As you may or may not have noticed, I’m a bit behind. And so, to return to where I’m meant to be, the next series of posts will deal with a timeline of the LGBT movement’s presence, life, and practice in the United States’ past. First as it informs our play’s action, and then as it informs our world today. I have no claim to be an expert, nor do I dare say that I’ll be able to completely cover every important event relevant to this subject. Apologies in advance if I misspeak or use an unacceptable name or label, and if I do then please let me know ASAP so that I can get on changing it.
But certain things need to be said and known, and even as cursory as this will be that doesn’t change how important this particular subject is to this production’s setting and, to a certain extent, point.
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Those of you who have searched anything like “LGBT history” on the internet will find many timelines start in 1924 and skip straight to the 1960s. Which is understandable, as ’24 was when Henry Gerber founded the Society for Human Rights in Chicago. This was the USA’s first documented gay rights organization, one which soon also produced the first American publication for the homosexual community – Friendship and Freedom. Political pressures force it to disband soon thereafter, and as I said most timelines then jump to tumultuous events of the ’60s.
But to do so ignores so many milestones both large and small (and domestic and international) in the preceding and intervening years. Milestones such as:
1906, where what may very well be the first openly gay novel (with a happy ending no less) was published in the United States.
In 1912, when The Young Women’s Journal – a Mormon magazine – is home to the first explicit reference to lesbianism in the United States.
1919, which saw the release of Different From the Others, a German film which portrayed gay men sympathetically. In the same year Doctor Magnus Hirschfeld – who had a bit part in the film – also co-founded Berlin’s Institute for Sex Research. This institute, a private research and counseling office with a library that eventually held thousands of books and worked to promote conversation, communication, scholarship, and acceptance, was destroyed by the Nazis in 1933.
Or 1917, when Russia’s October Revolution elected to repeal elements of Russia’s previous criminal code and announced that homosexual and heterosexual relationships are equal under the law. Sadly, this lasted for all of five years.
Or 1923, when British-born (but later resident of Canada and the USA) poet, photographer, and philosopher Elsa Gidlow published On A Grey Thread, perhaps the first collection of openly lesbian love poetry in North America.
Or how about we go back to 1924, when Panama, Paraguay, and Peru all legalized homosexuality. The fact that it was ever actually illegal anywhere is frustrating to the point of apoplexy, but we know that. These three countries are presented as contextual example and touchstone – to list the back and forth seen by so many countries around the world, from Iceland to Argentina to Poland to England, between the decriminalization and recriminalization and legalization of homosexuality, would be to fill an entire blog post in an of itself. And probably require a diagram. Or three.
1931 saw Germany step out yet again, producing and releasing the first explicitly pro-lesbian film Madchen In Uniform. And in the same year, because why stop there with progressivism, Berlin hosted the first known vaginoplasty and transformed one Rudolph into Dora. Too bad about that whole thing where one Adolf Hitler was sworn in as chancellor two years later and started sending everyone to concentration camps.
In 1936 America’s first lesbian bar – Mona’s 440 Club – opened in San Francisco.
Speaking of publishing, 1939 saw teacher Frances V. Rummell publish Diana: A Strange Autobiography, the first out-and-out lesbian autobiography complete with a (true) happy ending.
On the darker side of things, when the Allied forces liberated the prisoners of Nazi concentration camps in 1945, anyone interned there for homosexuality is required to remain and serve out their sentence per Paragraph 175 of the German Criminal Code (which was technically part of the law until 1994). Doctor Hirschfeld had been fighting to have Paragraph 175 repealed since as early as 1897. And repealed it was, in 1929. The rise of what would become the Nazi party, however, prevented the implementation of the vote’s result.
On the lighter side of things, in December 1946 what is now known as Cultuur en Ontspanningscentrum (translated as Center for Culture and Leisure) was founded in the Netherlands. It is the oldest LGBT organization we have as a world, at least insofar as ones which have continued to exist from their inception go. And while that’s brilliant and beautiful and fantastic, it’s not even the best part. You see, “Cultuur en Ontspanningscentrum” was instituted as a code name to cover the group’s real interests and purpose, but it was not the first used. No, that honor goes to the title “Shakespeareclub.” Founded by gay men who were associated with a magazine called Right to Live, the organization’s initial interest was not just in achieving social emancipation but also providing an opportunity for culture and recreation to the gay men and lesbian women of their community. The name was not changed until 1949.
I MAY HAVE SEEN THE DEVIL 