civil-rights movement that advocates equal rights for gay men, lesbians, bisexuals, and transsexuals; seeks to eliminate sodomy laws barring homosexual acts between consenting adults; and calls for an end to discrimination against gay men and lesbians in employment, credit lending, housing, public accommodations, and other areas of life.

Before the end of the 19th century there were scarcely any “movements” for gay rights. Once referred to as “the love that dare not speak its name” by Oscar Wilde's lover, Lord Alfred (“Bosie”) Douglas, homosexuality was given voice in 1897 with the founding of the Scientific-Humanitarian Committee (Wissenschaftlich-humanitäres Komitee) in Berlin; it published emancipation literature, sponsored rallies, and campaigned for legal reform throughout Germany and in The Netherlands and Austria, developing some 25 local chapters by 1922. Its founder, Magnus Hirschfeld, helped sponsor the World League of Sexual Reform. In 1914 the British Society for the Study of Sex Psychology was founded by Edward Carpenter (Carpenter, Edward) and Havelock Ellis (Ellis, Havelock) for both promotional and educational purposes.

An increasing number of organizations were formed in the mid- to late-20th century. The Cultuur en Ontspannings Centrum (“Culture and Recreation Center”), or COC, was founded in 1946 in Amsterdam. In the United States, the first major male organization, founded in 1950–51, was the Mattachine Society (its name reputedly derived from a medieval French society of masked players, Société Mattachine, to represent the public “masking” of homosexuality), while the Daughters of Bilitis (named after the Sapphic love poems of Pierre Louÿs (Louÿs, Pierre), Chansons de Bilitis), founded by Phyllis Lyon and Del Martin in San Francisco in 1955, was a leading group for women.

The beginning of militant gay activism can be dated to the early morning hours of June 28, 1969, when the Stonewall Inn, a gay bar in New York City's Greenwich Village, was raided by the police. Nearly 400 people joined a riot that lasted 45 minutes and resumed on succeeding nights. Gay rights organizations proliferated in the United States in the succeeding years. “Stonewall” came to be commemorated annually in June by Gay and Lesbian Pride Week, not only in U.S. cities but in cities in several other countries.

The International Lesbian and Gay Association was founded in Coventry, England, in 1978. Now headquartered in Brussels, it lobbies for human rights and fights discrimination against lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgendered persons.