Δαφνη Ευτυχια Αρθουρος

"When NYPD officers raided the Stonewall Inn on June 28, 1969, they didn't expect protests. In those days, gay bars were common police targets. But this time, the community, led by trans women of color, decided to push back. Three days of protests erupted in New York City, and the gay-rights cause began to roar nationwide.

"As the '70s trudged on, however, this pro-gay movement met pushback. Outspoken homophobes like Anita Bryant of 'Save Our Children' and Jerry Falwell of the Moral Majority ignited an anti-gay counterwave, drawing Christian conservatives from the shadows to the ballot box en masse.

[...]

"By 1981, nine states had criminalized homosexual conduct while decriminalizing sodomy for opposite-sex couples. Compared to a century earlier, convictions for consensual, same-sex sodomy were up twentyfold.

[...]

"Over the years, police and prosecutors have used CANS to target a revolving door of 'threatening' groups: those who transgressed family norms in the 1980s, those made vulnerable by welfare cuts in the 1990s, and those left destitute by failed levees and toppled flood walls in the post-Katrina 2000s. But one community represents the intersection of all these targeted groups: Black trans women.

"Indeed, some of the 'gay men' CANS targeted in the 1980s likely became the women it targeted in the '90s-as a consolidated identity category, 'transgender' hardly existed in the '80s, and gender-affirming health care options were scarce. Although many gays and lesbians benefited from greater social acceptance in the years after Tom Hanks won his Oscar for the white-gay classic Philadelphia (1994), trans women of color did not. Youth homelessness, biased hiring, and discriminatory government safety nets relegated many to the streets-at the precise moment those streets were being 'cleaned.'

[...]

"Although the law may be what lawyers call 'facially neutral'-that is, its text doesn't explicitly mention LGBTQ+ people-its anti-queer origins are clear. As long as that animus remains codified, Cooper argues, a message of hate is sent to Louisiana's hundreds of thousands of LGBTQ+ residents."

-- Matt Nadel, "Prostitution was already illegal in Louisiana. Then Republicans crafted an even more damning law to target trans sex workers.", Scalawag Magazine, 2021-06-01