Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance Survey (BRFSS).As part of this work, we need to increase the number of nationally-representative health-related surveys that collect information on sexual orientation and gender identity (SOGI).Īt the beginning of the decade, the following 6 national data systems collected sexual orientation data: The LGBT companion document to Healthy People 2010 7 highlighted the need for more research to document, understand, and address the environmental factors that contribute to health disparities in the LGBT community. 5 Personal, family, and social acceptance of sexual orientation and gender identity affects the mental health and personal safety of LGBT individuals. 4 Experiences of violence and victimization are frequent for LGBT individuals, and have long-lasting effects on the individual and the community. Discrimination against LGBT persons has been associated with high rates of psychiatric disorders, 1 substance abuse, 2, 3 and suicide. Research suggests that LGBT individuals face health disparities linked to societal stigma, discrimination, and denial of their civil and human rights. Sexual orientation and gender identity questions are not asked on most national or State surveys, making it difficult to estimate the number of LGBT individuals and their health needs. LGBT individuals encompass all races and ethnicities, religions, and social classes. Improve the health, safety, and well-being of lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) individuals.
READ MORE: How the Great Depression Helped End Prohibitionīy the post-World War II era, a larger cultural shift toward earlier marriage and suburban living, the advent of TV and the anti-homosexuality crusades championed by Joseph McCarthy would help push the flowering of gay culture represented by the Pansy Craze firmly into the nation’s rear-view mirror.ĭrag balls, and the spirit of freedom and exuberance they represented, never went away entirely-but it would be decades before LGBTQ life would flourish so publicly again.Check out our interactive infographic to see progress toward the Lesbian Gay Bisexual and Transgender Health objectives and other Healthy People topic areas. This not only discouraged gay men from participating in public life, but also “made homosexuality seem more dangerous to the average American.”
In the mid- to late ‘30s, Heap points out, a wave of sensationalized sex crimes “provoked hysteria about sex criminals, who were often-in the mind of the public and in the mind of authorities-equated with gay men.” The sale of liquor was legal again, but newly enforced laws and regulations prohibited restaurants and bars from hiring gay employees or even serving gay patrons. Each gay enclave, wrote George Chauncey in his book Gay New York: Gender, Urban Culture, and the Making of the Gay Male World, 1890-1940, had a different class and ethnic character, cultural style and public reputation. In addition to these groups, whom social reformers in the early 1900s would call “male sex perverts,” a number of nightclubs and theaters were featuring stage performances by female impersonators these spots were mainly located in the Levee District on Chicago’s South Side, the Bowery in New York City and other largely working-class neighborhoods in American cities.īy the 1920s, gay men had established a presence in Harlem and the bohemian mecca of Greenwich Village (as well as the seedier environs of Times Square), and the city’s first lesbian enclaves had appeared in Harlem and the Village. “In the late 19th century, there was an increasingly visible presence of gender-non-conforming men who were engaged in sexual relationships with other men in major American cities,” says Chad Heap, a professor of American Studies at George Washington University and the author of Slumming: Sexual and Racial Encounters in American Nightlife, 1885-1940.