ABSTRACT
In 1963, a young white man in Brooklyn, New York, was one of the approximately 121,000 people who decided to apply for US citizenship that year. He carefully prepared and submitted his application, never expecting that it would put him at the center of a US Supreme Court case that became a definitive legal statement on the relationship between US citizenship and sexual orientation. This chapter traces the longer historical arc of the state’s attempts to configure citizenship in sexual terms. It offers several examples that illustrate how the history of sexuality and the history of citizenship have been bound together during different periods in the US Federal laws on immigration and naturalization have historically offered some of the most explicit articulations of US citizenship and national belonging. The federal state has regulated sexuality and citizenship not only at the nation’s borders, but also by producing and policing distinctions within the polity based on race and indigeneity.
