| homophilia | |
Homophilia, meaning "love of the same," is a term developed to emphasize the emotional component of same-sex love and to de-emphasize the sexual aspect suggested by the word "homosexuality." Homophilia can refer to both nongenital and genital relationships. The term homophile was adopted by the post-World War II political movements that developed in Europe and America to increase understanding of gay men and lesbians and to combat social and legal persecution. Precursors of the gay liberation movement that flowered in the late 1960s and 1970s, the homophile movements adopted a strategy in which homosexuals were urged to accommodate themselves as much as possible to the heterosexual norms of society.
