Now that the new year is upon us, we can reflect on the past year’s downfalls and successes. 2015 holds a lot of sadness some of these tragedies include the bombing in Paris and the ebola outbreak. However it also has a lot of exciting advances– in technology and science but most especially for the gay, lesbian, and transgender community.
The most prevailing developments would be the transformation of Bruce Jenner; retired Olympian and gold medal-winning decathlon champion and the improvement of the gay pride symbol. As well as the legalization of same sex marriage in the United States.
Bruce Jenner is currently an American television personality,on E!’s reality TV show Keeping Up with the Kardashians and is currently starring in the reality show I Am Cait. The 65 year old made his first public announcement about being a transgender in February.
In May, Keeping Up with the Kardashians aired a special episode, titled About Bruce, here is where he officially revealed to his family that he was planning on having surgery to change genders in the spring. At the time he had nothing scheduled but in May he was alleged to have taken the final step in his transformation, surgery to reshape his male sex organ to match that of a female’s.
Bruce Jenner makes the cover of Vanity Fair. He poses for the first time as a woman and asks to be called Caitlyn as that is now her name.
The former male, opened up to ABC news in an exclusive 2 hour interview, where Jenner told Diane Sawyer “I am a Women,” these words struck the world. The former Olympian speaks about his secret cross dressing while still married to Kris Kardashian and his knowledge of his transgender identity since in adolescence.
She now hopes to become a remodel to those in her same position and spoke at the Oscars to promote her support for trans people, after she made the cover of Vanity Fair, where she asked to be called Caitlyn.
The highly anticipated court ruling that concluded that states cannot ban same sex marriage was approved in June. The rainbow flag is now universally recognized as a symbol for gay pride and rights. Gilbert Baker, a drag queen and artist, created it in 1978. The design featured 8 brightly colored strips each representing something different: hot pink (sex), red (life), orange (healing), yellow (sunlight), green (nature), turquoise (art), indigo (harmony), and violet (spirit). Throughout the years 2 strips were lost hot pink and indigo leaving the flag with 6 colors. Before this the symbol for the gay movement was a pink triangle, this originated in the 1970s and was used by the Nazis in concentration camps to signify gay people.
Baker stated, “We needed something beautiful, something from us. The rainbow is so perfect because it really fits our diversity in terms of race, gender, ages, all of those things,” that’s why he created it.
Marriage equality advocates celebrate the Supreme Court’s ruling as they hold up a rainbow flag.
In honor of the Supreme Court’s decision to make same-sex marriage a Constitutional right the White House was lit up in rainbow colors and a rainbow flag was hung outside of the Supreme Court.
Gay rights advocates have Obergefell to thank, due to the Obergefell v.s. Hodges case. The case divided the Supreme Court, in a 5-4 ruling until they came to the conclusion that same-sex couples may marry nationwide, this established a new civil right.
Obama called Obergefell on the phone shortly after and congratulated him by saying, “Your leadership on this has changed the country.” Obama also commented “Americans should be very proud,” because small acts of courage “slowly made an entire country realize that love is love.”
