Gay rights movement began late in the 20th century. This movement was based on empowering homosexuals and ensuring that they could get the same quality of life as others that were not homosexuals. Prior to this movement, many homosexuals concealed the fact that they were gay for a number of different reasons. These include the fact that it was not socially correct to be openly gay, and gays were subject to threats and acts of violence. Because of this movement, there are several different facets of life that have changed for homosexuals today. Perhaps at the core of the movement for gay rights that initiated at the end of the last century is the concept of tolerance. Tolerance is a wide sweeping social phenomenon that includes religion, ethnicity, nationality, gender, disability, and even sexual orientation. The crux of the gay rights movement was to produce a society in which there was tolerance for homosexuals in much the same way that there is alleged tolerance for people based on the other foregoing social stratifications. Additionally, this movement also stemmed from the very real acts of violence that gays were subject to prior to the beginning of this movement. However, the gay rights movement was probably mostly bolstered by all of the other social movements that took place in the 20th century, most notably the Civil Rights movement and feminism...

In this regard, the gay rights movement was just one more area of expression of dissatisfaction with society that a group wanted to change its perceptions and its rights. This fact is important, because it helped to rationalize the gay rights movement -- the rationale being, of course, that gay people deserved as much rights as any other group deserved.
Although the gay rights movement began in the 20th century, it is just now starting to reap the benefits of that movement in the 21st century. Recently, the Supreme Court approved legislation that enabled gays to get married throughout the United States. This mandate represents a critical junction in the struggle for gay rights. The fact that gays could not get married was, for those in favor of gay rights, one of the chief obstacles they perceived to their rights for life, liberty and happiness. The logic was that if crippled people, Jewish people, and Latino people could get married, gays should be able to get married too. Again, this logic is couched in the belief that gays are merely historic minority groups like all of the other historic minority groups in the U.S. and in the rest of the world by extension. Now that the Supreme Court has enabled gays to get married, one of the…