Are gay people asking for reparations

Some critics of gay reparations such as the conservative political commentator Michael Medved have maintained that gay people are not deserving of reparations because unlike Black Americans, gay people are not victims of multigenerational damage, meaning that whatever ills homophobia may have caused in the past, these ills are not the same as those left behind by slavery, as they do not carry over from generation to generation.

He also tied gay reparations to "the broader struggle by LGBTQ people for full citizenship, understood not only as rights and responsibilities, but also respect, recognition, and the sense of belonging to a national community.". But none of this momentum has reached the United States.

Two rulings in particular reveal the animus that American jurisprudence has in the past shown toward gays, lesbians, and bisexuals. One of the deadliest mass shootings in U. Right: Phyllis Schlafly and the Rev. Canada, a country with a decidedly less troubled history when it comes to homosexuality, issued an apology to the gay community in An obvious factor behind the delayed arrival of gay reparations in the United States is that the subject of reparations is particularly vexing in American society, stemming from the still-unsettled legacy of slavery and from racism.

Perhaps as many as 10, people were fired or expelled from their federal jobs during the s and s because they were homosexual or suspected of being homosexual based on evidence as flimsy as how they dressed, talked, or looked.

The policies hardly comprise a homogenous experience, and they do not entail giving people money simply for being gay, as some suspect. In others, they have entailed memorializing the victims of state-sponsored repression of homosexual citizens.

Why the United States

Let’s harness the power of a united front. Hardwicka U. In his concurring opinion, Chief Justice Warren E. Meanwhile, in Bottoms v. In most countries, gay reparations are limited to a government apology to the LGBTQ community for past wrongs and a promise to do better in the future.

Acts of state-sponsored anti-gay discrimination sent an unambiguous message to ordinary Americans that it was acceptable to demean and demonize LGBTQ people, and even to engage in acts of violence against them. For the Mattachine Society of Washington, D.C., the most prominent American organization demanding gay.

Real reparations demand far more. The closest the country has come to embracing gay reparations was inwhen, on the 50th anniversary of the Stonewall riots, the New York Police Department issued a belated apology for the raid that triggered the rebellion.

By the time the Obama administration lifted the policy insome 13, LGBTQ troops had been dismissed from their jobs. The trigger for this witch hunt was President Dwight D. Some of the victims of the Lavender Scare took their own lives, while others were sent to government-run institutions, especially St.

Elizabeths Hospital in Washington, D. Gay activists have compared the treatments offered at St. Adding to such mistreatment have been a host of court decisions that for decades stigmatized homosexual people. In Bowers v. The reparations & LGBTQ+ rights movements are aligned.

If passed, a Senate resolution introduced in June would apologize to LGBTQ federal workers for historical acts of discrimination. Inthe German government opened a monument to gay victims of the Holocaust, an unknown number whom perished in Nazi concentration camps, many of them victims of gruesome medical experiments intended to eradicate their homosexuality.

The opposition has already seen the value of a coordinated anti-LGBTQ+ and anti-Black attack. It’s time we embrace the true meaning of the word ‘reparations'—this isn’t just about giving people money, it’s about offering apologies and taking account for previous mistakes.

Entrapment was followed by the Lavender Scare, the midcentury persecution of federal workers suspected of being homosexual. This ruling was not an aberration; at the time, it was customary for the courts to deny LGBTQ people the right to raise their own biological children and to adopt.

Given the variety of gay reparations available, which one should the U.S. embrace?