Queer (In)justice: The Criminalization of LGBT People in the United States

The fight for LGBT rights started with a riot. Gays, drag queens, transgender people, and other gender and sex non-conforming individuals were hounded, attacked and criminalized by the legal system just for being themselves in those days. LGBTs had no freedom of association. Gays were banned from the military and from government employment solely based on a queer criminal archetype – the ‘queer security threat’, which, along with other queer archetypes, would make appearances at different times in our history. Gay bars and hangouts were routinely raided, their patrons arrested and charged with crimes. Then, in 1969, at the Stonewall Inn in New York, LGBTs started fighting back – attacking the police establishment and the prevalent belief that LGBT people should be charged with crimes and branded as lawbreakers. The Stonewall riots marked a shift in the way LGBTs would allow institutionalized homophobia to affect them:

It was on the night of June 27, 1969, that a routine police raid on the Stonewall Inn, a Christopher Street hangout for gays, run by the Mafia, prompted not cowed obedience from the customers but uncharacteristic fury and outrage. It was not unusual for the police to raid gay bars, and they did so regularly, to arrest transvestites and harass the customers. What made the raid of the Stonewall Inn unusual is that the gay and lesbian patrons spontaneously fought back, tossing beer cans, bricks and anything else in reach at the police officers, who responded by beating many of the protesters and arresting dozens of others.

Beacon Press has published Queer (In)justice: The Criminalization of LGBT People in the United States, a revolutionary work seeking an entirely new perspective on the rights of LGBT people in the United States. Focusing on the criminal legal system, the book details the years of systematic abuse and institutional and structural problems with that system – taking a hard look into our jails, police and courts – showing us that they not only prevent LGBT people from getting the justice they deserve, but that institutions such as those work against LGBTs to criminalize them based on stereotypes and homophobia – even when they ostensibly exist to help and protect LGBTs.