ABSTRACT
A time traveler from the not-so-distant past—say, the 1980s—would no doubt be amazed at how much and how quickly the situation of sexual minorities in the United States has changed. In 1986, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in Bowers v. Hardwick that states had the right to criminalize private sexual behavior between two consenting adults of the same sex; roughly half of the states had such laws at the time. Same-sex couples could not legally marry anywhere and “civil unions” did not exist. The concept of domestic partnerships was only beginning to take root in a few California municipalities and it initially met with considerable opposition. Our time-traveler might recall that in 1982, then-mayor Diane Feinstein had vetoed domestic partners legislation passed by the San Francisco Board of Supervisors, and in 1989 a majority of San Francisco voters repealed a newly enacted domestic partners law.
