Sexual Politics

"Sexual orientation, desires, and behaviors have become extremely politicized. The largest sexual political action committee is the Human Rights Campaign, which emerged in the 1980s as a Gay Community Rights organization. LGBT and LGBTQ have replaced Gay Community as the collective acronym. LGBT stands for Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender (occasionally Queer is added by some interest groups). The Human Rights Campaign has become the central political action organization for LGBTQ interest groups. Marriage between same-sex couples became an emotionally charged political issue during the California Proposition 8 referendum and constitutional amendment that passed November 2008. Because it passed, the California Section 7.5 of the Declaration of Rights to the State Constitution read, “Only marriage between a man and a woman is valid or recognized in California.” This set a strong national precedence against rights to same-sex couples to have legally recognized marriage on par with heterosexual married couples. Estimates are that over $80 million was spent on this proposition alone on both the for and against efforts. The Prop 8 initiative originated from a political action committee called ProtectMarriage.com. It self-describes as a “...broad-based coalition of California families, community leaders, religious leaders, pro-family organizations and individuals...to restore the definition of marriage as between a man and a woman.” Proposition 8 was ultimately ruled unconstitutional by a federal court in 2010, although the court decision did not go into effect until June 26, 2013, following the conclusion of proponents' appeals. In the past same-sex marriage in the United States was established on a state-by-state basis, expanding from 1 state in 2004 to 36 states in 2015, when, on June 26, 2015, same-sex marriage was established in all 50 states as a result of the ruling of the Supreme Court of the United States in the landmark civil rights case Obergefell v. Hodges, in which it was held that the right of same-sex couples to marry on the same terms and conditions as opposite-sex couples, with all the accompanying rights and responsibilities, was guaranteed by both the Due Process Clause and the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution."