Oral history faces the challenge of bridging the divide between the observer and the observed.
Tag: homophobia
Gay Politics and Police Politics in the American City
Christopher Lowen Agee In 1960 Patrolman John Mindermann, a rookie officer in the San Francisco Police Department (SFPD), was assigned to San Francisco’s Polk Gulch neighborhood. On his first night out, he stumbled upon the Cable Car Village, a gay bar. Speaking with me years later, he recounted this discovery […]
Operation Hyacinth and Poland’s Pink Files
Łukasz Szulc Thirty years ago, on 15 and 16 November 1985, the police forces of the People’s Republic of Poland (PRP, 1952-1989), in cooperation with the Secret Service, conducted an undercover operation, code-named Hyacinth. The aim of the operation was to detain, interrogate, and register both actual and alleged homosexuals in order […]
Stalling Civil Rights: Conservative Sexual Thought has been in the Toilet Since the 1940s
Gillian Frank Houston’s Proposition 1 bathroom ordinance. What does it mean to you? Any man at any time could enter a woman’s bathroom simply by claiming to be a woman that day. No one is exempt. Even registered sex offenders could follow women or young girls into the bathroom and […]
“The Gay Revolution”: An Interview with Lillian Faderman
Interview by Lauren Gutterman Lillian Faderman’s The Gay Revolution: The Story of the Struggle (Simon & Schuster, 2015) provides a moving and far-reaching account of the LGBT movement in the United States, from the founding of the homophile movement in the 1950s, to recent struggles for an Employment Non-Discrimination Act […]
Why I Oppose a General Pardon for Historical Convictions for Homosexual Offences
Justin Bengry UK Labour Party leadership contender Andy Burnham recently proposed automatic pardons for all men convicted of historical homosexual offences that are no longer crimes. This has been an ongoing conversation in the UK, which in 2013 granted WWII Enigma codebreaker Alan Turing a posthumous royal pardon. The issue reappeared […]
‘Pray the gay away’: The Catholic Church, Sexology and Sexuality in Italy
Chiara Beccalossi From Ireland’s recent referendum in support of same-sex marriage to the Australian Prime Minister’s adamant refusal to offer a conscience vote on the same issue, countries around the world are once again talking about homosexuality. But for all the positive steps taken towards granting LGBTI citizens the same rights as […]