The Westport Library Resource Guides: Male Homosexuality: About

What is Homosexuality?

Homosexuality is the sexual interest in and attraction to members of one’s own sex. The term gay is frequently used as a synonym for homosexual; female homosexuality is often referred to as lesbianism. At different times and in different cultures, homosexual behaviour has been variously approved of, tolerated, punished, and banned. Homosexuality was not uncommon in ancient Greece and Rome, and the relationships between adult and adolescent males in particular have become a chief focus of Western classicists in recent years. Judeo-Christian as well as Muslim cultures have generally perceived homosexual behaviour as sinful. Many Jewish and Christian leaders, however, have gone to great lengths to make clear that it is the acts and not the individuals or even their “inclination” or “orientation” that their faiths proscribe. Others—from factions within mainstream Protestantism to organizations of Reform rabbis—have advocated, on theological as well as social grounds, the full acceptance of homosexuals and their relationships. The topic has threatened to cause outright schisms in some denominations. Continue reading from Encyclopedia Britannica

The Homophile Movement

The homophile movement flourished in the United States between 1951 and 1970. This organizationally-based social movement used a variety of tactics in its quest to challenge and change patterns of discrimination against homosexuals within the institutions of the media, law, religion, psychology, and medicine. The participants in the movement came from a variety of backgrounds and across the political spectrum, but the majority of leaders were white gay men and lesbians who were middle class, or at least were college educated and held professional jobs. Homophile organizations were located in cities throughout the United States, with San Francisco, New York City, Los Angeles, and Philadelphia hosting the most active and longest lasting of the groups. Arguably, the most significant homophile organizations were the Mattachine Society, ONE Incorporated, and the Daughters of Bilitis.

The accepted starting point for the homophile movement in the United States is 1951 with the establishment of the Mattachine Foundation in Los Angeles under the leadership of Harry Hay, Chuck Rowland, Dale Jennings, and others. The short-lived Chicago-based Society for Human Rights, founded in 1924, borrowed ideas from the Weimer-era German homosexual civil rights movement and thus can be described as a predecessor to the movement of the 1950s and 1960s. Continue reading from Encyclopedia.com