Homosexual rights movement also called GAY RIGHTS MOVEMENT,
OR GAY LIBERATION
MOVEMENT, civil-rights movement that seeks to eliminate
sodomy
laws barring homosexual acts between consenting adults
and that
calls for an end to discrimination against homosexuals
in
employment, credit, housing, public accommodations,
and other
areas of life. Its ultimate aim is to encourage society's
tolerance or
acceptance of homosexuality.
Before the end of the 19th century there were scarcely
any
"movements" for homosexual rights. In 1897 a homosexual
Scientific-Humanitarian Committee (Wissenschaftlich-humanitäres
Komitee) was founded in Berlin; it published emancipation
literature,
sponsored rallies, and campaigned for law reform throughout
Germany and in The Netherlands and Austria, developing
some 25
local chapters by 1922. Its founder, Magnus Hirschfeld,
helped
sponsor the World League of Sexual Reform, which held
a series of
international congresses from 1921 to 1935. Adolf
Hitler's rise to
power in 1933 ended the German movement.
The British also were early activists; in 1914 the
British Society for
the Study of Sex Psychology was founded by Edward
Carpenter
and Havelock Ellis for both propagandistic and educational
purposes. The chief existing "homophile" organization
in Europe is
COC, or Cultur-en Ontspannings-Centrum ("Culture and
Recreation Center"), founded in 1966 in Amsterdam,
which has
become one of the world's centres for homosexual activism.
In the
United States, the first major male organization was
the Mattachine
Society, founded in 1950-51 in Los Angeles by Henry
Hay and four
friends and later represented by chapters in several
other cities. (The
name derived from a medieval French society of masked
players,
Société Mattachine, and suggested the
fact that social constraints
forced homosexuals to publicly "mask" their proclivity.)
The
Daughters of Bilitis (named after the Sapphic love
poems of Pierre
Louys, Chansons de Bilitis) was the first major American
organization for female homosexuals; it was founded
in San
Francisco in 1955.
The beginning of militant homosexual activism can virtually
be dated.
About 3:00 Am on June 28, 1969, the Stonewall Inn,
a homosexual
bar at 53 Christopher Street in Greenwich Village,
was raided by
New York City police. Instead of passively accepting
the situation
(as in the past), the some 200 homosexuals present
began taunting
the police and throwing debris; the riot lasted 45
minutes and
resumed on succeeding nights. Protest rallies ensued,
and
homosexual rights organizations proliferated in the
United States
from the 1970s on. "Stonewall" came to be commemorated
annually
in late June in Gay Pride Week (alternatively, Gay
and Lesbian
Pride Week), not only in American cities but in cities
in several other
countries. What Oscar Wilde had called the "love that
dared not
speak its name" had, by the late 20th century, become
highly
outspoken.
The gay liberation movement in the United States agitated
for the
repeal of sodomy laws (i.e., laws prescribing criminal
penalties for
homosexual sex) and tried to obtain other state laws
protecting
homosexuals' civil rights and outlawing discrimination
based on
sexual preference. From the mid-1980s the movement
was
preoccupied by the AIDS epidemic, which affected
disproportionate numbers of homosexual males. Gay-rights
activists worked to support AIDS patients, heighten
awareness of
the disease in the homosexual community, and obtain
increased
government funding for AIDS research.
A relatively tolerant atmosphere toward homosexuality
exists in the
countries of western and northern Europe. The United
States and
Great Britain have also become more tolerant; about
one-half of all
American states have no laws prohibiting homosexual
acts between
consenting adults, and Britain repealed such a law
in 1967.
Tolerance has also increased in most countries of
the East Asian rim
and in the states of eastern and central Europe. Latin
America, with
its Roman Catholicism and its culture of machismo,
remained largely
hostile, as did the Muslim nations of the Middle East
and the
countries of sub-Saharan Africa. Homosexual activity
is thus still
illegal in large parts of the world, though it is
apparently practiced in
every society, either openly or surreptitiously.
The international homosexual symbol is the Greek letter lambda ().
Bibliography
Barry D. Adam, The Rise of a Gay and Lesbian Movement
(1987), begins with conditions in the medieval world
and includes
evidence from around the world. John D'Emilio, Sexual
Politics,
Sexual Communities: The Making of a Homosexual Minority
in
the United States (1983), focuses on the period before
the
Stonewall riots. Margaret Cruikshank, The Gay and
Lesbian
Liberation Movement (1992), analyzes the successes
and failures
of modern activism.
"homosexual rights movement" Encyclopædia Britannica Online
<http://www.eb.com:180/bol/topic?eu=41810&sctn=1>
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