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New perspectives on how history is made

Gay rights movement started in 19th century Germany, says historian

Our modern understanding of what it means to be homosexual and the earliest gay rights movement started in nineteenth-century Germany, says a historian.

According to Robert Beachy from Goucher College, modern conceptions of homosexuality began, ironically, with an anti-sodomy law.

When the German empire was unified in 1871, the Imperial Criminal Code included a law prohibiting sexual penetration of one man by another.

Questions about what types of activity should fall under the law spurred a sustained public inquiry into the nature of same-sex eroticism and sexuality in general....

Read entire article at Daily News & Analysis