Socialist Action /November 2002
Movement for Gay Liberation Began Well
Before Stonewall
By ADAM RITSCHER
Many tend to think that the gay liberation movement did not begin in
earnest until the 1969 Stonewall riots in New York-the now infamous event
when patrons of the gay and lesbian bar stood up and fought back against
an attack by police.
As important an event as Stonewall proved to be, however, it was not
the birth of the gay liberation movement.
Authors John Lauritsen and David Thorstad, in their book "The Early
Homosexual Rights Movement," argue that Stonewall should be viewed
rather as the 100th anniversary of the GLBT movement. Below is a synopsis
of the forgotten chapter of GLBT history that they present in their book.
While gays and lesbians have of course been engaging in politics and
struggle since the beginning of our species, Lauritsen and Thorstad hold
that the modern gay liberation movement began in the late 1860s and early
1870s.
During this time the government of the unifying German state began a
debate on a new legal code. It represented an attempt to unify the new German
nation under a single legal code, and though no such laws had been on the
books previously, one of the proposed new laws was one that would make homosexual
acts illegal.
This spurred Karoly Maria Kertbeny, a German-Hungarian writer, to write
an open letter in 1869 pleading against the adoption of this new law. Karoly's
letter represented a bold act, and though the anti-gay law was subsequently
approved in 1871, a torrent of letter writing and pro-gay literature distribution
followed.
The gay community was awakened and called to come out into public to
defend itself. Out of this arose the first openly gay rights organization,
the Scientific Humanitarian Committee.
The new organization sought to unite "Uranians," as some gays
then called themselves, and to organize a campaign seeking to overthrow
the new anti-gay legislation. The committee began issuing an annual publication,
"Yearbook for Intermediate Sexual Types," and took upon itself
three goals: (1) to abolish the anti-homosexual law, (2) to enlighten public
opinion on homosexuality, and (3) "interesting the homosexual himself
in the struggle for his rights."
The main vehicle the new organization used for all three of these goals
was a petition drive, which was launched that same year. The petition, which
called on the German government to repeal anti-gay legislation, quickly
won the support of thousands. An aggressive campaign to send materials to
each and every judge, politician, and newspaper in Germany was also launched.
And while the campaign had its ups and downs-such as an anti-gay backlash
in 1907 following several sensational trials against homosexuals-the degree
of support the committee received was unprecedented in any other country.
Foremost amongst the allies of the new movement was the Social Democratic
Party of Germany-a party that at the time included socialists of almost
all stripes, from reformists to revolutionaries. Particularly outspoken
on the question was August Bebel, one of the most respected leaders of the
Social Democrats, who railed against the anti-gay law in the German parliament.
Some have argued that the support of the Social Democratic Party accounted
to a certain extent for the political space for the gay rights movement
to grow in Germany.
The coming of World War I, and the ensuing restrictions on civil rights
that took place in almost all belligerent nations, forced the Scientific
Humanitarian Committee to largely cease operations. After the war, though,
and the crushing of an attempted socialist revolution in 1918-19, the committee
reorganized itself and formed a united front with other German gay and lesbian
groups.
It also launched the Institute for Sexual Sciences, which came to contain
a huge library, and organized classes on sexuality. It's motto became "per
scientiam ad justitiam" (justice through science).
At around the same time the committee decided to commit time and resources
to taking the struggle for gay rights to countries outside of Germany. Magnus
Hirschfeldfor, the leader of the committee, toured several European countries
and helped to launch the World League for Sexual Reform.
The response they got was varied. In many countries the gay and lesbian
movement was still very much underground. Anti-obscenity laws in the United
States, for example, made even the mentioning of the word "homosexual"
a potentially legally punishable offense (though such laws didn't prevent
some figures, such as Margaret Sanger and Emma Goldman, from speaking out).
In some countries, such as Britain, where a branch of the Scientific
Humanitarian Committee was established and support was again provided by
various socialist and working-class organizations, state repression necessitated
a much more modest movement that was able to be develop in Germany.
An notable exception came from the new workers' state in Russia. Following
the 1917 Bolshevik Revolution, led by V.I. Lenin and Leon Trotsky, Russia
became the first nation to legalize homosexuality.
The new Bolshevik legal code contained within it the concept that if
there was no victim, there was no crime. This unprecedented championing
of sexual freedom gave hope to gays and lesbians the world over.
The new revolutionary state also become an active participant in the
World League for Sexual Reform, and sought to educate the world as to why
it held the views it did on homosexuality.
It should be noted, however, that the political position taken by the
Bolsheviks did not constitute a full-blown endorsement of the ideas of gay
liberation. In fact, some Bolsheviks held less than enlightened views on
homosexuality, but still believed that it was a scientific question, not
a legal one. This position was still head and shoulders above that of any
other state of the times.
Unfortunately, the 1930s would usher in a dark age for the gay and lesbian
movement, both in Germany and in the USSR. Following the coming to power
of Adolph Hitler in 1933, the Scientific Humanitarian Committee and similar
groups were quickly smashed. Leading up to 1933 SHC meetings were frequently
attacked by Nazi lynch mobs, and its leaders were often assaulted and beaten.
The Institute for Sexual Science was seized, and its library destroyed
in a massive book-burning orgy. Following 1933, partisans of the movement
who didn't flee early on soon found themselves in the new fascist concentration
camps.
In the USSR, following the death of Lenin and the defeat of Leon Trotsky
by Joseph Stalin and his bureaucratic clique, the Russian government's attitude
towards homosexuality began to change. These changes came about bit by bit.
Initially, Stalin's government took the position that homosexuality need
not be illegal, but should be actively discouraged. This position was even
presented at one point at a World League for Sexual Reform conference. This
took place at the same time that Stalin began taking away many of the gains
that women had made in Russia since the revolution, such as legal and free
abortions and contraceptives.
By the mid-1930s, Stalin had unleashed a full-fledged offensive against
gays and lesbians. When the new USSR constitution was written up for example,
Stalin personally intervened to have a provision added that from now on
any one caught and convicted of having committed a homosexual act would
be sentenced to eight years of hard labor.
The Stalinists' homophobia was so deep that gay-baiting was initially
one of their main attacks upon Hitler's fascist movement. Official state
propaganda (and even writings by the novelist Maxim Gorky) denounced the
Nazi movement as being led by homosexuals and representing politics based
on sexual deviancy.
Using many of the same arguments Hitler used to persecute gays and lesbians
in Germany, Stalin's campaign for "proletarian morality" snuffed
out sexual freedom in the USSR.
It would end up taking the international gay and lesbian movement decades
to recover from the twin blows delivered by Hitler and Stalin-leaving it
to the 1960s & '70s generation of activists to revive the movement.
Socialist Action /November 2002 |