LGBTQ rights in the United States

• 1. Introduction

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  LGBTQ rights in the United States have traveled a remarkable distance in a short time. From criminalized to constitutionally protected in a matter of decades, the arc of legal change has been steep and, in many places, still contested. Jeremiah Garretson, writing in 2018, called the transformation in American attitudes toward homosexuality "one of the most rapid and sustained shifts in mass attitudes since the start of public polling." How did a country move from arresting people for consensual sex to guaranteeing same-sex marriage nationwide? And how is that progress now being selectively reversed? The answers run through courtrooms, legislative chambers, military policy, and the lives of millions of Americans whose identities the law has only recently begun to recognize.

• 2. The Courts Rewrite the Rules

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  On the 26th of June 2003, the Supreme Court handed down Lawrence v. Texas, a decision that reached back and explicitly overruled Bowers v. Hardwick, a 1986 ruling that had found sodomy laws constitutional. Justice Anthony Kennedy, writing for the majority, held that intimate consensual sexual conduct is part of the liberty protected by the Fourteenth Amendment. At the time of the ruling, same-sex sexual activity was still illegal in fourteen states, Puerto Rico, and the U.S. military. Twenty-nine states, the District of Columbia, and five territories had already repealed their sodomy laws by legislative action; twelve more had seen them struck down by state courts.

  Yet the ruling did not immediately wipe the books clean. As late as 2022, Idaho was still formally repealing its sodomy statute, and Maryland's repeal of its "unnatural sex practices" law did not take effect until May 2023. Researchers have documented that sodomy law repeals corresponded with declines in arrests not just for sex offenses but for drug and alcohol consumption too, consistent with the idea that those laws had amplified minority stress in ways that rippled far beyond the bedroom.

  Twelve years after Lawrence, the Court returned with an even more sweeping ruling. On the 26th of June 2015, Obergefell v. Hodges required all fifty states to license and recognize same-sex marriages. Before that decision, thirty-six states had already moved to legal same-sex marriage, arriving there by three different routes: twenty-four by court order, nine by legislative action, and three by referendum. On the 6th of November 2012, Minnesota had become the first state to vote down a proposed constitutional amendment banning same-sex marriage, with that amendment failing 53% to 47%.

  The movement for civil marriage rights had begun in the 1970s but remained unsuccessful for over four decades. Massachusetts broke the long drought on the 17th of May 2004, becoming the first U.S. state and the sixth jurisdiction in the world to legalize same-sex marriage.

• 3. Opinion Shifts and Fault Lines

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  Between 1988 and 2009, support for recognized same-sex marriage grew at between 1% and 1.5% per year in polling data. Then the pace picked up. Pew Research Center polling showed support crossing 50% for the first time in 2011. A 2021 Public Religion Research Institute poll found majority support in 47 states, ranging from 50% in South Carolina to 85% in Massachusetts. A 48th state, Alabama, had plurality support. Only Arkansas and Mississippi had majority opposition at that point. When PRRI repeated the poll in 2022 and 2023, no state had majority opposition.

  A 2022 Grinnell College National Poll put the nationwide figure at 74% in favor of same-sex marriage as a guaranteed right, with 13% opposed. Gallup's 2022 and 2023 surveys found 71% support; by 2024, that figure had eased slightly to 69%. The General Social Survey found that support among 18-34 year olds is near-universal.

  By 2025, the data pointed to a hardening partisan split. Two Gallup polls that year found 88% of Democrats and 76% of independents in favor of same-sex marriage, compared to 41% of Republicans. On the question of transgender rights, the divisions were sharper still. The second Gallup poll found that 69% of Americans, including 90% of Republicans and 41% of Democrats, supported laws requiring transgender athletes to compete under their assigned sex at birth. Just 40% of Americans, and only 9% of Republicans, considered gender transition morally acceptable. A 2024 PRRI analysis found that support for same-sex marriage and LGBTQ discrimination protections is inversely correlated with support for Christian nationalism.

• 4. Federal Protections and Their Limits

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  In June 2020, the Supreme Court ruled in Bostock v. Clayton County that sexual orientation and gender identity are covered under "sex" as a prohibited ground of employment discrimination in the Civil Rights Act of 1964. The plaintiffs who brought that case included Gerald Bostock, Aimee Stephens, and Donald Zarda, each of whom had been fired on account of their sexuality or gender identity. A HuffPost/YouGov poll conducted shortly after the decision found that two-thirds of registered voters agreed with the outcome.

  Yet no federal statute explicitly names sexual orientation or gender identity as protected classes. The Equality Act, which would have done so nationwide, passed the House on the 17th of May 2019 by a vote of 236-173, then stalled in the Senate. It was reintroduced by the 119th Congress on the 29th of April 2025.

  Employment protections have also been built incrementally through executive order. President Bill Clinton's 1995 Executive Order 12968, establishing security clearance criteria, included sexual orientation in its non-discrimination language for the first time. His Executive Order 13087 in 1998 prohibited discrimination based on sexual orientation in the competitive federal civilian workforce. President Obama added gender identity protections in 2014 via Executive Order 13672, covering federal employees and contractors. President Trump revoked the related contractor compliance requirement on the 27th of March 2017.

  On housing, the federal picture is similarly fragmented. No federal law bars housing discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation or gender identity, though at least twenty-two states and many cities have enacted such protections. A 2012 regulation called "Equal Access" from the Department of Housing and Urban Development moved to prohibit LGBTQ discrimination in federally assisted housing programs, though there was an attempt to weaken it in 2019.

  The Matthew Shepard and James Byrd, Jr. Hate Crimes Prevention Act, signed by President Obama on the 28th of October 2009, extended federal hate crime coverage to include gender, sexual orientation, gender identity, and disability. It also removed the requirement that victims be engaged in a federally protected activity when the crime occurred. As of the most recent figures available, forty-six states, the District of Columbia, and several territories have statutes criminalizing bias-motivated violence, but only thirty-four of those statutes cover sexual orientation, and only twenty-three cover gender identity.

• 5. The Military and the Long Fight for Service

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  U.S. military law did not expressly prohibit homosexuality until the 4th of February 1921, though soldiers had been discharged for homosexual acts throughout the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. The Uniform Code of Military Justice, signed into law by President Harry S. Truman on the 5th of May 1950 and effective on the 31st of May 1951, included Article 125, which forbade sodomy among all military personnel. It defined the offense in explicit terms that included conduct with a person of the same or opposite sex.

  Prior to 1993, gay and lesbian people could not serve at all. The "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" policy enacted that year allowed service only on the condition that personnel did not disclose their sexual orientation. The Don't Ask, Don't Tell Repeal Act of 2010 opened the door to open service once government officials certified the military was ready. Since the 20th of September 2011, gay, lesbian, and bisexual service members have been able to serve openly.

  Transgender service members faced a different timeline. Defense Secretary Ashton Carter said on the 13th of July 2015 that regulations barring transgender individuals from serving were outdated and announced a six-month study of the question. Carter lifted the ban on the 30th of June 2016. That October, ten soldiers in the U.S. Army became the first to petition openly for a sex change since the lifting of the ban. In July 2017, President Trump announced via tweet that transgender people would be prohibited from serving. General Joseph Dunford, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs, said the day after that no policy modifications would take effect until implementation guidance was issued, and that personnel would continue to be treated with respect.

  The Supreme Court granted temporary permission to proceed with the ban on the 22nd of January 2019. The Department of Defense released implementation terms on the 12th of March 2019, to take effect on the 12th of April. The Biden administration revoked the ban on the 25th of January 2021. As of the 8th of May 2025, transgender individuals are again banned from military service except under narrow waivers for those who have maintained stability in their birth sex for at least thirty-six consecutive months and serve in roles critical to warfighting capabilities.

• 6. Transgender Rights Under Pressure

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  From the 11th of April 2022 through the 21st of January 2025, American passports offered three sex and gender options: male, female, and X, obtainable by self-determination. On the first day of his second term, President Trump signed an executive order declaring that the federal government would recognize only male and female genders, directing that official documents reflect biological sex assigned at birth, and stripping federal recognition from non-binary gender identities. References to transgender people were removed from government websites, in some cases replaced with the acronym "LGB" alone. Over 350 pages about the LGBTQ community were removed entirely.

  In 2022, more than 230 anti-transgender bills were introduced in state legislatures; the following year, that number rose above 350, and many became law. The terrain varies sharply depending on where a person lives. As of June 2025, all U.S. states except Kansas, Texas, Tennessee, and Florida allow the gender marker to be changed on a driver's license, though requirements differ widely. Tennessee will not change the sex on a birth certificate under any circumstances.

  The legal chaos created by inconsistent state rules can trap individuals in bureaucratic bind. A transgender woman born in Tennessee but living in Kentucky cannot change the gender marker on her Kentucky driver's license, because Kentucky requires an amended birth certificate, and Tennessee does not permit that change. Having identity documents that do not match a person's gender presentation has been documented to lead to harassment and discrimination, and advocates note that mismatched documents can complicate everyday transactions that require multiple matching forms of identification.

  In 2016, a coalition of over 250 anti-sexual assault and domestic violence organizations released a joint letter calling the portrayal of transgender people in restrooms as sexual predators both untrue and harmful. Many transgender advocates support converting single-occupant, gender-segregated restrooms into all-gender restrooms, noting that gender-neutral restrooms also benefit nursing mothers, parents with different-sex children, and people with disabilities.

• 7. Gender-Affirming Care and the Patchwork of Bans

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  Gender-affirming care for minors has been available in the United States for more than a decade and is endorsed by major medical associations. Of the approximately 1.6 million Americans who are transgender, about 300,000 are under the age of eighteen. An analysis from KFF in late January 2024 estimated that 38% of transgender youth between the ages of thirteen and seventeen lived in states with laws limiting their access to such care.

  Arkansas was among the first states to act, with its legislature passing a ban on the 6th of April 2021 before courts temporarily and then permanently blocked it. Courts later allowed the state to enforce the law after the Eighth Circuit ruled on the 12th of August 2025. Alabama made providing gender-affirming healthcare to transgender people under nineteen a felony when Governor Kay Ivey signed a ban on the 8th of April 2022. By August 2025, twenty-seven states had enacted some form of ban on gender-affirming care for minors, nineteen of those in 2023 alone.

  On the other side of the divide, a growing number of states enacted what advocates call "shield" laws. Connecticut was an early mover, with Governor Ned Lamont signing House Bill 5414 on the 5th of May 2022, designating the state as a safe harbor for providers and patients. California Governor Gavin Newsom signed Senate Bill 107 on the 30th of September 2022, making California a sanctuary state for transgender youth fleeing bans elsewhere. By 2023, Illinois, New Mexico, Vermont, New Jersey, Colorado, Minnesota, Washington, Maryland, New York, Oregon, and others had followed with similar protections.

  On the 17th of May 2024, Tennessee became the first state to prohibit helping a child access gender-affirming care without parental or guardian consent, with parents allowed to sue anyone who assists in seeking such care. On the 10th of March 2026, the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that West Virginia may continue to prohibit gender-affirming procedures for adults from being covered by Medicaid. The American Psychological Association approved a policy statement in February 2024 supporting unobstructed access to evidence-based clinical care for transgender, gender-diverse, and nonbinary children, adolescents, and adults, and explicitly opposing state bans. On the 17th of July 2025, Puerto Rico Governor Jenniffer Gonzalez-Colon signed Senate Bill 350, banning gender-affirming care for anyone under twenty-one, with violations carrying up to fifteen years in prison, a $50,000 fine, and permanent loss of a medical license.