The Evolution of LGBTQ Terminology: Tracing the Origin of Homosexuals.

The LGBT community also known as the LGBTQ+ community, GLBT community, gay community, or queer community is a loosely defined grouping of lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender individuals united by a common culture and social movements.

LGBT, or GLBT, is an initialism that stands for lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender In use since the 1990s, the term is an adaptation of the initialism LGB, which was used to replace the term gay when referring to the community as a whole beginning in various forms largely in the early 1990s.

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While the movement had always included all LGBT people, the one-word unifying term in the 1950s through the early 1980s was gay 

Throughout the 1970's and '80s, a number of groups with lesbian members, and pro-feminist politics, preferred the more representative, lesbian and gay.

 By the early nineties, as more groups shifted to names based on lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT), queer was also increasingly reclaimed as a one-word alternative to the ever-lengthening string of initials, especially when used by radical political groups, some of which had been using "queer" since the '80s.

The initialism, as well as common variants such as LGBTQ, has been adopted into the mainstream in the 1990s as an umbrella term for use when labeling topics about sexuality and gender identity. For example, the LGBT Movement Advancement Project termed community centers, which have services specific to those members of the LGBT community, as "LGBT community centers" in comprehensive studies of such centers around the United States.

The initialism LGBT is intended to emphasize a diversity of sexuality and gender identity-based cultures. It may refer to anyone who is non-heterosexual or non-cisgender, instead of exclusively to people who are lesbian, gay, bisexual, or transgender.

These communities generally celebrate pride, diversity, individuality, and sexuality. LGBT activists and sociologists see LGBT community-building as a counterweight to heterosexism, homophobia, biphobia, transphobia, sexualism, and conformist pressures that exist in the larger society.

However, not all people who are lesbian, gay, bisexual, or transgender consider themselves part of the LGBT community.

Groups that may be considered part of the LGBT community include gay villages, LGBT rights organizations, LGBT employee groups at companies, LGBT student groups in schools and universities, and LGBT-affirming religious groups.

. At the same time, high-profile celebrities in the broader society may offer strong support to these organizations in certain locations; for example, LGBT advocate and entertainer Madonna stated, "I was asked to perform at many Pride events around the world but I would never, ever turn down New York City.

The initialism “LGBT” “(lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender) has come a long way in terms of gaining acceptance and equal rights.

There was a battle with the Stonewall riots and police about gay rights and the fight began in the summer of 1988 and it was first discovered that Stonewall didn’t mark the beginning of what was then called the gay civil rights movement.
The conflict between bar patrons and the New York City police that began after a raid in the early morning hours of June 28, 1969, on Christopher Street in Greenwich Village came 19 years after the founding of the Mattachine Society, the first of the “homophile” organizations.

It wasn’t even the first time that “gay people fought back” against police repression. Or the second. Or even the third!

The LGBT community also has its own flag which was designed by San Francisco based artiste, army personnel and gay rights activist Gilbert Baker in 1978. In 1974, Baker met American politician Harvey Milk who was another popular gay icon in the United States. Milk asked Baker to design a flag for the San Francisco annual pride parade.

 In an interview to the Museum of Modern Art in 2015, Baker said that he had been thinking of creating a symbol for the queer community even before he had met Milk and was particularly inspired by the stars and stripes of the American flag.

The demand for the rainbow flag to symbolize the community grew stronger after the assassination of Milk on November 27, 1978. 

 In the past years it has also been embroiled in controversy like the time in the 1980s when a West Hollywood resident got into a legal battle with his landlord over his right to hang the flag outside his house. But eventually, it has become part and parcel of the queer community’s identity and sense of pride across the world and is uniformly adopted in LGBTQ parades, activism, and celebrations in all countries.

Recognize this inclusion as a popular variant that adds the letter Q for those who identify as queer or are questioning their sexual identity; LGBTQ has been recorded since 1996.