A lot of it, too, has to do with the sexual revolution and the general change in attitudes about sexual behavior, both in contributing to the birth of the gay liberation movement as well as the idea that sexual behavior between consenting adults is a private matter and should stay out of the public or legal sphere.
My thoughts are that it is related to the weakening of religion.
From my (limited) viewpoint…religion has lost a HUGE amount of impact especially on younger people.
Once religion is out of the way…what possible reasoning could a person have for not supporting gay rights?
Aside from the gender role issues already discussed by lee, it wouldn’t have made sense for there to be lesbian rights before women’s rights in general had a firm foothold. Lesbian marriage requires that women first have a real say in who they’re going to marry at all, and that women be able to support themselves without a male breadwinner in the household. The possibility of inheriting property from a lesbian partner requires that women first have the right to own, inherit, and control property in general. Heck, lesbians didn’t even have the right to vote for gay-friendly representatives until all women had the vote. I can at least imagine equal rights being granted to gay MEN a century ago, but extending equal rights to gay WOMEN at the same time would actually have given them rights that even straight women did not have.
I’m too young to know about this firsthand, but it’s my understanding that in the 1970s some lesbians felt torn between loyalties to the feminist movement and to the gay rights movement, with more than a few feeling that the gay rights movement was mostly serving the needs of gay men. At the extreme fringe was the lesbian separatist movement, that wanted nothing to do with men or anyone who had sex with men.
The alliance between homosexual men and homosexual women has not always been an easy one. If the two groups did not face similar discrimination and prejudice there’d have been little reason to start working together at all, and even today gay men and lesbians have somewhat different interests and priorities. I don’t know to what extent this may have hindered the struggle for gay rights, but it’s one factor.
I think the question is not “Why gay rights now?” but “Why has it taken so long?”
And that question is pretty much answered in the OP: the lack of a significant unifying event. Add to that the (probable) smaller percentage of homosexuals versus other groups such as African americans and women.
Then there’s the fact that, gaydar aside, it’s more difficult for gays to self-identify and form groups, and there’s not much of a mystery left.
Dont forget that the APA itself had homosexuality classified as an illness until 1973, well after the women’s rights movement had taken hold. It would be a few more years until the AIDS crises brought the issue to everyone’s attention
Again, I think the answer ties to mass communication, and particularly to market penetration of the Internet. Prior to widespread computer use, it was difficult for various self-identifying groups to unite; it was either embarrassing or hazardous or time-consuming to find others like yourself on a nationwide scale. Now, it’s as easy as finding a message board of like-minded people and posting in your underwear.
Black people, Hispanic people, women, and other groups defined by looks never had that problem.
I’d say this, especially the invention of the birth control pill. Once sexuality was disconnected with reproduction, other forms of sexual behavior that did not create offspring were legitimized.
Regards,
Shodan
If you look at the past 100 years of change (at least in liberal democracies) you see a pattern of liberation of traditionally repressed people. The old prejudices are falling like dominoes, and with transparency about what is happening (due to the Internet and mass communication) it’s only a matter of another generation before most people finally realize that no one is free unless everyone is free.
More directly, this has all come to a head because the majority of people who have voting power today (mostly) already saw the injustice of the situation. As we move forward, this effect will just get magnified as we admit other injustices in our society and decide that enough is enough.