People around the world face vlence and equaly—and sometim torture, even executn—bee of who they love, how they look, or who they are. Sexual orientatn and genr inty are tegral aspects of our selv and should never lead to discrimatn or abe. Human Rights Watch works for lbian, gay, bisexual, and transgenr peopl' rights, and wh activists reprentg a multiplicy of inti and issu. We document and expose ab based on sexual orientatn and genr inty worldwi, cludg torture, killg and executns, arrts unr unjt laws, unequal treatment, censorship, medil ab, discrimatn health and jobs and hog, domtic vlence, ab agast children, and nial of fay rights and regnn. We advote for laws and polici that will protect everyone’s digny. We work for a world where all people n enjoy their rights fully.
Contents:
GAY REPARATNS ARE PAST DUE
Compared to s mocratic peers Wtern Europe, the Uned Stat is a gay reparatn laggard. Dpe the overwhelmgly posive prs the Uned Stat gets on s LGBT advanc, the ntrast wh Spa is strikg: although same-sex marriage fally arrived natnwi 2015 (imposed by the urts), many other areas of Amerin life, LGBT rights are eher weak or unr attack. At least when pared to the Spanish experience, the stggle for same-sex marriage the Uned Stat failed to engage the public to a larger bate about the history of homosexualy the untry and about the ntributns of LGBT people to society today. One price of the narrow marriage equaly victory has been to leave tact and largely unexamed the long history of anti-gay anim, discrimatn, and homophobia Amerin culture. * reparations for gay people *
In 2017, for stance, the UK issued posthumo pardons to thoands of gay and bisexual men nvicted of “gross cency” the past, cludg Alan Turg, the mathematician who famoly broke the Germans’ Enigma s durg the send world war. It may seem surprisg to Amerin rears, but one of the most vibrant human rights movements around the world today is “gay reparatns, ” or polici tend to make amends for the legacy of systemic discrimatn on the basis of sexual orientatn and genr inty.
In still other untri, gay reparatns have centered on a pardon to anyone nvicted unr laws that crimalized same-sex attractn, as the Uned Kgdom, which 2017 issued a posthumo pardon to those nvicted of “gross cency, ” cludg Alan Turg, the mathematician creded wh shorteng the end of World War II; or even fancial pensatn for wag or pensns lost due to havg spent time prison or a mental stutn bee of a homosexual offense, as Spa sce 2009 and Germany sce 2016.
THE CASE FOR GAY REPARATN
The clost the untry has e to embracg gay reparatns was 2019, when, on the 50th anniversary of the Stonewall rts, the New York Police Department issued a belated apology for the raid that triggered the rebelln.
Surely, the absence of gay reparatns—or even a discsn of them— the Uned Stat is not out of a rosy history ee of systemic discrimatn toward the LGBTQ muny, although a valid argument n be ma that this history is not particularly well known, save, perhaps, for “don’t ask, don’t tell. Des before “don’t ask, don’t tell, ” om the 1920s through at least the 1960s, there was the policy of “entrapment, ” which volved unrver police officers sendg flirtat signals to other men they prumed to be homosexual the hop of ensnarlg them to illic activy. Acrdg to the historian Eric Cervi’s book The Deviant’s War, War, which is about gay rights pneer Frank Kameny, the 15 years after World War II, “homosexual arrts—cludg those for sodomy, dancg, kissg, or holdg hands—occurred at the rate of one every ten mut, ” for a grand total of 1 ln arrts.
Perhaps as many as 10, 000 people were fired or expelled om their feral jobs durg the 1950s and 1960s bee they were homosexual or spected of beg homosexual based on evince as flimsy as how they drsed, talked, or looked. Supreme Court lg that upheld the state of Geia’s sodomy laws, the urt termed that the Constutn did not protect the rights of gays, lbians, and bisexuals to engage private, nsensual sexual relatns, bee, the jtic nclud, homosexual sex has no nnectn to fay, marriage, abortn, or procreatn. The famo and bloody history of societal attacks on the Amerin LGBTQ muny clus sger and spokperson Ana Bryant’s 1977 Save Our Children csa, which picted gay men as pedophil; Evangelist Jerry Falwell’s “claratn of war” on homosexualy, a rhetoril tactic employed durg the 1980s to raise funds for Falwell’s Moral Majory anizatn; and the 2016 attack on Pulse, a gay nightclub Orlando, Florida.
WHY GAY REPARATN’S TIME HAS COME
The apology me wh a multiln-dollar payout to pensate victims of the “gay purge, ” those fired om the ary bee of their sexual orientatn, and thorized a memorial to the victims of those persecuted for their sexual orientatn the pal cy of Ottawa. Some crics of gay reparatns such as the nservative polil mentator Michael Medved have mataed that gay people are not servg of reparatns bee unlike Black Amerins, gay people are not victims of multigeneratnal damage, meang that whatever ills homophobia may have ed the past, the ills are not the same as those left behd by slavery, as they do not rry over om generatn to generatn.
Medved also pots to the enomic succs of some the Amerin LGBTQ muny (which has generated the mythil notn that LGBTQ Amerins are more affluent than the populatn at large) as a reason for why gay reparatns are rndant. As argued by a wrer for the right-wg webse RedState, gay reparatns would allow for reparatn claims by the “obe, the disfigured, the disabled, the short, the bald, ” and also by “[m]igrants who weren’t treated kdly when they tried to enter the U. They have also leveraged historil narrativ of homosexual reprsn to fluence public opn and policy toward the LGBTQ muny, such as the opprsn of gays and lbians unr Nazi Germany or unr the homophobic laws of the Francis Fran regime Spa, and shamed public officials for failg to stand up for the human rights of LGBTQ people.