LGBT rights in the United States

Public opinion

Public opinion of same-sex marriage in the United States has changed significantly since the late 1980s; in the early 2020s, an overwhelming majority of Americans approved of the legality of these marriages, with younger people more likely to express support.

From 1988 to 2009, support for recognized same-sex marriage increased between 1% and 1.5% per year, and accelerated thereafter, rising above 50% in Pew Research Center polling for the first time in 2011. Furthermore, a 2012 Gallup poll found 61% support for allowing gay and lesbian individuals to adopt children.

"The transformation of America's response to homosexuality", Jeremiah Garretson wrote in 2018, "has been — and continues to be — one of the most rapid and sustained shifts in mass attitudes since the start of public polling."

A 2021 Public Religion Research Institute poll about legal recognition of same-sex marriage found majority support (defined as at least 50% support) in 47 states, ranging from 50% in South Carolina to 85% in Massachusetts. A 48th state, Alabama, had plurality support (defined as more supporters than opponents, with neither side reaching 50%). Only Arkansas and Mississippi had majority opposition. When PRRI repeated the poll in 2022 and 2023, no state had majority opposition. A 2022 Quinnipiac University poll found 68% support nationwide. Gallup's 2022 and 2023 nationwide polls found 71% support; however, in 2024, this support decreased to 69%.

In 2024, the PRRI found that the support for same-sex marriage and for LGBTQ discrimination protections in US states is inversely correlated with the support for Christian nationalism.

Two 2025 Gallup polls indicated that support for LGBTQ+ rights was polarizing among party lines, with the first poll finding that 88% of Democrats and 76% of independents are in support of same-sex marriage, but only 41% of Republicans in support of same-sex marriage. The first poll also found that 86% of Democrats and 69% of independents saw same-sex relationships as morally acceptable, compared to only 38% of Republicans.

The second poll found that 69% of Americans, 90% of Republicans, 72% of independents and 41% of Democrats, supported laws that required transgender athletes to participate in sports aligned with their assigned sex at birth. 66% of Americans, 89% of Republicans, 66% of independents and 38% of Democrats, supported laws that required assigned sex at birth to be listed on government documents such as drivers licenses and passports. 40% of Americans, 70% of Democrats, 45% of independents and only 9% of Republicans, believe that gender transition is morally acceptable.

Legality of same-sex sexual activity

On June 26, 2003, the Supreme Court ruled in Lawrence v. Texas that intimate consensual sexual conduct is part of the liberty protected by substantive due process under the Fourteenth Amendment. The majority opinion, written by Justice Anthony Kennedy, explicitly overruled Bowers v. Hardwick, a 1986 decision that found sodomy laws to be constitutional. Despite this ruling, some states have not repealed their sodomy laws and local law enforcement officers have used these statutes to harass or arrest gay people. After the repeal of "Don't Ask Don't Tell" in 2011, the U.S. Congress repealed sodomy laws in the U.S. military in 2014.

Prior to the 2003 Supreme Court ruling in Lawrence v. Texas, same-sex sexual activity was illegal in 14 U.S. states, Puerto Rico, and the U.S. military. By that time, 29 states, the District of Columbia, and five territories had repealed their state's sodomy laws by legislative action. Twelve states have had state Supreme Court or state Appeals courts rule that their state's sodomy laws were unconstitutional. Georgia, Louisiana, and Massachusetts, have all had their state sodomy laws struck down by the courts, but the legislatures have not repealed those laws. On April 18, 2013, the governor of Montana signed a bill repealing that state's sodomy law; it had previously been nullified by the Montana Supreme Court. On April 23, 2014, the governor of Virginia signed a bill repealing that state's sodomy law. Utah and Alabama repealed their sodomy laws in 2019 and Idaho did in 2022. On October 1, 2020, a bill repealing Maryland's sodomy law went into effect without the governor's signature, and a bill repealing its "unnatural sex practices" law went into effect without the governor's signature in May 2023. Minnesota also repealed its sodomy law in 2023.

12 states either have not yet formally repealed their laws against sexual activity among consenting adults or have not revised them to accurately reflect their true scope in the aftermath of Lawrence v. Texas. Often, the sodomy law was drafted to also encompass other forms of sexual conduct such as bestiality, and no attempt has subsequently succeeded in separating them. 9 states' statutes purport to ban all forms of sodomy, some including oral intercourse, regardless of the participants' genders: Florida, Georgia, Louisiana, Massachusetts, Michigan, Mississippi, North Carolina, Oklahoma and South Carolina. 3 states specifically target their statutes at same-sex relations only: Kansas, Kentucky, and Texas.

Recognition of marriage and adoption for same-sex couples

Marriage

The movement to obtain civil marriage rights and benefits for same-sex couples in the United States began in the 1970s but remained unsuccessful for over 40 years. On May 17, 2004, Massachusetts became the first U.S. state and the sixth jurisdiction in the world to legalize same-sex marriage following the Supreme Judicial Court's decision six months earlier. Before nationwide legalization, same-sex marriage became legal in 36 states: 24 states by court order, nine by legislative action, and three by referendum. Some states had legalized same-sex marriage by more than one of the three actions.

On June 26, 2015, the Supreme Court ruled in Obergefell v. Hodges that states must license and recognize same-sex marriages. Consequently, same-sex marriage is legal in all 50 states, the District of Columbia, Puerto Rico, Guam, U.S. Virgin Islands, and Northern Mariana Islands. Currently, same-sex marriages are recognized in American Samoa, due to the Respect for Marriage Act. The legal status of same-sex marriage also varies in Native American tribal nations, as their reservations are considered sovereign entities and were not affected by the Supreme Court's legalization in 2015.

Civil unions

Prior to nationwide same-sex marriage, 15 U.S. states had civil unions or domestic partnerships. The first state to allow same-sex unions was Vermont in July 2000. Ten of these states retain those laws as a continued choice for same-sex couples and opposite-sex couples.

Adoption

Same-sex couples are allowed to adopt in states and territories following the ruling in Obergefell v. Hodges legalizing same-sex marriage. Prior to Obergefell, various states by legislative and judicial action had allowed joint adoption by same-sex couples.

Citizenship

Naturalized U.S. citizens whose biological children are born abroad may be unable to obtain U.S. citizenship for their children even if their spouse is also a U.S. citizen. This may disproportionately affect same-sex couples, given that typically only one spouse is biologically related to the child. In October 2020, with representation by Lambda Legal, Immigration Equality and law firm Morgan Lewis & Bockius; the United States Department of State withdrew its appeal of the verdict in Kiviti v. Pompeo, and declined to appeal Mize-Gregg v. Pompeo. The State Department's refusal to recognize children born overseas to married same-sex, American citizen couples as U.S. citizens was ruled to be unlawful by Federal district court judges in both cases.

Former restrictions

Defense of Marriage Act

The United States Congress enacted the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA) in 1996, which forbade the federal government from recognizing same-sex marriages and relieved states of the requirement that they recognize same-sex unions performed in other jurisdictions. On June 26, 2013, Section 3 of DOMA ("Definition of marriage") was ruled unconstitutional by the U.S. Supreme Court in United States v. Windsor. The law became effectively unenforceable after the U.S. Supreme Court decision Obergefell v. Hodges (2015) and was fully repealed by the Respect for Marriage Act in 2022.

Former state bans on same-sex marriage

After the passage of the DOMA in 1996, many state legislators enacted state statutes, nicknamed mini-DOMA's, that ban same-sex marriage. After Massachusetts legalized same-sex marriage in 2004, 14 states amended their constitution to ban recognition of same-sex marriages and many banning civil unions as well. 28 states passed state constitutional amendments that banned same-sex marriage:

Alabama, Alaska, Arizona, California, Colorado, Florida, Georgia, Idaho, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Michigan, Mississippi, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, Nevada, North Carolina, North Dakota, Ohio, Oklahoma, Oregon, South Carolina, South Dakota, Tennessee, Texas, Utah, Virginia, and Wisconsin.

Hawaii voters approved a narrower constitutional amendment empowering the legislature to outlaw same-sex marriage, which they had already done in 1993. On November 6, 2012, Minnesota became the first state to vote down a proposed constitutional amendment banning same-sex marriage. The amendment failed with a 53% to 47% vote. All state constitutional and statutory bans on same-sex marriage were declared unconstitutional in June 2015 in Obergefell v. Hodges.

Discrimination protections

The Equality Act, which had been introduced in the United States Congress in February 2021, would have outlawed discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity nationwide. However, shortly after his inauguration in 2025, Donald Trump signed an executive order ordering the non-enforcement discrimination laws for gender identity and sexual orientation. This is despite the Supreme Court ruling in Bostock v Clayton County that stated discrimination of this kind fell under Title VII of the 1964 Civil Rights Act, which outlawed discrimination based on someone's sex.

Anti-discrimination laws

U.S. federal law does not explicitly include protections against discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation or gender identity. In June 2020, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that sexual orientation and gender identity are included under "sex" as a prohibited ground of employment discrimination in the Civil Rights Act of 1964. The ruling may impact other federal civil rights barring sex discrimination in education, health care, housing, and financial credit.

Explicit and comprehensive anti-discrimination protections based on sexual orientation and gender identity have been proposed by the United States Congress under the Equality Act, which was passed in the House by a vote of 236–173 on May 17, 2019, but stalled in the Senate. The bill was reintroduced by the 119th Congress on April 29, 2025 in both the House of Representatives and in the Senate.

During the 2024 United States presidential election, The Heritage Foundation, with contributors from the cabinet of Donald Trump, outlined legislation on Project 2025 for a large rollback of LGBTQ rights in the United States, a rollback of same-sex marriage in the US, as well as a rollback on all legal protections on the basis of "gender identity."

Employment discrimination refers to discriminatory employment practices such as bias in hiring, promotion, job assignment, termination, and compensation, and various types of harassment.

There is no federal statute explicitly addressing employment discrimination based on sexual orientation or gender identity. However, in June 2020, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that sexual orientation and gender identity are included under "sex" as a prohibited ground of employment discrimination in the Civil Rights Act of 1964. This effectively means that in the U.S., no employer can fire an employee on the basis of sexual orientation or gender identity.

24 states, the District of Columbia, Puerto Rico, Guam, and over 140 cities and counties have enacted bans on discrimination based on sexual orientation and/or sexual identity. Additionally, some states have laws or regulations that ban discrimination based on gender identity and/or sexual orientation in public employment only.

Hate crime laws

Hate crime laws (also known as bias crimes laws) protect against crimes motivated by feelings of enmity against a protected class. Until 2009, a federal law defined hate crimes committed on the basis of a person's race, color, religion, or nation origin when engaging in a federally protected activity. In October 2009, Congress passed the Matthew Shepard Act, which expanded the definition of hate crimes to include gender, sexual orientation, gender identity, and disability. It removed the requirement that the victim of a hate crime be engaged in a federally protected activity. Obama signed the legislation on October 28, 2009.

Two statutes, the Hate Crime Statistics Act (1990) and the Campus Hate Crimes Right to Know Act (1997), require the Department of Justice and the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), as well as college/university campus security authorities, to collect and publish hate crime statistics.

As of December 2023, 46 states, the District of Columbia, Puerto Rico, the US Virgin Islands, and the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands have statutes criminalizing various types of bias-motivated violence or intimidation (the exceptions are Arkansas, Georgia, South Carolina, and Wyoming). Each of these statutes covers bias on the basis of race, religion, and ethnicity; 34 cover disability; 34 of them cover sexual orientation; 28 cover gender; 13 cover age; 23 cover gender identity; five cover political affiliation. 31 states and the District of Columbia have statutes creating a civil cause of action, in addition to the criminal penalty, for similar acts. Twenty-seven states and the District of Columbia have statutes requiring the state to collect hate crime statistics; 16 of these cover sexual orientation.

In Wisconsin v. Mitchell (1993) the Supreme Court unanimously held that state penalty-enhancement laws for hate crimes were constitutional and did not violate First Amendment rights to freedom of thought and expression.

Laws that prohibit hate speech, including those that relate to sexual orientation or gender identity, are considered unconstitutional, due to the First Amendment's broad protections for free speech.

Gay panic defense

In 2018, Senator Edward Markey (D-MA) and Representative Joseph Kennedy III (D-MA) introduced S.3188 and H.R.6358, respectively, which would prohibit a federal criminal defendant from asserting, as a defense, that the nonviolent sexual advance or an individual or a perception or belief of the gender, gender identity, or expression, or sexual orientation of an individual excuses or justifies conduct or mitigates the severity of an offense. Both bills died in committee. In June 2019, the bill was reintroduced in both houses of Congress as the Gay and Trans Panic Defense Prohibition Act of 2019 (S.1721 and H.R.3133). It has been reintroduced in both the 2021 and 2023 sessions.

As of October 2023, 17 states and the District of Columbia have banned the so-called "gay panic defense": California, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, Hawaii, Illinois, Maine, Maryland, Nevada, New Hampshire New Jersey, New York, Oregon, Rhode Island, Vermont, Virginia, Washington.

Military service

Although the U.S. military discharged soldiers for homosexual acts throughout the eighteenth and nineteenth century, U.S. military law did not expressly prohibit homosexuality or homosexual conduct until February 4, 1921. On May 5, 1950, the Uniform Code of Military Justice was passed by Congress and signed into law by President Harry S. Truman, and became effective on May 31, 1951. Article 125 forbade sodomy among all military personnel, defining it as "any person subject to this chapter who engages in unnatural carnal copulation with another person of the same or opposite sex or with an animal is guilty of sodomy. Penetration, however slight, is sufficient to complete the offence." Application of Article 125 was severely limited by the 2003 U.S. Supreme Court decision in Lawrence v. Texas, and it was amended only to apply to 'forcible sodomy' on December 26, 2013, when President Barack Obama signed into law the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2014. The National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2017 finally repealed the article and its classification of sodomy, as a crime separate from rape, altogether.

Prior to 1993, lesbian and gay people were not permitted to serve in the U.S. military. Under the "Don't ask, don't tell" (DADT) policy enacted that year, they were permitted to do so only if they did not disclose their sexual orientation. The Don't Ask, Don't Tell Repeal Act of 2010 permitted homosexual men and women to serve openly in the armed forces once designated government officials certified that the military was prepared for the repeal. Since September 20, 2011, gays, lesbians, and bisexuals have been able to serve openly.

On July 13, 2015, Defense Secretary Ashton Carter said that the current regulations banning transgender individuals from serving were outdated, and announced a six-month study to determine if lifting the ban would have any impact on the military's effectiveness. On June 30, 2016, Carter announced that the ban on transgender troops from openly serving had been lifted. The policy went into effect on October 1, 2016, and training on transgender issues was scheduled to begin a month later.

On October 24, 2016, 10 soldiers in the United States Army became the first to openly petition for a sex change since the ban on service by transgender individuals was lifted. The military was originally scheduled to complete its adjustment to openly transgender troops by July 2017. That month, however, Trump declared in a tweet that transgender people would be prohibited from serving in the military. The next day, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff General Joseph Dunford said, "There will be no modifications to the current policy until the President's direction has been received by the Secretary of Defense and the Secretary has issued implementation guidance. In the meantime, we will continue to treat all of our personnel with respect."

Prison

Solitary confinement

More than 8,400 detained migrants—over a five-year period spanning both the Obama and Trump administrations—were placed in solitary confinement, which remains an ongoing practice as of May 2019. In half of the cases, detainees were being punished, but in the other half, the confinement was due to the person's mental illness, physical disability, or sexual orientation. Journalists identified six suicides among this population.

Conjugal visits

In the United States, four states permit conjugal visits to prisoners: California, Connecticut, New York, and Washington; all of these U.S. states have legalized same-sex marriage in June 2015. In June 2007, California, following the enactment in 2005 of a state law requiring state agencies to provide the same rights to domestic partners as to married couples, became the first U.S. state to allow same-sex conjugal visits. The new rules allowed for visits only by registered same-sex married couples or domestic partners, provided that the same-sex marriage or domestic partnership was established before the prisoner was incarcerated. In New York, prior to the vote on same-sex visits, this state allowed 27 out of its 60 facilities to allow same-sex conjugal visits, but this law was not enforced state wide until April 2011. In 2014, both New Mexico and Mississippi banned conjugal visits.

Transgender rights in the United States

From April 2022 to January 2025, United States passports gave the sex/gender options of male, female and X by self determination. Discrimination rates are very high for the transgender community and especially for transgender people of color. Some frequent examples of discrimination and other forms of oppression faced by the transgender community are violence and hate crimes, homelessness, poverty, sexual assault, housing discrimination, employment discrimination, harassment, bullying, disproportionate rates of arrest and incarceration,

prison and immigration violence and mistreatment, airport security humiliation, HIV/AIDS and health disparities, governmental/bureaucratic barriers to transitioning (documents and surgery requirements), economic and societal barriers to transitioning (the high costs of medical care and the frequent denial of care), to name only a few.

Some who experience exclusion from the workforce, turn to survival crimes, such as sex work, in order to have an income as a direct result of economic oppression and discrimination. With the passage of the Fight Online Sex Trafficking Act (FOSTA) and Stop Enabling Sex Traffickers Act (SESTA) bills, those individuals who turn to sex work are put in more danger because they are forced to turn back to more dangerous methods of finding work, such as through pimps and working on the streets, than online forums where they were able to vet clients.

Frequently, the media, and politicians sensationalize transgender identities and oppression is reinforced. Aware of this trend, in 2016, a coalition of over 250 anti-sexual assault and domestic violence organizations have released a joint letter decrying the trend of portraying transgender people in restrooms as sexual predators as untrue and harmful. Likewise, GLAAD has released a media guide for reporters covering restroom usage in relation to the transgender community.

In 2022, over 230 anti-transgender bills were introduced in state legislatures in a coordinated national campaign to target transgender rights, and over 350 in 2023. Many of these bills became law.

Many transgender advocates also advocate for converting single-occupant, gender-segregated restrooms into single-occupant, all-gender restrooms by simply changing the signs due to the high rates of harassment and even violence faced by the transgender community when accessing gender-segregated restrooms according to their gender expression. All-gender/gender-neutral restrooms are also beneficial to nursing mothers, parents with different-sex children, and people with disabilities. Transgender advocates affirm all-gender restrooms as well as access to gendered restrooms as a matter of choice, safety, privacy, and dignity.

Identity documents

An executive order signed in the first hours of President Donald Trump's second administration defined, for all purposes of the federal government, sex as binary, removing the federal recognition of non binary genders. It is also expected to prevent the federal government from allowing gender changes by people who are transgender.

Different procedures and requirements for legal name changes and gender marker changes on birth certificates, drivers licenses, social security identification and passports exist and can be inconsistent. Many states require gender reassignment surgery to change their name and gender marker. Also, documents that do not match each other can present difficulties in conducting personal affairs - particularly those which require multiple, matching forms of identification. Furthermore, having documents that do not match a person's gender presentation has been reported to lead to harassment and discrimination.

U.S. states make their own laws about birth certificates, and state courts have issued varied rulings about transgender people.

Most states permit the name and sex to be changed on a birth certificate, either by amending the existing birth certificate or by issuing a new one, although some require medical proof of sex reassignment surgery to do so.

Tennessee will not change the sex on a birth certificate at all, under any circumstances. In February 2020, the Idaho House of Representatives passed a similar bill. Oklahoma banned gender change in 2021. In 2022, Montana banned gender change.

As of June 2025, all U.S. States except for Kansas, Texas, Tennessee, and Florida allow the gender marker to be changed on a driver's license, although the requirements for doing so vary by state. Often, the requirements for changing one's driver's license are less stringent than those for changing the marker on the birth certificate. For example, until August 1, 2015, the state of Massachusetts required sex reassignment surgery for a birth certificate change, but only a form including a sworn statement from a physician that the applicant is in fact the new gender to correct the sex designation on a driver's license.

Gender-affirming care bans

Gender-affirming care for minors has been available in the U.S. for more than a decade and is endorsed by major medical associations, but it has increasingly come under attack in many conservative legislatures. Of the approximately 1.6 million Americans who are transgender, about 300,000 are under the age of 18. According to the ACLU, in 2023 alone, over 500 anti-LGBTQ bills were submitted in the US, over 130 of which were about healthcare. Efforts to prohibit gender-affirming care for minors had begun several years earlier, but did not receive much attention from state legislatures until more recently. The conservative organization Do No Harm was influential in developing model legislation that appeared starting in 2022 in Arkansas, Florida, Iowa, Mississippi, Montana, New Hampshire, and West Virginia legislatures.

Many Democrat-controlled states have gone in the opposite direction and enacted laws protecting access to gender affirming care for minors and adults. These laws, often called "shield" laws, often explicitly combine protections for gender-affirming care and abortion and cover a variety of protections, including protecting both providers and patients from being punished, mandating insurance providers to cover the procedures, and acting as "sanctuary states" that protect patients traveling to the state from other states that have banned such treatments among other provisions.

Bans on gender-affirming care have been criticized as governmental interference with the doctor–patient relationship, and taking away healthcare decisions from parents and families for their children. State level bans on gender-affirming care in the United States have led some families with transgender children to move out of their states. As of October 2023, approximately 105,200 transgender youth aged 13 to 17 lived in states where gender affirming care is banned for minors. However, around 26,000 of those youth are currently still able to access care in their state due to court orders that prohibit enforcement of the laws. Conversely, around 146,700 transgender youth live in states with shield laws. An analysis from KFF in late January 2024 estimated that 38% of trans youth between the ages of 13–17 in the United States lived in states with laws limiting youth access to gender-affirming care.

The American Psychological Association approved a policy statement in February 2024 supporting unobstructed access to health care and evidence-based clinical care for transgender, gender-diverse, and nonbinary children, adolescents, and adults, as well as opposing state bans and policies intended to limit access to such care.

Bathroom bills

A bathroom bill is the common name for legislation or a statute that defines access to public toilets by gender (restrooms)—or transgender individual. Bathroom bills affect access to sex-segregated public facilities for an individual based on a determination of their sex as defined in some specific way—such as their sex as assigned at birth, their sex as listed on their birth certificate, or the sex that corresponds to their gender identity. A bathroom bill can either be inclusive or exclusive of transgender individuals, depending on the aforementioned definition of their sex. Unisex public toilets are one option to overcome this controversy.

Critics of bills which exclude transgender individuals from restrooms which conform to their gender identity argue that they do not make public restrooms any safer for cisgender (non-transgender) people, and that they make public restrooms less safe for both transgender people and gender non-conforming cisgender people. Additionally, critics claim there have been no cases of a transgender person attacking a cisgender person in a public restroom, although there has been at least one isolated incident of voyeurism in a fitting room. By comparison, a much larger percentage of transgender people have been verbally, physically, and sexually harassed or attacked by cisgender people in public facilities. For these reasons the controversy over transgender bathroom access has been labeled a moral panic.

Proponents say such legislation is necessary to maintain privacy, protect what they claim to be an innate sense of modesty held by most cisgender people, prevent voyeurism, assault, molestation, and rape, and retain psychological comfort.

One bathroom bill, the Public Facilities Privacy & Security Act in North Carolina, was approved as a law in 2016, although portions of the measure were later repealed in 2017 as part of a compromise between the Democratic governor and Republican-controlled Legislature.

Public opinion regarding "transgender bathroom rights" in the United States is mixed, see summary table below.

Trans athletes in sports

Twenty-seven states have banned transgender people from sports under their gender identity in various capacities. Alabama, Arizona, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Idaho, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, Missouri Montana, Nebraska New Hampshire, North Carolina, North Dakota, Ohio, Oklahoma, South Carolina, South Dakota, Tennessee, Texas, Utah, West Virginia, and Wyoming. The passage of legislation against transgender youth has seen increases in calls to Trans Lifeline, a suicide crisis hotline run by and for transgender people. Some of these bans only apply to school sports and some only apply to transgender women, but not transgender men.

The Human Rights Campaign has argued that these discriminatory laws are not about protecting women's sports, but rather attempt to "undermine the existence of transgender people." Transgender advocates have noted that hormone replacement therapy and testosterone suppression reduce muscle mass and physical strength in transgender women, reducing the possibility of a competitive advantage. A 2021 literature review concluded that for trans women, even with testosterone suppression, "the data show that strength, lean body mass, muscle size and bone density are only trivially affected. The reductions observed in muscle mass, size, and strength are very small compared to the baseline differences between males and females in these variables, and thus, there are major performance and safety implications in sports where these attributes are competitively significant." After 24 months of testosterone suppression, bone mass is generally preserved. The review states that no study has reported muscle loss greater than 12% with testosterone suppression even after three years of hormone therapy. It found that trans women are in the top 10% of females regarding lean body mass and possess a grip 25% stronger than most females. They suggest that instead of universal guidelines, each individual sport federation decide how to "balance between inclusion, safety and fairness" due to differences between sports. Transgender inclusion in sports is supported by the Women's Sports Foundation, the Women's National Basketball Players Association (WNBPA), the National Women's Law Center, and Athlete Ally, as well as United States Women's National Soccer Team Captain Megan Rapinoe, tennis legend Billie Jean King, WNBA Minnesota Lynx coach Cheryl Reeve, and WNBA star Candace Parker.

The United States Department of Education during the Biden Administration has said transgender students are protected under Title IX and during the second Trump administration has said schools allowing transgender participation in girls' sports is a Title IX violation.

Transgender people in prison

In September 2011, a California state court denied the request of a California inmate, Lyralisa Stevens, for sex reassignment surgery at the state's expense.

On January 17, 2014, in Kosilek v. Spencer a three-judge panel of the First Circuit Court of Appeals ordered the Massachusetts Department of Corrections to provide Michelle Kosilek, a Massachusetts inmate, with sex reassignment surgery. It said denying the surgery violated Kosilek's Eighth Amendment rights, which included "receiving medically necessary treatment ... even if that treatment strikes some as odd or unorthodox".

On April 3, 2015, the U.S. Department of Justice intervened in a federal lawsuit filed in Georgia to argue that denying hormone treatment for transgender inmates violates their rights. It contended that the state's policy that only allows for continuing treatments begun before incarceration was insufficient and that inmate treatment needs to be based on ongoing assessments. The case was brought by Ashley Diamond, an inmate who had used hormone treatment for seventeen years before entering the Georgia prison system.

On May 11, 2018, the US Bureau of Prisons announced that prison guidelines issued by the Obama administration in January 2017 to allow transgender prisoners to be transferred to prisons housing inmates of the gender which they identify with had been rescinded and that assigned sex at birth would once again determine where transgender prisoners are jailed.

As of January 2021, one state, California, allows transgender people to be housed in prison according to their gender identity, and another, New Mexico, has separate facilities entirely, which are segregated off from other inmates, and are reserved for transgender people only.

Transgender Day of Remembrance

Transgender Day of Remembrance was founded in 1999 by Gwendolyn Ann Smith and JMEL a transgender woman, to memorialize the murder of transgender woman Rita Hester in Allston, Massachusetts. It has slowly evolved from the web-based project started by Smith into an international day of action every November 20. Transgender Day of Remembrance is now a day to honor all transgender lives lost to murder caused by transphobia. Several communities and organizations all over the world have made vigils accessible to all for the lost lives through murder.

Intersex rights in the United States

Since April 11, 2022, United States passports have given the sex/gender options of male, female and X by self determination. Intersex people in the United States have some of the same rights as others but with significant gaps, particularly in protection from non-consensual cosmetic medical interventions, violence, and discrimination. Many non-consensual medical surgeries are being performed to align these individuals with a more typically male or female sex when they are babies or children. Some are also put on hormones to ensure that their bodies develop to the sex they were assigned. In August 2018, the California state legislature passed a resolution that condemns these types of surgeries. Actions by intersex civil society organizations aim to eliminate harmful practices and promote social acceptance and equality. In recent years, intersex activists have also secured some legal recognition.

Medical discrimination

HIV/AIDS

In 1981, the AIDS epidemic, caused by the Human Immunodeficiency Virus, was reported in the United States. HIV is transferred through infected blood and sexual contact, and in the early 1980s, risk factors were reported to include homosexuality and drug use. One of the earliest medical clinics treating the disease was run in New York City by Dr. Joseph Sonnabend. By 1985, thousands of people in the United States had died. Many LGBTQ advocacy organizations began to speak up and raise funds.

Blood and tissue donation

In the United States, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) issues non-binding guidance for deferral of blood donations, which are universally followed. In May 2023, the restrictions were updated to focus on behavior rather than sexual orientation or gender. People are ineligible to donate blood if they have:

Had anal sex within the past 3 months and have a new or multiple sexual partners

Ever tested positive for HIV or been treated for HIV with anti-retroviral therapy

Taken any HIV prevention medication (PEP or PrEP; these can affect test results) by mouth within the past 3 months or by injection within the past 2 years

Ever exchanged sex for payment or barter

Used non-prescription injection drugs within the past 3 months

Had sex within the past 3 months with someone who has ever tested positive for HIV

Received an allogeneic blood transfusion or been exposed to blood of another individual (e.g. through a wound) within the past 3 months

Gotten a tattoo or body piercing within the last 3 months, unless pierced with single-use equipment or tattooed in a state-approved shop with sterile needles and non-reused ink

Been infected with or treated for syphilis or gonorrhea within the past 3 months

Hemophilia or other clotting factor deficiency

Current regulations prohibit tissue and semen donation by any man who has had sex with another man in the preceding five years, even if all infectious testing is negative. This five-year MSM deferral policy prevents thousands of donations of eye tissue annually, despite a global shortage of donated eye tissue needed for vision-restoring corneal transplant surgeries.

Conversion therapy

Conversion therapy is the discredited practice of attempting to change a person's sexual orientation or gender identity. 21 states, the District of Columbia, and Puerto Rico ban the practice of conversion therapy on minors.

History of U.S. Supreme Court decisions on LGBTQ rights

In March 1956, a Federal District Court ruled that ONE: The Homosexual Magazine, was obscene under the Federal Comstock laws and thus could not be sent through the United States Postal Service. This ruling was upheld by the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals, but in 1958, the Supreme Court issued a landmark ruling in One, Inc. v. Olesen, 355 U.S. 371 (1958), which overturned the previous rulings under a new legal precedent that had been established by the landmark case, Roth v. United States, 354 U.S. 476 (1957). As a result, gay newspapers, magazines and other publications could be lawfully distributed through the public mail service.

On May 22, 1967, the Supreme Court upheld the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1952 in Boutilier v. Immigration and Naturalization Service 387 U.S. 118 (1967). The Court held that barring homosexuals from entry to the United States was valid and constitutional. This ban remained in effect until 1991 after the passage of the Immigration Act of 1990.

In 1972, a Tacoma, Washington teacher of twelve years with a perfect record was terminated after a former student outed him to the vice-principal. The Washington Supreme Court found that homosexuality was immoral and impaired his efficiency as a teacher. The court supported its conclusion in various ways, including the definition of homosexuality in the New Catholic Encyclopedia, the criminal nature of homosexual conduct, and finding that an "immoral" person could not be trusted to instruct students as his presence would be inherently disruptive. On October 3, 1977, the Supreme Court denied certiorari, although Justices Brennan and Marshall would have granted cert. This was the first homosexual discrimination decision to be aired on national network news. In fact, it was simultaneously aired on all three national network evening news shows, reaching approximately 60 million viewers.

In 1985, the Supreme Court heard Board of Education v. National Gay Task Force, which concerned First and Fourteenth Amendment challenges against a law that allowed schools to fire teachers for public homosexual conduct. The Court affirmed the lower court by an equally divided vote 4–4 allowing the Tenth Circuit's ruling that partially struck down the law to stand without setting precedent.

History of LGBTQ rights under U.S. presidents

George Washington

To train the new American Army in the latest military drills and tactics, General George Washington brought in Friedrich Wilhelm von Steuben (1730–94), who had been an officer on the German General staff. Von Steuben escaped Germany where he was threatened with prosecution for homosexuality. He joined Washington's army at Valley Forge in February 1778 accompanied by two young aides. Steuben became an American general, and a senior advisor to Washington. Despite rumors about sexual behavior at his parties, there never was an investigation of Steuben, and he received a congressional pension after the war.

The first evidence of discrimination to homosexuals serving in the United States military dates from March 11, 1778, when Lieutenant Frederick Gotthold Enslin was brought to trial before a court-martial. According to General Washington's report: "...Lieutt. Enslin of Colo. Malcolm's Regiment tried for attempting to commit sodomy ..." Washington's secretary described the results of the trial: "His Excellency the Commander in Chief approves the sentence and with Abhorrence & Detestation of such Infamous Crimes orders Lieut. Enslin to be drummed out of Camp tomorrow morning...."

John Adams

In 1801, Congress enacted the District of Columbia Organic Act of 1801 that continued all criminal laws of Maryland and Virginia in the now formally structured District, with those of Maryland applying to that portion of the District ceded from Maryland, and those of Virginia applying to that portion ceded from Virginia. At the time, Maryland had a sodomy law applicable only to free males with a punishment of "labour for any time, in their discretion, not exceeding seven years for the same crime, on the public roads of the said county, or in making, repairing or cleaning the streets or bason [sic] of Baltimore-town;" it imposed the death penalty for slaves committing sodomy. Similarly, Virginia had a penalty of 1–10 years for free persons committing sodomy, but imposed the death penalty for slaves committing sodomy. The law went into effect on February 27, 1801.

Thomas Jefferson

In 1779, Thomas Jefferson wrote a law in Virginia which contained a maximum punishment of castration for men who engaged in sodomy. However, what was intended by Jefferson as a liberalization of the sodomy laws in Virginia at that time was rejected by the Virginia Legislature, which continued to prescribe death as the maximum penalty for the crime of sodomy in that state.

Andrew Jackson

In 1831, Congress established penalties in the District of Columbia for a number of crimes, but not for sodomy. It specified that "every other felony, misdemeanor, or offence not provided for by this act, may and shall be punished as heretofore[.]" At the time, Maryland and Virginia had a penalty of 1–10 years for committing sodomy. It went into effect on March 2, 1831.

William Henry Harrison

In 1807, William Henry Harrison signed into law a comprehensive criminal code that included the first sodomy law for the Indiana Territory that eliminated the gender-specifics, reduced the penalty for a maximum of 1 to 5 years in prison, a fine of $100 to $500, up to 500 lashes on the back, and a permanent loss of civil rights.

Benjamin Harrison

In 1892, Congress passed a law for the District of Columbia that states that "for the preservation of the public peace and the protection of property within the District of Columbia." Labeled in the law as vagrants were "all public prostitutes, and all such persons who lead a notoriously lewd or lascivious course of life[.]" All offenders had to post bond of up to $200 for good behavior for a period of six months. The law went into effect on July 29, 1892.

William McKinley

In 1898, Congress amended the provision by removing the word "notoriously" when concerning a lewd or lascivious course of life, thereby allowing prosecution of persons without the condition of notoriety. The bond for good behavior was raised to $500, and the law was made gender-neutral. The law went into effect on July 8, 1898.

In 1901, Congress adopted a new code for the District of Columbia that expressly recognized common-law crimes, with a penalty for them of up to five years and/or a $1,000 fine. The law went into effect on March 3, 1901.

Woodrow Wilson

On December 14, 1916, President Woodrow Wilson vetoed the Immigration Act of 1917, which would have excluded individuals from entering the United States who were found "mentally defective" or who had a "constitutional psychopathic inferiority." A similar Public Health Service definition of homosexuals was used simultaneously by the Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) to reinforce the language of the Immigration Act of 1917 and effectively ban all homosexual immigrants who disclosed their sexual minority status. On February 5, 1917, the Congress overrode Wilson's veto, implementing the Immigration Act of 1917 into law.

On March 1, 1917, the Articles of War of 1916 are implemented. This included a revision of the Articles of War of 1806, the new regulations detail statutes governing U.S. military discipline and justice. Under the category Miscellaneous Crimes and Offences, Article 93 states that any person subject to military law who commits "assault with intent to commit sodomy" shall be punished as a court-martial may direct.

On June 4, 1920, Congress modified Article 93 of the Articles of War of 1916. It was changed to make the act of sodomy itself a crime, separate from the offense of assault with intent to commit sodomy. It went into effect on February 4, 1921.

Franklin Roosevelt

In 1919, Democratic Assistant Secretary of the Navy Franklin D. Roosevelt requested an investigation into "vice and depravity" in the sea services after a sting operation in which undercover operatives attempt to seduce sailors suspected of being homosexual had already begun at the Naval base in Newport, Rhode Island. At least 17 sailors were jailed and court-martialed before public outcry prompted a Republican-led Senate committee to condemn the methods of the operation. Roosevelt denied he had any knowledge that entrapment had been used or that he would have approved of it.

In 1935, Congress passed a law for the District of Columbia that made it a crime for "any person to invite, entice, persuade, or to address for the purpose of inviting, enticing, or persuading any person or persons...to accompany, to go with, to follow him or her to his or her residence, or to any other house or building, inclosure, or other place, for the purpose of prostitution, or any other immoral or lewd purpose." It imposed a fine of up to $100, up to 90 days in jail, and courts were permitted to "impose conditions" on anyone convicted under this law, including "medical and mental examination, diagnosis and treatment by proper public health and welfare authorities, and such other terms and conditions as the court may deem best for the protection of the community and the punishment, control, and rehabilitation of the defendant." The law went into effect on August 14, 1935.

In 1941, Congress enacted a new solicitation law for the District of Columbia that labeled a "vagrant" any person who "engages in or commits acts of fornication or perversion for hire." The law went into effect on December 17, 1941.

Harry Truman

In 1948, Congress enacted the first sodomy law in the District of Columbia, which established a penalty of up to 10 years in prison or a fine of up to $1,000 for sodomy. Also included with this sodomy law was a psychopathic offender law and a law "to provide for the treatment of sexual psychopaths in the District of Columbia, and for other purposes." The law went into effect on June 9, 1948.

On May 5, 1950, the Uniform Code of Military Justice was passed by Congress and was signed into law by President Harry S. Truman, and became effective on May 31, 1951. Article 125 forbids sodomy among all military personnel, defining it as "any person subject to this chapter who engages in unnatural carnal copulation with another person of the same or opposite sex or with an animal is guilty of sodomy. Penetration, however slight, is sufficient to complete the offence."

On June 25, 1952, the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1952 was vetoed by President Truman because he regarded the bill as "un-American" and discriminatory. The bill prohibits "aliens afflicted with a psychopathic personality, epilepsy, or a mental defect" from entry into the United States. Congress would later override his veto and implemented the act into law.

Dwight D. Eisenhower

On April 27, 1953, President Dwight D. Eisenhower signed Executive Order 10450 which prohibits Federal employees from being members of a group or organization considered subversive. The order lists "sexual perversion" as a security risk constituting grounds for termination or denial of employment. The order went into effect on May 27, 1953.

Without explicitly referring to homosexuality, the executive order responded to several years of charges that the presence of homosexual employees in the State Department posed blackmail risks. Attorney General Herbert Brownell Jr. explained that the new order was designed to encompass both loyalty and security risks and he differentiated between the two: "Employees could be a security risk and still not be disloyal or have any traitorous thoughts, but it may be that their personal habits are such that they might be subject to blackmail by people who seek to destroy the safety of our country."

The press recognized the revolutionary nature of the new executive order. The Washington Post said that it established not a loyalty test but a "suitability test." Some in government referred to their new "integrity-security" program. Some of those the press expected to be excluded from federal employment included "a person who drinks too much," "an incorrigible gossip," "homosexuals," and "neurotics."

In 1953, Congress changed the solicitation law in the District of Columbia so that the jail term of up to 90 days was retained, but the maximum fine was raised to $250, and the reference to the power of judges to "impose conditions" on the defendant was removed. The law went into effect on June 29, 1953.

John F. Kennedy

In late 1961, Frank Kameny co-founded the Washington D.C. branch of the national gay rights organization, Mattachine Society. In the year following the group's founding, Kameny led an initiative to declare the existence of the Mattachine Society of Washington publicly. The group sent letters to every government branch, including the entirety of Congress. Kameny also wrote to President John F. Kennedy asking him to change the rules on homosexuals being purged from the government. The content of the letters included harsh criticism of the government's treatment of homosexuals and asserted that there were over three hundred members of the group. The letter was signed by the president of the Mattachine Society of Washington, Franklin E. Kameny.

The Mattachine Society of Washington discussed the prospect of public protest in 1963. The FBI and J. Edgar Hoover had made advancements to ban the Washington branch and had been threatened with the prospect of a march on behalf of the organization. Although supportive of the idea, Kameny restrained from taking part in a march due to the threat of damaging his public image.

In 1963, Kameny and Mattachine launched a campaign to overturn D.C. sodomy laws.

Lyndon B. Johnson

On February 2, 1950, Senator Lyndon B. Johnson voted for Uniform Code of Military Justice.

On October 19, 1964, Walter Jenkins, a longtime top aide to President Johnson, had been arrested by District of Columbia Police in a YMCA restroom. He and another man were booked on a disorderly conduct charge.

After becoming a controversy prior to the 1964 presidential election, the American Mental Health Foundation wrote a letter to President Johnson protesting the "hysteria" surrounding the case:

The private life and inclinations of a citizen, Government employee or not, does not necessarily have any bearing on his capacities, usefulness, and sense of responsibility in his occupation. The fact that an individual is homosexual, as has been strongly implied in the case of Mr. Jenkins, does not per se make him more unstable and more a security risk than any heterosexual person.

After reelection during his second term on October 3, 1965, Johnson signed the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965, which added "sexual deviation" as a medical ground for denying prospective immigrants entry into the United States. The bill went into effect on June 30, 1968.

Richard Nixon

In August 1970, Richard Nixon, on the issue of same-sex marriage, said "I can't go that far; that's the year 2000! Negroes and whites, okay. But that's too far!"

In 1972, San Francisco's Gay Activists Alliance disbanded and formed the Gay Voters League, a group that campaigned for the reelection of President Richard Nixon. In October 1972, a representative of the Committee to Re-elect the President addressed gay voters on behalf of Nixon's campaign in San Francisco. The event was organized by the Gay Voters League of San Francisco.

Gerald Ford

On August 25, 1965, Rep. Gerald Ford voted for the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965.

On March 5, 1976, when asked about the issue of gay rights, with respect to hiring, employment, and housing, Gerald Ford said "I recognize that this is a very new and serious problem in our society. I have always tried to be an understanding person as far as people are concerned who are different than myself. That doesn't mean that I agree with or would concur in what is done by them or their position in society. I think this is a problem we have to face up to, and I can't give you a pat answer tonight. I just would be dishonest to say that there is a pat answer under these very difficult circumstances".

In 1976, during that year's presidential campaign, President Gerald Ford was "zapped" by activists in Ann Arbor, Michigan over federal immigration rules. The protests forced President Ford to admit that he was not aware that homosexuality was used as a basis for exclusion in immigration rulings.

Gerald Ford, as former president, formally opposed the Briggs Initiative in 1977, which sought to ban homosexuals from teaching in public school. In October 2001, he broke with conservative members of the Republican Party by stating that gay and lesbian couples "ought to be treated equally. Period." He became the highest ranking Republican to embrace full equality for gays and lesbians, stating his belief that there should be a federal amendment outlawing anti-gay job discrimination and expressing his hope that the Republican Party would reach out to gay and lesbian voters. He also was a member of the Republican Unity Coalition, which The New York Times described as "a group of prominent Republicans, including former President Gerald R. Ford, dedicated to making sexual orientation a non-issue in the Republican Party".

Jimmy Carter

In February 1976, Carter said he opposed discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation, but in June 1976 he withdrew his support of a gay rights plank in the Democratic Party platform.

In 1977, under the guidance of Jimmy Carter, a policy was removed which barred employment of gays in the foreign service and Internal Revenue Service. That same year, fourteen gay and lesbian activists were invited to the White House for the first official visit ever. Jimmy Carter publicly opposed the Briggs Initiative. However, in March 1980, Carter issued a formal statement indicating he would not issue an executive order banning anti-gay discrimination in the U.S. federal government and that he would not support including a gay rights plank in the Democratic Party platform. In September 1980, the United States Department of Justice announced that immigration officials would no longer be allowed to ask whether an individual entering the United States was gay and therefore ineligible for admission. An individual would only be denied admission into the United States if the traveler self-identified as gay to the immigration official.

In 2004, Carter came out for civil unions and stated that he "opposes all forms of discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation and believes there should be equal protection under the law for people who differ in sexual orientation". In 2007, he called for ending the ban on gays in the military. In March 2012, Jimmy Carter came out in favor of same sex marriage.

Ronald Reagan

The first chapter of what would become the national Log Cabin Republicans (LCR) formed in 1978 to fight California's Briggs Initiative, a ballot initiative that would have banned homosexuals from teaching in public schools. The chapter worked diligently and successfully convinced Governor Reagan to publicly oppose the measure. Reagan penned an op-ed against the Briggs Initiative in which he wrote, "Whatever else it is, homosexuality is not a contagious disease like the measles. Prevailing scientific opinion is that an individual's sexuality is determined at a very early age and that a child's teachers do not really influence this."

On the 1980 campaign trail, he spoke of the gay civil rights movement:

My criticism is that [the gay movement] isn't just asking for civil rights; it's asking for recognition and acceptance of an alternative lifestyle which I do not believe society can condone, nor can I.

No civil rights legislation for LGBTQ individuals passed during Reagan's tenure. Additionally, Reagan has been criticized for ignoring (by failing to adequately address or fund) the growing AIDS epidemic, even as it took thousands of lives in the 1980s. Reagan's Surgeon General from 1982 to 1989, Dr. C. Everett Koop, claims that his attempts to address the issue were shut out by the Reagan administration. According to Koop, the prevailing view of the Reagan administration was that "transmission of AIDS was understood to be primarily in the homosexual population and in those who abused intravenous drugs" and therefore that people dying from AIDS were "only getting what they justly deserve."

On August 18, 1984, President Reagan issued a statement on the issue of same-sex marriage that read:

Society has always regarded marital love as a sacred expression of the bond between a man and a woman. It is the means by which families are created and society itself is extended into the future. In the Judeo-Christian tradition it is the means by which husband and wife participate with God in the creation of a new human life. It is for these reasons, among others, that our society has always sought to protect this unique relationship. In part the erosion of these values has given way to a celebration of forms of expression most reject. We will resist the efforts of some to obtain government endorsement of homosexuality.

George H. W. Bush

In 1988, the Republican Party's nominee, Vice President George H. W. Bush, endorsed a plan to protect persons with AIDS from discrimination.

As President, George H. W. Bush signed legislation that extended gay rights. On April 23, 1990, George H. W. Bush signed the Hate Crime Statistics Act, which requires the Attorney General to collect data on crimes committed because of the victim's race, religion, disability, sexual orientation, or ethnicity. It was the first federal statute to "recognize and name gay, lesbian and bisexual people." On July 26, 1990, George H. W. Bush signed the Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990. On November 29, 1990, Bush signed the Immigration Act of 1990, which withdrew the phrase "sexual deviation" from the Immigration and Nationality Act (INA) so that it could no longer be used as a basis for barring entry of immigration to the U.S. for homosexuals.

In a television interview, Bush said if he found out his grandchild was gay, he would "love his child", but tell him homosexuality was not normal and discourage him from working for gay rights. In February 1992, the chairman of the Bush-Quayle campaign met with the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force. In May 1992, he appointed Anne-Imelda Radice to serve as the Acting Chairman of the National Endowment for the Arts. Losing ground in the 1992 Republican president primary to President Bush's far-right challenger, Pat Buchanan, the Bush campaign turned to the right, and President Bush publicly denounced same-sex marriage.

The 1992 Log Cabin Republican convention was held in Spring, Texas, a Houston exurb. The main issue discussed was whether or not LCR would endorse the re-election of President George H. W. Bush. The group voted to deny that endorsement because Bush did not denounce anti-gay rhetoric at the 1992 Republican National Convention. Many in the gay community believed President Bush had not done enough on the issue of AIDS. Urvashi Vaid argues that Bush's anti-gay rhetoric "motivated conservative gay Democrats and loyal gay Republicans, who had helped defeat Dukakis in 1988, to throw their support behind Clinton."

In 1992, the Council of the District of Columbia passed the "Health Benefits Expansion Act", which was signed into law by the Mayor of Washington, D.C. The bill, which established domestic partnerships in the District of Columbia, became law on June 11, 1992. Every year from 1992 to 2000, the Republican leadership of the U.S. Congress added a rider to the District of Columbia appropriations bill that prohibited the use of federal or local funds to implement the Health Care Benefits Expansion Act. On October 5, 1992, Bush signed the H.R. 6056 into law, which included the Republican rider to the appropriations bill.

Bill Clinton

In 1992, Governor Bill Clinton, as a candidate for president, issued a public statement of support for repeal of Arkansas's sodomy law. Also in 1992, the Human Rights Campaign, America's largest LGBTQ rights organization, issued its first presidential endorsement in 1992 to Bill Clinton.

Bill Clinton's legacy on gay rights is a matter of controversy. LGBTQ rights activist Richard Socarides credits Clinton as the first president to publicly champion gay rights, but Clinton's signing of DOMA and DADT have led critics like Andrew Sullivan to argue Clinton was a detriment to rather than an ally for the LGBTQ rights movement, though DOMA passed Congress with veto-proof majorities in the House and Senate. In December 1993, Clinton implemented a Department of Defense directive known as "Don't Ask, Don't Tell", which allowed gay men and women to serve in the armed services provided they kept their sexuality a secret, and forbade the military from inquiring about an individual's sexual orientation. The policy was developed as a compromise after Clinton's proposal to allow gays to serve openly in the military met with staunch opposition from prominent congressional Republicans and Democrats, including Senators John McCain (R-AZ) and Sam Nunn (D-GA). According to David Mixner, Clinton's support for the compromise led to a heated dispute with Vice President Al Gore, who felt that "the President should lift the ban ... even though [his executive order] was sure to be overridden by the Congress".

Some gay-rights advocates criticized Clinton for not going far enough and accused him of making his campaign promise to get votes and contributions. Their position was that Clinton should have integrated the military by executive order, noting that President Harry Truman used executive order to racially desegregate the armed forces. Clinton's defenders argue that an executive order might have prompted the Senate to write the exclusion of gays into law, potentially making it harder to integrate the military in the future. Later in his presidency, in 1999, Clinton criticized the way the policy was implemented, saying he did not think any serious person could say it was not "out of whack". On September 21, 1996, Clinton signed into law the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA), which defines marriage for federal purposes as the legal union of one man and one woman, allowing individual states to refuse to recognize gay marriages performed in other states. Paul Yandura, speaking for the White House gay and lesbian liaison office, said that Clinton's signing of DOMA "was a political decision that they made at the time of a re-election." In defense of his actions, Clinton has said that DOMA was an attempt to "head off an attempt to send a constitutional amendment banning gay marriage to the states", a possibility he described as highly likely in the context of a "very reactionary Congress."

George W. Bush

In his 1994 campaign to become the Governor of Texas, Bush pledged to veto any effort to repeal Texas's sodomy law, calling it "a symbolic gesture of traditional values."

In 1997, Governor Bush signed into law a bill adding "A license may not be issued for the marriage of persons of the same sex" into the Texas Family Code. In a 1998 Texas Gubernatorial election political awareness test, he answered no to the questions of whether Texas government should include sexual orientation in Texas' anti-discrimination laws and whether he supports Texas recognizing same-sex marriage.

In 1999, the Byrd Jr. Hate Crimes Act, which would have increased punishment for criminals motivated by hatred of a victim's gender, religion, ethnic background or sexual orientation, was killed in committee by Texas Senate Republicans. Governor Bush was criticized for letting the hate crimes bill die in a Texas Senate committee. Bush spokesman Sullivan said the governor never took a position on the bill. According to Louvon Harris, sister of James Byrd, said that Bush's opposition to the bill reportedly revolved around the fact that it would cover gays and lesbians.

The governor's office "contacted the family and asked if we would consider taking sexual orientation out of the bill, and our answer was no, because the bill is for everybody. Everybody should be protected by the law." said Harris. In a 2000 presidential debate, Al Gore would attack Bush for allowing the bill to die in committee, with Bush responding Texas already had a hate crimes statute, and nothing more was needed. George W. Bush also stated his opposition to a New Jersey Supreme Court ruling that said the Boy Scouts of America must accept gays in their organization. "I believe the Boy Scouts is a private organization and they should be able to set the standards that they choose to set," Bush said. Bush also expressed his support for bans on gay foster parenting and adoption, urging agencies to place children in "traditional homes—man and wife."

During the 2000 campaign he did not endorse a single piece of gay rights legislation. In a 2000 Republican presidential debate, George W. Bush said he opposes same-sex marriage, but supports states' rights when it came to the issue of same-sex marriage. During the campaign he had refused to comment on Vermont's civil unions law. On April 13, 2000, Governor Bush became first presumptive GOP presidential nominee ever to meet publicly with gay Republicans in Austin, Texas.

Barack Obama

Barack Obama supported legalizing same-sex marriage when he first ran for the Illinois State Senate in 1996. When he ran for re-election to the Illinois Senate in 1998, he was undecided about legalizing same-sex marriage and supported including sexual orientation to the state's non-discrimination laws. During his time as a state senator he cosponsored a bill amending the Illinois Human Rights Act to include protections for LGBTQ people which prohibits discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation and gender identity in the workplace, housing, and all public places and supported Illinois gender violence act.

Obama supported civil unions, but opposed same-sex marriage when he ran for the U.S. Senate in 2004 and for U.S. President in 2008. He supported civil unions that would carry equal legal standing to that of marriage for same-sex couples, but believed that decisions about the title of marriage should be left to the states.

During his time as senator, Obama co-sponsored the Employment Non-Discrimination Act, Matthew Shepard Local Law Enforcement Hate Crimes Prevention Act, Tax Equity for Domestic Partner and Health Plan Beneficiaries Act, and Early Treatment for HIV Act.

In the 109th United States Congress, Obama received a score of 89% by the Human Rights Campaign.

In 2006, Obama voted against the Federal Marriage Amendment, which would have defined marriage as between one man and one woman in the U.S. Constitution.

In 2007, Senator Obama said he opposed the 1996 Defense of Marriage Act and the don't ask, don't tell policy when it passed and supported repealing it. He also said that homosexuality is not a choice, he supported adoption rights for same-sex couples, and he would work as president to extend the 1,000 federal rights granted to marriage couples to couples in civil unions. He also voted for the Kennedy Amendment to the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2008 that would expand federal jurisdiction to reach serious, violent hate crimes perpetrated because of the victim's sexual orientation and gender identity and the Tom Lantos and Henry J. Hyde United States Global Leadership Against HIV/AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria Reauthorization Act.

Donald Trump

Donald Trump opposed expanding LGBTQ rights. As President, he rolled back LGBTQ rights and appointed anti-LGBTQ officials, but also gay officials such as Scott Bessent as Secretary of the Treasury and Richard Grenell as special presidential envoy for special missions. He opposed the Equality Act, which has been one of the highest priorities of LGBTQ rights groups since same-sex marriage was enacted by the Supreme Court. Long before his 2016 campaign, Trump opposed the legalization of same-sex marriage; during his 2016 campaign, he pledged to appoint anti-LGBTQ Justices to the Supreme Court. His administration banned transgender people from serving in the military and attempted to legally redefine gender in order to undermine nondiscrimination protections for transgender, non-binary, and intersex people.

His administration argued before the Supreme Court that Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 does not protect gay or transgender Americans from discrimination (though the Court ultimately decided in favor of LGBTQ rights in this matter). His Cabinet rolled back non-discrimination requirements for homeless shelters, allowing them to discriminate against homeless transgender youth. His Education Secretary, Betsy DeVos, rolled back protections for LGBTQ students. All LGBTQ references were removed from the websites of the White House, Department of State, and Department of Labor minutes after Trump took office. Trump did not allow refugees to enter the country on the basis of their fleeing from LGBTQ-related discrimination. Trump was the first president to speak at the Value Voters Summit hosted by the Family Research Council.

In 2017, Trump dissolved the Office of National AIDS Policy (ONAP, founded in 1993) and the Presidential Advisory Council on HIV/AIDS (PACHA, founded in 1995). His 2019 budget proposal did not include any funding for two existing programs run under the Ryan White HIV/AIDS Program.

The Trump administration has attacked transgender rights on multiple fronts.

Students' bathroom access: On February 10, 2017, the Department of Justice dropped a defense of transgender students' access to bathrooms. Obama-era guidance had allowed students to use bathrooms corresponding to their gender identity. The right had been challenged by a Texas District Court, and the Department of Justice had previously asked the court to lift its stay, but the Department of Justice (under the new Attorney General Jeff Sessions) withdrew its request. On February 22, 2017, Trump reversed a directive from the Obama administration that allowed transgender students who attend public schools to use bathrooms that correspond with their gender identity. Education Secretary Betsy DeVos, questioned before the House Education and Labor Committee on April 10, 2019, about the previous rollback, acknowledged that she had been aware of the effects of the stress of discrimination on transgender youth; these effects include depression, anxiety, lower attendance and grades, and attempted suicide. In May 2019, the Supreme Court declined to hear a challenge to a Pennsylvania school regarding its bathroom policy, suggesting that schools may continue to set their own policies to accommodate transgender students.

Joe Biden

On Joe Biden's first day in office, he signed an executive order banning employment and housing discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation and gender identity. This executive order interprets the United States Supreme Court decision Bostock v. Clayton County more broadly than the Trump administration had. The executive order also mandates that transgender children be allowed to use the locker rooms and bathrooms of their gender identity, and be allowed to participate in the sport of their gender identity too, and although it does not mandate all schools and states must follow the order, if they were to defy it, the Federal Government could deny funding to said states or schools. Currently, there are multiple states considering bills which would bar transgender athletes from competing in the sport of their gender identity, and even one state, Idaho, has enacted a bill which bans trans girls from playing in the sport of their gender identity, which is currently the subject of an ongoing court battle in the 9th Circuit (see Hecox v. Little). Despite this, the Biden administration has not made any statements on said bills, and whether or not it will deny funding to states that have enacted them, or are considering enacting them.

The court ruling expanded Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 to ban employment discrimination against LGBTQ employees but did not explicitly ban discrimination outside of employment. The executive order signed by President Biden ordered all federal agencies to review existing regulations and policies that prohibit sex discrimination, and to revise them as necessary to clarify that "sex" includes sexual orientation and gender identity. Also on Biden's first day in office, his press secretary, Jen Psaki, announced in a press conference that the President would soon reverse the government's ban on transgender people from serving openly in the military. Biden had originally said that reversing the ban would be an action taken "on day one," but this was delayed, perhaps because his nominee for Secretary of Defense, Lloyd Austin, had not been confirmed yet. This ban was reversed by executive order on January 25, 2021, allowing transgender people to serve in the military again.

On March 26, 2021, Rachel Levine became the U.S. assistant secretary for health and "the highest-ranking openly transgender official in U.S. history" (according to the Washington Post). On May 10, 2021, the Department of Health and Human Services affirmed that gay and transgender people's access to healthcare was protected under the Affordable Care Act, reversing a Trump administration policy and restoring an Obama administration policy. On June 15, 2022, Biden signed another executive order designed to blunt recent anti-LGBTQ state legislation. The order directed the Department of Health and Human Services to partner with state child welfare agencies to prevent anti-LGBTQ discrimination, identify and address barriers to LGBTQ people receiving federal anti-poverty benefits, and create a Bill of Rights for LGBTQI+ Older Adults; ordered the Department of Housing and Urban Development to identify and address barriers to housing for LGBTQ people; and expanded the federal government's commitment to data collection on sexual orientation and gender identity by creating a coordinating committee to guide such data collection across all federal agencies. In addition, it would order the federal government to curb federal funding for the practice of Conversion therapy, and ask the Federal Trade Commission to consider whether it constitutes an unfair or deceptive act. It would also set up programs to expand access to suicide prevention resources for LGBTQ youth.

Political support for LGBTQ rights

Support

The main supporters of LGBTQ rights in the U.S. have generally been political liberals and libertarians. Regionally, support for the LGBTQ rights movement has been strongest in the areas of the Northeast and the West Coast, and in other states with large urban populations. The national Democratic Party has held the official platform support most initiatives since 2012 for LGBTQ rights. However, there are some Republican groups advocating for LGBTQ issues inside the party include the Log Cabin Republicans, GOProud, Young Conservatives for the Freedom To Marry, and College Republicans of the University of Pennsylvania and Columbia University. A CNN News poll in 2021 found that 55% of Republicans support same-sex marriage, a percentage that rose to 55% in a Gallup poll conducted during May 2021.

In 2013, 52% of Republicans and GOP-leaning independents between the age of 18 and 49 years old supported same-sex marriage in a joint Washington Post-ABC News poll. A 2014 Pew Forum Poll showed that American Muslims are more likely than Evangelicals to support same-sex marriage 42% to 28%, a percentage that according to the Public Religion Research Institute in 2018 rose to 51% and 34%. According to Pew Research Center in 2017, Millennials and Generation X, younger white evangelicals born after 1964, have grown more supportive in favor same-sex marriage, up to 47%. A 2017 Pew Research Center poll showed that 64% of White Americans, 60% of Hispanic and Latino Americans and 51% of African Americans support the right for same-sex couples to marry. Religious groups in support of their LGBTQ parishioners and same-sex marriage include the Episcopal Church, the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, the Metropolitan Community Church, the Union for Reform Judaism, the Moravian Church, the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ), the Alliance of Baptists, the Baptist Joint Committee for Religious Liberty, the Reformed Church in America, the United Church of Christ, the Presbyterian Church (USA), and the United Methodist Church.

Opposition

While support for same-sex marriage has increased significantly since the Obergefell decision, support has fallen slightly since its peak in 2023. Democratic and independent support has remained largely stable, while Republican support fell from its peak at 55% in 2021 to 41% in 2025.

The main opponents of LGBTQ rights in the U.S. have generally been conservative Christians. As of 2024, the majority (62%) of evangelical Protestants oppose same-sex marriage. While evangelical support is the lowest among any religious group, it has increased from 28% in 2014 to 36% in 2024. Arguments against LGBTQ rights are largely based on religious objections. Regionally, LGBTQ rights opposition has been strongest in the South and in other states with a large rural and conservative population, particularly the Bible Belt.

Late in 1979, a new religious revival among conservative evangelical Protestants and Roman Catholics ushered in the conservatism politically aligned with the Christian right that would reign in the United States during the 1980s, becoming another obstacle for the progress of the LGBTQ rights movement. During the HIV/AIDS epidemic of the 1980s, LGBTQ communities were further stigmatized as they became the focus of mass hysteria, suffered isolation and marginalization, and were targeted with extreme acts of violence. As the movement for same-sex marriage has developed, many national and/or international organizations have opposed that movement. Those organizations include the American Family Association, the Christian Coalition, Family Research Council, Focus on the Family, Save Our Children, NARTH, the Catholic Church, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS Church), the Southern Baptist Convention, Alliance for Marriage, Alliance Defending Freedom, Liberty Counsel, and the National Organization for Marriage.

Democratic Party

The Democratic Party started to support some LGBTQ rights in the 1970s. Despite signing the Defense of Marriage Act, Bill Clinton was the first president who openly supported LGBTQ rights; he appointed several openly gay government officials during his administration. In the 2012 national platform, the Democratic Party supported the repeal of the Defense of Marriage Act and "equal responsibility, benefits, and protections" for same-sex couples; President Barack Obama came out in support of same-sex marriage in 2012. The Democratic Party explicitly supports same-sex marriage.

In the Democratic Party's 2016 national platform, the Democratic Party adopted its most progressive agenda in supporting LGBTQ rights. According to that agenda, "Democrats believe that LGBT rights are human rights and that American foreign policy should advance the ability of all persons to live with dignity, security, and respect, regardless of who they are or who they love."

The agenda is supportive of:

Obergefell v. Hodges

Passing the Equality Act, the comprehensive federal nondiscrimination legislation for LGBTQ Americans in housing, employment, public accommodations, credit, jury service, education, and federal funding

Including LGBTQ people under sex discrimination laws

Combating youth homelessness

Policies to improve school climates for LGBTQ students

LGBTQ elders

Access to Transgender health care

Ending violence against LGBTQ people including the crisis of anti-transgender violence

Mental health

"Insuring fair treatment for LGBTQ veterans, including by proactively reviewing and upgrading discharge records for veterans who were discharged because of their sexual orientation."

Republican Party

While many in the Republican Party have become more supportive of same-sex marriage throughout recent years, many are still opposed to the recognition of transgender rights within the United States. More than half of those who identify as Republican believe that same-sex marriage should be legal (55% in a Pew Research survey conducted in May 2021).

Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump used the acronym "LGBT" at the 2016 Republican National Convention while acknowledging the recent shooting at the Pulse nightclub. Trump, as president, signed a memo in August 2017 prohibiting transgender individuals from joining the armed services in most cases. Trump appointed the first openly gay member of Cabinet, Richard Grenell. The Republican Party's 2016 platform, which was also used in 2020, opposes:

Obergefell v. Hodges (the U.S. Supreme Court case that legalized same-sex marriage) and same-sex marriage generally.

Banning conversion therapy on minors.

Transgender children's right to use the facilities corresponding to their gender.

Covering LGBTQ people under anti-discrimination policies, including in cases of adoption.

Fred Karger's run for the 2012 Republican nomination for President made him America's first openly gay Republican presidential candidate.

In the 2020s, Republican-led states across the United States began rolling back some LGBTQ rights, particularly those involving children and transgender rights. These mainly include bans on gender transitions for minors, bans on public performances of drag shows, among others.

Third parties

The Libertarian Party has endorsed libertarian perspectives on LGBTQ rights by supporting the decriminalization of same-sex sodomy and promoting same-sex marriage since it was created in 1971, while also supporting religious freedom. The Libertarian Party wished to lift the bans on same-sex marriage, but with the ultimate goal of marriage privatization. Multiple sources, including the Libertarian Party, have referred to John Hospers, who was in 1972 the first presidential nominee of the newly formed Libertarian Party, as the first openly gay person to run for president of the United States. However, The Guardian's obituary stated that his family "strenuously denied" he was gay. Chase Oliver, who is openly gay, became the Libertarian Party's presidential nominee in 2024.

While many American socialist and communist political parties initially preferred to ignore the issue, most now support gay rights causes. Socialist groups generally integrate a stronger approach to gender identity issues than mainstream parties. The Socialist Party U.S.A nominated an openly gay man, David McReynolds, as its first openly gay presidential candidate in 1980; he is America's first gay presidential candidate if not counting John Hospers; see above for the controversy regarding Hospers' sexual orientation. The Green Party has been in favor of sweeping LGBTQ rights and protections since the party's inaugural platform in 2000. The more informal coalition of State Green Parties that existed in America from 1983 to 2000 also backed LGBTQ rights. The Constitution Party (United States) is strongly opposed to LGBTQ freedoms and supports criminal laws against homosexuality and cross-dressing. The party is very conservative and has ties to Christian Reconstructionism, a far-right, political movement within conservative Christian churches.

Public opinion on different LGBTQ rights and issues in the United States

Public opinion regarding different individual LGBTQ rights and issues in the United States is very mixed, with some issues having strong majority public opinion on the Progressive side of the argument, where on others, the American population is more Conservative, see summary table below.

Summary table of LGBTQ rights in the United States

This is simplified for international comparison with other Wikipedia LGBT rights articles.

A Y denotes that the right exists, while a N denotes it does not; a Y and N in the same column means the right varies on a state-by-state basis, or that it varies on the Federal Level.

Summary of state protections

Employment protections will not be included on the following table, unless the state adopted them before 2020, as they have already been implemented nationwide under Bostock v. Clayton County.