How WWI Sparked the Gay Rights Movement | Natnal WWI Mm and Memorial

Contents:

• HOW WWI SPARKED THE GAY RIGHTS MOVEMENT
• THE FOTTEN GAY SOLDIERS OF THE FIRST WORLD WAR
• REMEMBERG LGBT HISTORY: HOW WORLD WAR II CHANGED GAY AND LBIAN LIFE AMERI
• "COMG OUT UNR FIRE": THE STORY OF GAY AND LBIAN SERVICEMEMBERS
• A BRIEF HISTORY OF LBIAN, GAY, BISEXUAL, AND TRANSGENR SOCIAL MOVEMENTS
• GAY RIGHTS

HOW WWI SPARKED THE GAY RIGHTS MOVEMENT

More than a century before Apti Aluadov, Chechnya’s puty terr mister and a manr of s police forc, told out ABC reporter Jam Longman last month the same thg that Head of the Chechen Republic Ramzan Kadyrov has said, that there are no gays their untry; more than a century before Bishop Godey Makumbi of the Wt Buganda Dce of the Church of Uganda said 2012 there are no gays Uganda; more than a century before then-Print of Iran Mahmoud Ahmadejad said 2007 there aren’t as many gays his untry as the Uned Stat, var untri were claimg that homosexualy was somethg that only existed beyond their borrs. Followg German psychiatrist Richard von Krafft-Ebg’s 1886 Psychopathia Sexualis which foced on a number of “sexual pathologi, ” particularly homosexualy, was the send his 12 psdoscientific, psychopathologil romans à l’e rose (romance or trash) novels he lled, L déséquilibr l’amour (The Lunatics of Love).

THE FOTTEN GAY SOLDIERS OF THE FIRST WORLD WAR

Then, durg WWI, a thls, amb member of the Brish Parliament named Noel Pemberton Billg who uld have given any ntemporary Amerin Antigay Indtry lunatic a n for his or her magogic money, published an article (allegedly wrten mostly by his assistant edor) lled “The Forty-Seven Thoand” which referred to “47, 000 highly placed Brish perverts” beg blackmailed by the Germans to “propagate evils which all cent men thought had perished Sodom and Lbia. Eager to get even wh gays who’d nounced or shunned him for betrayg Osr, Douglas had earlier played his own direct role fanng wartime homophobia by wrg a pamphlet that sold thoands of pi: “Two fo thou hast, one there one here, One far one ultimately near, Two filthy fogs blot out thy light: The German, and the Sodome. Some fay and iends vehemently nied he was gay at all, as did some born after his ath such as late Irish thor and civil servant Eo Neon who wrote: “No one who knew him believed the allegatns and [they] are unanimo about his extremely high sense of moral tegry… The virtual impossibily of his practicg the gross generaci at all, let alone wh the equency alleged, is monstrable.

REMEMBERG LGBT HISTORY: HOW WORLD WAR II CHANGED GAY AND LBIAN LIFE AMERI

Some evince of what might be lled today “sexual tourism” asi, Dudgeon noted: “It has to be said that the diari, as well as beg an important part of Irish history, are also a val part of gay history the twentieth century. But Mchell’s assertn that “Dudgeon upheld the diari as the heart and soul of Casement’s bgraphy and ed them provotively as a means of stabilizg (or queerg) the martial spir of Northern Irish Prottant natnalism and reprentg as some viant youth movement” smells of the same kd of homophobia Neon exhibed but Mchell ni. In any se, his assertn that “In 1916, homosexualy was still punishable unr English law by executn” serly impacts his credibily given sodomy stopped beg a pal crime wh enactment of the Offens agast the Person Act of 1861.

As they did their profsnal approach to every other aspect of life, s before the Village People’s double-entendre “In the Navy, ” gay brother illtrators JC and Frank Leyencker brought their “hi pla sight” and naked phallic symbolism that might make Frd blh to their work durg WWI, om official recg posters to magaze vers to advertisg for men’s cloth.

Fally, The Sexual History of the World War, wh “eyewns reports by hundreds of men and women participants the World War; scribg the sex life the warrg natns, ” Germany’s legendary sexologist and founr of the world’s first gay rights anizatn Magn Hirschfeld wrote: “The assumptn that the nscly erotic form of raship was not equent is the more jtified sce there are reports of a not nsirable number of such s between soldiers of the same rank as well as between soldiers and officers. 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. Although was not actually prohibed by Brish army regulatns – that didn’t happen until 1955 – homosexualy was illegal throughout the UK so most gay soldiers kept their sexualy hidn, possibly addg to the misery they were already experiencg the trench of the Wtern Front: livg, eatg and sleepg mud, plagued by rats and nstantly unr enemy fire and the threat of poisoned gas.

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

War poets Wiled Owen – who died a week before the armistice was signed and is famo for works such as ‘Anthem for Doomed Youth’ and ‘Dulce et Dem Est’ – and Siegied Sassoon, who survived the war and whose poems clu ‘Suici the Trench’ and ‘Aftermath’, were both gay, although was not public knowledge at the time. Another war poet, Rupert Brooke, once lled the most handsome young man England, is said to have scribed himself as one half outright heterosexual, one quarter outright homosexual and one quarter “sentimental homosexual.

Brta was killed 1918  the Battle of the Piave River, but after the war his sister Vera revealed that the day before he died her brother had been acced of homosexual activy, followg the openg of a letter of his by the censor. The book follows the life of Mrice Hall, who enters his first homosexual relatnship at Cambridge and spends the rt of his life on a journey to reach a place where he uld be te to himself and love and enjoy physil ntact wh a partner of the same sex. Part of the reason for Forster’s reluctance  publishg Mrice may be unrstood by the fact that Rose Allati’s 1918 book Dpised and Rejected, which featured the wartime experienc of a homosexual man and lbian woman, was banned unr the Defence of the Realm Act as a potential threat to Bra’s morals.

A BRIEF HISTORY OF LBIAN, GAY, BISEXUAL, AND TRANSGENR SOCIAL MOVEMENTS

Before I do so, however, I have to apologise twice: once for the very fleetg verage I n give to the subject matter owg to nstrats of space and, nnected to this, aga for the impersonal way this brief treatment necsat I portray the very real liv of homosexual men durg the perd. Misrmatn asi, 22 officers and 270 enlisted men were urt-marshalled for homosexualy durg the war; this figure, though no doubt only reprentg a small sample of the totaly of such experience, is remarkably smaller than I might have gused. In this way, too, one might view the chief Brish sentiment at the time towards homosexualy as a treasono act, only ma more poignant by the very real loss felt by so many fai durg the lk between homosexualy and Germanns French and Brish mds durg the early twentieth century is probably part due to the Eulenberg sndal, where key members of Kaiser Wilhelm’s bet and entourage were ‘outed’ between 1907 and 1909.

However, spe the harsh nsequenc for natural feelg, there appears to have been a much higher cince of German homoeroticism the trench beg exprsed (based solely on private acunts, which is all we really have to measure this sort of thg). 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. However, throughout 150 years of homosexual social movements (roughly om the 1870s to today), lears and anizers stggled to addrs the very different ncerns and inty issu of gay men, women intifyg as lbians, and others intifyg as genr variant or nonbary.

Such eyewns acunts the era before other media were of urse riddled wh the bias of the (often) Wtern or Whe observer, and add to beliefs that homosexual practic were other, foreign, savage, a medil issue, or evince of a lower racial hierarchy.

GAY RIGHTS

The European powers enforced their own crimal s agast what was lled sodomy the New World: the first known se of homosexual activy receivg a ath sentence North Ameri occurred 1566, when the Spanish executed a Frenchman Florida. Biblil terpretatn ma illegal for a woman to wear pants or a man to adopt female drs, and sensatnalized public trials warned agast “viants” but also ma such martyrs and hero popular: Joan of Arc is one example, and the chillg origs of the word “faggot” clu a stick of wood ed public burngs of gay men.

Their wrgs were sympathetic to the ncept of a homosexual or bisexual orientatn occurrg naturally an intifiable segment of humankd, but the wrgs of Krafft-Ebg and Ellis also labeled a “third sex” generate and abnormal. The blu mic of Ain-Amerin women showsed varieti of lbian sire, stggle, and humor; the performanc, along wh male and female drag stars, troduced a gay unrworld to straight patrons durg Prohibn’s fiance of race and sex s speakeasy clubs. This creasg awarens of an existg and vulnerable populatn, upled wh Senator Joseph McCarthy’s vtigatn of homosexuals holdg ernment jobs durg the early 1950s outraged wrers and feral employe whose own liv were shown to be send-class unr the law, cludg Frank Kameny, Barbara Gtgs, Allen Gsberg, and Harry Hay.

Awarens of a burgeong civil rights movement (Mart Luther Kg’s key anizer Bayard Rt was a gay man) led to the first Amerin-based polil mands for fair treatment of gays and lbians mental health, public policy, and employment. In 1951, Donald Webster Cory published “The Homosexual Ameri, ” assertg that gay men and lbians were a legimate mory group, and 1953 Evelyn Hooker, PhD, won a grant om the Natnal Instute of Mental Health to study gay men.