History of the Lesbian and Gay Movement

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The history of the lesbian and gay movement around the world can be roughly divided into the following sections:

Period After self-identification Waves to Repnik Germany Switzerland Austria United States
17th century – 1817 Pre-events 1786–?
1817-1897 early pioneers, champions
1897-1945 Homosexual movement First wave 1897-1933 1932-1942 (1900-1920s) 1920s
1945–1969 Homophile movement Second wave (1949) / 1969-1971 1942-1972 (1960s) 1950-1969
1969 – act. Lesbian and gay movement 1971 – act. 1972 – act. 1975 – act. 1969 – act.

History until 1970

Pioneers of the gay movement

In advance, the Age of Enlightenment was generally decisive for the course of history and the perspectives of the people. With the French Revolution (1789 to 1799) and the declaration of human and civil rights (1789) and the initiation of the process of separating church and state , further foundations were laid. In 1787, for pragmatic reasons, the Josephine Penal Act abolished the death penalty for the first time and replaced it with labor sentences that were only slightly less fatal. Homosexuality was first legalized in France in 1791, and this was retained in the Code pénal impérial of 1810. As a result of the Napoleonic Wars , French law was introduced in many areas of influence, sometimes briefly, sometimes quite permanently, and also influenced further independent legislation. Also influential is the prehistory of sexology , where non-standard sexual acts went from sin to medical perversion. On September 30, 1817, a homosexual in Switzerland was one of the last people in Europe to be strangled and whacked for killing his friend due to unfulfilled passion. Heinrich Hössli was very preoccupied with his story of suffering , he made contact with various people and in 1836 published his first volume of Eros, Die Männerliebe der Greeks . In some cases he still used the external attributions of sodomy and pederasty , but also wrote of "this appearance" and love for men.

Karl Heinrich Ulrichs lived in the Kingdom of Hanover, where homosexuality was not a criminal offense at the time, but nevertheless began to feel the adversities of the majority society from 1854 when investigations into public nuisance began against him. He created the terms Urning and Urninde , published several works on the riddle of male-male love , drafted an early concept of sexual orientations and, in 1867, presented his call for impunity for homosexual acts for the first time at the Juristentag in Munich. Like others, he opposed the adoption of the Prussian criminal law paragraph in the penal code of the newly founded German Reich, but unsuccessfully, which was shown in Section 175 of the 1872 Criminal Code. Karl Maria Kertbeny , driven by a sense of justice and the suicide of a friend, dealt with the subject, also advocated the repeal of the Prussian criminal law paragraph and in 1868 coined the terms homosexual and heterosexual, which are still used today . By sexual psychopathology of Richard von Krafft-Ebing , the terms were widespread from the 1886th In 1891 Albert Moll published the first edition of his work The Contra Sexual Sensation . He was in favor of treatment, but, like Krafft-Ebing, advocated impunity. Some of the people were in contact with each other and with others, but mostly remained lone fighters, even if Ulrichs had drafted a statute for the Urningsbund in 1865 . The conviction of Oscar Wilde in 1895 was a topic of conversation across Europe. In the UK, published in 1897 Havelock Ellis his work Sexual Inversion , the first English medical book about homosexuality. He did not view same-sex relationships as a disease, a crime, or immoral.

The first homosexual movement

On May 15, 1897, the organized homosexual emancipation movement began with the founding of the Scientific-Humanitarian Committee (WhK). In the same year the first petition against § 175 was introduced. From 1896 the first homosexual magazine appeared with Der Eigen and from 1899 with the yearbook for sexual intermediate stages a more scientific publication. 1901 WhK cofounder published Magnus Hirschfeld with What must the people of the third gender know! an early popular science and not primarily medical educational pamphlet for the general public. Many other organizations followed, such as friendship associations. Some took a position opposite to the WhK on certain points; the demand for the abolition of § 175 was common to all. In 1903 the community of one's own was founded . In 1906 Benedict Friedlaender broke with the WhK and founded the secession of the Scientific and Humanitarian Committee , which was later renamed the Bund für Male Kultur , but did not survive his suicide long in 1908. In 1913, Hirschfeld wrote that the term homosexuality had established itself as the standard term despite all counter-arguments. There were also other terms and euphemisms. In 1919, Hirschfeld founded his institute for sexology and was subsequently contacted by thousands of homosexuals and transsexuals.

In 1919, the magazine Die Freunda appeared for the first time and quickly established itself as the most important German gay magazine of the Weimar Republic. From its readership, friendship alliances were founded in numerous German cities in 1919 and 1920. B. in Breslau, Leipzig, Hamburg, Frankfurt am Main, Dresden, Düsseldorf, Hanover, Stuttgart and several times in Berlin. The Scientific-Humanitarian Committee invited these groups to Berlin in August 1920, where they formed an umbrella organization under the name of the German Friendship Association (DFV). The friendship was appointed organ of the DFV. This was the first time there was a nationwide organization that reached broad strata of homosexuals. In 1923, under the new first chairman Friedrich Radszuweit, the DFV was renamed the Bund für Menschenrecht (BfM). The German Friendship Association was then re-founded in March 1925 in Berlin from dissatisfied and excluded members of the DFV. These two organizations dominated the discourses of the first homosexual movement in Germany in the 1920s and early 1930s, especially in the form of their affiliated publishers, who published numerous gay and lesbian magazines, alongside the WhK.

Also in 1897, the Order of Chaeronea was founded in London by George Cecil Ives , who did not believe that society would openly accept homosexuality anytime soon. Some secret or semi-secret societies have been formed in the United States about which very little is known. The first better known was The Society for Human Rights , founded in 1924 , which was inspired by models from Germany; however, it was broken up by the police after a few months and its members arrested. In some cases, there were branches of German clubs in neighboring countries. Shortly before the occupation, the Levensrecht Association was founded in the Netherlands in 1940 . Further activities took place in Europe and North America as part of the sexology and sexual reform movement, which established shortly after 1900 . From 1909, and especially from 1925/1929, there were repeated efforts in Germany to extend criminal liability. Normative forces became generally stronger again in the late 1920s and early 1930s. In the USA, for example, the Hays Code for feature films was introduced on a voluntary basis from 1930, and was made mandatory from 1934. Everything in Germany was smashed when the National Socialists came to power in 1933, and the Second World War set different priorities almost worldwide. In 1932, committed women in neutral Switzerland began to publish friendship and human rights papers. In the middle of the war, simple homosexuality was exempt from punishment in 1942, and in the same year Karl Meier began to publish the magazine Der Kreis - Le Cercle , at the time the only magazine for homosexuals. Her name was then extended from 1951 with English contributions to Der Kreis - Le Cercle - The Circle ; it lasted until 1967. The subscribers practically formed an association and people from all over Europe came to the private parties in Switzerland. From the end of the 1940s the first clubs were established again in the Netherlands ( Shakespeare Club , today COC , 1946), Denmark ( Forbundet af 1948 ) and the USA ( Mattachine Society , 1950; Daughter of Bilitis , 1955). The climate, however, was largely very repressive, so that societal changes were only tentatively called for and, above all, work was carried out to be able to continue. The McCarthy era in the USA from around 1947 to 1956 falls during this period .

In Germany you could still feel the aftermath of the National Socialist ideology, many protagonists had perished or were expelled, few came back, and the few activists also partly fell out. The re-founding of the WhK in 1949 and 1956 and the Federation for Human Rights failed. The criminal law paragraph remained in the National Socialist version, and the accompanying censorship made any clarification on the subject more difficult. Magazines were censored and banned, and attempts to set up gay organizations led to arrests. There were only isolated advances against Section 175. Otherwise there were only a few small private circles. The term homosexual was rejected by many mainly because of the part of the word “-sexual”, and in addition to trying to find new terms, people mostly referred to themselves as homophile . In addition to the circle , the International Homosexual World Organization (IHWO) founded in Denmark was one of the few links in the German-speaking area. From 1965 onwards, a decrease in the number of convictions under Section 175 could be observed in the FRG. With effect from September 1, 1969, the criminal law was reformed and homosexual acts over the age of 21 and under 18 years of age were exempt from punishment. With Du & Ich the first new magazine was published in October, a little later him , in Hamburg an offshoot of the IHWO was founded as the International Homophile World Organization - Gruppe Norddeutschland eV , which existed until 1974. The Club for Progressive Leisure Time Organization (CpF) and the Protection Association of German Homophiles (SdH) were founded in Berlin. The Interest Association of German Homophiles (IdH) was founded in Wiesbaden . A little later, the German Homophile Organization (DHO) was added. In Austria there were few lone fighters during the whole time and an attempt from 1963 to establish an association for free motherhood and sexual equality was not very successful . The Swiss Organization of Homophilia (SOH) was founded in Switzerland in 1970 , but it was no longer able to reach left-wing and student homosexuals in particular. The days of homophiles were numbered.

Stonewall and the second gay movement

A new era began in the United States with the Stonewall uprising from June 27-29, 1969. The homosexuals became more self-confident again and wanted to become self-determined. Gay Pride came up. Initially, the driving force was mainly the political left and students, and the 1968 movement showed its influence. Many new initiatives emerged within a short period of time; the number of around 50 organizations rose to around 2500 two years later; they broke with the conformism of the homophile movement. Some activists switched, others stopped. In 1970 there was the first small demonstration in London and in 1971 there was a march in Paris on May Day. In Germany and Switzerland, Stonewall was still known to few. The initiator was the film Not the homosexual is perverse, but the situation in which he lives from 1971 (shown in Switzerland in 1972). Homophile organizations were mostly against the showing of the film and especially against its broadcast on television in 1972, as they feared negative effects. After a few presentations, discussions and initiatives and associations were formed. The existing commercial subculture was sometimes despised as a sex ghetto. Tensions kept building up between homophiles and gays. Few old homophiles changed camps. There was almost no connection to the story before 1933, many new activists did not even know that there had been a movement in Germany before. The first new book about it appeared in the USA in 1975, and it was only with time that the old movement began to be dealt with. In Austria, the total ban on male and female homosexual acts was lifted in 1971, but it was replaced by four new paragraphs, including a ban on advertising and a ban on associations. The Catholic Church continued to exert a great influence on politics and public opinion. In addition, homosexuality was still understood as something private, and it was rarely and only negatively reported in the Austrian media (while in Germany, for example, Der Spiegel reported more balanced). Other new social movements also started later in Austria; the student movement had never become a mass movement compared to other countries, and so there was a lack of opportunities to gain experience of protest. As a result, the first groups did not emerge until 1975/1976, and in 1980 the first association was founded. Something specifically German and Austrian from the mid-1970s was the intense preoccupation with National Socialism and the demand for mention, recognition as a victim and reparation. Here too, decisive impulses came from the USA. The new lesbian and gay movement is now active on all ice-free continents.

1970s

The gay movement of the 1970s orientated itself very strongly internationally towards other New Social Movements , especially towards the New Left . The lesbian movement merged to a large extent with the women's movement and shaped the paradigm of lesbian feminism there .

In addition to individual demonstrations and various political activities directed against discrimination against homosexuals, an alternative infrastructure was created that established itself outside the commercial subculture. Book shops, publishers, centers and associations from that time still exist today.

A central concept was coming out , which was supposed to enable homosexuals to develop a self-confident identity as lesbians or gay men. Gay coming out had two important aspects, especially for gay men and for the gay movement in the 1970s and in some cases to this day, which were ideally linked:

  • The individual coming out. That was to become aware of oneself and to announce one's own homosexuality to the family and the closest circle of friends.
  • The social coming out. Here the individual should make his or her “gay” public in his or her social position, so that on the one hand society can / must deal with homosexuality in as many professions and social positions as possible, and on the other hand, other homosexuals have an opportunity to identify that Coming out personally and life as a self-confident gay person is made easier.

United States

Main article: History of homosexuality in the United States

Gay Liberation Front and Gay Activists Alliance

In New York, the Gay Liberation Front (GLF) was formed immediately after the Stonewall uprising in June 1969 . The choice of name was an allusion to the South Vietnamese Liberation Front Viet Cong . As the first organization that was ready to stand up for the liberation of gays and lesbians in open confrontation , the GLF, like the Stonewall uprising that preceded it, marked a completely new quality. By making lesbians and gays visible, she laid a foundation for all subsequent liberalization, although her goals went beyond the integration of a minority.

Very early on, a split became apparent over the question of whether the GLF had other militant left organizations such as the B. should support the Black Panther Party . In 1970 Jim Owles and Marty Robinson founded a new organization outside the GLF: the Gay Activists Alliance (GAA). In a newbie's brochure, it was presented like this:

“ The Gay Activists Alliance is a militant (though non-violent) homosexual civil rights organization. […] The GAA is exclusively committed to the liberation of homosexuals and avoids any participation in an action program that has no obvious reference to homosexuals. [...] The GAA uses the tactic of a confrontational policy. Politicians and people in social authority who contribute to the repression of homosexuals are publicly exposed through mass demonstrations, demolishing gatherings and sit-ins. "

After the moderate activists left, the GLF openly saw itself as a revolutionary organization. In an interview with members of GLF New York published in the San Francisco Free Press , when asked what the Gay Liberation Front was, the answer was:

“ We are a revolutionary homosexual group of men and women that was formed with the realization that complete sexual liberation for all human beings cannot be achieved unless the existing social institutions are abolished. We reject the attempt by society to impose sexual roles and definitions of our nature on us. We step out of these roles and simplistic myths. We will be who we are. At the same time, we are creating new social forms and relationships, that is, relationships based on brotherhood, cooperation, human love and unimpeded sexuality. Babylon forced us to commit to one thing ... the revolution. "

One year old, in addition to the plenary meetings on Sunday evening, which were attended by around seventy to eighty people, the GLF comprised 19 cells or action groups, twelve groups for awareness-raising, a meeting on Wednesday evening for men, a women's meeting on the Sunday evening before the plenary assembly, three Residential communities and a Radical Study Group . There was also the GLF newspaper Come Out! and GLF Commune's magazine on 17th Street, Gay Flames . Based on the experience of the US-GLF, branches were founded in several other countries, including the English Gay Liberation Front , which - brought into being by Aubrey Walter and Bob Mellors - developed its activities primarily in London and later throughout the country.

The emergence of lesbian feminism

The establishment of lesbian feminism went back to the second annual congress for the unification of women on May 1, 1970, where the manifesto of women identified as women was distributed with a happening . It said:

“ What is a lesbian? A lesbian is the anger of all women, condensed to the point of explosion. Lesbian is the word, the label, the condition that keeps women in line. ... Lesbian is a label invented by men to throw at any woman who dares to be his own, to question his prerogatives ... to assert the primacy of her own needs. It is the primacy of women who relate to women ... the basis for the Cultural Revolution. "

The lesbian women, who confronted the final plenary with a series of resolutions, gave themselves the name “Radicalesbians” after the congress. The separation from the gay movement initially provoked severe criticism from the GLF women. But the invisibility of lesbians in the GLF, at the end of the charge of sexism , of ignorance of the problems of women finally led to their departure. In 1970 they founded the Gay Women's Liberation in San Francisco . And in 1973, the Gay Activists Alliance , the civil split of the GLF, became the Lesbian Feminist Liberation .

The lesbian-feminist movement said goodbye to the term gay and adopted the terms lesbian and dyke .

In 1971 the Furies were founded , based in Washington, DC, which further developed the program of lesbian separatism and transferred it to the organization of private life. "Heterosexual women get confused by men, don't put women first," wrote Rita Mae Brown , one of the founders. "They betray lesbians and finally they also betray themselves." The first issue of their eponymous magazine finally read:

“ Lesbianism threatens male rule at its core. In a politically conscious and organized form, it has a central function in destroying our sexist, racist, capitalist and imperialist system. [...] Lesbians must become feminists and fight against the oppression of women, just as feminists must become lesbians if they hope to end male domination. "

German-speaking area

Federal Republic of Germany

In Germany, the premiere of the film Not the homosexual is perverse, but rather the situation in which he lives (FRG 1970, director: Rosa von Praunheim , text: Rosa von Praunhein, Martin Dannecker , Sigurd Wurl) at the Berlin Film Festival in 1971 was the initial spark the gay movement. In the same year, the Homosexuelle Aktion Westberlin (HAW) and the Red Cell Gay (RotZSchwul) were founded in Frankfurt . On Saturday, April 29, 1972, the first gay demonstration in Germany was held in Münster.

The film was shown again in early 1972 and the HAW women's group was founded. The HAW women, who from 1974 onwards defined themselves in a feminist way and approached the women's movement, pursued an offensive strategy of becoming visible. The central part was the film they helped to create ... and we are taking our rights (broadcast on January 14, 1974 on Third Programs). The aim of the HAW women was to get out of the isolation, loneliness and tabooing of lesbian life and to enable this as possible for all lesbian women. Their address was shown in the film - the women received a lot of mail - and as a result, lesbian groups formed nationwide.

Quarrel

In 1973/74 there was a first strategy discussion in the gay movement, the so-called queer dispute . The conflict broke out at the Whitsun meeting in West Berlin in 1973. As at the closing demonstration with over 700 participants who had traveled from France and Italy gays in women's clothing, so-called queens occurred, it came to a head, which eventually expanded to the HAW internal strategy debate. The result was the split into an integrationist wing of orthodox Marxists and the radical faction of feminists .

For the former, homosexual oppression was a "pre-capitalist relic" and not an essential feature of bourgeois society. Since the integration of homosexuals seemed possible at any time, the task of the "homosexual socialists" was seen in developing active solidarity for the homosexual minority in the labor movement and an awareness of the majority situation as exploited wage workers among homosexuals .

The feminist faction is different. Its representatives rejected a minority policy that amounts to leaving the prevailing form of heterosexuality untouched. The latter is characterized by the violent exaggeration of gender roles and a latent homosexual identification of the men with one another. From this perspective, they derived the demand for an autonomous gay movement which, instead of indulging in gestures of humility towards heterosexual comrades, must develop independent positions and bring them to the left.

In this situation, on the sidelines of a meeting of German gay groups in May 1977, some people who were all active in gay groups in their respective places of residence founded the group NARgS , which succeeded in ensuring that during the third Russell Tribunal on "human rights violations in the Federal Republic of Germany" In 1978/79 a case of the prevention of factual information about homosexuality was also treated as an infringement. The experiences from the preparation time led the group to the decision to plan an event by and for gays in order to be able to autonomously determine the goals and paths of the gay movement. Due to the extensive reporting, Homolulu was a turning point in the development of the West German gay movement.

German Democratic Republic

In the year of the World Youth Festival , which took place in East Berlin in 1973 , there was already a lively exchange between members of the Homosexual Action West Berlin (HAW) and gays who were politically active in the GDR. Some HAW activists were then or a little later members of the SEW , which was comparable to the West German DKP . These party members, e.g. B. Volker Eschke , but also independent HAW activists, had contact with Peter Rausch, Michael Eggert and others who at the time formed a loose association of gays in the GDR.

On the one hand, the government of the GDR had nothing to object to contacts with West Berlin communists ; on the other hand, the gay emancipation claim met with more or less open mistrust on the part of the state. Many meetings between GDR gays and HAW members - often noticed, sometimes unnoticed - were monitored by the state security .

Today there are only a few documents about homosexual life in the GDR. A piece of lesbian emancipation history in the GDR works the film Why We Were So Dangerous. stories of an unofficial commemoration .

Netherlands

The Cultuur- en Ontspanningscentrum (COC), founded in 1946 as the Shakespeare Club in Amsterdam, was able to achieve one of its main goals in 1971, the reform of Article 248-bis in the Wetboek van Strafrecht (Dutch penal code). This former paragraph made same-sex contact between 16 and 21 years of age a criminal offense and allowed sentences of up to one year in prison. In contrast, the age of consent for heterosexual people was 16 years. During this period, there was also an increasing acceptance of homosexuality in Dutch society. In 1973 the COC, which has been called the Nederlandse Vereniging voor Integratie van Homoseksualiteit COC since 1971 , was officially registered as an association. In addition to the COC, other LGBT associations emerged in the Netherlands during this period.

Switzerland

In 1975 the first public demonstration of the participation of a gay group with a banner during the May Day parade took place in Basel . Three years later, after the handover of a petition for the cancellation of the gay register, there was a sit-in on Zurich's Platzspitz , which was already known as Christopher Street Liberation Memorial Day . The first official national gay demonstration took place in Bern in 1979 .

See also CSD in Switzerland

1980s

United States

In the summer of 1979, Samois was the first feminist lesbian group to emerge, which was politically committed to the rights of lesbian sadomasochists in the 1980s . Her title Coming to Power , published in 1981, ultimately led to an increased acceptance and understanding of the topic of BDSM in the lesbian community. Against the resistance of the organizers, the group took part in the Gay Freedom Day Parade together with the BDSM group Janus and wore t-shirts with the inscription The Leather Menace for the first time . This is considered to be the first open appearance of a sadomasochistic lesbian group at a public event. The open participation of the group at this event revealed for the first time differences to a subset of non-adomasochistic lesbians who saw BDSM as the basis of misogyny and violent pornography.

As a result, there was initially massive censorship in the lesbian subculture. The resulting ideological conflict lasted for decades and laid the basis for a dispute that continues to this day, known in the Anglo-Saxon world as the Feminist Sex Wars . This resulted in sometimes extremely aggressive clashes with various feminist organizations such as Women Against Violence in Pornography and Media (WAVPM) and Women Against Pornography . Prominent representatives of the resulting theoretical discussion are z. B. Pat Califia and Gayle Rubin and on one side and Andrea Dworkin and Catharine MacKinnon on the other. The work of the proponents led to the development of sex positive feminism . The discourse on the legitimacy of female sadomasochism continues to this day. In the German-speaking area, the discussion about the PorNO campaign took up the most important arguments and demands of the anti-pornographic side, but a comparably intense discussion among feminists was largely absent, as the theses of the debate were mostly only transferred in the critical partial aspects.

Federal Republic of Germany

The 1980s in Germany were mainly characterized by the institutionalization of the lesbian and gay movement:

  • In 1982 the lesbian ring was created as an umbrella organization for lesbian women and in 1986, as its gay counterpart, the Bundesverband Homosexualität (BVH).
  • From 1977 onwards, numerous groups emerged in the vicinity of the Berlin General Homosexual Working Group (AHA-Berlin eV) who wanted to influence large social organizations: the Ecumenical Working Group on Homosexuals and the Church at the 1977 Evangelical Church Congress in Berlin, the Homosexuality Working Group in the ötv-Berlin trade union (today ver.di), the Schwusos in the SPD , official recognition in 1983, the homosexuality working group of the then still FDP-affiliated young democrats (1978 in Berlin, official recognition as FDP working group in 1981), the federal AG SchwuP within the Greens and in 1984 the DKP- affiliated Democratic Lesbian and Gay Initiative (DeLSI), but previously a working group of the SEW-affiliated university group ADSen (working group of democrats and socialists).
  • In the federal German student councils ( ASten ), gay units were set up almost everywhere from 1981 onwards , which initially wanted to be accepted as regular components of the official ASten and therefore had to carry out various legal negotiations with the state university administration. The lesbian and gay students later renounced this official status and traded as “autonomous lesbian and gay lectures”.
  • The Berlin Lesbian Week (1985–1997) and the Lesbian Spring Meeting , which had been held in a different city since the late 1970s , also had nationwide coverage . The names of these events show that even in the 80s, lesbians were predominantly autonomous, i. H. independent of men, committed.
  • In West Berlin, the meeting of the Berlin gay groups worked and coordinated gay political activities in the city.

Between December 1980 and May 1986 alone, the number of lesbian-gay emancipation groups increased from around 148 to 416. In 1981, the Hamburg author Thomas Grossmann published his guidebook Gay - so what? the first guidebook on coming out for gays; Also in 1981, the first lesbian guide, Pat California's Sapphistrie: The Book of Lesbian Sexuality, caused a sensation. In 1989 Bea Trampenau drew attention to the situation of lesbian girls with No place for lesbian girls .

A second novelty was the organization of an annual Christopher Street Day to commemorate the Stonewall uprising. The first CSDs took place in 1979 in Bremen and Berlin.

From around 1983 the immune deficiency disease AIDS cast its shadow over the gay movement. On the one hand, numerous prominent activists died in the following years; on the other hand, it was now a matter of fending off a repressive health policy, such as the Bavarian domestic politician Peter Gauweiler in particular tried to promote. In 1986 he demanded the establishment of internment camps for AIDS sufferers.

Despite its success in AIDS policy, which brought homosexuality to the general public as an issue, the lesbian and gay movement fell into a crisis of meaning towards the end of the 1980s that it shared with almost all other social movements. Many activists withdrew from the movement in disappointment. The reasons for this are complex:

  • The generalization of a lesbian and gay self-esteem made it unnecessary to get involved within the movement in order to benefit from the identity it had created.
  • The term “ political sister ” became an internal stigma term. Political engagement was considered "unsexy".
  • Due to the increasing acceptance of their way of life, many members of the scene saw the mission of the lesbian and gay movement as fulfilled.
  • Former movement magazines began to transform into commercial lifestyle magazines, breaking loose from their attachment to the lesbian and gay movement.
  • Political catchphrases such as “ emancipation ” and “ patriarchy ” were largely devalued by the decline of the New Left.
  • The movement had become more professional and, due to its growing association structure, excluded grassroots participation.

Because of these trends, some former activists pronounced the gay and lesbian movement dead in 1989.

1990s

United States

Germany

At the beginning of the 1990s, the number of participants at the German CSDs exploded (around 500,000 people in Berlin). At the same time, active participation in traditional political emancipation groups fell drastically. The meeting of Berlin gay groups (TBS), a kind of working, planning and discussion group of politically interested gay groups, dissolved. The homosexual subculture had become a lesbian-gay scene, which often referred to itself as the community , and thus as a whole took over the identity that was originally a special characteristic of political emancipation groups. As a result, the distinction between subculture and movement increasingly faded, so that today both terms seem antiquated. The numerous group foundations in the early 1990s are characterized by a strong differentiation of interests. They range from sports and youth groups to migrant and human rights associations. However, the annual Transgeniale CSD was created in Berlin in 1997 , which saw itself as a political alternative to the big CSDs.

Dispute between the associations over lifestyle policy

The political lesbian and gay movement in the narrower sense melted down into individual associations during the 1990s , which primarily pursued the goal of influencing the legislature in its policy. The establishment of the Gay Association in Germany (SVD) was particularly characteristic of this . Founded in February 1990 as the "Gay Association in the GDR", it originally represented the opposition, the Protestant Church- related part of the lesbian and gay movement in the GDR . In the following months he recruited numerous former members of the West Association BVH and finally expanded to include all of reunified Germany in June.

Differences between the two associations, SVD and Bundesverband Homosexualität (BVH), were mainly about the question of whether one should call for the opening of marriage to lesbians and gays or whether this should be prohibited. The concept of the “notarized partnership” drafted by the BVH no longer wanted to bind kinship rights to a certain way of life. The concept did not include any restriction on the number or sex of partners. The SVD was accused of wanting to copy civil marriage and of betraying the emancipatory principles of the lesbian and gay movement. In contrast, the SVD did not see it as the task of homosexuals in their capacity as a social minority to change society. Rather, the aim should be an equality policy that puts an end to discrimination against lesbian citizens.

In the course of the 1990s, the BVH increasingly sidelined with its lifestyle policy. Jurists doubted the feasibility of his bill, the tabloids adopted the SVD's popularized “gay marriage” demand, and the Greens made SVD spokesman Volker Beck one of their candidates for the Bundestag . Due to growing insignificance and internal structural problems, the BVH dissolved in 1997.

A year later, the "Beck ab!" Initiative was formed to prevent Volker Beck from being reassigned to the Bundestag. After their failure, the scientific-humanitarian committee (whk) emerged, which sees itself not as a lesbian and gay organization, but as a left-wing sex-emancipatory alliance. His confrontational politics had a very polarizing effect on the lesbian-gay public from the start.

In 1999 the SVD was expanded to become the Lesbian and Gay Association in Germany (LSVD). This gave lesbians an alternative to the lesbian ring , which rejected gay marriage for feminist reasons. Around the same time, Christina Schenk, a non-party member of the Bundestag, presented a draft proposal for a legal gutting of marriage and “freely delegable rights of relatives”. This model, which was traded in the lesbian and gay movement under the keyword “Elective Affinities” as an alternative to gay marriage , did not find sufficient support in the PDS faction to which Schenk belonged and was therefore never discussed at parliamentary level.

In the end, the Bundestag adopted neither the LSVD nor those of its opponents as its own. With effect from August 1, 2001, he decided instead to set up his own family law institute for lesbians and gays with the name " registered civil partnership ", which is legally located below marriage. While the LSVD welcomed it as an important step in the right direction, its opponents ridiculed it as the "first special law for homosexuals since the abolition of Section 175 ". In the following years the association advocated an alignment of the registered civil partnership with marriage, which was partly crowned with success in 2004 with the passing of the “ Civil Partnership Law Revision Act”. In the following years, based on various judgments by the Federal Constitutional Court, civil partnerships were largely equated in terms of rights and obligations relating to marriage.

Most federal states also passed action plans to combat homophobia, which, among other things, resulted in the age-appropriate and interdisciplinary inclusion of sexual diversity in the educational and curriculum of schools.

In the summer of 2017, a further milestone in the history of the lesbian and gay movement in Germany was the parliamentary opening of marriage in Germany, which came into effect on October 1, 2017.

present

In contrast to the emancipatory movements of the 1970s and 80s, the lesbian-gay movement today is more interested in more civil rights and in extensive adjustment to bourgeois norms.

Africa and Asia

For the current status and individual events around the lesbian and gay movement in African and Asian countries, see:

literature

Web links

swell

  1. ↑ a b Ulrike Repnik: The History of the Lesbian and Gay Movement in Austria (Feminist Theory, Volume 48). Milena Verlag, Vienna 2006, ISBN 3-85286-136-5 .
  2. ^ Stefan Micheler: Magazines, associations and bars of same-sex desirous people in the Weimar Republic. P. 3 , accessed on August 16, 2019 .
  3. ^ Carsten Balzer: Gender-Outwlaw-Triptychon. (PDF; 2.8 MB) - An ethnological study on self-images and forms of self-organization in the transgender subcultures of Rio de Janeiro, New York and Berlin. Dissertation at the Department of Political and Social Sciences at the Free University of Berlin, October 2007.
  4. ↑ Raimund Wolfert: Against loneliness and 'hermit'. The history of the International Homophile World Organization. IHWO Männerschwarm, Hamburg 2009, ISBN 978-83-61719-44-1 , p. 220 .
  5. ↑ David Carter: Stonewall: The Riots that Sparked the Gay Revolution. St. Martin's Press, 2004, ISBN 0-312-34269-1 , p. 251.
  6. ↑ Georg Klauda: 30 years of Stonewall. Part III ( Memento of the original from April 3, 2005 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.  @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / gigi.x-berg.de
  7. ↑ Georg Klauda: 30 years of Stonewall. Part IV ( Memento of the original from February 12, 2005 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was automatically inserted and not yet checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.  @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / gigi.x-berg.de
  8. ↑ cf. Jannis Plastargias : RotZSchwul. The beginning of a movement (1971–1975). Querverlag, Berlin 2015, ISBN 978-3-89656-238-8 , pp. 10–24, 33 ff., 114 ff.
  9. ↑ Approval of the first gay demonstration . Queer Communications GmbH. August 15, 2019. Retrieved August 20, 2019.
  10. ↑ Sebastian Haunss, Identity in Movement, VS Verlag für Sozialwissenschaften, 2004, Section 9 (Gay Movement), p. 211
  11. ↑ Die Tageszeitung: Epitaph on the Gay Movement , August 8, 1989
  12. ↑ whk: The Beck ab! Story