Constructing Lesbian Closets

In 1918, the English courts again participated in a campaign against Wilde (that is, homosexuality) and again participated in the construction of a closet, this one designed for lesbians. The Billing trial of 1918, which banned a production of Wilde's play Salomé, introduced the tabloid-reading public to the phenomenon of lesbian sexual activity for the first time.

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Three years later, in 1921, when English anti-homosexual laws were reworded to include lesbianism, the amendment passed the House of Commons, but not the House of Lords, where Lord Desart reasoned, "You are going to tell the whole world that there is such an offence, to bring it to the notice of women who have never heard of it, never thought of it, never dreamed of it. I think that is a very great mischief."

Later in the decade, in 1928, censorship proceedings (again in the English courts) against Radclyffe Hall's lesbian novel The Well of Loneliness mobilized support in homophile communities on both sides of the channel and again moved the subject of lesbianism into the headlines.

The effect of this exposure in the press was analogous to that of the earlier Wilde scandal; it fostered greater solidarity among lesbians and gay men (whatever the internal divisions within specific communities) vis-à-vis the "outside" world and made lesbianism (like it or not) an axis of social--that is to say public--identity for women. A new closet, a lesbian closet, took shape as a reactive formation to this exposure.

The Eulenburg-von Moltke Scandal

England, periodically animated by homophobic zeal, was far from unique in this respect. In turn-of-the-twentieth-century Germany, for example, a scandal of major proportions implicated high-ranking homosexual diplomats and officers in Kaiser Wilhelm's service (the Philipp zu Eulenburg and Kuno von Moltke scandal). The Eulenburg-Von Moltke affair rigidified enforcement of legislation already on the books in Germany, Paragraph 175, which made anal intercourse a crime.

In contrast to the patterns of response to Wilde's trials among London's gay dandy-aesthetes, homosexuals in Germany met this wave of repression with organized resistance, mounting the first campaigns for homosexual rights. In the midst of this campaign, one activist, Adlolf Brand, exposed a leader of the opposition as secretly homosexual, thus presaging the "outing" tactics of the post-Stonewall era.

Territorial Closets

Berlin's reputation as a scene of activism enhanced the city's appeal to homosexuals internationally, and the homosexual expatriate colony there expanded to rival that of Paris.

Urban centers like Paris and Berlin, while they could be described as "territorial closets," contributed to the visibility as well as the invisibility of homosexual refugees, while fostering bonds that were cultural as well as sexual. Urban institutions such as cabarets, after hours clubs, bath houses, salons, and theaters rallied individual homosexuals from the provinces and abroad, far from the admonishing eyes of their families, into identifiable communities.

If the closet has served to institutionalize homosexuality as shameful and inferior vis-à-vis the legitimate heterosexual culture, it has also provided a space of possibility for subversive sexual and political acts. The closet's unstable character, its reversibility, its shifting temporal and territorial boundaries, make it a figure of both oppression and resistance.

Notable in the twentieth century both for its pioneering efforts in homosexual emancipation and for the subsequent Nazi persecution of homosexuals, Berlin is now a major participant in the struggle to gain legal recognition of gay relationships.

The coming out experience is so important to gay men and lesbians that it is a primary focus of much of their literature.

Over the past 25 years, the academic discipline of Geography, especially its social scientific and humanistic branch, has been attuned to glbtq people, places, and natures.

Mixed-orientation marriages--those in which one partner is straight and the other is gay or lesbian--often end in divorce, but such an ending is not inevitable.

First used by homophobes and then by glbtq activists, outing is the public revelation of a person's sexuality without the consent of that person.

Historically, the Roman Catholic Church may be the institution most responsible for the suffering of individuals involved in same-sex sexual relationships.

The concept of sexual citizenship draws attention to the political aspects of erotics and the sexual component of politics.

English decadent and Symbolist artist Aubrey Beardsley made a lasting contribution to the art of illustration; a satirist with a gift for caricature and grotesquerie, Beardsley attacked Victorian sexual values.

The "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" policy, in effect since 1993, was a compromise intended to end discrimination against gay men and lesbians in the U. S. military, but it has failed to halt discharges based solely on sexual orientation.

Lord Alfred Douglas is remembered today for his tumultuous association with Oscar Wilde and as a minor poet.

A favorite of Kaiser Wilhelm II, to whom he gave political advice, Philipp zu Eulenburg was involved with a circle of homosexual men, and his life ended in scandal.

One of the leading philosophers of the twentieth century, Foucault has had an enormous influence on our understanding of the lesbian and gay literary heritage and the cultural forces surrounding it.

Radclyffe Hall, who lived her lesbianism openly and proudly, is best known for The Well of Loneliness, arguably the most important lesbian novel ever written.

The Labouchère Amendment criminalized all sexual contact between men in Great Britain in 1885 and remained on the books until 1967.

Paragraph 175 was the German law prohibiting sex between men; strengthened by the Nazis, it was the statue under which homosexuals were sent to concentration camps.

Michelangelo Signorile is a prolific, and often provocative, writer and activist whose books and articles, radio show, newspaper columns, and website champion the cause of glbtq rights.

Mel White spent over thirty years serving the Evangelical Christian community; after struggling with his homosexuality for many years, he broke his ties with anti-gay religious leaders and became a glbtq activist.

Oscar Wilde is important both as an accomplished writer and as a symbolic figure who exemplified a way of being homosexual at a pivotal moment in the emergence of gay consciousness.