The gay rights movement in the United States is often traced to June 27, 1969, in New York City, when police raided a Greenwich Village bar, the Stonewall Inn, and bar patrons rebelled in protest. Seven years later, in 1976, in Dade County, Florida, Anita Bryant led the first religious campaign against gay rights. Her campaign (run by Bryant, her husband Bob Green, and a political operative named Ed Rowe, who went on to head the Church League of America briefly and later Christian Mandate) opposed a vote by the Dade County commissioners to prohibit discrimination against gay men and lesbians in housing, public accommodation, and employment. Bryant promoted a successful referendum to repeal the commissioners' vote, and her campaign gained strength and notoriety.
By the end of the 1970s, a political movement was born that incorporated conservative Christian fundamentalists and evangelicals as full partners in opposing gay rights and abortion. Homophobia has become a deep current in the Christian Right, part of a "pro-family" campaign that champions families with a strong father and that enforces a Biblically mandated heterosexuality. With the "ex-gay movement," the Right has taken a pseudo-scientific turn using therapy to rescue gays from what the Right sees as an unnatural perversion.
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