Gay, Lesbian & Bisexual History - Homphobia & Persecution

The culture had a choice about how to respond.
It could either decide that the story was wrong
and change it. Or it could conclude there was
something wrong with the people.

Western societies started to describe people who did not fit the
cultural story as having illnesses, mental conditions or being in some way
malformed.

It developed medical categories for such people and labelled them. In the
1869, the word homosexual was invented.

The following century was a period of intense

persecution

unscripted

people. People

were

locked up as criminals,

placed in

mental

institutions,

and subject to a

array of

forced

medical testing

including

castrations and

lobotomies.

In the 1930s and 1940s the Nazi's rounded

unscripted

people

and

sent them to

concentration camps, for fear that

they would

tar

the master

race. In the 1950s Americans

decided unscripted

people were the weak

link

that would

allow communism to infiltrate

the

United States. They were

one of the major

victims of

McCarthyism.

Unscripted people were treated as a threat to

the fabric of

society

itself.

Lesbians versus Gay Men

Unscripted women and men were often treated differently during this time.

The 'opposite sex' cultural story believed women did not have sexual
desire. As a result, female couples were often not seen as sexual couples.
They were often seen as political dissidents and women who refused to
submit to being wives.

In order to survive economically, it was common for one woman to pass as
a man to earn a wage. In some places, women who did this were
accused of property crimes and political crimes, rather than sexual crimes.
They were charged with stealing men's jobs and men's wives and
threatening the social order.

The Nazis threw unscripted women in with political dissidents, trouble
makers and social outcasts. They were required to wear black triangles,
rather than the pink triangles of the sexual criminals.

In contrast male couples were painted as being based entirely on sex.
Men were seen as threatening the social order, and throwing away the
privileges of manhood, due to an overwhelming preoccupation with sex.

The treatment varied from place to place, and sometimes men and women
were treated similarly.

Nonetheless, these negative stories about why unscripted people
challenged the cultural story still has some residues today.