Well Homosexuality was a 19th-century invention and once which is still not the dominant idea world over; SDMB notwithstanding. Hadrian would not have recognised the concept as is practised today. Neither would have Alexander, Edward II, or Philip Duc D’ Orleans, famous people who probably took part in same-sex intercourse.
I would go with this. I have never seen anyone do a serious study but from what I saw doing research on a different subject I would say that Western PA circa 1790 or so had a small openly gay population. Back then to divorce someone you ran an ad in the paper worded a specific way “so-and-so having left my bed, I will no longer be responsible for debts etc incurred by them”. I came across a couple examples or men divorcing other men. One of many small things I came across that I wish I had copied and saved. Ancient Greece and many Native American cultures qualify as well.
If you are speaking more in the modern sense/understanding I disagree with the other posters who point at the 70s and would say more late 90s or even more into the 00s. The 70s had some acceptance; the roots were planted that grew into what we have now. But among those who were not gay but spoke in favor of it all there was a certain reluctance to actually do anything actively fighting for it. To me, IMHO, you have to go beyond not being against something to actively fighting for it until you can say you’ve begun to put the “ism” behind you.
I agree - notions of sexuality are simply too varied for cross-cultural and cross-time generalizations to make much sense.
First people have to agree on what “homosexuality” is as a category, before they can decide to hate and look down upon - or, conversely, tolerate and accept as equals - people in that category.
When the change from publicly accepted hatred to publicly accepted tolerance occurred (where it has occurred) I think is very much a matter of local culture.
In Toronto, my hometown, I can pinpoint the exact date the tide turned with some accuracy: it was in 1981, with the public backlash against a series of major police raids against gay bathhouses:
Prior to 1981: a pro-gay mayor lost the election in large part because of his pro-tolerance stand: public sentiment was still largely in the “homophobia is obviously correct” camp.
After the raids in 1981: public fallout led, eventually, to widespread acceptance of homosexuality as “normal” and homosexuals as deserving of protection, not prosecution. The gay pride parade, organized originally as a protest, became a major civic event.
It wasn’t by any means an instant process, but I think a lot of Torontonians agree that 1981 marked the turning point as it were.
Anecdotally, I was a kid in the 1970s and gays were then widely thought to be, basically, perverts. Some were bad perverts and likely to be child molesters; others were good perverts, and so basically funny in a comedic sense. That was certainly the message I received at the time, and the impression I got was that most people sincerely believed it as truth; but then, I was only a kid at the time.
I was in High School in the early 1980s and by that time the message had already changed - gays were not perverts, people who thought gays were perverts were old fashioned and behind the times. This was the message both among the kids and “officially” as it were from the school itself.
I was in university in the late 1980s and by that time, the message had changed again: those who still thought gays were perverts at that point were, essentially, hateful people and morally wrong.
While this sentiment was particularly strong in universities (naturally), it existed in a diluted form throughout the city: of course not everyone held it, but if you were going to talk to an average person, and the topic somehow came up, whereas prior to 1980 the “safe bet” would have been to take to ‘homosexuality is an aberration’ line, in the late 80s early 90s the “safe bet” would have been to say the opposite.
Bolding mine.
This is the first time I have ever heard this referenced. Fascinating! Is this cited by any historians? I would think it should be a historical big deal.
I don’t know --------- and now I’m curious myself. This was maybe in the mid-1970s when I virtually lived in the Pennsylvania Room of the Carnegie. In researching another thing (actually early Pittsburgh gunmakers and blacksmiths) I read through a couple dozen years of the available newspapers. I want to say that the ads were 1800/1801 but there were at least two that caught my eye because both names were male but different last names. At times the male-female versions would have different last names as well but these were names like Joseph and Henry; ones not easily written off to misspellings or something like that.
I wrote it off to this being basically the Wild Frontier at the time and people being a little more accepting with the transient nature of the population. But to be honest I didn’t really have a stake or deep interest in the subject back then and just made a rough note of “Gee-- how odd” and left it at that.
Sounds like a tailor made project for a young historian looking for a master’s thesis subject. Plus it’d be sure to get some mainstream media attention if published. I don’t recall this ever having been mentioned in any form as an aspect of early US history. If there are actual citations of this happening that would be fascinating.