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| Before 1950 | 1950 to 1959 | 1960 to 1979 | 1980 to 2004 |
In 1950, the Undersecretary of State revealed that the majority of dismissals for State Department employees were based on accusations of homosexuality. Over the next few months, Senator Joseph R. McCarthy and other conservatives accused the Truman Administration of a laxity of rooting out homosexuals in government. Bowing to the pressure, the Civil Service Commission focused its efforts to locate and dismiss lesbians and gay men working in government.
After months of controversy, the US Senate authorized a wide-ranging investigation of homosexuals working in national government. The Senate Committee recommended that stringent measures be taken to root out all lesbians and gays out of government. In 1953, President Dwight Eisenhower signed an Executive Order mandating the dismissal of all federal employees determined to be homosexual.
This was at the height of the McCarthy era, and homosexuals were one of the primary targets of the Nation's hysteria.
After World War II, the American Psychiatric Community labeled homosexuality a mental illness and lobotomies for homosexuality were being regularly performed in the United States.
In 1953, Dr. Evelyn Hooker applied to the National Institutes of Health for a grant to study gay men. Just securing a government grant on this controversial topic was a major accomplishment. The final paper, presented to the American Psychological Association in 1956 presented findings that gay men were as well adjusted as straight men. It took another 20 years of work by Dr. Hooker and other psychologists to drop homosexuality as a mental disease.
Other psychologists were convinced lesbian and gay men could be cured through various techniques. In 1957, Dr. Arthur Guy Mathews told of how he cured a lesbian by getting her hair professionally styled, teaching her to apply cosmetics, and hiring a fashion expert. Others took more drastic measures. In 1955, in Sioux City, Iowa, 29 men suspected of homosexuality were committed to mental asylums as a preventative measure authorized by the State.
Despite great fear, lesbians and gay men experienced a continuous, dynamic, and growing political consciousness during the fifties. Part of our understanding of ourselves comes from the early organizations whose members were not afraid to articulate the need for social change. The three main organizations of the 1950's were the Mattachine Society, ONE, Inc., and the Daughters of Bilitis.
In 1950, a small group of gay men formed the Mattachine Society in Los Angeles. 'The Mattachine Review' was a monthly publication that began in 1955 and featured articles, news and commentary on legal, social, and cultural trends. Although gay groups existed before this time, Mattachine was the first to establish a legally incorporated and long lasting organization. It represented the beginning of today's organized gay and lesbian movement.
The founders of ONE, Inc. held their first meeting in Los Angeles in 1952 to "work for the betterment of the lives of homosexual men and women". The goal of the group was to bring light to the lack of civil rights protections for homosexuals and to bring homosexuals and heterosexuals together in closer communication.
The journal 'ONE' was sold from newsstands and contained articles, poetry, fiction, etc., expressing "The Homosexual Viewpoint". The group successfully contested an attempt by the US Post Office to declare their magazine obscene, securing the right of homosexuals to publish and mail homosexual material.
The first national lesbian organization was established in 1955 when a group of 8 women, including Phyllis Lyon and Del Martin, met in San Francisco to form a club whose main purpose was to develop a broad program of education for both lesbians and the public. It also addressed the need for legal reform and more adequate research. The group was called the Daughters of Bilitis. "Bilitis" comes from a poem about the lesbian lover of Sappho. In 1958, Barbara Gittings held the first Daughters of Bilitis meeting in New York. This was the first chapter on the East Coast.
The group started a monthly magazine called 'The Ladder' which contained news, research reports, and political and social commentary of which Barbara Gittings and Phyllis Lyon served as editors. Phyllis Lyon and Del Martin, in the years that followed, continued to fight for the needs and basic rights of all women. These women were in that rare group of impassioned leaders that have changed the lives of countless women. Their contributions are far reaching and continue to this day.
These groups and their magazines provided an up close and personal view of what it was like to be a lesbian or gay man during this time. For many lesbians and gay men, the magazines were a kind of survival manual, providing a lifeline to the community. Articles addressed everything from what to do in case of a police raid to providing news on homosexual publications. The pages of these magazines chronicle the lives of lesbians and gay men as they struggled to make a place for themselves in American society.
In its original (1951) edition, Donald Webster Corry's 'The Homosexual In America' was the first widely-read book in the US to demonstrate the legal, social and economic discrimination leveled against an "amazingly large" segment of the American population and to put forward a strong defense of homosexual rights and a view of homosexuals as "the unrecognized minority."
Also during this decade the voices of other GLBT writers were beginning to be heard. In 1951 Langston Hughes published a poem about a police raid on a gay establishment. And In 1956, James Baldwin published 'Giovanni's Room', his first novel depicting an openly gay character.
These magazines and books brought to the surface the years of pain and opened a door to an intensely private experience, giving voice to a population perceived as deviant in a decade of McCarthy witch-hunts.
Christine Jorgensen is undoubtedly the most famous transsexual figure in the 20th Century. Her very public life after her 1952 transition and surgery was a model for other transsexuals for decades. She was a tireless lecturer on the subject of transsexuality, pleading for understanding from a public that all too often wanted to see transsexuals as freaks or perverts. Although she considered herself primarily a photographer, she toured as a stage actress and singer. Ms. Jorgensen's poise, charm, and wit won the hearts of millions. Christine Jorgensen died of cancer in 1989, at the age of 62.
| Before 1950 | 1950 to 1959 | 1960 to 1979 | 1980 to 2004 |