Obstacles to Equality: Government Responses to the Gay Rights Movement in the United States
| DOI | 10.1111/j.1467-9248.1982.tb00519.x |
| Author | A. S. Cohan |
| Published date | 01 March 1982 |
| Date | 01 March 1982 |
| Subject Matter | Article |
OBSTACLES TO EQUALITY:
GOVERNMENT RESPONSES
TO
THE
GAY
RIGHTS MOVEMENT IN THE
UNITED STATES
A.
S.
COHAN
University o/’ Luncaster
Abstract:
The Gay Rights movement in the United States, like other social movements, may
achieve its goal of full equality before the law through actions by the legislatures
or
courts.
Generally, action by the latter opens the door to concessions by the former. But the Gay
Rights movement has not progressed as its adherents have wished for four reasons:
(I)
the
unpopularity of homosexuals; (2) the disjointed nature of American government(s);
(3)
the
absence of cohesiveness of the movement itself, possibly as a result of a lack of economic
deprivation among homosexuals; and
(4)
most significant, the unwillingness of the Supreme
Court to accord to homosexuals the same rights it has extended to other minority groups,
thereby giving a lead to legislatures as they did in the area
of
civil rights for Blacks.
GOVERNMENTS deal with a myriad of problems, all of which involve the
allocation of societal resources in whatever form those resources may take.
Most problems, such as social welfare provisions and defence arrangements,
require vast expenditures of money, and the expenditures, through money
raising methods and where the money goes, affect entire populations of such
societies. Because of the salience of those problems, they have tended to be the
ones on which political scientists with a special interest in public policy have
focused. Thus, public policy analysts have often been concerned with budgets
because
‘if
one looks at politics as a process by which the government
mobilizes resources
to
meet pressing problems, then the budget is a focus of
these efforts’.2 Further, taking all of its facets, the budget is an ideal
operational definition of ‘whatever governments choose to do or not to d~’.~
Budgets are the most easily manipulable data in policy analysis which actually
tell
us
something important about problems affecting virtually all members of
a society.
Some problems, however, involve the allocation
of
societal resources other
than money. Often, these problems
to
not pertain to whole, or even majorities
of, societies. Instead, groups, often very small, may require government
intervention for assistance in some way. But because these problems usually do
My view of the allocation
of
such resources is most strongly influenced by Harold Lasswell.
See, especially,
Politics:
Who
Gets What. When,
How
(Cleveland, Meridian Books,
1958).
first
published
1936.
*
Aaron Wildavsky,
The Politics
of
the Budgetary Process,
2nd edn (Boston, Little Brown,
1974).
p.
4.
Thomas
R.
Dye,
Understanding
Public
Policy,
2nd edn (Englewood Cliffs,
N.J.,
Prentice Hall,
1975).
p.
3.
Political Studies, Vol.
XXX,
No.
1
(Sct76)
60 OBSTACLES TO EQUALITY
not affect majorities, or even significant minorities, governments respond
slowly, if at all, in meeting such
problem^.^
In turn, political scientists have
given relatively little attention to them. Problems typical
of
this category relate
to
questions of civil liberties. While civil liberties questions may entail economic
factors, such as the generally lower standard of living among certain minority
groups, many do not.
Civil liberties problems arise because members
of
a group, almost inevitably
a minority,s collectively believe that the formal and/or informal rules of their
society discriminate against them. But the very existence of such rules suggests
that for some reason those comprising the majority disapprove
of
something
about that group. Majority disapproval permits decision makers to avoid
alleviating whatever grievance members of the minority group may feel. In this
paper, by focusing upon the activities of the Gay Rights movement in the
United States, the difficulties encountered by such minority groups in bringing
about social change will be explored. In this section, two propositions
concerning the balance between legislatures and courts in dealing with civil
liberties questions will
be
suggested. Then the activities of the Gay Rights
movement will be considered in the context of the American system with a
discussion of the differences between agitation for gay rights and for other
causes such as equal civil rights for women and Blacks.
This
will be followed
by
an analysis of the obstacles to progress for the Gay Rights movement in
achieving its goals with special emphasis upon the lack of any major progress
in the courts.
Although this is a case study,6 many of the problems which confront
American homosexuals are common to all societies in which citizens take pride
in democratic traditions. Indeed, it is not especially easy being a homosexual in
any Western democracy. The impulse toward civil liberties that characterizes
such .sockties is often thwarted by public prejudices which affect those who
differ from the majority. While fewer states maintain the level of legal
discrimination against homosexuals that they once did, some enforce laws
The concept of the significant minority is not an easy one with which
to
deal as it is fraught
with problems of tautology. Generally, a significant minority may
be
seen as one which has the
ability
to
affect the workings of a government, even, perhaps, to help being it down. By this
definition, coal miners in the United Kingdom would be a significant minority while university
teachers are almost certainly not. Blacks may
be
a significant minority,
or
they may not be,
depending upon the strength they are able to mobilize in certain areas. Anomic group activity as in
Bristol, for example, may have scant impact upon government policy thus suggesting insignifi-
cance. But government recognition of significance may often come too late. The transition from
insignificance to significance is very shadowy.
Women are the exception, although only a minority of women are interested in the women's
movement in whatever country one wishes to study.
While there is
no
great need to justify the case study, this approach had fallen
on
hard times
uctil recently. Often, works which were really case studies were placed in other categories by their
authors. This was usually done in order
to
justify 'theoretical relevance', a notion which many
people still take seriously without considering the theoretical relevance
of
case studies, even those
which make
no
mention of similar literature. Two works which do extol the virtues of case studies
and which are worth reading are Arend Lijphart, 'Comparative Politics and Comparative
Method',
American Political Science Review,
65
(1971),
682-93, and Jorgen Rasmussen,
'
"Once
You've Made a Revolution, Everything's the Same": Comparative Politics'. in
G.
J.
Graham, Jr..
and
G.
W. Carey (eds),
The Post-Behavioural Era: Perspectives
on
Political Science
(New
York,
David Mackay,
1972).
pp. 71-87. See, especially, p. 85.
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