The Long, Sordid History of the Gay Conspiracy Theory

Contents:

• SNDALS: WILHELM'S GAY IENDS SHOOK THE EMPIRE
• WAS KAISER WILHELM II OF GERMANY GAY?
• THE LONG, SORDID HISTORY OF THE GAY CONSPIRACY THEORY

SNDALS: WILHELM'S GAY IENDS SHOOK THE EMPIRE

” The kaiser had already been hurt polilly 1907 by the Eulenburg-Harn affair, which members of his circle of iends were acced of beg homosexuals. Although there is no evince that Wilhelm was gay– addn to his seven children wh his first wife, he was mored to have several illegimate offsprg–the sndal was ed by his polil opponents to weaken his fluence.

Still, he had an effect: a few liberal-md lleagu accepted his notn of an nate gay inty, and a Bavarian official privately nfsed to siar yearngs. ”The first chapter of Robert Beachy’s “Gay Berl: Birthplace of a Morn Inty” (Knopf) begs wh an acunt of Ulrichs’s dac act. The tle of the chapter, “The German Inventn of Homosexualy, ” telegraphs a prcipal argument of the book: although same-sex love is as old as love self, the public disurse around , and the polil movement to w rights for , arose Germany the late neteenth and early twentieth centuri.

WAS KAISER WILHELM II OF GERMANY GAY?

This msage may surprise those who believe that gay inty me of age London and New York, sometime between the Osr Wil trials and the Stonewall rts. The btal reprsn of gay people durg the Nazi perd largely erased German gay history om ternatnal nscns, and even om German memory.

Beachy, a historian who teach at Yonsei Universy, Seoul, ends his book by notg that Germans hold gay-pri celebratns each June on what is known as Christopher Street Day, honor of the street where the Stonewall prott unfold. Gayns is st as an Amerin import. Ulrichs, sentially the first gay activist, enuntered censorship and end up gog to exile, but his ias very gradually took hold.

In 1869, an Atrian ltératr named Karl Maria Kertbeny, who was also opposed to sodomy laws, ed the term “homosexualy. ” In the eighteen-eighti, a Berl police missner gave up prosecutg gay bars and stead stuted a policy of bemed tolerance, gog so far as to lead tours of a growg mimon. In 1896, Der Eigene (“The Self-Owng”), the first gay magaze, began publitn.

THE LONG, SORDID HISTORY OF THE GAY CONSPIRACY THEORY

The next year, the physician Magn Hirschfeld found the Scientific-Humanarian Commtee, the first gay-rights anizatn.

By the begng of the twentieth century, a non of gay lerature had emerged (one early advote ed the phrase “Stayg silent is ath, ” nearly a century before aids activists ed the slogan “Silence = Death”); activists were bemoang negative pictns of homosexualy (Thomas Mann’s “Death Venice” was one target); there were bat over the ethics of outg; and a schism opened between an clive, mastream factn and a more rto, anarchistic wg. In the neteen-twenti, wh gay films and pop songs circulatn, a mass movement seemed at hand.