Europeans came to the Americas with an extraordinarily rigorous sense of how gender and sexuality should be organized. These strict ideas were bulwarked by rigid civil and religious statutes. The Europeans attempted to eradicate many non-European gender-normative customs, traditions, and behaviors. They often did this through accepted practices of violence, such as capturing and enslaving non-Christians and forced conversion. This legal and religious repression and violence provided a template for how mainstream European culture would treat LGBT people throughout much of U.S. history.
