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Informationen zum Autor Lillian Faderman is an internationally respected scholar of lesbian history and literature. She is the author of several award-winning books on LBGT history. Her book Surpassing the Love of Men (1981) is considered the first serious, full-length historical study of lesbians.Odd Girls and Twilight Lovers (1991) is often called a "classic" of LGBT history. Both titles were named New York Times "Notable Books of the Year". Klappentext The sweeping story of the struggle for gay and lesbian rights based on amazing interviews with politicians, military figures, and members of the entire LGBT community who face these challenges every day The fight for gay and lesbian civil rights, the years of outrageous injustice, the early battles, the heart-breaking defeats and the victories beyond the dreams of the gay rights pioneers is the most important civil rights issue of the present day. Lillian Faderman tells this unfinished story through the dramatic accounts of passionate struggles with sweep, depth and feeling. Against the dark backdrop of the 1950s, a few brave people began to fight back, paving the way for the revolutionary changes of the 1960s and beyond. Faderman discusses the protests in the 1960s; the counter reaction of the 1970s and early eighties; the decimated but united community during the AIDS epidemic; and the current hurdles for the right to marriage equality. The Gay Revolution paints a nuanced portrait of the LGBT civil rights movement. A defining account, this is the most complete and authoritative book of its kind. The Gay Revolution Chapter 1 LAWBREAKERS AND LOONIES “HOMOSEXUALIST PSYCHOPATHIC INDIVIDUALS” Dr. Carleton Simon was an enlightened man. Though special deputy police commissioner for New York State since 1920, he opposed the death penalty, and he advocated the rehabilitation of criminals. He opened a psychiatric clinic to serve the mentally disturbed down-and-out of the Bowery; and he disputed the use of the “water cure,” a torture technique devised by the US Army to interrogate prisoners during the occupation of the Philippines in World War II. He was a star among law enforcement officials and the medical establishment, and among society’s upper crust, too. 1 But Dr. Simon had his idiosyncrasies and prejudices. The bald, hulking doctor dabbled in phrenology. He assured his formidable audiences, including the New York Academy of Medicine and the New York State Association of Chiefs of Police, that a criminal could be identified even before he committed a crime by a drooping eyelid or a hanging corner of the mouth. 2 Simon was also an expert on race. “Negro criminals,” he opined, were “dishonest, shiftless, and unreliable.” 3 His 1947 lecture to the International Association of Chiefs of Police on “Homosexualists and Sex Crimes,” a model of bigotry and flawed logic, passed for science that lay people accepted uncritically. The “born-male homosexualists,” he asserted, are easy to spot by their female characteristics: their walk, body contour, voice, mannerisms, texture of skin, and also their interest in housekeeping and theatrical productions. The “women homosexualists” are fickle, always eager to add to their list of conquests, and are extremely jealous of the object of their lusts. Though Simon granted that some homosexualists live as “decent members of society,” many, he insisted, have psychopathic personalities, are indifferent to public opinion, and become “predatory prostitutes.” He extolled the state of Illinois’s treatment of ?“homosexualist psychopathic individuals” and recommended it be adopted everywhere. In Illinois, convicted “homosexualis...
