Recovering Queer Identities

 | 
07/18/2020

In the Castro District, the well-known hub of San Francisco’s gay community, bronze plaques embedded in the sidewalks honor famous LGBTQ individuals from around the world. Recognizing ancestors has a long pedigree in LGBTQ activism, dating back to 19th-century efforts to repeal sodomy laws in Germany. For generations, doing so allowed queer people to feel a sense of kinship with the past. It also enabled them to dispute those who argued that homosexuality, along with other queer gender and sexual identities, is an aberration of the modern world. Campaigners could point to ancients such as the poet Sappho or Alexander the Great as proof that homosexuality was neither unnatural nor harmful. Curiously, though, almost every single person in the Rainbow Honor Walk, as the Castro installation is known, is a figure of the 20th or 21st century. The oldest, the two-spirit Zuni tribal leader We’wha, was born in 1849 and died in 1896. There is seemingly no place for those older figures who were once held up as evidence of queerness in history.

Share this:

Latest Global News

Added on: 03/28/2024
03/27/2024
Nine men were sentenced to death by a Houthi court in Yemen in a mass trial based on “dubious” charges of sodomy, a human …
Added on: 03/28/2024
03/27/2024
Thailand is set to become the first Southeast Asian nation to recognise equal marriage after politicians passed a same-sex marriage bill. The lower house of …
Added on: 03/28/2024
03/27/2024
In what looks like a deliberate bid to redirect intense public scrutiny away from grave allegations implicating her in a seemingly multibillion-shilling corruption scandal, …

Explore LGBTQ+ Issues

Other News from ,

Added on: 03/28/2024
WASHINGTON | The U.S. National Security Council met with Ugandan LGBTQ rights activist Frank Mugisha on Monday, according to a spokesperson who reaffirmed America’s …
Added on: 03/27/2024
Even as people fight for justice, some cries remain unheard and voices unanswered. In American society, many of these lost voices belong to the …
Added on: 03/26/2024
Washington Gov. Jay Inslee, a Democrat, signed a law last week that includes a mandate for the state’s public schools to teach LGBTQ history, …