The Olst Gays History | Psychology Today

Contents:

• A BRIEF HISTORY OF LBIAN, GAY, BISEXUAL, AND TRANSGENR SOCIAL MOVEMENTS
• WRG GAY HISTORY
• HONORG GEE CHNCEY, A SCHOLAR OF GAY HISTORY
• TEACHG LBIAN AND GAY HISTORY
• THE OLST GAYS HISTORY

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

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. 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. ” In Wtern history, we fd ltle formal study of what was later lled homosexualy before the 19th century, beyond medil texts intifyg women wh large cloris as “tribas” and severe punishment s for male homosexual acts.

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.

WRG GAY HISTORY

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. Studi such as Aled Ksey’s 1947 Ksey Report suggted a far greater range of homosexual inti and behavrs than prevly unrstood, wh Ksey creatg a “sle” or spectm rangg om plete heterosexual to plete homosexual.

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. Fstrated wh the male learship of most gay liberatn groups, lbians fluenced by the femist movement of the 1970s formed their own llectiv, rerd labels, mic ftivals, newspapers, bookstor, and publishg ho, and lled for lbian rights mastream femist groups like the Natnal Organizatn for Women. And polil actn explod through the Natnal Gay and Lbian Task Force, the Human Rights Campaign, the electn of openly gay and lbian reprentativ like Elae Noble and Barney Frank, and, 1979, the first march on Washgton for gay rights.

The creasg expansn of a global LGBT rights movement suffered a setback durg the 1980s, as the gay male muny was cimated by the Aids epimic, mands for passn and medil fundg led to renewed alns between men and women as well as angry street theatre by groups like Aids Coaln to Unleash Power (ACT UP) and Queer Natn. In the same era, one wg of the polil gay movement lled for an end to ary expulsn of gay, lbian, and bisexual soldiers, wh the high-profile se of Colonel Margarethe Cammermeyer publicized through a ma-for-televisn movie, “Servg Silence. Durg the last of the 20th century, lns of Amerins watched as actrs Ellen DeGener me out on natnal televisn April 1997, heraldg a new era of gay celebry power and media visibily—although not whout risks.

HONORG GEE CHNCEY, A SCHOLAR OF GAY HISTORY

Wh greater media attentn to gay and lbian civil rights the 1990s, trans and tersex voic began to ga space through works such as Kate Boernste’s “Genr Outlaw” (1994) and “My Genr Workbook” (1998), Ann Fsto-Sterlg’s “Myths of Genr” (1992) and Llie Feberg’s “Transgenr Warrrs” (1998), enhancg shifts women’s and genr studi to bee more clive of transgenr and nonbary inti.

TEACHG LBIAN AND GAY HISTORY

He then me across a pamphlet, wrten by two gay activists, about the Nazi persecutn of gay people durg WWII, which, at the time, had not been rerd any major history book and was not even part of the public memory. He eventually unvered a range of primary source documents om lonial urt s on sodomy to anecdot about Willa Cather to polil slogans om the lbian activist group Radilbians to then ntemporary news reports of gay men beg arrted for “disorrly nduct. Katz did not have a doctorate history, let alone an unrgraduate gree, so he sadly had ltle standg or affiliatn wh the profsn—though he remas one of the most prolific and important gay historians four s later.

THE OLST GAYS HISTORY

Dpe the fact that so many gay people, like Jonathan Ned Katz, gaed sights and strategi about prott om the civil rights movement, once gay liberatn gaed momentum, many people ignored, fot, or overlooked the ntributns of trans people and people of lor. Boston’s Fag Rag llaborated wh San Francis’s Gay Sunshe for a special jot issue on the fifth anniversary of Stonewall 1974 and featured an article tled “Personal Reflectns on Gay Liberatn om The Third World. The fiftieth anniversary of Stonewall offers a chance for many people to learn the history of gay liberatn and for those who are more faiar wh the general ntours of the story to reckon wh the actur that have divid .

Johnson, an associate profsor of history at the Universy of Florida, recently published Buyg Gay: How Physique Entreprenrs Sparked a Movement (Columbia Universy Prs), the rearch for which was supported by an NEH-fund fellowship at the Natnal Humani Center. The text of this article is available for uneded republitn, ee of charge, g the followg cred: “Origally published as “Wrg Gay History” on June 26, 2019,  Humani magaze, a publitn of the Natnal Endowment for the Humani. He was thirty-ne, a ltle-known assistant profsor at the Universy of Chigo, and a year away om publishg his groundbreakg book Gay New York: Genr, Urban Culture, and the Makg of the Gay Male World, 1890–1940.