Within the past year the state of New York held a vote on gay marriage. Evolving Political Landscape - Gay Activism In Queens To provide gays equal treatment under the law while denying them access to marriage, requires the creation of a completely parallel body of law, similar in most respects to the laws governing heterosexual marriage. Marriage provides a whole set of rights to spouses, to which gays would like access - such as visitation rights in hospitals, healthcare rights via a working partner and inheritance rights from a spouse. Others believe that gays should have the same rights as heterosexuals to enter into marital unions. They believe that there's a sanctity to marriage, involving child birth, offspring and frequently religion, which they do not want transformed into a purely legal arrangement by expanding it to encompass gay rights.
Some believe that marital rights should be reserved for heterosexuals only. Recently there was a New York State vote on marital rights for gays. Debate Over Gay Rights & Gay Marriage Continues Today the front line for equal treatment under the law has moved onto spousal rights. In 2004 a court case in Texas struck down the validity of state sodomy laws, arguing that one's sexual practices, when done privately by two consenting adults was not any of the state's business. Equal Treatment Under The Law - A Changing Landscape These percentages may not, on the surface, appear to align with one's own personal experience, because many gays and lesbians continue to hide their sexuality identity due to societal pressures. It's also worth noting that gay sexuality is also found in other mammalian species, some of which is documented in a book entitled Biological Exhuberance: Animal Homosexuality and Natural Diversity.
It's normal to have some deviation within just about any large population. This sort of diversity is well documented in genetics where it is normal for certain human attributes such as eye color, height, sexuality and intelligence to lie outside the norm by one standard deviation. It is believed that lesbians, gays, bisexuals and transgender people comprise up to 15% of the population, which statitically speaking, is one standard deviation from the norm. One method used to galvanize and help organize the LGBT community was the use of parades to help establish the gay community's identity and to help bring gays together. Following this incident, the gay community was galvanized and began to organize itself, first in New York and soon this movement spread throughout the rest of the nation. Gay Pride Parades - Exercising Freedom Of Speechįollowing the raid, the heretofore unorganized gay community, responded with rioting in the west village neighborhood streets for a few days. The Stonewall Inn had become a hang out for "tranvestites and effeminate young men" according to reports given of that time and attracted a large following in the gay community. In 1969 the Stonewall Riots erupted following an early morning raid of the Stonewall Inn in the west village of New York City. Hence commercial businesses didn't openly cater to gay audiences, but over time a number of bars began to accommodate them. Sodomy laws prohibited some sexual acts, including interaction by members of the same sex. Back in the sixties, gay sexual acts were outlawed in the United States by virtue of sodomy laws which were generally enacted at the state level. Continued / Jackson Heights / Multi-cultural Queens NY / Queens Buzz.