Oceania, and the Islamic world.229 Worse, homosexuality is punishable by death in Mauritania, Saudi Arabia, Sudan, Yemen, parts of Nigeria, parts of Somalia, and all of Iran (despite, according to Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, not existing in that country). But the pressure is on. Every human rights organization considers the criminalization of homosexuality to be a human rights violation, and in 2008 in the UN General Assembly, 66 countries endorsed a declaration urging that all such laws be repealed. In a statement endorsing the declaration, Navanethem Pillay, the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, wrote, “The principle of universality admits no exception. Human rights truly are the birthright of all human beings.”230
FIGURE 7–23. Time line for the decriminalization of homosexuality, United States and world
Sources: Ottosson, 2006, 2009. Dates for an additional seven countries (Timor-Leste, Surinam, Chad, Belarus, Fiji, Nepal, and Nicaragua) were obtained from “LBGT Rights by Country or Territory,” http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LGBT_rights. Dates for an additional thirty-six countries that currently allow homosexuality are not listed in either source.
The same graph shows that the decriminalization of homosexuality began later in the United States. As late as 1969, homosexuality was illegal in every state but Illinois, and municipal police would often relieve their boredom on a slow night by raiding a gay hangout and dispersing or arresting the patrons, sometimes with the help of billy clubs. But in 1969 a raid of the Stonewall Inn, a gay dance club in Greenwich Village, set off three days of rioting in protest and galvanized gay communities throughout the country to work to repeal laws that criminalized homosexuality or discriminated against homosexuals. Within a dozen years almost half of American states had decriminalized homosexuality. In 2003, following another burst of decriminalizations, the Supreme Court overturned an antisodomy statute in Texas and ruled that all such laws were unconstitutional. In the majority opinion, Justice Anthony Kennedy invoked the principle of personal autonomy and the indefensibility of using government power to enforce religious belief and traditional customs:Liberty presumes an autonomy of self that includes freedom of thought, belief, expression, and certain intimate conduct.... It must be acknowledged, of course, that for centuries there have been powerful voices to condemn homosexual conduct as immoral. The condemnation has been shaped by religious beliefs, conceptions of right and acceptable behavior, and respect for the traditional family.... These considerations do not answer the question before us, however. The issue is whether the majority may use the power of the State to enforce these views on the whole society through operation of the criminal law.231
Between the first burst of legalization in the 1970s and the collapse of the remaining laws a decade and a half later, Americans’ attitudes toward homosexuality underwent a sea change. The rise of AIDS in the 1980s mobilized gay activist groups and led many celebrities to come out of the closet, while others were outed posthumously. They included the actors John Gielgud and Rock Hudson, the singers Elton John and George Michael, the fashion designers Perry Ellis, Roy Halston, and Yves Saint Laurent, the athletes Billie Jean King and Greg Louganis, and the comedians Ellen DeGeneres and Rosie O’Donnell. Popular entertainers such as k.d. lang, Freddie Mercury, and Boy George flaunted gay personas, and playwrights such as Harvey Fierstein and Tony Kushner wrote about AIDS and other gay themes in popular plays and movies. Lovable gay characters began to appear in romantic comedies and in sitcoms such as Will and Grace and Ellen, and an acceptance of homosexuality among heterosexuals was increasingly depicted as the norm. As Jerry Seinfeld and George Costanza insisted, “We’re not gay! . . . Not that there’s anything wrong with that.” As homosexuality was becoming destigmatized, domesticated, and even ennobled, fewer gay people felt the need to keep their sexual orientation hidden. In 1990 my graduate advisor, an eminent psycholinguist and social psychologist who was born in 1925, published an autobiographical essay that began, “When Roger Brown comes out of the closet, the time for courage is past.”232
Americans increasingly felt that gay people were a part of their real and virtual communities, and that made it harder to keep them outside their circle of sympathy. The changes can be seen in the attitudes they revealed to pollsters. Figure 7–24 shows Americans’ opinions on whether homosexuality is morally wrong (from two polling organizations), whether it should be legal, and whether gay people should have equal job opportunities. I’ve plotted the “yeses” for the last two questions upside down, so that low values for all four questions represent