Homosexuals Working in the Criminal

Homosexuals Working in the Criminal Justice System

There are nowadays no restrictions on homosexuals joining any activity as employees in United States and that includes the armed forces. Of course, the work in every area is varied. Yet there are some common features of the persons being recruited and for the armed forces it is that they are recruited from the poor or the middle income groups. This had taken place even during the times of conscription. Some of the upper income groups managed to find reasons why they should be exempt from conscription and then proceeded with a good education so that they were placed better. Thus the members of the working class and the poor were left with no option other than to serve in dangerous locations. Some politically inclined persons were also left out of the war as they refused to serve and were left to suffer punishment. In the meantime, the political power shifted to the Right and this started the recruitment of women and homosexuals to the armed forces. There is of course no reason why these individuals should end up as being cannon fodder. (the Socialization of State Authority) to a certain extent these are a result of the gay rights movement being pushed and thus remove the stigma of gays being viewed as criminals and this resulted in establishment of their civil rights. (Gay rights)

One of the first gays' organizations was the Mattachine Society of New York. This was one of the first such groups and founded by Harry Hay in Los Angeles with the first meeting on November 11, 1950. There were quite a few who attended, but the organization was not incorporated till 1961. Several other similar groups were then founded in New York, Boston, Chicago, Denver, Washington DC and Philadelphia. The main aim of this society was to change the opinion of the general society about homosexuals from mental deviants to a persecuted minority. The interesting point to note is that all founders of this society were Communists and the base was the same as the cell structure of the American Communist Party. Then came the activities against the communists and this frightened a lot of the members who left, and even the leadership changed. Some other members became unpopular and their positions were lost to conservatives in the group. The aim of the society was to liberate the homosexual persons who they felt were oppressed, and provide some common services like legal and counseling. They were also trying to get some of the laws that hurt the homosexuals repealed, and one of these was the Sodomy law. It was coming out with a magazine called 'The Mattachine Review'. In the period from 1961 to 1969 this group was probably the most important group of homosexuals in the country. In 1969 came the Stonewall Riots and this changed the opinion of this group as being stodgy and traditional. This led to loss of support and start of infighting. Ultimately the organization closed as it was facing bankruptcy. (Mattachine Society)

The Stonewall riots began from a police raid on a gay bar in New York City and this is viewed as being the start of the modern gay's rights movement. The attack was named after the Stonewall Inn which was raided by the police. This was a popular hang out for gays in Manhattan's Greenwich Village. These raids had been taking place for a long time, but this was different as the crowd assembled there fought back. The riots led to the formation of the organization Gay Liberation Front and also give rise to a new level of solidarity among the gays. The police method earlier was to record the identity of all persons present in the bars, when they were raided, and these were then ready for publication in the newspapers. The police van was then filled to the brim with persons found. The arrests were made generally on any charge of indecency like kissing, holding hands, wearing clothes of the opposite gender, or even for being in the bar. This had however led to complaints by the Mattachine group that police were just trying to trap gay men and charging them with indecency. This complaint made the then police Commissioner, Harold Leary pass on instructions to the police so that they do not make an arrest without a civilian witness or push the gays into breaking the law. This had nearly stopped all incidences of arrest of gay men in New York. This was broken by this incidence when a drag queen swung out at a police officer after he was prodded. The other story is that it started when a lesbian began a fight when the car carrying her came to the crowds. Whatever may have been the beginning, a big fight broke out from the crowd and the police were overcome to be compelled to retreat into the bar. There was the heterosexual folk singer, Dave Van Ronk passing through and the police caught him, pulled him into the bar and beat him up. The crowd fought for a long time and tried to set the bar on fire. There was the use of a parking meter as a ram to force the police out. The fight went on and spread rapidly due to the joining in of the customers in the other bars and residents joining in. (Stonewall Riot)

At present Human Rights Campaign is the biggest organization asking for equal rights for the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender groups. This organization is trying to build an America where these people are assured of their basic rights and can be open, honest and safe at home, at work and in the community. This group is important in politics, and it tries to gather support for bills that are positive to these people, try to build a Congress that is helpful for these people through support of suitable candidates, collect support among the people of this type and also ensure that they vote in every election. They have a website which helps the members select law makers at both the state and local level, select laws that are useful to this group, review the position of different lawmakers regarding the issues of these people, and even sending suitable letters to these people. This was established in 1980 by Steve Endean for raising money for congressional candidates supporting these people. Within three months the organization was registered as an independent political action committee. They have become a force in Presidential candidates and supported Bill Clinton in 1992. One of their important projects has become the National Coming out Day. The only criticism of this group is that they are very friendly with the Democrats. During the 2004 elections the group spent a lot of time, energy and money supporting John Kerry. (Human Rights Campaign)

At the same time the support had probably led President Clinton to order the Defense Dept. To permit homosexuals enters the army, though they were not supposed to carry out homosexual activities. This policy has been discussed a lot and was felt to be a 'don't ask, don't tell' policy of permitting the gays to serve the military, without being discharged or meet other penalties as long they do not start the activity within the army. Even at the turn of the century, it seems that the status of these people had hardly changed. In contrast, gays in other NATO nations are openly permitted to join the armed forces. Anyway, from 1995, the homosexuals in U.S. were not automatically barred. (Gay rights)

There has been the start of a number of groups for the repeal of laws that stop consensual homosexual conduct. They are trying to remove legislation barring discrimination that gays face in housing and employment, as also more acceptances of them against other people. There has been some progress and anti-sodomy laws have been removed in 2 states and in the other states except five, these laws have been extended to all persons. Even the Supreme Court has accepted this point-of-view and agreed that anti-sodomy laws were unconstitutional in 2003. It has also ruled that a law to this effect in Texas was illegal and accepted that their own decision of not extending privacy laws to consensual sexual acts were wrong. However there has been strong objection to these laws from conservative religious groups and this has led to the repeal of these laws in many cases. This led to the state of Colorado nullified the enacted civil rights protection for homosexuals by changing its constitution in 1992, and was the fist state to do so. This change was rejected at the level of the Supreme Court in 1996. A somewhat similar scene can be seen in Maine in 1998 where there was a statewide referendum and that led to the repeal of the protection of the gay's rights. (Gay rights) Thus one can see clearly that the protection of gay rights is probably not very satisfactory, but at the same time, they are also guilty of many untruths.

The first of these is regarding their share of population and they have been compelled to admit that they do not have 10% share of population as has been claimed earlier. This admission was recorded at a Friends of the Court filed in the Supreme Court on March 26, 2003 for a case known as the Texas Sodomy Case identified as Lawrence v. Texas case. This was a case through which the homosexuals were trying to get the Texas law against Sodomy declared as unconstitutional. The declaration made was "The NHSLS found that 2.8% of the male, and 1.4% of the female, population identify themselves as gay, lesbian, or bisexual. This amounts to nearly 4 million openly gay men and 2 million women who identify as lesbian." (Homosexual Urban Legends: The Series) This is also reflected in the 2000 census figures which show that homosexuals exist in far lesser numbers than the figures talked about by the homosexuals. These figures were used by the homosexuals to claim that the number of same sex house holds had increased rapidly during the last few years. As per the census, there are a total of 106,741,426 households in United States and of these only 0.42% is unmarried same sex households. (Homosexual Urban Legends: The Series)

This makes it clear that the real sections of population who are homosexual are really small in number. At the same time they are very aggressive and a professor at the University of Nevada offended them by saying the homosexuals tend to plan less for the future during a lecture on economic planning. This was reported by Las Vegas Review Journal. The name of the professor is Hans Hoppe and he is known as a conservative economist who has taught at the University for over 20 years. According to him he said that he gave some examples of sections that do not plan for the future and among them were the very young, the very old, childless couples and homosexuals. According to him the discussion probably lasted for 90 seconds during a lecture of 75 minutes. This led a student to lodge a complaint informally within a few days and the step taken by the university is to give him a letter of reprimand and also not pay his next salary raise. (Economic theory' and 'cultural stereotype') it is clear that lawyers considering cases regarding homosexuals will certainly have a lot of cases to handle, but their lives will have to be very private, and they will probably not be permitted to be a homosexual on the job, if they are in government service.

During the period of 1990s, gay rights became very important and among them were the spouse benefits like health insurance and pension plans for the domestic partners as also the legal recognition of the same sex or gay marriages. This has been heard by many American companies who now offer same sex partners benefits for medical treatment similar to those enjoyed by the wives of other employees. This is reflected in the benefits of around one-fifth of the workers in these companies. At the same time, during the mid-1990s, the same sex marriages were being banned in any states, and the situation today is that 41 states do not accept same sex marriages. (Gay rights)

This has also been opposed by some state supreme courts and in Vermont it was declared in 2000 that offer civil unions for same sex couples be given the same facilities as those in marriages between different sexes. Even in Massachusetts, it was ruled in 2003 that homosexual couples have the fundamental right to marry and this has led to issue licenses for such marriages from May, 2004. In the meantime, there was a decision for the issue of civil unions for gay couples while marriages to heterosexuals were restricted and this law could take effect only from 2006, November. This was not a uniform picture and there have been restrictions from November 2004 regarding restriction of marriages between a man and woman and also banning same sex marriages in certain cases, and this was in 11 states. There are five states which ban gay marriages but recognize same sex partnerships, but those do not offer as many rights as civil unions. (Gay rights)

It is clear that the gays are approaching the status of a powerful minority, somewhat like the Jews which have a lot of power in United States. The only question is what is a criminal lawyer supposed to do for them and why is a homosexual required to do it? At the national level, there is the Defense of Marriage Act and that restricts the definition of marriage to being a union among heterosexual couples, and the matter has progressed to the level where some leaders including President Bush have been trying to get bans on same sex unions. The religious organizations have also been trying to get rid of same sex unions. (Gay rights)

Now let us look at sexual harassment as that is the main difficulty that gay people complain about, and which is likely to be the main job for a homosexual criminal lawyer. This is defined are the verbal or physical behavior of a sexual nature happening in the place of work or in an institution. These can be brought in as tort under equal-opportunity laws. This was earlier viewed as pressure from persons in authority in those institutes on those in an inferior position, and the object was to gain some sexual favors. This is now also viewed as creating a difficult environment to work in for the persons who are subjected to it. This may be employed by male employees in work situations against newly recruited female employees so that she finds it difficult to work. The objective may also be to protect some areas of work that were being earlier done only by males. These are viewed in United States since 1977 as sex discrimination by the courts. The court may penalize not only the superior who is trying to gain sexual favors, but also other fellow employees, or the controlling authority that is not being able to restrict others.

There have been complaints in the Senate in 1991 by Professor Anita Hill that a Supreme Court nominee had made unwelcome advances. The harassment has been taken into account by the Supreme Court to the extent that permits individuals harmed by a failure of the school to stop students who harass others to sue the school for damages that they have suffered. The normal definition of sexual harassment involves unwanted touching of the private parts of a worker, lewd comments, and talks about gender superiority or sexual jokes. At the same time this has now gone to the level where sexual harassment where co-workers have complained about how well the complaining worker looks, or their dates with others, or even for apparently harmless compliment. These are generally viewed to be harmless but in certain cases may be rude or viewed to be sexual harassment. (Sexual harassment)

As a criminal lawyer regarding homosexuality this is an area that is to be looked at carefully. These are most of the 'hate crimes' that gays complain about and these are generally nothing more than name calling or remarks. During 1991 FBI reported a total of 431 hate crimes against gays. In Washington DC there was only one reported case by FBI, but the gays claimed 397 incidents. When the gays were asked for details, they admitted that at least 366 incidents were those of verbal harassment (Violence and Homosexuality). Thus the criminal lawyer will have to be very selective about the cases that are handled.

Even in other countries, the general attitudes toward gays have become more tolerant, and this is even in Singapore. In July 2003, Mr. Goh Chok Tong, the Prime Minister had told Time magazine that the government had started employing homosexuals even for critical posts. To stop being blackmailed they were told to avoid declaring their status. At the same time, homosexual behavior is a crime under Sections 377 and 377A of the Penal Code there! (Homosexuals, health and the law) Regarding criminal behavior, the homosexuals are as violent as the others, if not more. In 1992, in Jeffersonville of Indiana two lesbians of ages 17 and 16 abducted a 12-year-old girl whom they suspected of getting close to another lesbian. The little girl was killed violently by being pushed into the trunk of a car, stabbed repeatedly and beaten with a heavy metal bar. Finally she was set ablaze while still alive. There was another killing at Fort Lauderdale, Florida of his 40-year-old father by a 14-year-old boy. The father was stabbed 45 times and beaten with a skillet to the extent that the iron skillet shattered. The reason was to help the father's homosexual lover to live with him! These murders are in line with the established psychiatric opinion that excess violence is a part of individuals affected by social pathology. This means that homosexuals, prostitutes, alcoholics, etc. are more likely to be violent than others, as they do not accept social norms. (Violence and Homosexuality)