LGBTQ+ Law

LGBTQ+ law is deeply informed by many other bodies of knowledge, individuals, and communities. Historical work has played a major role in developing case law and arguing for change, while also responding to the needs of the moment. Many organizations advocate for LGBTQ+ communities in the legal field, while others provide assistance for community members across the nation. This page provides an array of sources that can support many different legal research questions. It provides links to national organizations, a selected list of works on LGBTQ+ history, North Carolina organizations, and resources on UNC LGBTQ+ history.

ABA Commission on Sexual Orientation and Gender Identity. The ABA SOGI leads the Association's commitment to diversity, inclusion and full and equal participation by lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender persons in the Association, legal profession, and society.

ACLU's LGBTQ & HIV Project: The ACLU advocates for the LGBTQ community through litigation, lobbying, public education, and organizing. Its website includes reports and information on cases and legislation.

GLBTQ Legal Advocates & Defenders (GLAD): National legal advocacy organization fighting discrimination based on gender identity and expression, HIV status, and sexual orientation through litigation and advocacy work.

Human Rights Campaign: National advocacy organization that seeks equality for LGBTQ+ people. Well-known for its logo, the blue and yellow equal sign.

Immigration Equality: LGBTQ and HIV-positive immigrant rights organization that supports immigrants and families through direct legal services, policy advocacy, and impact litigation. Select the Legal Help tab to access resources on asylum, detention, etc.

Lambda Legal: A national nonprofit committed to achieving full recognition of the civil rights of lesbians, gay men, bisexuals, transgender people and everyone living with HIV through impact litigation, education and public policy work. Their website provides more information about their work, as well as a breakdown of laws in all 50 states that protect LGBTQ communities and individuals.

Movement Advancement Project (MAP): MAP is an independent, nonprofit think tank that produces research on equality and opportunity for LGBT+ community.

National Black Justice Coalition (NBJC): NBJC is a national civil rights organization focused on Black LGBTQ+/SGL people. Its website has research reports, toolkits, and surveys.

Blue Ridge Pride: This organizations promotes equality, safety, and quality of life for western North Carolina’s LGBTQ and allied communities, working as a united community through advocacy, celebration, education and service.

Equality NC: ENC is the oldest statewide organization in the country dedicated to securing rights and protections for the LGBTQ community. Their website provides information about their issues, partnerships, and programs, as well as contact information for regional chapters.

LGBTQ Center UNC-Chapel Hill: The LGBTQ Center works to foster a welcoming and inclusive environment for UNC-Chapel Hill community members of all sexual orientations, gender identities, and gender expressions. Their website provides information about programs, resources, and news and events for undergrads, graduate students, and faculty and staff at UNC.

LGBTQ Center of Durham: The Center in Durham supports LGBTQ+ people through services, programming, resources, and support networks that center their well-being and allows them to thrive. Their website provides information about programs and resources for the local community.

LGBT Center of Raleigh: The Center in Raleigh advocates for LGBT individuals and communities in Raleigh, the triangle, and North Carolina more generally. Their website includes information about events, program initiatives, and resources. They have a page specifically on changing your name in Wake County, with links to a presentation and forms.

Black. Queer. Southern. Women: An Oral History. E. Patrick Johnson. Drawn from the life narratives of more than seventy African American queer women who were born, raised, and continue to reside in the American South, this book powerfully reveals the way these women experience and express racial, sexual, gender, and class identities--all linked by a place where such identities have generally placed them on the margins of society. Available in print and online.

Bodies of Evidence: The Practice of Queer Oral History. Ed. Nan Alamilla Boyd and Horacio N. Roque Ramírez. This text provides scholarly insight into the methodological practices that shape lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer oral histories. Each chapter pairs an oral history excerpt with an essay in which the oral historian addresses his or her methods and practices. Available in print and online.

Boots of Leather, Slippers of Gold: The History of a Lesbian Community. Elizabeth Lapovsky Kennedy and Madeline D. Davis. This text traces the evolution of the lesbian community in Buffalo, New York from the mid-1930s up to the early 1960s. Drawing upon the oral histories of 45 women, it is the first comprehensive history of a working-class lesbian community. Available in print and online.

Coming Out Under Fire: The History of Gay Men and Women in World War II. Allan Berube. During World War II, as the United States called on its citizens to serve in unprecedented numbers, the presence of gay Americans in the armed forces increasingly conflicted with the expanding antihomosexual policies and procedures of the military. Berube examines that social and political confrontation--not as a story of how the military victimized homosexuals, but as a story of how a dynamic power relationship developed between gay citizens and their government, transforming them both. Available in print and online.

Freedom With Violence: Race, Sexuality, and the U.S. State. Chandan Reddy. Reddy develops a new paradigm for understanding race, sexuality, and national citizenship. He examines a crucial contradiction at the heart of modernity: the nation-state's claim to provide freedom from violence depends on its systematic deployment of violence against peoples perceived as nonnormative and irrational. Available in print and online.

Gaylaw: Challenging the Apartheid of the Closet. William Eskridge, Jr. This text provides a comprehensive analysis of the legal issues concerning gender and sexual nonconformity in the United States through the end of the twentieth century. Available in print and online.

Gay New York: Gender, Urban Culture, and the Makings of the Gay Male World, 1890-1940. George Chauncey. Drawing on a rich trove of diaries, legal records, and other unpublished documents, George Chauncey constructs a fascinating portrait of a vibrant, cohesive gay world that has previously gone unseen in the historical record. Available in print.

Gay Rights and Moral Panic: The Origins of America's Debate on Homosexuality. Fred Fejes. Using the 1977 campaign against the Dade County Florida gay rights ordinance as a focal point, this book provides an examination of the emergence of the modern lesbian and gay American movement, the challenges it posed to the accepted American notions of sexuality, and how American society reacted in turn. Available in print.

How Sex Changed: A History of Transsexuality in the United States. Joanne Meyerowitz. This text examines how new definitions of sex circulated in popular culture, science, medicine, and the law and elucidates tidal shifts in social, moral, and medical beliefs over the twentieth century, away from sex as an evident biological certainty and toward an understanding of sex as something malleable and complex. Available in print and online.

Intimate Matters: A History of Sexuality in America. John D'Emilio and Estelle Freedman. The first full length study of the history of sexuality in America, Intimate Matters offers trenchant insights into the sexual behavior of Americans, from colonial times to today. D'Emilio and Freedman give us a deeper understanding of how sexuality has dramatically influenced politics and culture throughout our history. Available in print.

Men Like That: A Southern Queer History. John Howard. The first book-length history of the queer South, Men Like That reorients presuppositions about gay identity and about the dynamics of country life. Howard's history of queer life in the South debunks the myth that same-sex desires can't find expression outside the city and shows that the nominally conservative institutions of small-town life--home, church, school, and workplace--were the very sites where queer sexuality flourished. Available in print.

Normal Life: Administrative Violence, Critical Trans Politics, & the Limits of Law. Dean Spade. This text critiques  current strategies in advocating for trans individuals and communities solely on a legal rights framework, but also points to examples of an organized grassroots trans movement that is demanding the most essential of legal reforms in addition to making more comprehensive interventions into dangerous systems of repression —and the administrative violence that ultimately determines our life chances. Available in print and online.

Not Straight, Not White: Black Gay Men from the March on Washington to the AIDS Crisis. Kevin Mumford. This book recounts the history of black gay men from the 1950s to the 1990s, tracing how the major movements of the times--from civil rights to black power to gay liberation to AIDS activism--helped shape the cultural stigmas that surrounded race and homosexuality. Available in print and online.

Odd Girls and Twilight Lovers: A History of Lesbian Life in Twentieth-Century America. Lillian Faderman. This text examines the history of lesbian life in twentieth-century America, tracing the evolution of lesbian identity and subcultures from early networks to more recent diverse lifestyles. Available in print.

Queer Fictions of the Past: History, Culture, and Difference. Scott Bravmann. This text explores the complexity of lesbian and gay engagement with history and considers how historical discourses animate the present. Bravmann demonstrates their powerful role in constructing present identities, differences, politics, and communities. In particular, this text explores the ways in which lesbians and gay men have used history to define themselves as social, cultural, and political subjects. Available in print.

A Queer History of the United States. Michael Bronski. Drawing upon primary documents, literature, and cultural histories, this text charts the breadth of lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender history, from 1492 to the 1990s and explores how the LGBT experience has profoundly shaped our country, culture, and history. Available in print.

Queer (In)Justice: The Criminalization of LGBT People in the United States. Joey L. Mogul et al. Drawing on years of research, activism, and legal advocacy, Queer (In)Justice examines queer experiences in the legal system - as "suspects," defendants, prisoners, and survivors of crime. Available in print.

Queering the Colorline: Race and the Invention of Homosexuality in American Culture. Siobhan Somerville. This text transforms previous understandings of how homosexuality was "invented" as a category of identity in the United States beginning in the late nineteenth century. Somerville argues that the emerging understanding of homosexuality depended on the context of the black/white "color line," the dominant system of racial distinction during this period. Available in print and online.

Sexual Hegemony: Statecraft, Sodomy, and Capital in the Rise of the World System. Christopher Chitty. This text traces the five-hundred year history of capitalist sexual relations by excavating the class dynamics of the bourgeoisie's attempts to regulate homosexuality. Available in print and online.

The Straight State: Sexuality and Citizenship in Twentieth Century America. Margot Canaday. This text shows how the state systematically came to penalize homosexuality, giving rise to a regime of second-class citizenship that sexual minorities still live under today. Canaday looks at three key arenas of government control--immigration, the military, and welfare--and demonstrates how federal enforcement of sexual norms emerged with the rise of the modern bureaucratic state. Available in print and online.

Sexual Politics, Sexual Communities: The Making of a Homosexual Minority in the United States, 1940-1970. John D'Emilio. With thorough documentation of queer oppression and biographical sketches of the lesbian and gay heroes who helped the contemporary gay culture to emerge, this text examines the homophile movement in the U.S. from 1940 to 1970. Available in print.

Sweet Tea: Black Gay Man of the South. E. Patrick Johnson. Giving voice to a population too rarely acknowledged, Sweet Tea collects more than sixty life stories from black gay men who were born, raised, and continue to live in the South. Johnson challenges stereotypes of the South as "backward" or "repressive" and offers a window into the ways black gay men negotiate their identities, build community, maintain friendship networks, and find sexual and life partners--often in spaces and activities that appear to be antigay. Available in print and online.

Transgender History, Susan Stryker (2008). Covering American transgender history from the mid-twentieth century to today, Transgender History takes a chronological approach to the subject of transgender history, with each chapter covering major movements, writings, and events. The original 2008 edition can be found online through UNC libraries; the 2017 update is available in print.

The University of North Carolina provides some resources specific to the UNC community and its history.

LGBTQ Center UNC-Chapel Hill: The LGBTQ Center works to foster a welcoming and inclusive environment for UNC-Chapel Hill community members of all sexual orientations, gender identities, and gender expressions. Their website provides information about programs, resources, and news and events for undergrads, graduate students, and faculty and staff at UNC.

UNC Libraries' Subject Guide on LGBTQ Life at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill: This guide details special collections materials at Wilson Library about the history of LGBTQ+ life at UNC, including student organizations, campus offices, curriculum, and materials on the broader LGBTQ+ community in the triangle.

Queerolina: Experiences of Place and Space Through Oral Histories: This digital exhibit examines spaces on campus and beyond through excerpts from oral histories from students and alumni of UNC.