The monument was also intended to function as a political touchstone for the continued fight against hatred and oppression in contemporary times.

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Although ideas for a public monument had circulated within lesbian and gay circles soon after the war, and despite complaints about the widespread erasure of homosexual persecution during Hitler's reign, organizing for a public monument was not fully realized until the 1970s, when visibility became an important political objective for many gay and lesbian emancipation groups.

Further political catalysts came in 1970 after gay activists were arrested for attempting to place a lavender wreath on Dam Square in Amsterdam during the annual national memorial service. The wreath, which was intended to draw public attention to the thousands of homosexual women and men who were persecuted during the war, was removed by police and denounced as a disgrace.

Throughout the 1970s, similar wreath-placing demonstrations were executed with varying success, as activists constantly pushed for the inclusion of homosexuals in the public's collective memory of Hitler's "social purification" campaigns.

A coalition of Dutch gay and lesbian organizations finally secured government approval for the memorial in the early 1980s and began the huge task of raising the money necessary to complete it. Through grass roots fundraising, political lobbying, and community organizing, these groups helped forge the infrastructures of action now characteristic of many communities in large European and North American cities.

In its reliance on community mobilization and its insistence on public visibility, the struggle for the monument was not simply about the past, but was also very much about--and in some senses, crucial to--contemporary strides against in Europe.

Accordingly, the monument's design simultaneously looks back on gay and lesbian histories as it also looks toward the future. Designed by Karin Daan, the monument consists of three large triangles of pinkish granite that together compose one giant triangle.

Each smaller triangle is distinct and serves a different function within the overall space: one extends tranquilly over a nearby canal and is used mainly to leave flowers in memory of the persecuted; another is raised as a sort of podium and is used mainly as a gathering spot; the last triangle is set into the ground, quietly bearing the inscription, "Such an unlimited longing for friendship," a line from the gay poet Jacob Israël De Haan.

Together, the three triangles effectively articulate the Homomonument's mediation between past, present, and future. Its solemn symbolic recognition of war and persecution is balanced by its function as a lively venue for social and political gatherings.

On one level, the design recalls the pink triangles used to designate homosexuals within Nazi concentration camps. But as the pink triangle had by the 1970s been adapted into a political marker of emancipation and pride, its incorporation into the monument's design also signifies the need for continued visibility and resistance to erasure and oppression.

Famous as a major gay tourist destination and for its tolerance of glbtq people, in the second half of the twentieth century Amsterdam became a leader in the struggle for glbtq equality.

The history of gay and lesbian literature in the Low Countries is rich and varied, reflecting the changing concepts of intimate relations between people of the same sex.

The successes of the Dutch emancipation movement have served as an inspiration to the international struggle for glbtq equality.

Patronage--the sponsorship of artists and the commissioning of works from them--has remained a significant factor in the creation of queer visual culture in the modern era.

The gay monument in Barcelona, dedicated in March 2011, commemorates the sufferings of glbtq people.

Dutch friendship glasses, which were made on order to celebrate friendship in the eighteenth century, may also have covertly celebrated same-sex sexual desire; one surviving friendship glass celebrates sodomitical pleasure.

The Legacy Walk in Chicago is an outdoor history museum that reclaims and celebrates glbtq contributions to world history and culture.

Originally a mark of criminalization and persecution under the Nazis, the pink triangle was later reclaimed by gays both as a memorial and as a celebration of sexual identity.

Designed by Gilbert Baker in 1978, the rainbow flag has become a popular (and sometimes controversial), internationally recognized symbol of gay and lesbian pride.