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rfmcdonaldAs I mentioned in my reaction to Coal from Hades, the question implicit in that work of whether an earlier gay rights movement was possible has been tantalizing me for the past month. Could we have had a Stonewall a generation earlier, or even earlier? Could the global gay rights movement have taken off earlier?
I'd like to believe this possible, for any number of reasons. I'm not inclined to think it was possible, simply on account of the overwhelming popularity of homophobic religion in even the most liberal countries. Even in France, where legal bans against gay sex had been dropped in 1791, homophobia was normal, and gay rights unimaginable: In Frédéric Martel's The Pink and the Black, for instance, the author's examination of the history of gay rights notes that while gay sex as such was not criminalized, any public displays seen as threatening to public morals were prosecuted as criminal offenses. If even in liberal France there was no way to create a public discussion about sexual orientation and civil rights, what prospect was there anywhere? The relative weakness of many civil rights movements in the pre-Second World War period is also another point against this imagining.
Am I wrong? I'd love it if you could tell me so.
I'd like to believe this possible, for any number of reasons. I'm not inclined to think it was possible, simply on account of the overwhelming popularity of homophobic religion in even the most liberal countries. Even in France, where legal bans against gay sex had been dropped in 1791, homophobia was normal, and gay rights unimaginable: In Frédéric Martel's The Pink and the Black, for instance, the author's examination of the history of gay rights notes that while gay sex as such was not criminalized, any public displays seen as threatening to public morals were prosecuted as criminal offenses. If even in liberal France there was no way to create a public discussion about sexual orientation and civil rights, what prospect was there anywhere? The relative weakness of many civil rights movements in the pre-Second World War period is also another point against this imagining.
Am I wrong? I'd love it if you could tell me so.
