LGBTQ MOVEMENT PROGRESS – KARTIKEYA RAO
It's been 51 years since the first brick was thrown at the Stonewall Inn — a
moment some historians have deemed the beginning of the modern fight for
LGBTQ rights in the US.
In the half-century following the famed Stonewall riots, the landscape of
LGBTQ civil rights has completely shifted.
In the last decade alone, many of the issues like marriage equality, same-
sex adoption, and the right for transgender people to use the bathroom of
their choice have had their day in court and successfully made
advancements for the rights of LGBTQ people. Legal victories coupled with
the heightened visibility of LGBTQ people in the media make the 2010s a
notable decade for the community.
But while this has been a decade of monumental change, it is also important
to note that many of the issues the organizers at the Stonewall Inn fought
against, like LGBTQ homelessness and safety from assault, remain dire —
with transgender women of color at a disproportionately high risk for
violence and assault.
Here’s the landmark changes
Florida's Third District Court of Appeal ended the state's ban on gay adoption in 2010.For over
33 years, Florida barred all gays and lesbians from adopting children. This law ended in 2010
after Florida’s Third District Court of Appeal in Miami ruled that the ban was unconstitutional
and there was “no rational basis” for it — making Florida the final US state to abolish adoption
bans for gays and lesbians.
A federal judge in San Francisco struck down Proposition 8 in 2010, abolishing
California’s ban on same-sex marriage. Proposition 8, a California law voted into
effect in 2008 that prohibited same-sex marriage, was struck down by Vaughn R. Walker,
chief judge of the Federal District Court in San Francisco, in 2010. Walker stated that
Prop 8 stood in direct opposition to the Equal Rights Protection Clause of the Fourteenth
Amendment, which prevents states from "deny(ing) to any person within its jurisdiction
the equal protection of the laws." Though the ban of Proposition 8 did not immediately
make same-sex marriage in California legal and did not eliminate bans against same-sex
marriage in other states, it was a significant step in the overall battle for marriage equality
in the US.
