South Suburban Chapel

S. Supreme Court issued a ruling in the most important case involving same-sex marriage since it became legal in all 50 states. On its surface, the Masterpiece Cakeshop case looked like it was a contest about discrimination and the meaning of religious liberty. But the circumstances of the case may actually be more important than the decision. My research on the history of the postwar United States indicates that Americans should also see this conflict as a consequence of the growing sexual diversity of the nation’s suburbs. Suburban migration The conflict that led to the case did not just happen in the abstract realm of the law or the court of public opinion. Rather, the conflict happened in a particular place: Lakewood, Colorado, a suburb outside Denver. Since the 1960s, many Americans have associated openly gay life with urban neighborhoods such as San Francisco’s Castro District or Denver’s Capitol Hill neighborhood. But same-sex couples and transgender people are increasingly living outside of these traditional “gayborhoods”. Many of the national battles over lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender rights have grown out of everyday conflicts between these new suburbanites and their straight-identified neighbors. The movement of openly gay couples away from older cities defied the perceived connection between heterosexual family life and the suburbs that dates at least to the 1940s. The federal government played a particularly important role in defining the suburbs as “family friendly” places after World War II. Officials at the Federal Housing and Veterans’ administrations pushed banks to give mortgages to married men with children and forbade them to lend to Americans they suspected of “sexual deviance”. The 1944 G.I. Bill was the first law in U.S. history to specifically exclude homosexuals from federal benefits, including mortgage assistance. Realtors promised homebuyers a chance to live in safe neighbo...