The Pk Triangle: From Nazi Label to Symbol of Gay Pri | HISTORY

Contents:

• THE PK TRIANGLE: FROM NAZI LABEL TO SYMBOL OF GAY PRI
• GAY PRI
• GAY PRI CALENDAR
• PRI FLAGS 101: EVERYTHG YOU'VE EVER WANTED TO KNOW ABOUT GAY, TRANS, AND OTHER PRI FLAGS

THE PK TRIANGLE: FROM NAZI LABEL TO SYMBOL OF GAY PRI

Jt as the Nazis forced Jewish people to wear a yellow Star of David, they forced people they labeled as gay to wear verted pk triangl (or ‘die Rosa-Wkel’).

The roots of the Nazi persecutn of gay people are ep. And the fact that was almost impossible to nvict anyone unls he nfsed to such a crime urt meant that police jt kept a watchful eye on gay bars and events, and Germany end up beg home to a vibrant gay muny.

GAY PRI

Historian Robert Beachy argu that, ironilly, the law spurred scientific tert the study of sexual preferenc, and that rearch tend to enurage a more scientific unrstandg of human sexualy, which further allowed the ia of gay rights to flourish. Hler saw gay men as a threat to his mpaign to purify Germany, pecially bee their partnerships uld not bear children who would grow the Aryan race he wanted to cultivate. Durg that perd, gay-iendly bars and clubs started beg shut down, thori burned the books at a major rearch stutn voted to the study of sexualy, and gay aternal anizatns were shuttered.

The efforts only creased after the Night of the Long Kniv, the 1934 purge of Nazi lears who were acced of tryg to overthrow Hler; they clud Storm Troopers lear Ernst Röhm, whom the SS murred, later cg his homosexualy as jtifitn for his murr. Some were ed as guea pigs var medil experiments to fd a cure for typh fever and a cure for homosexualy, the latter of which led the SS to ject them wh ttosterone to see if would make them straight.

The Nazi law stayed place until a 1969 Wt German law crimalized gay relatnships among men over 21.

GAY PRI CALENDAR

As one of the USHMM’s curators has poted out, even as the Allied powers refully worked to scb Nazism om Germany, they left that part alone — perhaps bee they had anti-gay and anti-sodomy laws of their own. As the gay liberatn movement grew Ameri the ’70s and the ’80s, so did awarens of the persecutn of gays durg the Holot, as books and data about perd started beg published. Data on the victims started to be ced 1977, after a statistil analysis by soclogist Rudiger Ltmann of Bremen Universy claimed that as many as 60% of the gay men sent ncentratn mps may have have died.

The first reference to pk triangl TIME also appeared that year, a story about gay-rights activists Miami who attached the symbols to their cloth as a show of solidary while prottg a vote to repeal a law protectg gay people om hog discrimatn. “Gay people wear the pk triangle today as a remr of the past and a pledge that history will not repeat self, ” he add. In 1979, Mart Sherman’s play Bent, spired by Heger’s memoir, opened on Broadway; the play, one of the characters tras his pk triangle for a yellow star, “which giv him preferential treatment over the homosexuals, ” as TIME’s review put .

PRI FLAGS 101: EVERYTHG YOU'VE EVER WANTED TO KNOW ABOUT GAY, TRANS, AND OTHER PRI FLAGS

It was later published as The Pk Triangle: The Nazi War Agast Homosexuals.

By that time, the gay muny was facg a very different threat: HIV and AIDS. The activists who formed the anizatn ACT-UP to raise awarens about this public health crisis cid to e the pk triangle as a symbol of their mpaign and allud to s history when they clared, their manifto, that “silence about the opprsn and annihilatn of gay people, then and now, mt be broken as a matter of our survival.