1960 gay rights movement
During the nineteenth century, the first gay liberation thinkers laid the groundwork for a militant movement that demanded the end of the criminalization, pathologisation and social rejection of non-heterosexual sexuality. In 1836, the Swiss man Heinrich Hössli (1784-1864) published in German the first essay demanding recognition of the rights of those who followed what he called masculine love. Nearly three decades later, the German jurist Karl-Heinrich Ulrichs (1825-1895) wrote twelve volumes between 1864 and 1879 as part of his “Research on the Mystery of Devotion Between Men” (“Forschungen über das Räthsel der mannmännlichen Liebe”). He also circulated a manifesto to produce a federation of Uranians (1865), a term which designated men who loved men. He was engaged in the struggle to repeal § 175 of the German penal code, which condemned “unnatural relations between men,” and in 1869 publicly declared he was a Uranist during a congress of German jurists. He died in exile in Italy before the birth of the liberation movement which he had called for.
A first lgbtq+ liberation movement emerged in Berlin in 1897, revolving around the doctor Magnus Hirschfeld (1868-1935),co-f
LGBTQ+ Living History: The Transformative ’60s and ’70s
In a six-part series, we highlight a few of the moments, movements, and people that made their mark on Cal’s LGBTQ+ history. We move through the decades, origin in an era of secrecy and continuing through today.
The transformative ’60s and ’70s
The gay rights movement saw some forward motion in the 1960s. Dr. John Oliver coined the term “transgender” in his novel Sexual Hygiene and Pathology. Activism percolated. It exploded, in a sense, in June 1969 with the Stonewall Riots in New York City—a response to a police raid that took place at the Greenwich Village bar The Stonewall Inn.
In 1969, two groups formed on the UC Berkeley campus: Students for Gay Authority and Gay Liberation Front. According to William Benemann ’71, M.L.S. ’75 (former Berkeley Law archivist, author, and founder of the Queer Bears Collection in the University Archives), the Gay Liberation Front was very radical for its time. “They were too ‘out’ for me and most of us at that time,” he says. “Being in the closet is about controlling your story. I felt I coul
Barbara Gittings Helps Lead First 'Annual Reminder' Protests
Vice squads–police units dedicated to “cleaning up” undesirable parts of urban life–routinely raided the bars frequented by LGBTQ+ people. Laws against people of the same sex dancing together or wearing clothing made for the opposite sex were used as justification to arrest patrons. By the 1960s in New York City, the mafia owned many of these establishments and its members would bribe officers in order to avoid fines. Sometimes the arrangement meant that patrons would be forewarned of a pending raid in time to change their clothing and terminate dancing. That wasn’t true during the early morning hours of June 28 1969, when the NYPD raided the Stonewall Inn in Greenwich Village.
When they arrived at Stonewall, the police locked the doors so that no one could escape as they conducted arrests. As certain patrons were released, they joined a large crowd that had been gathering outside the bar. Those chosen for arrest started resisting the police officers with the encouragement of the jeering crowd. Violence broke out and the crowd overwhelmed police, who were forced to call in reinforcements. The conflict lasted int
How the Stonewall Uprising Ignited the New LGBTQ Rights Movement
In 1969, police raids of gay bars in Manhattan followed a template. Officers would pour in, threatening and beating bar staff and clientele. Patrons would pour out, lining up on the street so police could arrest them.
But when police raided the Stonewall Inn in the adv morning hours of June 28, 1969, things didn’t depart as expected. Patrons and onlookers fought back—and the days-long melee that ensued, characterized then as a riot and now known as the Stonewall Rebellion, helped spark the modern LGBTQ civil rights movement.
Each June, Pride Month honors the history of Stonewall with parades and events. In the years since the uprising, LGBTQ activists pushed for—and largely achieved—a broad expansion of their the legal rights, and in June 2015, the Supreme Court issued a landmark ruling guaranteeing same-sex couples the right to marry.
Before these gains, however, LGBTQ people had long been subject to social sanction and legal harassment for their sexual orientation, which had been criminalized on the pretexts of religion and morality. By the 1960s, homosexuality was clinically classified as a mental disorder,