History of the Gay Rights Movement in America
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History of the Gay Rights Movement in America Pre-Stonewall Beginning in colonial times there were prohibitions of sodomy derived from the English criminal laws passed in the first instance by the Reformation Parliament of 1533. The English prohibition was understood to include relations between men and women as well as relations between men and men. As Europeans settled in North America, they encountered Native American cultures which had different ideas about sexuality and gender. The accounts of French, Spanish and British travelers about Native American customs are full of references to such cultural differences, such as the acceptance among some groups of same-sex sexual activity and cross-dressing. Reactions to these differences ranged from amused to violent, as Europeans confronted cultures that did not follow what Europeans had always considered to be "natural" laws. European colonial governments sought to control the sexual behavior of the people within their settlements. The British, French, and Spanish all passed laws regarding sex outside of marriage and "sodomy" - a range of same-sex sexual activities. In early British colonies, as under English law, sodomy was a capital crime (punishable by death). One of the earliest recorded convictions for sodomy in the colonies was that of Richard Cornish, a sea captain executed in 1624 in Virginia for alleged homosexual acts with a servant. Despite the severity of the laws, however, we know of only a few instances of executions in sodomy cases during the colonial period. People were more likely to be tried for the lesser offense of "lewd behavior," which did not incur the death penalty. Sodomy was a difficult charge to prove - two witnesses were required, and there was no possibility of a tell-tale pregnancy - and people may have been reluctant to place their neighbors' lives in jeopardy with such a dire accusation. Sara Norman and Mary Hammon of Yarmouth, Plymouth Colony, in 1649 were taken to court for "lewd behavior each with [the] other upon a bed," the first known conviction for lesbian activity in North America. Three years later, Joseph Davis of Haverhill, New Hampshire, was fined for "putting on women's apparel" and made to admit his guilt to the community. Colonial laws actually made it a crime to cross-dress, usually imposing a fine and some form of public contrition for the offense. Laws about what people could wear were generally intended to preserve social order and maintain a hierarchy within society, and were not directly concerned with homosexuality. Homosexuality was an issue that many were trying to make sense of. Michael Wigglesworth, a Puritan clergyman, kept a diary for recording his daily life, meditations on faith, and his battles with lust and temptation. For Wigglesworth, however, these feelings took a form that seemed dangerous to record even in his private papers as Wigglesworth was plagued by his attraction to his male students. In 1653, he struggled with "filthy lust" inspired by "my fond affection for my students while in their presence." Wigglesworth married in 1655, but his attraction to men continued. In 1656, Wigglesworth became minister of the church in Malden, Massachusetts, and became widely known for his epic poem about the Last Judgment called The Day of Doom . Wigglesworth's carefully encoded confessions were not revealed until the 1960s when his diary was discovered and published. Wigglesworth seems to have taken his secret with him to the grave. In New England, laws and religious thinkers condemned many different kinds of sexual activity (both heterosexual and homosexual) as sinful acts. The concept of the homosexual as a distinct category of person did not emerge until the late 19th century. Thus early American sodomy laws were not directed at homosexuals as such but instead sought to prohibit non-procreative sexual activity more generally. This does not suggest approval of homosexual conduct. It does tend to show that this particular form of conduct was not thought of as a separate category from like conduct between heterosexual persons. Homosexuality was clearly being discussed at various levels of society in the 1700s. In 1749, Thomas Cannon wrote what may be the earliest published defense of homosexuality in English, Ancient and Modern Pederasty Investigated and Exemplify’d . Thomas Jefferson even weighed in on this in 1779 when he revised Virginia law to make sodomy (committed by men or women) punishable by mutilation rather than death . Instead of targeting relations between consenting adults in private, 19th-century sodomy prosecutions typically involved relations between men and minor girls or minor boys, relations between adults involving force, or relations between men and animals. Nineteenth century American society allowed some leeway for passionate same-sex relationships. Some men and women found love in same-sex "romantic friendships" that society did not view with suspicion. Walt Whitman's Calamus Poems , published for the first time in the 1860 edition of his Leaves of Grass , extolled "the love of comrades" - men's love for each other - at a time when homosexuality as such was still undefined. In his private life, Whitman had passionate relationships with a number of men and intimate encounters with many more, as recorded in his correspondence and diaries. Many of Whitman's readers, including English essayist and poet Edward Carpenter and Oscar Wilde, found in the Calamus Poems a legitimation of love between men, a kind of manifesto of homosexuality. Carpenter was an English poet and early homosexual activist, living in a gay community near Sheffield. In 1874, Carpenter wrote to Whitman, "You have made men to be not ashamed of the noblest instinct of their nature.” Oscar Wilde, author of The Picture of Dorian Gray in 1891, was an open homosexual. One of Wilde’s close friends was Lord Alfred Douglas. Douglas’ father strongly disapproved of the relationship and publicly insulted Wilde, leading to Wilde’s imprisonment in 1895 after being convicted of "gross indecency” for homosexual offences. In his trial, Wilde defended same-sex relationships by referring to “the love that dares not speak its name” and saying that “it is beautiful, it is fine, it is the noblest form of affection. There is nothing unnatural about it.” For the crime, Wilde was found guilty and sentenced to 2 years of hard labor. In the 1880s, British parliament passed the Criminal Law Amendment Bill "outlawing all forms of male homosexual contact". The love of two men not only defied Victorian sexual mores but also the highly stratified British class system. Carpenter strongly believed that homosexuality was a natural orientation for people of a third sex. His 1908 book on the subject, The Intermediate Sex , would become a foundational doctrine of the gay rights movement of the late 20 th century. Towards the end of the 19th century, women in the United States gained increasing access to higher education and to such professions as social work and teaching, achieving greater independence. As some women gained access to education and employment, they were able to form permanent, independent partnerships. Sarah Orne Jewett and Annie Adams Fields had such a union -- known as a "Boston Marriage" -- for nearly 30 years. "Boston Marriages," long-term relationships between two women, were not uncommon in the late 19th century among educated, well-off women. Jewett’s "Martha's Lady," a short story, celebrated the redemptive power of love between women. Jane Addams and Ellen Gates Starr were part of this emerging group of women, as well, when they started their work at Hull House among immigrant communities in Chicago. By the end of the century, however, the medical profession had begun to investigate same-sex relationships, inspiring a new wave of suspicion and concern. The new science of psychology denounced same-sex love, equating it with arrested development and mental disorder. This effort to identify the characteristics of a "homosexual" as a distinct kind of person was a reflection of the growth of a new area of medical research. In the 1860s, medical experts began to study men and women whom they called "inverts," members of the "third" or "intermediate sex," or "homosexuals." Early sex researchers tended to ascribe homosexual behavior to some innate biological difference in homosexual men and women. By the turn of the century, the theories of Sigmund Freud pointed to a combination of nature and nurture as the source of homosexual tendencies. Women who challenged the primacy of men - whether by entering the work place, demanding the vote, or rejecting a man's sexual prerogatives -- were often labeled by doctors as biological misfits and "inverts," one of the terms used for gays and lesbians. Doctors often linked women's political activism to defective sexuality, declaring that if a woman harbored "masculine ideas of independence," she likely possessed other "manly" attributes -- such as excessive body hair, a fondness for cigars and the ability to whistle. While conceding that not every suffragist was a lesbian, these doctors nonetheless determined that their efforts to "invade a man's sphere" was a clear indication that women activists had a "certain impelling force within them." In the years before World War II, gay men and lesbians developed subcultural forms of daily resistance, usually with distinctive dress and body language. In the US, one such individual who spoke out was Henry Gerber, a German immigrant who lived in Chicago. Gerber served in the US army and was stationed in Germany with the occupying forces from 1920-1923. It was there that he discovered Brand and Hirschfeld’s homosexual-emancipation movements and decided to attempt a similar organization in Chicago. Gerber organized the first public homosexual organization in America -- the Society of Human Rights -- and published two issues of the first gay publication, entitled Friendship and Freedom .