Motion Pictures Movement, Homosexual
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9 MONTHERLANT, HENRY DE anarchist who has never believed in anar- ment thinkers as Voltaire and Diderot had chism. ambivalent attitudes toward sexual non- conformity. While opposing barbaric op- BIBLIOGRAPHY. Henry de Montherlant pression, they clung to the notion that the and Roger Peyrefitte, Correspondence, Paris: Robert Laffont, 1983; Pierre church remained the arbiter of "moral- Sipriot, Montherlant sans masque, I: ity," which in practice meant sexual L'Enfant prodigue, 1895-1 932, Paris: morality, and that same-sexrelations, being Robert Laffont, 1982. "unnatural," were destined to disappear in Wayne R. Dynes a truly enlightened polity. During the French Revolution two pamphlets MOTIONPICTURES appeared, Les enfans de Sodome and Les See Film. petits bougres au man8ge, purporting to give information on adherents to a proto- MOVEMENT, liberation movement for homosexuals, but HOMOSEXUAL this anticipation remains shadowy. Modernlife has seen many move- A lonely precursor was Heinrich ments for social change, including those Hoessli (1784-1864), a Swiss milliner from intended to secure the rights of disenfran- the canton of Glarus, who in 183648 chisedgroups. Thehomosexualmovement published in two volumes Eros: Die is a general designation for organized po- Miinnerliebe der Griechen: ihre litical striving to end the legal and social Beziehungen zur Geschichte, Erziehung, intolerance of homosexuality in countries Literatur und Gesetzgebung aller Zeiten where it had been stigmatized as both a (Eros: The Male Love of the Greeks: Its vice and a crime, and where the revelation Relationship to the History, Education, of an individual's homosexuality almost Literature and Legislation of All Ages). inevitably led to social ostracism and Amateur that he was, Hoessli collected economic ruin. Only at the end of the the literary and other material-mainly nineteenth century did such organized from ancient Greeceand medieval Islam- movement endeavors become possible in that illustrated male homosexuality. His continental Europe, in no small measure writings, issued in very small editions, had because of the impact of scientific think- no immediate effect on public opinion or ing on the political discourse of that ep- the law. och. Characteristic of such movements is Second in the prehistory of the their capacity to give the homosexual movement, the German jurist and poly- individual not just a sexual but a political math Karl Heinrich Ulrichs (182.5-1895) identity-as a niember of a minority with began in January 1864to publish a series of agrievance against thelargersociety. These pamphlets under the title Forschungen movements varied in the size of their zur mannmannlichen Liebe. The first of membership and the scope of their activ- these was entitled Vindex, a name meant ity, as well as in the specific goals which to vindicate the homosexual in the eyes of they pursued and the arguments by which public opinion. The second had the name they sought to persuade the decision- Inclusa, taken from Ulrichs' formula an- making elites and the general public of the ima muliebris corpore virili inclusa, "a justice of their cause. female soul trapped in a male body." The Origins. The Enlightenment of pamphlets rambled over the entire field of the eighteenth century, which took up ancient and modern history and sociology, arms against every form of arbitrary op- with comments on contemporary scan- pression, may be regarded as the spiritual dals. Although he even conceived the idea parent of all later homosexual liberation of an organization that would fight for the movements. Yet such leading Enlighten- human rights of Umings, as he called them, MOVEMENT, HOMOSEXUAL 0% Ulrichs' efforts to ameliorate the legal subject over the centuries. Gatheringsome plight of the homosexual in Germany 1500 members from all parts of Germany, failed, since the North German Confed- the Committee never became a mass or eration and then the German Empire "activist" organization; unlike some later adopted the Prussian law penalizing groups, it never even sought this status. "unnatural lewdness" between males. He Outside Germany the Scientific- ended his days in poverty and exile, be- Humanitarian Committee only gradually friended by anItaliannoblemanwhowrote attracted imitators, as in countries that a short tribute to him after his death. had adopted the Code Napoleon where no Emergence. Two years after criminal statute remained in need of re- Ulrichs' death, the world's first homosex- peal. In the Netherlands a branch was ual organization came into being: the founded in 191 1 in the wake of the passage Wissenschaftlich-humanitare Komitee of a law which ominously raised the age of (Scientific-Humanitarian Committee), consent from 14 to 21-discriminating founded in Berlin on May 14, 1897 under against homosexual acts for the first time the leadership of Magnus Hirschfeld in the twentieth century. This Dutch (1868-1935)) a physician who became the branch had been preceded by the participa- world's leading, if controversial, authority tion of several writers-Arnold Aletrino, on homosexuality in the years that fol- L. S. A. M. von Romer, Jongherr Jacob van lowed. The Committee's first action was Schorer-in theinternational aspect of the to draft a petition to the legislative bodies German movement. Aletrino had coura- of the German Empire calling for the re- geously spoken in defense of homosexuals peal of Paragraph 175 of the Penal Code of at the Congress of Criminal Anthropology the Reich. For this petition the Commit- in Amsterdam in 190 1 and been roundly tee solicited the signatures of prominent abused by the other delegates. Another figures in all wallcs of German life, and offshoot of the Committee was founded in ultimately it obtained some 6,000 names, Vienna in 1906 to seek reform of the an impressive cross-section of the intel- Austrian law of 1852which penalized both lectual elite of the Second Reich and the male and female homosexual expression. Weimar Republic. It also began to publish By the second decade of the twen- the world's first homosexual periodical, tieth century the various organizations or thefahrbuch fur sexuelle Zwischenstufen groups of friends such as those around (Yearbook for Sexual Intergrades], whose John Addington Symonds, Edward Car- title embraced not only homosexuality penter, and Havelock Ellis that were con- but also transvestism, pseudohermaphro- cerned with changing the law and public ditism, and other departuresfrom the norm opinion in regard to the legitimacy and of masculinity or femininity. morality of sexual behavior began to coa- The Committee professed the lesce into a larger "sexual reform move- view-which did not go unchallenged even ment." All rejected the traditional ascetic within homosexual circles-that homo- morality of the Christian Church and its sexuals belonged to a "third sex" which more modern variants to a greater or lesser represented aninnate "intermediatestage" degree, though some affected a neutral between male and female. All traits of pose on this issue. The birth control mind and body it assigned to the mascu- movement was joined by the eugenics line or the feminine, while insisting that movement and by an organization that there was acontinuum between the twoin sought to abate the stigma attaching to every human being. It also issued pam- unwed motherhood-the Deutsche Bund phlets and brochures for the lay public, fur Mutterschutz (German League for the trying to break down the layers of preju- Protection of Motherhood). Also, voices dice and ignorance that had encrusted the were raised against the laws prohibiting 4 MOVEMENT, HOMOSEXUAL voluntary abortion as a method of birth Europe in 1917-18-all created a new set- control and the religiously based laws ting for efforts at homosexual emancipa- which made divorce difficult-if not im- tion. possible, as was the case in most of Catho- Germany, now the Weimar Re- lic Europe. Despite entrenched opposition, public, remained the center of the move- the women's suffrage organizations were ment, which barely existed in most other becoming ever more influential in coun- countries, even where a semi-clandestine tries such as Germany and Great Britain. subculture flourished, as it had in London, Throughout the industrial world, Paris, and the major Italian cities since the the old order in the realm of sexuality-a late Middle Ages. The Deutsche Freund- kind of Old Regime of social control-was schaftsverband [German Friendship Asso- under attack on many fronts. By and large, ciation] was founded in 1920 as an expres- the protagonists of these various reform sion of the displeasure felt by many homo- movements saw one another as natural sexuals at the academic and political ori- allies and clerical and traditionalist par- entation of the Scientific-Humanitarian ties in the national legislatures as natural Committee and the narrow elitism of the enemies. So the homosexual movement Community of the Exceptional. The Asso- was part of a much larger wave of social ciationwas more oriented toward theneeds agitation against nineteenth century sex- of the average homosexuali it opened an ual morality. This positive development activities center in Berlin, held weekly was paradoxical in that its roots lie in part meetings, sponsored dances, and published in the "social purity" campaigns of the aweekly entitledDieFreundschaft [Friend- late Victorian era. In their conviction that ship]. Some 42 delegates from chapters social hygiene required repressive as well throughout Germany