Monday, February 28, 2011

Today in Gay History



Monday, February 28, 2011

credit to Dan Vera and SEE MORE @ gaywisdom.org



1824 - on this date Karl-Maria Kertbeny or Károly Mária Kertbeny (born Karl-Maria B
enkert) (d. 1882) was born in Vienna, the son of a writer and painter. He was an Austrian-born Hungarian journalist, memoir-ist and human rights campaigner who in 1869 coined the word homosexual. This was part of his system for the classification of sexual types, as a replacement for the pejorative terms "sodomite" and "pederast" that were used in the German- and French-speaking world of his time. In addition, he called the attraction between men and women "heterosexualism", masturbators "monosexualists", and practitioners of anal intercourse "pygists." [Please note that "homosexuality" was defined first. Then they had to come up with the term for "heterosexuals."]


1973 - on this date two members of the GAY ACTIVIST ALLIANCE appeared on the popular national television program JACK PAAR TONITE show to demand that the host stop using the terms "fairies", "dykes" and "fags" to disparage Gay people. It was the first such conversation on network television and resulted in Paar apologizing for his deluge of anti-gay remarks (he had a long track-record of homophobic remarks over his career).