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LGBT’s Rights Movement History

LGBT ‘s history is recently changing rapidly. However, it started way before North America was established and that shifts back to ancient times. In Greek, there were no words such as ‘heterosexual’ or ‘homosexual’ in those days (B, Pickett, 2015). There were many men who loved other men and most of their lovers hadn’t been adults. This was rather moral issue than preference or taste. This was a normal thing and had strange rules about love depending on their status. Those thoughts ended when Christians condemned sexual attraction in the gospels. The idea of the horror of any sex was eased after few generation though, the objection to same-sex relationships was continued. They were not called gay, instead of those names, they were sodomites. After the 18th and 19th century, the interpretations and secular arguments then theological argument became general. At that time, those discussions were made mainly in the field of medicine and psychology. Doctors were gathered by courts to examine the sex crime rate done by gay citizens. Moreover, attendance and time spent at school’s increased, made gay relation between same aged people. The concept was that homosexual was pathological mental state or an expressing disease changed the penalty of involving sexual activity between same gender to medical invention to cure them and that was called rehabilitation. In the 20th century, the redefinition of sexual roles happened again due to premarital intercourse slowly became more common and became acceptable. Furthermore, prohibition of having sex as a pleasure outside of marriage decreased, it became difficult for homophobic people to protest homophile sex. 1950 was a key year for LGBT since then the movement began and spread quickly.

LGBT’s Rights Movement

In 1924, the organization which was the first to be documented named The Society for Human Rights was established in Chicago(CNN, 2017). After 26 years, The Mattachine Society was formed by Harry Hay which focused on homosexuality to be accepted and supports for it. The first lesbian organization, Daughters of Bilitis started within five years in San Francisco. Though, they were not legal. The first legal organization Lamdba Legal was established in 1973, for the equal rights of lesbians and gays. June 28,1970 was a big step for LGBT since this is the day, the first gay parade was held. Community members marched through local streets in New York in order to have the recognition of the Stonewall riots. Movement moved people’s heart positively but also effected negatively, too, and laws shows that. The first state which repealed their sodomy and discriminative homosexuality laws was Illinois in 1961. Though, in 1973 Maryland banned same-sex marriage for the first time. Those situations made LGBT people stand up as a Congress in order to make laws better. In 1974, Kathy Kozachenko was elected to Michigan City Council for the first time. On January 14th, 1975, the first federal gay rights bill was introduced but it never brought up for consideration. As for that history, it has gone up and down and the situation like that continues even now. Also, each president has a strongly effect. The president Bill Clinton was anti-LGBT and people can see from his work, such as signing a military policy which banned gays and lesbians from serving in military() and Defense of Marriage Act which prohibited the same-sex marriage. After him, president Barack Obama made Matthew Shepard and James Byrd Jr. Hate Crimes Prevention Act into law. The name of this law was taken from the victims who died from hate crimes against LGBT’s in 1998. Moreover, “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” was repealed to end military policy which president Clinton allowed. However, the newest president, Donald Trump has clearly showed that he is homophobic. He mentioned that to rethink about transgender’s acceptance in the military on June 30th, 2017. Though, thanks LGBT efforts have been done, the acceptance by the civilization increased and some states in the USA have allowed same-sex marriage. Moreover, non-LGBT people have been affected by them and started to think that they want to get out from categorization of man or woman like them. In order to do that, they started for search their own identities. Social networks enabled identities to more than a dozen.

Now, on Facebook, there are 58 genders which users can choose to customize their identity for themselves. Those were discovered by ABC NEWs, there were agender, trans, to the ones people do not know or have heard of before (yahoo.2014.). Before this, there were three options; male, female and also, not answering or making it secret though, that was not enough. This system was introduced this because workers who made it thought this might be meaningless for many cis genders. However, this will impact few, it means the world. In the future, more gender types will be found which have not been found yet. Thus, users can expand their ideas of identity through social media. These sexuality are now becoming everyone’s problem, those are related to identification system and privacy. The issues are not happening in the future but present in other countries such as in Canada in 2017.

BBC news reported that there was baby born without gender designation. The parent, who is non binary transgender, who is not either male or female, did this in order to have the child discover their own identity. The Ministry of Health had a big problem with this. They were required to fill the space for ‘sex’. The discussion was made to write “U” though, whether to mean “undetermined” or “unassigned”, it continued. The parent wanted baby’s sex to be unofficial. Furthermore, family member suggested to use the pronoun “them” rather than “he” or “she” since determining their gender is not done by visual inspection. Children were following the path which was made by someone else and by the papers, but this baby will go wherever they want. Some people are already looking at the difficulties in the future which those youngster face such as, to find which sexuality is right for them, to change all the documents when it is found.

Now, Germany became the first country in Europe to allow citizens to write “X” on the birth certificate. For this solution, in addition to the things were already argued, there are things that need to be considered. The woman wanted their child’s pronoun to be “they” though, if people use “they”, it will be confusing so a new word will be decided. Moreover, many children will have trouble choosing their identity thus, for example in school they have to have counselor who is an experts in those issue and can easily talked to. There is more that should be done to end these conflicts and that is related to other issues happening recently.

Infant

Identifying as someone as a male or female is usually done by just looking at their body’s . Thus, how to show citizens that he or she is transgender or not is a very big problem because it can not be done that way anymore. This seems like LGBT matter, but visa versa it can be said we will be not sure a person is truly cis gender or not. Furthermore, identification systems will not change depending on people. Thus, they have to identify themselves in other ways. In news article written by R. DiManno, expired passport, health card with photo, birth certificate, student ID card, were not enough to renew passport. Documented proof was required for it. This new system will confuse many citizens but it is needed to welcome LGBT people into society. Service Ontario has been working with the federal government and is now accepting the receipt from making new health cards with the health card itself as identification for renewing passports. The question remains whether we should get receipts from Service Ontario to identify our gender with the card which does not say whereas sexuality is thought to not matter. The passport needs sex because other countries may require to know it when entering there. The solution for this is to discuss these issues between leaders of the country such as presidents and prime ministers and set rules for identification on documents. Moreover, it is beneficial and efficient to make a list of identities which are approved to write on them. This discussion will never be finished since there are more gender types which have not been discovered yet. It is important to keep on changing many things, ideas and thoughts. It is obvious that there will be a meeting about these problems among countries, so why not do it now. Though, there are more issues related to the fact that human’s sexuality can no longer be distinguished by their appearance.

“Privacy” is a key word to discuss issues related to administration of identity of LGBT that they face every day. The issue related to this occurred in school. It is about bathrooms, whether to choose based on their body or identity since schools usually do not have unisex washroom. This issue did not come up until the end of the19th century(T. Kogan. 2016). When North Carolina legislated a law to use the one that matches their sex, the government allowed the use of its which corresponded to their sexuality. This looks like the solution to end this problem, but, instead of that, it changed into another issue. Surprisingly, this is reported as a transgender matter but the truth was not told from the beginning, the history. The reason why gender separated bathrooms were made was to protect man’s ideology. There was a time when everybody thought that public realm and workplace belonged to them and private realm and home were for woman. Though, this reality could not go against the current trend and evolution of society. Many of them started to work in factories that made them involved in the places that was considered to be a man’s field. Instead of inviting them, men saw them and worried and did not let go of the positions where men felt higher than them. In order to continue that feeling, they began to find the scientific proof that female are weaker than men and needed to be protected. They have legislate many laws with the term of “protecting woman”. This enabled them to reconfirm their ideology. It is built from this way of thinking about ladies. Moreover, as a factor, in facilities, there were no bathrooms inside the buildings and workers used toilets built outside. But the concern of sanitation by Correa, changed dirty, unclean piping facilities into a public sewerage system. Also, the evolving factory machines were considered a danger to female workers and the situation of female working with male side by side and using the same bathrooms were stressing the Victorian value to men. These factors made them so insecure that it became the cause of this matter being discussed now. Making sex divided restroom is not about the equality. It is ideological policy for them and is purely nominal “to protect weak woman” and this became the moral ideology which is setting the woman’s position, place and role. Non-transgenders feels it is a threat since homophobic saids that, to allow transgenders to use woman’s washrooms is the same as allowing men in the it and this reminds people that vision of man’s violence toward women. To think critically, it is obvious that this is not an ethical way of thinking. However, just looking at their bodies, we can not know whether users are really trans or not and it will become a threat to woman. The important thing is to know and understand the history. Also, to look at the fact that there are many same sex restrooms on airplanes, in convenience stores and so on. A few newspapers suggest that all of those should be unisex but it is not enough. Though, there are woman who feel scared when there are man in the same bathroom. In order to decrease those problems, the bathroom has to have security cameras and needs to be placed where many people can see and be near. Privacy is not in the gender separated place, it is in the small room where you will be alone. A toilet is not the thing which was thought about ladies privacy but male dignity so that, it is everybody’s matter.

  • https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-40480386
  • https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/homosexuality/
  • https://edition.cnn.com/2015/06/19/us/lgbt-rights-milestones-fast-facts/index.html

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