LGBTQ+ History Resources: Social Attitudes

This article, published by the America Psychological Association, charts the history of LGBTQ+ rights movements, with a focus on how they helped to shape social attitudes towards LGBTQ+ people over time.

This is an article from the 1980s that looks at political cartoons about the Eulenburg Affair, a major public controversy in Germany that was triggered by the outing of a close ally of Kaiser Wilhelm II in 1907.

This blog post explores what the material housed in The National Archive's collections can tell us about attitudes towards LGBTQ+ people in the 19th and 20th century.

This book, which was published by Oxford University Press, explores the stories of a number of LGBTQ+ Victorians. The book argue for "re-visiting the period’s thinking about gender and sexual identity at a time when our queer alliances are fraying."

This is a talk by historian Dr John Gilbert McCurdy, who discusses gay relationships in early America. There is a focus on the trail of Reverend Robert Newburgh, a British chaplain who was accused of having sex with a man just before the American War of Independence.

This PhD thesis, from 2009, explores the changing representation of gay MPs in the British media. This change is understood in relation to wider shifts in social attitudes towards gay people in the UK over time.

Galop is a UK LGBTQ+ anti-abuse charity that focuses on monitoring police activity. This report, from 1987, explores police behaviour towards gay people in the previous year. It gives insight into how gay people were understood and treated by the police at the time.

This is an audio recording of a talk and discussion, held at the Bishopsgate Institute, that focuses on "the resistance to Clause 28, which prohibited local authorities from presenting "homosexuality as a pretended family relationship". This was seen as a watershed moment in the long struggle for civil rights for LGBTQ+ citizens, bringing the community together around one cause."

This article looks at gay relationships during China's cultural revolution. "Using oral history and archival cases collected by the author, this article complicates this narrative about the Cultural Revolution by documenting different experiences of sexual awakening, ingenuity, and resilience of those men as well as their fear, misfortune, and tribulations. Despite all the risks of being arrested, interrogated, and disciplined by the authorities, clandestine sex between men persisted in both private and public spaces throughout this tumultuous period."

This timeline looks at the history of LGBTQ+ people in sport, especially in the US. It demonstrates how the representation of LGBTQ+ people in sport has changed over time, as well has how attitudes have developed.