Gay Men unr the Nazi Regime | Holot Encyclopedia

Contents:

• "COMG OUT UNR FIRE": THE STORY OF GAY AND LBIAN SERVICEMEMBERS
• HOW WWI SPARKED THE GAY RIGHTS MOVEMENT
• GAY MEN UNR THE NAZI REGIME

"COMG OUT UNR FIRE": THE STORY OF GAY AND LBIAN SERVICEMEMBERS

“Unsirable” behavr—specifilly, an accatn of “attemptg to perpetrate an act of Homosexualy, ” as he explaed a letter to the Natnal Associatn for the Advancement of Colored People, om whom he was seekg legal help. ” Wh WWII’s massive human mobilizatn, the ary shifted om s practice of jailg soldiers acced of homosexualy (which required time-nsumg, expensive urt-martials) to simply emg them psychologilly unf. Acrdg to Jon, the NAACP worked wh Black service members acced of homosexualy, like Lemuel Brown, to appeal to the Discharge Review Board for a changed stat—ually wh ltle succs.

READ MORE: The Supreme Court Rulgs That Have Shaped Gay Rights Ameri‘Scientific’ Attempts to Intify HomosexualsIn their effort to screen out queer nscripts, ary officials ran to a problem: They didn’t have a nclive way of intifyg them, beyond a set of subjectively terpreted “signs” such as “feme bodily characteristics” and “effemacy drs and manner, ” acrdg to Allan Bébé, thor of Comg Out Unr Fire: Gay Men and Women Durg World War II. The doctor proclaimed that a tongue prsor tt uld screen out gay people not jt om ary service, but om other feral agenci as doctors began explorg whether they uld diagnose homosexualy—through Rorschach tts or by measurg sexualy through hormone tts.

) None of the theori panned part bee of the difficulti of scientifilly measurg queerns, the War Department January 1944 began to allow discharg on the basis of “latent homosexualy.

HOW WWI SPARKED THE GAY RIGHTS MOVEMENT

” That gave officials license to eject someone for homosexualy unr the blue discharge system simply bee they seemed gay—even if the ary lacked MORE: How LGBT Civil Servants Beme Public Enemy No. Among them was Harvey Milk, a Korean War veteran who went on to bee the first openly gay polil official the Uned MORE: For Centuri, Blackmail Was a Tool Used to Intimidate Gay Men. Fellow wrer and airman Edward Field summed up nicely his short memoir when he noted the Amerin army had a “gay world built to ”, even if was very different to the gay inti wh which we are faiar today.

As one Amerin sailor statned New Caledonia explaed to naval thori 1943 “ is more of the feme tra to want somethg that is mascule … It is the thrill of havg a [butch] man, and not another [effemate] homosexual”. The 1994 documentary Comg Out Unr Fire giv voice to the experienc of thoands of gay and lbian servicemembers who joed the ary durg World War II, a story that is largely ignored by historians and mms across the untry. Gay and lbian recs were forced to answer qutns vaguely, or lie about their sexualy, orr to be allowed to serve; otherwise, they would n the risk of beg sent home and brand as “sex perverts.

Servicemembers on every waront enjoyed drag show entertament; an entire gay lexin was veloped om the wrgs of Dorothy Parker; and eventually an unrground queer newspaper emerged. We sat down wh Sir John Dermot Turg, Alan Turg’s nephew and thor of a new book on Bletchley Park, to discs his uncle’s role pivotal role puter science and his persecutn for beg gay the 1950s.

GAY MEN UNR THE NAZI REGIME

Though the movement that lled self “homosexual emancipatn” began the 19th century, my rearch and that of historian Jason Crouthamel shows that the war turned the 19th-century movement to gay rights as we know today. ” It was, ironilly, the ghastly vlence and horrible human toll of the World War I that first spired such assertive lls, lls that characterized gay rights movements around the world the 20th century. What his fay probably never knew was that Gleed was homosexual, and that he uld not be open about his sexualy and talk about his was not until the 1990s, when one of his lovers, Christopher Gotch, was terviewed for BBC televisn, that the tth me out.