Unidentified soldiers in Union uniforms holding cigars in each other's mouths, ca. Two unidentified Union Army soldiers, 1864 Oscar Wilde and Lord Alfred Douglas, 1893Ī male couple with hats and open waistcoats, ca. Doctors and psychologists, believing that homosexuality could be cured, tried methods such as hypnosis and aversion therapy.Ī middle-aged gay couple in the late 1800sĪn affectionate pair from the late 19th century Gay men were commonly seen by society as perverts who had chosen their sexuality, or as diseased individuals whose sexuality was caused by their upbringing and biology, and not something they were born with. However, the laws were selectively applied and thus were not a great threat to gay men, as long as they were discreet and avoided scandal. The witch hunts and mass hangings began, and the number of convictions rose.
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READ MORE: How the Great Depression Helped End Prohibitionīy the post-World War II era, a larger cultural shift toward earlier marriage and suburban living, the advent of TV and the anti-homosexuality crusades championed by Joseph McCarthy would help push the flowering of gay culture represented by the Pansy Craze firmly into the nation’s rear-view mirror.ĭrag balls, and the spirit of freedom and exuberance they represented, never went away entirely-but it would be decades before LGBTQ life would flourish so publicly again.During the 19th century the silence in England was broken, and police began actively fighting the "problem" of homosexuality.
This not only discouraged gay men from participating in public life, but also “made homosexuality seem more dangerous to the average American.” In the mid- to late ‘30s, Heap points out, a wave of sensationalized sex crimes “provoked hysteria about sex criminals, who were often-in the mind of the public and in the mind of authorities-equated with gay men.” A beautiful collection that shows genuine intimacy Oscar Wilde and Lord Alfred Douglas, 1893 Photos via vintag. The sale of liquor was legal again, but newly enforced laws and regulations prohibited restaurants and bars from hiring gay employees or even serving gay patrons. These men posed to exhibit their love and affection for each other, celebrating their friendship with gestures such as holding hands or sitting in each other’s lap, as it was a truly common thing at the time. Each gay enclave, wrote George Chauncey in his book Gay New York: Gender, Urban Culture, and the Making of the Gay Male World, 1890-1940, had a different class and ethnic character, cultural style and public reputation.
In addition to these groups, whom social reformers in the early 1900s would call “male sex perverts,” a number of nightclubs and theaters were featuring stage performances by female impersonators these spots were mainly located in the Levee District on Chicago’s South Side, the Bowery in New York City and other largely working-class neighborhoods in American cities.īy the 1920s, gay men had established a presence in Harlem and the bohemian mecca of Greenwich Village (as well as the seedier environs of Times Square), and the city’s first lesbian enclaves had appeared in Harlem and the Village. “In the late 19th century, there was an increasingly visible presence of gender-non-conforming men who were engaged in sexual relationships with other men in major American cities,” says Chad Heap, a professor of American Studies at George Washington University and the author of Slumming: Sexual and Racial Encounters in American Nightlife, 1885-1940.