ABSTRACT
Challenges to racial segregation during the civil rights movement of the 1950s and 1960s were about access to public space. Lesbian and gay bars were significant public spaces for the creation of social and political community for a number of reasons. The battle over the right to public space in bars and taverns frequented by homosexuals was a legal battle as well as a social and political one. Police harassment was challenged as early as the 1950s, typically by bar owners rather than patrons. Universities often find themselves in the center of social and political movements for change. In most employment discrimination cases, the employer does not have a per se rule barring the employment of homosexuals. But when the employer is the military, such a rule has been on the books in one form or another for decades. State employees could not look to federal civil service regulations for job security since those regulations only applied to federal jobs.
