11.1: The Gay Rights Movement

Paired Sources from U.S. History, 1877-present
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Abstract

The gay rights movement was inspired by the African American civil rights movement of the 1950s and 1960s. Its roots are generally traced to the Stonewall Riots of 1969, and in some ways it has been even more successful than the fight for racial equality. From often hiding their true selves from their families (not to mention society at large), gay people have achieved enormous societal acceptance over the last half century, best symbolized by the Supreme Court’s decision in Obergefell v. Hodges in 2015, which required all fifty states to accept same-sex marriages.

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