National LGBTQ Task Force, American nongovernmental organization founded in 1973 that advocates for the civil rights of lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer (LGBTQ) individuals. It was the first such national-level nonprofit organization, and it mobilizes state-level training of LGBTQ community organizers, activists, and community memb...

gay rights movement, civil rights movement that advocates equal rights for LGBTQ persons (i.e., for lesbians, gays [homosexual males], bisexuals, transgender persons, and queer persons); seeks to eliminate sodomy laws; and calls for an end to discrimination against LGBTQ persons in employment, credit, housing, public accommodations, and other ar...

Religious admonitions against sexual relations between individuals of the same sex (particularly men) long stigmatized such behavior, but most legal codes in Europe were silent on the subject of homosexuality and bisexuality. The judicial systems of many predominantly Muslim countries invoked Islamic law (Sharīʿah) in a wide range of contexts, a...

Before the end of the 19th century there were scarcely any “movements” for gay rights. Indeed, in his poem “Two Loves” (1894), Lord Alfred (“Bosie”) Douglas, Oscar Wilde’s lover, declared “I [homosexuality] am the love that dare not speak its name.” Homosexual and bisexual men and women were given voice in 1897 with the founding of the Scientifi...