Timeline of LGBT history

[WillParkinson]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_LGBT_history

From 9660 BC to current. Some fascinating facts that I had not heard of before.

Examples:

7000 BC - Among the sexual depictions in Neolithic and Bronze Age drawings and figurines from the Mediterranean are "third sex" human figures having female breasts and male genitals or without distinguishing sex characteristics. In Neolithic Italy, female images are found in a domestic context, while images that combine sexual characteristics appear in burials or religious settings; in Neolithic Greece and Cyprus, figures are often dual-sexed or without identifying sexual characteristics.

149 BC or earlier – During the Roman Republic, the Lex Scantinia imposed penalties on those who committed a sex crime (stuprum) against a freeborn youth; infrequently mentioned or enforced, it may also have been used to prosecute male citizens who willingly took the passive role in homosexual relations.[15] It is unclear whether the penalty was death or a fine. For an adult male citizen to desire and engage in same-sex relations was considered natural and socially acceptable, as long as his partner was a male prostitute, slave or infamis, a person excluded from the legal protections accorded a citizen. In the Imperial period, the Lex Scantinia was revived by Domitian as part of his program of judicial and moral reform.

218 – The emperor Elagabalus begins his reign. He marries a man named Zoticus, an athlete from Smyrna, in a lavish public ceremony at Rome amid the rejoicings of the public.

498 – In spite of the laws against gay sex, the Christian emperors continued to collect taxes on male prostitutes until the reign of Anastasius I, who finally abolishes the tax in favor of sampling of the best men.

1649 – The first known conviction for lesbian activity in North America occurs in March when Sarah White Norman is charged with "Lewd behaviour each with other upon a bed" with Mary Vincent Hammon in Plymouth, Massachusetts. Hammon was under 16 and not prosecuted.

1921 – In England an attempt to make lesbianism illegal for the first time in Britain's history fails.

1941 – Transsexuality was first used in reference to homosexuality and bisexuality.

1957 – The word "Transsexual" is coined by U.S. physician Harry Benjamin; The Wolfenden Committee's report recommends decriminalizing consensual homosexual behaviour between adults in the United Kingdom; Psychologist Evelyn Hooker publishes a study showing that homosexual men are as well adjusted as non-homosexual men, which becomes a major factor in the American Psychiatric Association removing homosexuality from its handbook of disorders in 1973.

There's so much more at the link.

[xchrom]

1. Du rec. Nt

[xfundy]

2. After my screwup last night, I'll withhold comment

except to say that gay men AND LESBIANS (who I left out in my disastrous never-shoulda-posted-post) have always served a real natural, valuable purpose in life and its stability among humans, and I'm goddamned tired of hearing about how "useless" we are by those involved in taking blood profits in the hate, religious, and political industries, which merged some years back and now wear a badly fitting elephant suit.

Had I been around a couple hundred or thousand years ago, I'd have outted the hypocrites who--wait, better example: Judas.

Procreation is a most hoary and still contemporary "reason" for instilling fear about us, but, as we've always existed, the only change has been that we're not willing to sit silently and be beaten to death with the blessing of the religious figures anymore.

So, I'm no good at witholding comment. But I never meant to piss so many people off. Unless they deserved it.