MARRIAGE WARS (PART ONE): THE GAY RIGHTS MOVEMENT VS. THE CHRISTIAN CHURCH

PART ONE: THE RISE OF THE GAY RIGHTS MOVEMENT

What is marriage? Where did it come from?  Is it a secular institution or is it a religious institution?  Those are the questions at the heart of today’s “Marriage Wars”.   Those in the Christian Church believe that marriage was created by God and can only be entered into by a man and a woman.  To many others, marriage is a human institution created and designed by society.  In the past decade, we have seen an escalation in the battle for the definition of marriage from these two sides.  Now that DOMA has been obliterated and Exodus International has shut down, it seems that the Gay Rights Movement is poised to shout the cry of victory and that this war just about over.  But before we look to the end of this story, let’s look at how it all began.

The Gay Rights Movement, also known as the Homosexual Rights Movements, is an effort by various individual homosexual groups to eliminate laws against homosexual sex and end discrimination against gays, lesbians, and others.  To fully understand the agenda of this movement, one has to look at their history.

The history of this movement can be traced back to Berlin, Germany, where Magnus Hirschfeld (1868-1935) founded the first group to campaign publicly.  By 1922, he established 25 local chapters all over Europe.  His efforts were eventually suppressed by the Nazis and it did not survive World War II.  Today, Europe’s most prominent group is the C.O.C. (in English the acronym translates as “Center for Culture and Leisure”).  They were founded in 1966 and are presently headquartered in Amsterdam.

In the Los Angeles, the first United States of America support group was founded in 1950 by the Mattachine Society.  Five years later, in 1955, the Daughters of Bilitis was founded in San Francisco for lesbians.  This movement turned violently militant on June 28,1969 with the Stonewall rebellion.

The Stonewall rebellion occurred in New York City, when homosexuals took retaliatory action against the police.  The New York Police Department raided the Stonewall Inn, a popular homosexual bar in Greenwich Village, for the second time in the same week when about 1000 homosexuals and gay rights supporters taunted police and threw trash at them.  The police responded with violence.  This led to further rioting and protest rallies on the following nights.  This event was hailed as the awakening of several Homosexual Rights organizations throughout the country.  Every year, during this time, Gay and Lesbian Pride Week is celebrated to commemorate this event.