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LGBTQ+ Rights blog
Changing a Name and Gender Marker on IDs: A Starting Point A plain guide to the order of steps for changing a legal name and gender marker, how federal and state rules now differ after the January 2025 executive order, and where to get help. ACT UP Storms the FDA and Changes How Drugs Get Approved How a 1988 protest outside the FDA in Rockville, Maryland pushed regulators toward faster access to experimental AIDS drugs, and why those rules still shape medicine today. Bayard Rustin, the March on Washington's Organizer Kept Offstage The man who planned the 1963 March on Washington was a gay Quaker pacifist with an arrest record. Here is how he built the march, why he was kept in the background, and what he believed came next. Bostock v. Clayton County and What Title VII Now Protects at Work A Georgia child-welfare worker joined a gay softball league and lost his job. The 2020 ruling in his case reads the 1964 Civil Rights Act's ban on sex discrimination to cover gay and trans workers. Compton's Cafeteria and the Trans Uprising Before Stonewall In August 1966 trans women in San Francisco's Tenderloin fought back against a police sweep at an all-night cafeteria. Here is what happened, why it was nearly forgotten, and what it built. Don't Ask, Don't Tell From the 1993 Compromise to the 2010 Repeal How a 1993 compromise meant to ease the military ban on gay service members ended up discharging thousands, and the votes, lawsuits and Pentagon study that finally repealed it in 2010. Frank Kameny's Long Fight Against the Government That Fired Him An astronomer fired by the Army Map Service in 1957 refused to go quietly, petitioned the Supreme Court, picketed the White House and spent fifty years making the federal government apologize. From Bowers to Lawrence: Seventeen Years to Correct a Mistake How an Atlanta bedroom arrest produced a 1986 ruling upholding sodomy laws, why one justice later regretted his vote, and how a Houston arrest in 1998 led the Court to overrule it in 2003. Harvey Milk, the Briggs Initiative and the Campaign That Changed Minds In 1978 California voters were expected to pass a ballot measure to fire gay teachers. They rejected it. Here is how a coalition, not a single hero, turned that vote around. How Obergefell v. Hodges Made Marriage Equality the Law Everywhere A plain guide to the 2015 marriage ruling: the couples behind it, the two constitutional clauses it relied on, the dissents' strongest points, and what keeps it standing a decade later. The Lavender Scare and the Purge of Gay Federal Workers How a 1953 executive order turned 'sexual perversion' into grounds for firing, how thousands of civil servants lost their careers, and what the purge teaches about civil-service protections now. The Military's Transgender Ban From 2017 Posts to the 2025 Order How transgender military service went from allowed in 2016 to banned by posts in 2017, restored in 2021 and banned again in 2025, and what the Supreme Court's May 2025 order changed. The Night at the Stonewall Inn and the Movement It Started How a routine police raid on a Mafia-run Greenwich Village bar in June 1969 turned into nights of resistance, and how organizers turned that anger into the first Pride marches. The Respect for Marriage Act and What It Does if Obergefell Falls The 2022 Respect for Marriage Act passed with votes from both parties. Here is exactly what it guarantees for same-sex and interracial couples, and the gap it leaves. Trans Athletes, Title IX and the Fight Over Who Gets to Play The arguments about fairness, safety and inclusion in girls' and women's sports, laid out honestly, from the February 2025 executive order to the Supreme Court's 2026 ruling. United States v. Skrmetti and the Limits of Equal Protection for Trans Youth What the Supreme Court decided in June 2025 when it upheld Tennessee's ban on gender-affirming care for minors, how it reached rational-basis review, and which big questions it left open.