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 Benkert) (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).

Today in Gay History

Happy 184th Birthday

Karl Heinrich Ulrichs (1825-1895)

Pioneer Homosexual Theorist/Pamphleteer

Credit glbtq for the folllowing:

Ulrichs then earned his living as a reporter for the important Allgemeine Zeitung (Augsburg) and as secretary to one of the representatives to the German Confederation in Frankfurt am Main. He also received a small inheritance from his mother on her death in 1856.

Using the pseudonym Numa Numantius he published in 1864-1865 five booklets under the collective title Forschungen über das Rathsel der mannmännlichen Liebe (Researches on the Riddle of Male-Male Love). They set forth a biological theory of homosexuality, the so-called third sex theory, which he summed up in the Latin phrase anima muliebris virili corpore inclusa (a female psyche confined in a male body).

Ulrichs coined the term Urning for the male subject of this condition; he variously called the female counterpart Urningin, Uranierin, Urnin, and Urnigin. (The term "homosexual," coined by Karl Maria Kertbeny, first appeared in 1869.)

Using his real name in his next booklet, Ulrichs described his appearance at a Congress of German Jurists in Munich, where on August 29, 1867, he urged repealing the anti-homosexual laws. He was shouted down and not allowed to finish, but this was the first time that a self-acknowledged Urning/homosexual spoke out publicly for his cause. Thus Ulrichs was not only the first theorist of homosexuality, but also the first homosexual to "come out" publicly.

|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||

Today in Gay History

Happy Birthday
Károly Mária Kertbeny February 28, 1824-1882


Austro-Hungarian man of letters, translator, and journalist is credited with coining the word "homosexual."