Gay Rights

        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>
         

        Keep pride alive!
         
         

        Links

        Lesbian.org
        Amazons