Chapter 2 History Homosexuality has existed as long as heterosexuality but it has not always been socially accepted At one point during the time of ancient Greece homosexuality became part of the culture One of the most famous Greek poets Sappho is known for her poetry about women’s love and beauty The gymnasium in ancient Greece In ancient Greece male homosexual attachments often developed in the gymnasium where male athletes trained for competitions 8
History The Greek poet Sappho left lived on the island of Lesbos This is where the term lesbiancomes from was a training area for males and homosexual attachments were valued there Apart from ancient Greece and ancient Rome where homosexuality was generally accepted Western 9
The LGBTQ Story civilization made homosexuality seem shameful for centuries It eventually became illegal in the 1500s in Britain Many other countries declared homosexuality illegal In some places the punishment for being a homosexual was death By the end of the 1800s people began to try to change these laws in some countries They formed organizations that worked to repeal or overturn the laws In Berlin Germany in 1897 Magnus Hirschfeld and others formed the Scientific-Humanitarian During the reign of English king Henry VIII the government passed a law that made homosexuality between men a crime punishable by death Committee the world’s first gay rights organization It worked to repeal the German law that made 10
History homosexuality illegal The committee also published literature sponsored rallies and worked for legal reform By 1922 some 25 chapters of the committee were operating in Germany the Netherlands and Austria During the 1920s gay men and women experienced a certain amount of freedom in Germany In larger German cities gay nightlife was allowed and the number of gay publications increased According to some historians the number of gay bars and periodicals in Berlin in the 1920s exceeded that in New York City 60 years later Magnus Hirschfeld worked to make homosexuality legal The rise of Adolf Hitler ended this period Hitler was a dictator who believed that 11
