On January 7th, 1957 the American Civil Liberty Union (ACLU) “…decided that laws that made sexual intimacy a crime for lesbians and gay men could not be constitutionally challenged.”

This was a radical departure from earlier efforts to end discrimination for LGBTQIA+ people. Today, the ACLU is one of the staunchest allies in the fight for justice, but that was not always true.

Even when the ACLU was not fully engaged in LGBTQIA+ rights they helped with other justice issues that would be of great benefit to same-gender-loving (SGL) and transgender people in the future. For example, in 1963 they began assisting Mildred Loving, who wanted to visit her family with her husband but couldn’t because she was Black and he was white. On June 12, 1967, the Supreme Court ruled that anti-miscegenation statutes were not constitutional. This decision would prove important decades later when the ACLU assisted SGL people in their effort to make marriage legal for all loving and committed adult partners – no matter the gender of the couple. Edie Windsor shares her story with the ACLU below.

Learn more about The ACLU: Then and Now.