Making Gay History
The Half-Century Fight for Lesbian and Gay Equal Rights
Part One
Before
At the close of the nineteenth century, more than fifty years before the gay civil rights movement took root in the United States, the first organization for gay people, the Scientific Humanitarian Committee, was founded in Germany. The then-radical goals of the committee included the abolition of Germany's antigay laws and the promotion of public education about homosexuality. The committee also set out to encourage gay people to take up the struggle for their rights. The rise of the Nazis brought a brutal end to the Scientific Humanitarian Committee, and for decades after, Germany's gay civil rights movement would remain dormant.
In the United States, it wasn't until 1950 that the gay rights effort really got its start, with the founding of an organization called the Mattachine Society. But the stirrings began years before, and included the Society for Human Rights, a very short-lived gay rights organization founded by Henry Gerber in Chicago in 1924 ... read full excerpt from: Making Gay History ebook
