Goals:
1. Understanding LGBT experience pre and post Stonewall (Then and Now)
2. Contestation and meaning of "Stonewall" and "liberation."
In case you forgot: Signifier (symbol, word), and Signified (cultural meaning with the signifier)
Then (60s and 70s):
- Military: "homosexuality is incompatible with military service"
- Law: Sodomy Laws, Gays and lesbians didn't have job safety, if you were found in a gay bar, you could be raided and arrested, no relationship recognition, cross-dressing statutes
- Culture/Media: Gay wasn't a word that was allowed to be used in Village Voice, All gays portrayed in the movies were "campy," "queeny," and were usually killed off by the end of the third reel of the movie (until quite recently...past twenty to thirty years)
- Kate Millett: forced to come out of the closet because it was assumed she was a lesbian. Otherwise, lesbians weren't very prominent in the media
- Gays were seen as effeminite (sissy, fairy), lesbians were considered butch (killers or villains)
- Science/Medicine: Homosexuality was considered a mental disease, electroshock therapy to "cure" homosexuality, "Straight Camp"
- Religion: Sin to be gay in all religions
- Government/Politics: Harvey Milk was the first openly gay man to be elected to government in the state of California, homosexuals treated like Communists as "invisible traitors"
- School/Education: No out students until after college, Briggs initiative to ban openly gay teachers (can't reproduce so must recruit)
Now (2010):
- Military: "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" compromise is currently (as of today) enjoined
- Law: Job protection is instated for gays and lesbians (in 20 states), gay marriage legal in five states, and civil unions in a few others, sodomy laws ruled unconstitutional in 2003, but they're still around
- Culture/Media: LGBT community is not hidden in the media today, but there's still an undertone saying that homosexuality is wrong
- There's a more positive light being shed on the LGBT community than forty years ago
- Science/Medicine: People are trying to claim that homosexuality is a genetic defect, There is no cure for homosexuality because it is not a disease
- Religion: Some gay-supportive religions
- Government/Politics: There is a difference, but it's not a huge change. There are 3 openly gay (out of 435) in the House of Representatives
- School/Education: Coming out earlier, GSAs in many schools (The Princes ad *embedded below*)
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