Gay people in history

Other traditions of criminalisation or censure, particularly those heavily influenced by Islam and other religions, are not interrogated in detail here. LGBT history month takes place in February each year, to help educate people on lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender history, as well as the history of the gay and civil rights movements.

Lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people have faced legal proscription for hundreds of years, initially under religious laws, in particular those imposed by the Abrahamic faiths, and later under secular legal codes, often drawing heavily on the theological traditions that preceded them. By the end of the.

While the fight for LGBT equality is far from complete, the distance travelled, even in the last 50 years, is reason to be hopeful. In honor of their life-long struggles, here's a list of 20 historical figures you didn't know were queer. This timeline gives an overview of this history of the criminalisation of LGBT people, tracing in particular the evolution of the specific forms of criminalisation that originated in Europe and which are the source of many of the laws that still blight the lives of LGBT people across the world today.

Spain and Portugal, for example, adopted similar laws inspired by the Napoleonic Code in and respectively, until Spain re-criminalised in the midth century and Portugal in From Alexander to Florence Nightingale, there are many people in history who were totally queer. 1. InFrance introduced a new penal code predicated on the belief that private acts by private individuals were not a matter for state intervention.

Let’s look at the 30 Famous People who Changed the World. Alan Turing.

In , the U.S. military lifted its ban on transgender people serving openly, a month after Eric Fanning became secretary of the Army and the first openly gay secretary of a U.S. military branch.

The treatises show that the common law at the time, tried in ecclesiastical rather than secular courts, saw sodomy as an offence against God with the punishment of being buried alive in the ground or burnt to death. The legacy of British colonial-era penal codes looms large in this history, informing many of these criminalising provisions. This Pride Month, celebrate these gay people people who have played a major role in the Gay Rights Movement over the years.

Wikimedia Commons. Blasphemy, witchcraft, heresy, sacrilege, and sodomy were all omitted. Other colonial legal traditions, such as the French Penal Code and later Napoleonic Codewhich decriminalised same-sex sexual activity indid not have the same long-lasting effect on the lives of LGBT people.

30 Famous Gay People Who Changed the World In the s, gay became the word utilized by homosexual men to describe their sexual orientation. Photo by Ludovic Bertron. Eleanor Roosevelt. This shortened the war by several years. It was closely followed by the Napoleonic Code founded on the same principles. Many of which, were prominent figures in history. 1. This made the penal code the first western law to decriminalise same-sex sexual activity since classical antiquity.

LGBTQ history dates back to the first recorded instances of same-sex love, diverse gender identities, and sexualities in ancient civilizations, involving the history of lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer (LGBTQ) peoples and cultures around the world. The timeline also follows how this legacy of criminalisation has increasingly been undone, highlighting important milestones in the global, century-long struggle to achieve justice and equality before the law for LGBT people.

This Pride Month, celebrate these famous people who have played a major role in the Gay Rights Movement over the years. LGBTQ history dates back to the first recorded instances of same-sex love, diverse gender identities, and sexualities in ancient civilizations, involving the history of lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer (LGBTQ) peoples and cultures around the world.

For a very long time, being gay was illegal, meaning that many people were forced to live their whole lives in the closet. Following in the footsteps of the French Penal Code, the Napoleonic Code, introduced in full inwas adopted by most of the countries occupied by the French under Napoleon. Photo by PhotoColor. Meet some famous faces from history, science, drama, sport, music, politics, and entertainment who identify as LGBT+.

Aside from the references found in the texts of antiquity, such as the story of Sodom and Gomorrah found in Genesis in the Bible, the first recorded references of criminalisation in English law date back to two medieval treatises: Fletawritten in Latin and Britton circa the start of the 14 th century, written in Norman French. Despite the long history of the criminalisation of LGBT people, the long arc of history bends inexorably toward justice.

Wikimedia Commons. Crucially, the Act provided the foundation for the sodomy laws that were eventually exported around the world history British colonial rule over years later. In England, when King Henry VIII made his break with the Catholic Church, much of the former ecclesiastic law tried in the ecclesiastical courts had to be revised and incorporated into secular law to be tried by the state.

It strongly influenced codes in other countries, helping to spread the model of a criminal code that did not criminalise same-sex activity. Turing was a mathematician who cracked the Enigma code which was used by the German military to send encrypted messages. While anyone could technically be convicted under the act, it was same-sex convictions that were the most common.

As the European powers expanded their control and influence over much of the world, they took their legal systems and the laws criminalising LGBT people with them, imposing them over diverse indigenous traditions where same-sex activity and gender diversity did not always carry the same social or religious taboo. Although briefly brought back to the ecclesiastical courts on the ascension to power of the Catholic Queen Mary inthe Act was reinstated by Queen Elizabeth in Only inwhen the Act was repealed and replaced by the Offences Against the Person Actdid the offence focus solely on male same-sex activity.

Legal codes first implemented in Europe proliferated during the colonial period.