The movement to protect gay and lesbian civil rights emerged, for the most part, after World War II. Prior to that time—as far back as the late nineteenth century—a demimonde of gay life existed in New York City and, to a lesser extent, a number of other major urban centers. That little world was, however, a rather limited affair and took place largely undercover. In selected saloons, eateries, and apartments, gay people found a life to live in some of the city’s neighborhoods. Interactions took place at waterfront hideaways, Bowery taverns, off-Broadway entertainment houses, Harlem cabarets, and Greenwich Village speakeasies. In the 1920s and early 1930s, gay and gay-friendly variety-show producers organized drag balls that drew hundreds of gay performers and straight spectators. Writers, actors, and musicians developed a unique style of literature and performance. While the creative community was the first social arena in which gays and lesbians could express themselves publicly, eventually the impetus behind gay subculture spread to other arenas and to other locales in the city.

In the 1930s, in the midst of the Depression, a backlash against gay people and gay culture set in. Laws were enacted in New York, for example, that prohibited homosexuals from gathering in state-licensed public places. Bars, restaurants, and entertainment venues were threatened with the loss of their liquor licenses or ticketing operations if they employed homosexuals or allowed them to gather on the premises. This state of affairs, in fact, continued for decades afterward.

Indeed, anti-gay policing throughout the country increased in the 1940s and, especially, the 1950s, when Senator Joseph McCarthy proclaimed that homosexuals were rife in the U.S. State Department, thereby threatening national security. It was thought that gays were subject to recruitment and manipulation by Soviet spies because of the secret life that they led. Hundreds, perhaps thousands, of gay or presumed gay Federal employees were dismissed; those in the military were discharged. Additionally, newspapers and police departments around the country began to denounce homosexuals as social deviants, child molesters, and victims of mental illness.

In the 1950s, a small assortment of brave men and women organized the first gay rights, or “homophile,” groups, including the Mattachine Society and the Daughters of Bilitis. Although membership in these organizations was largely secret, with few if any members speaking out openly, the groups wrote extensively about the persecution of gays and lesbians, the fears that they faced on a daily basis, and the idea that any assimilation into society—which these groups generally supported—would require greater openness on the part of the population at large. Protests in 1959 by gays and transgender people in Los Angeles proved a harbinger of things to come. Meanwhile, most homophile organizations encouraged LGBTQ+ people to conform to societal norms and worked with experts to convince their fellow citizens that homosexuals were not a threat. In one noted case (One, Inc. v. Olesen, 1958), plaintiffs even successfully appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court for the right to mail a gay-oriented periodical—which initially had been ruled “obscene.”

Yet, fears of being subjected to harassment, losing their jobs, being separated from their families, and even arrested meant that most ordinary LGB people hid their participation in gay life from their straight associates. To communicate among themselves, they relied on a system of codes involving dress, speech, gesture, and popular interests that allowed them to recognize like souls and share, covertly, in one another’s company. The term gay was itself a codeword until the 1960s, when its meaning began to be widely understood by the non-LGBTQ+ populace.

During the 1960s, gays and lesbians became somewhat more vocal, holding small protests in front of the White House and Philadelphia’s Independence Hall against the dismissal of LGB federal employees. Such actions portended more aggressive forms of activism to come. Most notably, in June 1969, at New York’s Stonewall Inn, patrons fought back against a police raid and engaged in street rioting. Although groups in Los Angeles and San Francisco were already growing at a fast pace by then, Stonewall served as a nationwide rallying call. Activists now spoke out publicly against the expectations of “normal” society and the need for LGB people to express themselves freely in whatever manner they chose. Gay liberation marches began to be held, and activists around the country began disrupting city council meetings, sitting in at political campaign headquarters and media company offices, and recruiting widely. It was, they demanded, time for all homosexuals to “come out of the closet” and present themselves to families, friends, and colleagues.

By the 1970s, the onetime consensus regarding homosexuality as aberrant had begun to collapse under the pressure of gay-liberation and gay-power challenges, and of societal changes generally. The “sexual revolution” had redefined the idea of “natural” and expanded the idea of “normal” or “acceptable.” In the mid-1970s a number of major professional organizations such as the American Psychiatric Association, the American Psychological Association, and the American Medical Association determined that homosexuality was not a “condition” to be treated but rather was part of normal human behavior. The U.S. Civil Service lifted the ban on homosexual employment in government, and soon state and local governments began to add “sexual orientation” to their lists of protected statuses (comparable to race, religion, or, later, gender).

Nevertheless, these achievements unfolded against a backdrop of resistance by traditionalists. In 1977, the former beauty queen and advertising persona Anita Bryant led a successful campaign in Florida—”Save Our Children”—to overturn Dade County’s new gay-rights legislation, and other cities followed. In 1978, Harvey Milk, a gay city supervisor in San Francisco, was assassinated (after having called Bryant to account, among other things), and California voters discussed proposals to deny homosexuals employment as public school teachers. These reactionary activities had the effect of drawing some conservative supporters to the gay-rights cause, and states such as California managed to overcome the backlash through conventional political means. In that state, and elsewhere, lobbying groups established a gay presence in government, worked to elect openly gay politicians, and combined their cause with others to advance a generally progressive agenda.

A set-back of a different kind occurred in the 1980s, as the AIDS (acquired immunodeficiency syndrome) epidemic broke out. In response to a long period of silence and inaction by the federal government, the gap was filled at first by non-profit and/or community organizations such as the Gay Men’s Health Crisis and ACT UP. By the time there was some degree of progress at the federal level, there were already hundreds of thousands of victims. The end of the decade witnessed gay men and women, including a new breed of ardent “queer” activists, once more taking to the streets to demand equality and fairness in all areas of life.

In 1986 a Supreme Court decision, Bowers v. Hardwick, had held that homosexuality was identified with sodomy and that sodomy was not a “natural act.” States sought to prosecute homosexual sodomy but without a great deal of success. Then, in 1996, a different Court revisited the issue (or rather the broader issue of sexual-minority rights) in Romer v. Evans. The majority determined that states may not withhold legal protections solely on the basis of sexual orientation. Further historic developments in that decade include the 1993 “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” policy in the military to allow gays to serve (silently); and, in the opposite direction, the 1996 Defense of Marriage Act designed to limit marriage to partners of the opposite sex. Also, with the arrival of anti-retroviral drugs in 1995, the prospect of facing a virtual death sentence upon receiving a diagnosis of AIDS was significantly reduced, replaced by the knowledge that those infected with HIV (human immunodeficiency virus) could lead long lives provided they followed a strict (and often costly) pharmaceutical regime. By the end of the twentieth century, gay characters were being portrayed widely in the movies and television, and eleven states and hundreds of cities had antidiscrimination statutes.

The LGBTQ+ rights movement continued to make gains in the early twenty-first century, though not in a controversy-free way. A Supreme Court decision in 2003, Lawrence v. Texas, struck down a Texas law barring consensual sexual relations between adults of the same sex. The following year, the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court ruled that no law in Massachusetts forbade same-sex couples from marrying (and that relying on “civil unions” for gays was discriminatory). Also in 2004, San Francisco mayor Gavin Newsom, a supporter of gay rights, ordered the city clerk to issue marriage licenses to gay couples. Thousands applied and city officials performed many marriages. Both events started a process that culminated in the 2015 decision by the U.S. Supreme Court, Obergefell v. Hodges, upholding same-sex marriage across the nation. Similarly, a 2009 law, the Matthew Shepard and James Byrd Jr. Hate Crimes Act, made it a federal matter whenever a crime is committed against someone based on their sexual orientation, race, gender, or religion.

Change continues to impact the lives of LGBTQ+ individuals in the United States. In a Pew Research Center survey of LGBTQ+ Americans in 2013, 92 percent of LGBTQ+ adults reported that they thought American society had grown more accepting of them in recent years, and that they expected that trend to continue in the near future. At the same time, discrimination continued to be a problem, with 58 percent reporting having been the butt of jokes or slurs, 39 percent saying they faced rejection by their families or friends, 30 percent reporting physical attacks, and 21 percent indicating mistreatment by employers. The current Trump administration, unlike the preceding Obama administration, has not signaled that it is particularly sensitive to LGBTQ+ issues, seeking among other things to ban transgender people from the military (without fully following through on the threat). Disparagement of gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgender, queer, and other individuals has often resulted from broader anxieties in American culture, not just from fears about homosexuality itself. Recent decades have shown that attitudes toward gay people can be changed—or can sometimes change of their own accord.