Karl-Maria Kertbeny

250px-Karl_Maria_Kertbeny_(ca_1865) One thing that makes talking about LGBTQ+ history difficult is that most of this history happened before we had the current understanding of human sexuality and gender identity — and also before we had the words we have now to describe it. So, today, let’s talk about the writer who created the term “homosexual”: Karl-Maria Kertbeny (born Karl-Maria Benkert.)

Karl-Maria was born in Vienna on February 28, 1824, but his family moved to Budapest when he was a child. He grew up to become a journalist, memoirist, translator, and human rights campaigner.

Karl-Maria was also closeted homosexual (except, of course, that word didn’t exist yet). In his youth, he befriended a young man who was also a closeted homosexual (they were actually just friends from what I can tell). This friend would go on to be extorted and blackmailed because of his affections, and would ultimately commit suicide. This event had a massive impact on Karl-Maria, who wrote later in his life that it gave him an “instinctive drive to take issue with every injustice.”

Karl-Maria went on to join the army and — in 1847 — he changed his last name to Kertbeny. (Why, I honestly couldn’t say. Why he left his first name unchanged is also a complete mystery. Neither of these questions, however, leaves me quite as confused as his mustache. What is that and why?) By 1868, he had settled in Berlin.

Although in his public writings, Karl-Maria claimed to be “normally sexed”, his personal diary was filled with an illustrious collection of veiled homosexual encounters. In these diaries, he also describes tremendous fear following the arrest of Karl Heinrich Ulrichs. Ulrichs was a correspondence of Karl-Maria, but is much more notable for essentially pioneering the modern LGBT+ rights movement.

Karl-Maria began writing extensively on the topic of homosexuality — claiming it was for “anthropological interest”. (I guess “anthropological interest” was the mid-19th century version of “no homo”.) On May 8, 1868, in a private letter, Karl-Maria first coined the terms “homosexual” and “heterosexual”, although the words were yet to be used in public.

In 1869, Karl-Maria published the first of two pamphlets arguing against the Prussian sodomy law (known as Paragraph 143). In these pamphlets, he argued that consensual sexual acts were private and should not be subject to criminal law and — drawing on his own experiences — argued that the law itself was what had allowed his friend to be blackmailed, which led to his friend’s suicide.

He also argued, in these pamphlets, that homosexuality was actually an inborn trait, not something men chose out of their own wickedness (which was the common belief of the time. He was, along with Ulrichs and Heinrich Hössli, one of the first people to take this point of view.) It was over the course of these writings that the word “homosexual” was first used, as part of a system of defining sexual “types” without using derogatory language like “sodomite”. He also introduced the term “heterosexualism” for the attraction between men and women, “monosexualism” for masturbators, and a few other words that are still not widely used — but even if we ignored most of the words he came up with, he did set us up to have a comprehensive, descriptive way of talking about sexuality without degrading people who don’t fit into the “norm”.

After these pamphlets, Karl-Maria’s career faded. In 1880, he did contribute a chapter to Gustav Jäger’s “Discovery of Soul”. His chapter was taken out by the publisher, but his sexual terminology was still used throughout the book. Karl-Maria died on January 23, 1882 — two years later in Budapest, before any of his ideas would really take root.

In 1886, a German sexual researcher named Richard von Krafft-Ebing borrowed the terminology from “Discovery of Soul” for his own work “Psychopathia Sexualis”. This work became so influential that it caused Karl-Maria’s terminology to become the standard, accepted words that we still use today.

In 2001, Karl-Maria Kertbeny’s gravesite was located by a sociologist. The Hungarian LGBT+ community set about having a new tombstone put in place, and since 2002 it has been a tradition at Hungarian LGBT festivals to place a wreath on his grave.

(Adapted from this Facebook post.)

1st Rhode Island Pride

As I’ve mentioned before, being from Rhode Island the local LGBTQ+ history here is something I’m particularly passionate about. It’s amazing to see firsthand where this journey’s taken us and get to be a part of where this journey is going at the same time. Of all the Prides that I’ve gone to, Rhode Island Pride is my clear favorite, bar none. Maybe I’m biased because it’s my home and it’s my fabulously queer chosen family celebrating. But to be fair, we’ve been called one of the best Prides in the world too. (That was a shameless plug and I’m not even sorry about it.)

These days, Rhode Island is pretty supportive of its LGBTQ+ community — Providence City Hall proudly announces the start of Pride season for the state of Rhode Island, and political leaders like Mayor Jorge Elorza speak at the event each year. But to get to the point (and the history), we have had to come a long way since our first Pride in 1976.

Nowhere in the country was particularly welcoming to LGBTQ+ people by 1976, and Rhode Island was not an exception. Sodomy was still against the law Federally and in the state — let alone any other rights that we’ve fought for since. And yet, the LGBTQ+ community of the state of Rhode Island wanted to march to recognize their contributions to the state in the previous 200 years. Other communities, like the Portuguese community, had arranged parades for the bicentennial. Reverend Joe Gilbert of the Metropolitan Community Church saw no reason the LGBT community could not also participate in these celebrations.

However, Mayor Buddy Cianci (also the Public Safety Commissioner at the time) and police chief Col. Walter McQueeney opposed the idea of the parade. (McQueeney, for his part, later explained that it was just because it would have been a parade promoting an illegal behavior.) And so, the Rhode Island ACLU went to Federal court — and Judge Raymond J. Pettine hastily ruled in favor of granting the parade permit. Subsequently, roughly 70 (or 75, I’ve heard it both ways) marchers (including Belle A Pellegrino who is still a vibrant part of our community and part of the Imperial Court of Rhode Island) wearing bright clothing and wielding kazoos held their parade from Kennedy Plaza on June 26, 1976. The parade, named “Toward a Gayer Bicentennial” was described in the Providence Journal in an article entitled “City tolerates first homosexual parade”.

Walter McQueeney, despite his opposition to the march, worked to control the crowd who came out to see and threaten the marchers. He told reporters “This is the first time they marched and I hope it’s the last.” It wouldn’t be the last. 2018 will mark our 42nd year of marching, and celebrating.

(Adapted from this Facebook post.)

Mother Clap’s Molly House

Through the various posts I’ve shared, we’ve talked a fair amount about the legality of homosexuality in various countries. What we haven’t talked much about is how the LGBTQ+ community came together when its very existence was a criminal offense.

In England, at least, gay men came together in places called “molly houses” — which were essentially taverns, inns, etc — where gay men could socialize or have sexual encounters. Other activities common in molly houses included various toying with gender roles — everything from adopting “female dialect” (I don’t know what that is — talking like a girl?), cross-dressing, and adopting female personas to false wedding ceremonies and “mock birth rituals” (that doesn’t sound like fun to me but okay). Although “buggery” could be a capital offense in England until 1861, those caught were often placed in pillories — as a result, pillories were frequently built near known molly houses and even came to be a symbol of them.

Probably the most famous and most well-documented of these was Mother Clap’s molly house, a coffee house run by a woman named Margaret Clap. Not much is known about her, but Mother Clap’s molly house was open from 1724 to 1726. Margaret may have run the coffee house out of her own private home, and she was said to only leave the premises to purchase alcohol from the tavern across the street, which she would serve to her customers. Although she undoubtedly did make money from running the establishment, her primary goal seemed to be taking care of and supporting the men who stayed there. One man who was a boarder there for two years (which was like, the whole time it was open) was arrested for sodomy, and she provided false testimony in his defense.

In February of 1726, Mother Clap’s molly house was raided by law enforcement (Wikipedia says by the police, but I’m fairly certain there was no formalized police force in London yet?) at the behest of the Society for the Reformation of Manners. (Which would raid a number of molly houses in London before 1730.) The Society had turned a number of “mollies” into informants who had surveilled the molly house for at least a year prior to the raid. These informants were not prosecuted as thanks for their cooperation. (And this would not be the last time that this tactic was used against homosexual men — this would last into the 20th century.)

Mother Clap herself was sentenced to stand in the pillory at Smithfield Market, pay 20 marks, and then spend two years in prison. What became of her after this is unknown. Mother Clap is one of only two individuals recorded to have been formally charged with keeping a molly house and found guilty (although a large number of people were charged with sodomy who were probably keepers of a molly house).

Three men arrested in the raid on Mother Clap’s molly house were found guilty and hung on May 9, 1726. The trials of these men — Gabriel Lawrence (a 43-year old milkman), William Griffin (a 43-year old furniture upholsterer), and Thomas Wright (who may have helped Mother Clap run the house or had a molly house of his own) — provide much of the details of what we now know about the LGBT community of London in the early 18th century. Dozens of others were arrested in the raid, but they were fined, put in the pillory, and imprisoned — but not put to death. I honestly can’t find any details to explain why those three in particular were singled out for execution, but knowing what I do about British society at the time it seems likely these were just the lowest class people arrested or someone influential had a grudge.

These molly houses were the precursors to the bars that we still see as being a safe place, a sanctuary for our community. As far as I know, we’ve pretty much just done away with the mock birth rituals (which, personally, I’m completely okay with.)

(Adapted from this Facebook post.)

Alan Turing

This post is like SUPER long, but this man did a LOT of stuff that is really important even to this day and he deserves to have it all celebrated. Let’s get into it:

Alan Turing was born on June 23, 1912 in London. (He was one of a handful LGBT+ figures who were born on this day — the birthday is shared by Alfred Kinsey, and myself. 😛) Turing is often known as the father of theoretical computer science as well as artificial intelligence, and is known for his work in code-breaking. In truth, he accomplished a great deal more than that before his death on June 7, 1954. (And that’s why we’re doing his post today!)

Alan Turing displayed signs of genius early on in life, showing incredible gifts at science and math, which were recognized by his teachers. At the age of 13, he was sent to Sherborne boarding school — however, his aptitude for math and science was not appreciated by many of the staff there, who sought to create more well-rounded students. Nevertheless, Turing would find inspiration for much of his later work at the school — by working on advancing his own education alongside his “first love” (albeit unrequited) Christopher Morcom. On February 13 of 1930, Morcom died from complications related to bovine tuberculosis, which he had contracted several years earlier. To work through his grief, Alan dedicated himself even more fully to his studies of math.

Turing attended university at King’s College in Cambridge. (That’s Cambridge in England, not in Massachusetts, for the Bostonians reading this.) At this point, Turing began writing and publishing dissertations on things that I am truly not smart enough to explain, so I’m just going to tell you what they were and let you Google them. In 1935, Turing wrote a dissertation that proved the central limit theorem. He was elected a fellow of King’s College as a result, because neither Turing nor the committee realized that the theorem had already been proven in 1922. I guess that’s what happens when you go to university before the invention of the Internet. In 1936, Turing published a paper called “On Computable Numbers, with an Application to the Entscheidungsproblem.” (I’ll admit to copying and pasting that last word there because wtf Germany, is that word for real?) In this paper, Turing essentially planned out the devices that would be called Turing machines, and proved that the-then hypothetical machine would be able to solve any computation that could be solved by an algorithm — and also apparently proved that you couldn’t mathematically prove whether or not his hypothetical machine would ever stop, or something. I mentioned that this is way over my head, right?

Apparently, someone else also beat Turing to the punch with the things he was proving about the Entscheidungsproblem (seriously, Germany, wtf?) — but Turing’s answers were considered far more accessible than those provided by Alonzo Church. As a result, Turing machines became central to the science of computers and are apparently still studied as part of the theory of computation. Likely because of their common interest in developing machines that could compute literally anything, Turing began to study under Alonzo Church at Princeton University from 1936 to 1938. It was here that Turing began to study cryptology, or code breaking. After earning his PhD, Turing returned to Cambridge to give lectures, and he also joined the British code-breaking organization called the Government Code & Cipher School (GC&CS).

The day after Britain declared war on Germany in 1939, Turing reported for duty at Bletchley Park — which was the wartime headquarters for the GC&CS. He is credited with essentially five different code-breaking techniques, including the bombe which was the primary automated method used by the GC&CS during World War II. For a time, he led Hut 8 — the British group in charge of breaking German naval ciphers. Never one to stop being a scholar, Turing also published two papers on mathematical approaches to codebreaking — however, these papers contained such valuable information to the British codebreaking organization that they were not actually released until 2012.

Turing’s work is estimated to have saved thousands of lives during World War II, and is said to have shorted the war by as much as two years. In 1946, King George IV awarded Turing the Order of the British Empire even though Turing’s work remained secret for years to come.

In 1945, Turing began working on an Automatic Computing Engine (ACE). He also wrote and presented a paper on a hypothetical computer that could store programming — unheard of at the time. (Once again, Turing was beaten to the punch on the *idea* but the paper that preceded him was apparently too vague to be taken seriously.) On May 10, 1950 a pilot version of the ACE enacted its first program — although Turing was at Cambridge at the time and did not witness the event. Turing’s ACE would not be truly completed until after his death.

Turing also became interested in other, more obscure forms of mathematics at about this time. He developed what is known as the Turing test — a test to determine whether or not a machine had true intelligence. This test is still used today, and in fact every one of those CAPTCHA tests that drive us all nuts is a reverse Turing test. He also worked on creating a chess program for computers — even though computers capable of running the program did not exist. The algorithm was completed in 1953, but could only be demonstrated by Turing flipping through his work to play the game of chess out on and actual chessboard. He also became keenly interested in mathematical biology (which I frankly did not even know was a thing until I started researching him) and particularly in morphogenesis (I don’t know what that is either). Despite publishing his work on morphogenesis before DNA was discovered, his paper is still considered relevant by biologists to this day.

In December of 1951, Turing began a relationship with an unemployed nineteen year old named Arnold Murray. Shortly afterwards, a burglar broke into Turing’s house — Murray said he knew the man, and Turing reported the crime to the police. However, during the course of the investigation, the sexual relationship between the two men was discovered. Homosexual acts were still illegal in the United Kingdom at the time, considered “gross indecency” under Section 11 of the Criminal Law Amendment Act of 1885. Both men were charged with the crime.

Turing pled guilty to the crime. The case Regina v. Turing and Murray went to trial on March 31, 1952. Turing was convicted, stripped of his security clearance, barred from doing anymore cryptographic consulting, and given a choice: imprisonment, or probation with a hormonal treatment to lower his libido for one year. He opted for probation. The hormonal treatment, however, rendered him impotent and caused gynaecomastia (the growth of breast tissue in men). As a result of the conviction, Turing was also denied entry in the United States of America.

On June 7, 1954 Alan Turing died of cyanide poisoning. His body was discovered by his housekeeper the next day. Because there was a half-eaten apple by his bed, it was assumed that he committed suicide by ingesting the cyanide with the apple. There are theories, however, that his death was actually an accident as he was keeping some lab equipment in his bedroom, which used cyanide to dissolve gold. Yet others believe he intentionally put the equipment in his room to make his suicide look more like an accident. Some are still calling for a renewed investigation into his death.

In 2014, Turing was officially posthumously pardoned for the crime of gross indecency by the Queen. His was only the fourth royal pardon since the end of World War II. As of 2016, in what is informally called the “Alan Turing Law”, others convicted of historical laws that outlawed homosexual acts are being pardoned in England and Wales.

On June 5, 2019 Alan Turing received an obituary from the New York Times as part of their “Overlooked” series.

(Adapted from this Facebook post.)

Jeremy Bentham

I have talked a little bit about how well-respected LGBT+ people seemed to be in the ancient world (outside of the Assyrian Empire) but by the 18th century, that was absolutely not the case. Homosexuality was not explicitly illegal in *every* country, but those that had not adopted those laws were about to.

441px-Jeremy_Bentham_by_Henry_William_Pickersgill_detail Enter Jeremy Bentham — a radical social reformer, a philosopher who is considered the father of utilitarianism, and one of the first people in Europe to ever write down an argument that homosexual acts shouldn’t be criminal offenses. Bentham was born on February 15, 1748 CE.

He was way ahead of his time. He believed in transparency — not just for the government but for everyone. (He would have loved social media.) He believed in equality for women. He is considered to be one of the earliest animal rights activists.

And, in 1785, he penned a paper called “Offences Against Oneself” which was, essentially, an argument that it made no sense to prohibit two consenting adults from any sexual act in the privacy of their own home — that the crime was victimless and therefore shouldn’t be a crime.

Unfortunately, Bentham didn’t publicly publish this essay for fear of offending the populace of England. The paper was first published in 1978 in the “Journal of Homosexuality”. Despite not publishing his paper, he would live to see a handful of countries decriminalize homosexuality — starting with the Kingdom of France in 1791. Bentham eventually died on June 6, 1832 at 84 years old.

(Adapted from this Facebook post.)