjoy popular support in the state. A 2016 Public Religion Research Institute survey showed that 61% of Ohio residents supported same-sex marriage. Another survey by the same pollster in 2019 showed that 71% of respondents favored non-discrimination laws protecting LGBT people.
History and legality of same-sex sexual activity
As part of the Northwest Territory, Ohio passed the "buggery" law, which provided the death sentence for homosexual sexual activity. In 1804, shortly after statehood, the law was repealed and sodomy was legalized. Despite several court decisions and newspaper articles acknowledging sodomy as legal, the Ohio General Assembly made no effort to overturn these decisions or enact a new law over the following decades. However, the Ohio cities of Cincinnati, Dayton, and Columbus were some of the first to pass laws against "indecent behavior" in 1819, 1842, and 1848 respectfully. Cincinnati and Dayton also passed laws in 1849 prohibiting "obscene publications and immoral plays", and Columbus passed a law in 1848 prohibiting men from cross dressing in women's clothing, and vice versa.
Ohio adopted its first sodomy law in 1885, stating that anyone who has "carnal copulation against nature, with another human being or with a beast," is guilty of sodomy, and when convicted, shall be imprisoned in a penitentiary for "not more than twenty years". This was revised to include fellatio (oral sex) in 1889. It applied to private, consensual activity as well, and led to police raids on "establishments with a known gay clientele". In April 1886, the Supreme Court of Ohio ruled in Foster et al v. State that sodomy, or "copulation against nature", required the presence of a male, meaning that lesbian sexual activity was exempt from prosecution and thus legal, whereas homosexual and heterosexual sodomy were both punished by up to 20 years' imprisonment.
A 1906 text on state law stated that sodomy could be committed "between two human beings, as between two men, a man and a woman, a man and a boy, a man and a girl, two boys or a boy and a girl where of that age when capable of the crime". Over the following years, numerous court cases dealt with the issue of sodomy, including one in 1915, where a man was sent to the State Reformatory for having engaged in masturbation. In 1929, Ohio law was changed to make sodomy, said to include "any form of unnatural copulation", an offense without possibility of parole. In 1939, the Ohio General Assembly passed a "psychopathic offender" law, under which those convicted of sodomy could be sentenced to life in a mental health institution and were not permitted to be released, even if they were "cured", until the expiration of the minimum term for which, if he or she had been imprisoned, the prisoner would be eligible for parole. An appellate court, ruling in 1944 in State v. Forquer, held that cunnilingus fell out of the sodomy statute's scope. In 1945, State v. Walhenmaier, an Ohio Circuit Court stated that sodomy could be "evidenced by medical examination results".