Lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and queer (LGBTQ) movements are social movements that advocate for the inclusion, recognition, and rights of LGBTQ people and other gender and sexual minorities.
While there is no overarching organization representing all LGBTQ people, numerous advocacy groups, grassroots networks, and community-based organizations work to advance related causes. The earliest known LGBTQ rights organization was the Scientific-Humanitarian Committee, founded in Berlin in 1897.
New York City has been described as the gay capital of the world and the central node of the LGBTQ sociopolitical field, and is home to the world's largest and the most prominent LGBTQ population. Brian Silverman, the author of Frommer's New York City from $90 a Day, wrote the city has "one of the world's largest, loudest, and most powerful LGBT communities", and "Gay and lesbian culture is as much a part of New York's basic identity as yellow cabs, high-rise buildings, and Broadway theatre". LGBTQ travel guide Queer in the World states, "The fabulosity of Gay New York is unrivaled on Earth, and queer culture seeps into every corner of its five boroughs". LGBTQ advocate and entertainer Madonna stated metaphorically, "Anyways, not only is New York City the best place in the world because of the queer people here. Let me tell you something, if you can make it here, then you must be queer."
LGBTQ Americans in New York City constitute the largest self-identifying lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer communities by a significant margin in the United States, and the 1969 Stonewall riots in Greenwich Village are widely considered to be the genesis of the modern LGBTQ rights movement. The New York metropolitan area has an estimated 756,000 LGBTQ residents—the most in the United States, including the largest metropolitan transgender population in the world, estimated at 50,000 in 2018, concentrated in Manhattan, Brooklyn, and Queens.