Homophile Movement Week 1 Our world today can learn from our past history of how to respond to oppression - first we are afraid, then we resist, and then we are free. This is not necessarily a linear movement. It is cyclical.

1. SAGE Presentations
Homophile Movement 1
Where and Why did the Homphile Movement begin?
What was its goal?

2. Homophile Movement Pre-Stonewall
What was - is it?
The term homophile was coined by the German astrologist, author and
psychoanalyst Karl-Günther Heimsoth in his 1924 doctoral dissertation
Hetero- und Homophilie.
The term “homophile,” means “loving the same”.
Members of organizations or groups used term to describe themselves.
Organizations, groups individuals came together demanding respect
and equal rights for people regardless of gender identity or sexual
orientation.

3. Homophile Movement Pre-Stonewall
Where Did It Begin?
It began in Europe and in the United States not at the same time.
Homophile Movements need to be understood in the light of the
forms of persecution and oppression
faced by individuals who had emotional and sexual relations with
persons of their own gender and/or did not conform to the social
expectations of their own gender.

4. Focus Question:
Do You
Remember
The Closet?

5. Homophile Movement Pre-Stonewall
Persecution of Homosexuals
First known record
• The year 98 – Germanic tribes executing homosexuals and sinking
them into swamps.
• ca. 500 – As the Germanic tribes living south of Scandinavia convert
to Christianity their homophobic views are confirmed by the Roman
Catholic condemnation of homosexuality. However, rather than
adopting church- inspired edicts, they maintain their own legal
practices.
• 1532 – Holy Roman Empire makes sodomy punishable by death.

6. Homophile Movement Pre-Stonewall
Holy Roman Empire

7. Homophile Movement Pre-Stonewall
In Germany - Seeds of the Movement
1867 – On August 29, 1867, Karl Heinrich Ulrichs became the first self-
proclaimed homosexual to speak out publicly for homosexual rights
when he pleaded at the Congress of German Jurists in Munich for a
resolution urging the repeal of anti-homosexual laws.
1869 – The term "homosexuality" appears in print for the first time in
a German-Hungarian pamphlet written by Karl-Maria Kertbeny (1824–
1882)
1871 – Homosexuality is criminalized throughout the German Empire
by Paragraph 175 of the Reich Criminal Code which condemned
“unnatural relations between men,”

8. Homophile Movement Pre-Stonewall
German Empire includes
Prussia
Which contained 2/3 of
Germany’s territory and
population

9. Homophile Movement Pre-Stonewall
• 1929 – On October 16, a Reichstag Committee votes to repeal
Paragraph 175. The Social Democrats and other leftist parties backed
the repeal, while the Catholic Center party and other right-wing
parties opposed the repeal. The Nazis' rise to power prevents the
implementation of the vote.
• Resistance to the Nazi government became the consuming focus, not
gay liberation.
• After the war, homophile organizations began to re-form.

10. Homophile Movement Pre-Stonewall
Persecution of Homosexuals in the United States
• 1624 Richard Cornish is executed in Virginia for alleged homosexual
acts with a servant.
• 1642 In Essex County, Massachusetts, Elizabeth Johnson is fined and
whipped for "unseemly practices with another maid attempting to
do that which man and woman do.“
Most of the laws around homosexuality in the colonies were derived
from the English laws of "buggery," or sodomy and the punishment in
all American colonies was death.

11. Homophile Movement Pre-Stonewall
Homosexuality Is Invisible To General Public
• 1786 Pennsylvania was the first state to repeal the death penalty for
"sodomy". Still against the law.
• 1860 New edition of Walt Whitman's Leaves of Grass includes the
homoerotic Calamus Poems.
• Before the American Civil War and the massive population growth of
the Post-Civil War America, the majority of the American population
was rural. Homosexuality remained an unseen and taboo concept in
society.

12. Homophile Movement Pre-Stonewall
Homosexuality Becomes More Visible
• 1908, the first American defense of homosexuality
was published by Edward Stevenson
• 1915 On a speaking tour crossing the country
Emma Goldman defends lesbianism and homosexuality.
Goldman's appearances prompted many women,
unhappy with having to hide their lesbianism,
to share their stories with her.
Rochester, NY Connection

13. Homophile Movement Pre-Stonewall
Era of Social Acceptance of Minorities and Homosexuals
• The 1920s ushered in a new era of social acceptance of minorities and
homosexuals, at least in heavily urbanized areas. Homosexuals received a
level of acceptance that was not seen again until the 1970s. During the
1920s, LGBT persons found employment as entertainers or entertainment
assistants for various urban venues in cities such as New York City.
• 1924 Henry Gerber's founded Society for Human Rights in Chicago.
First documented public homosexual organization in America and published
two issues of the first gay publication, entitled Friendship and Freedom.
1929 "The Surprise of a Knight" became first American gay pornographic film

14. Homophile Movement Pre-Stonewall
Return to Ultra-Conservativism
• By 1935, the United States had become conservative once again. Victorian
values and mores, which had been widely ridiculed during the 1920s
became fashionable once again. During this period, life was harsh for
homosexuals as they were forced to hide their behavior and identity in
order to escape ridicule and even imprisonment. Many laws were passed
against homosexuals. Many police forces conducted operations to arrest
homosexuals by using young undercover cops to get them to make
propositions to them.
• 1940 Medical profession regarded heterosexuality as the only
nonpathological outcome of human sexual development
• 1947The State Department begins firing suspected homosexuals under
President Truman's National Security Loyalty Program

15. Homophile Movement Pre-Stonewall
The Beginning of the Homophile Movement in the United States
1948, Sexual Behavior in the Human Male was published by Alfred Kinsey, one
of the first to look scientifically at the subject of sexuality. Kinsey claimed:
approximately 10% of the adult male population (and about half that number
among females) were predominantly or exclusively homosexual for at least
three years of their lives.
In the 1940s, '50s and '60s, police arrested LGBTQ people dressed in drag
based on an informal "three-article" rule.
By the 1950s, demographic,cultural, and political developments had
converged in a way that enabled the first effective steps toward
community organizing among homosexuals in the United States.