The ACLU and Gay Rights: A Complicated Relationship

Numerous times in our readings, the ACLU has rejected or ignored the pleas of lesbian and gay citizens. Given their status today as the blazoners of equality, I was curious as to when they first began to defend the LGBTQ+ community. According to their own website, the ACLU has been active since the 1930s, when they came to the defense of  Lillian Hellman's stage play The Children's Hour, which was being banned from performances in NYC due to lesbian content. While their case was unsuccessful, this does mark the ACLU's first foray into the gay and lesbian community. 

They go on to note that over 20 years later, they helped again. The ACLU, "came to the defense of City Lights Bookstore owner and prominent Beat poet, Lawrence Ferlinghetti for publishing Allen Ginsberg's Howl and Other Poems, which was deemed obscene due to its unapologetic references to gay sex. The closely watched trial, in which ACLU lawyers cited Balzac, Shakespeare and the Bible as examples of works with 'erotic' content, resulted in a complete acquittal." This marks the beginning of what we might now recognize as the ACLU championing gay rights. 

It is crucial to see that there is a two decade gap in their history. It is during this time we see that while the ACLU might defend cases of free speech, as in Hellman's play and Ferlinghetti's publishing, they were reticent to come to the aid of other gay issues. The NY Times wrote that in cases of sodomy and the Lavender Scare, "even the American Civil Liberties Union declared it had no interest in challenging laws 'aimed at the suppression or elimination of homosexuals.'" You can read the ACLU's response letter to the editor here. Canaday, in "Building a Straight State", points out that the ACLU "avoided cases where it  appeared that homosexual acts had occurred".

As is the case in most histories, the relationship between the ACLU and gay rights is not black or white. They neither ignored all of the pleas of the LGBTQ+ community, nor did they answer every call. I might suggets that the ACLU comes to the stand when they believe they are forwarding a socially digestible agenda, as in the cases of gay marriage and free speech. I would be curious to see how the ACLU might react to more inherently sexual cases in the 21st century.