Looking Back In 2065 At Gay Rights In The USA

Today, we shall consider the past 60 years of social progress in the rights of gay Americans. Starting from the rocky years of the early 21st century and concluding with the founding of the North American Union in 2064, we will examine historic events and social changes that proceeded from the late 20th century movements for the rights of African Americans, women, the elderly, gays, and transpeople.

The late 20th Century was a turbulent time for the United States of America, one of the superpowers that is now a sovereign member of the North American Union (the Union or NAU). Patriarchal monotheistic religious ideologies dominated 20th century societies, resulting in extreme social and political polarization and fomenting endless cultural clashes and much violence. The common worldview espoused by these dominator systems has been identified as the primary mechanism inhibiting progress of social systems, societies, and ethical development. An example of these ethical conflicts can be seen with quotes from the USA of 2010:

Your children will be trapped in classes taught by drag queens and transgender activists. Traditional Values Coalition

In the greatest of all democracies, it hurts my heart that in the year 2010, we would still treat some members of our society as 2nd-class citizens, and use them to score political points or gain votes or power. Senator Barbara Boxer, D- California

Highlights of the past six decades demonstrate the emergent global recognition of universal human rights:

• The Matthew Shepard and James Byrd Jr. Hate Crimes Prevention Act was enacted by the American Congress in early 2010. This act was seen as controversial in its day, although opponents failed to ever produce any rationality in their opposition.
• The Employment Non-Discrimination Act (ENDA) passed in 2011 and was implemented at the federal level. Social and cultural resistance persisted, generated by rightists and led by Christian institutions. However, given the rapid decline of both the Catholic and mainstream Protestant religions that followed pervasive sex and finance scandals, over the next decade ENDA became broadly embraced.
• Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell (DADT), the federal law prohibiting lesbians and gays from openly serving in the military, was repealed in 2011, after supporters successfully argued that other democracies’ experience actually strengthened unit cohesiveness with the presence of self-affirming gays and lesbians.
• In 2020, the 28th Amendment to the Constitution of the United States of America overturned a ruling by the Supreme Court of the US from 2012 that declared no Constitutional right to marriage for same sex couples, repealing the notoriously heterocentric and misnamed Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA).
• The American state of New Columbia was created by an act of Congress in 2021, producing the first state Constitution with full human rights recognition of lesbians, gays, bisexuals, and transpeople.
• American extremists attempted secession of the following states between 2020 and 2035 in protest of federal recognition of the rights of LGBTs: Alabama, Mississippi, Oklahoma, Utah, Texas, Louisiana, Georgia, Tennessee, Florida, and Kansas. Although their efforts failed, they succeeded in creating a political sub-nation with proto-fascist institutions in control of these state governments, requiring protracted legal and political battles to ensure that Constitutional freedoms and liberties were upheld. These attempts ended the rise of regressives in the USA, as their violent theocratic vision was widely denounced.
• Growing recognition of the heavy hand of religious interference with national and social progress empowered a growing Civil Society movement and led to the 29th Amendment to the Constitution of the USA in 2036, which encoded full and clear separation of religion and state into the American national structure.
• Federal taxation of all religious institutions began in 2038, leading to the growth of overtly religious political parties.
• Numerous studies from the scientific disciplines began to coalesce between 2030-2040, leading to the now widely held understanding of a plurality of human sexes, rather than the quaint binary concept of male and female.
• The US Census was repurposed by federal fiat in 2045 into one that continued to count American citizens, but that now sought to assess the strength, potentials, and happiness of Americans as a matter of political concern and to identify areas in society that needed better financing and support. Gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender Americans were consulted for these changes.
• By 2055, widespread assimilation of same sex couples, gays in the military, and an openly lesbian Vice President had eroded much of the remaining homophobia present in non-urban areas of the USA.
• Sociological progress by 2060 had produced a highly secular American nation, with religion diminishing in importance. Ethical living societies now provide a common ethical understanding that is broad, flexible, and highly humane.
• The nations of Canada and the USA united in 2064, birthing the North American Union. The Constitution of the NAU became the first one to initially include all of the rights and liberties recognized by the historic Universal Declaration of Human Rights created in 1948 by the United Nations.