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14 Lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) people, no less than anyone else, deserve that dignity and freedom. The movement for LGBT rights, and the resulting expansion of state and local laws to secure gender and sexual minorities’ full and equal enjoyment of publicly available goods and services, is the latest chapter of this great American story.

LGBT people have existed for all of human history. And as sure as they have existed, others have sought to deny their existence, and to exclude them from public life. Those who would subordinate LGBT people have often done so with the backing of law. For most of American history, there were laws criminalizing same-sex intimacy. Obergefell v. Hodges, 576 U. S. 644, 660–661 (2015). “Gays and lesbians were [also] prohibited from most government employment, barred from military service, excluded under immigration laws, targeted by police, and burdened in their rights to associate.” Id., at 661. “These policies worked to create and reinforce the belief that gay men and lesbians” constituted “an inferior class.” Brief for Organization of American Historians as Amicus Curiae in Obergefell v. Hodges, O. T. 2014, No. 14–556, p. 3.

State-sponsored discrimination was compounded by discrimination in public accommodations, though the two often went hand in hand. The police raided bars looking for gays and lesbians so often that some bars put up signs saying, “ ‘We Do Not Serve Homosexuals.’ ” Id., at 13 (quoting G. Chauncey, Why Marriage 8 (2004)). LGBT discrimination in public accommodations has continued well into the 21st century. See UCLA School of Law Williams Institute, C. Mallory & B. Sears, Evidence of Discrimination in Public Accommodations Based on Sexual Orientation and Gender Identity (2016).

A social system of discrimination created an environment in which LGBT people were unsafe. Who could forget the