![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
question elsewhere: "why did the whole of the UK left take such a bad position on LGBT rights until the late seventies?"
my answer: four thoughts:
1) m/m sex was mostly decriminalised in 1967. People who started adolescence before 1967, who if straight had generally started from a viewpoint of "gay sex is a crime", were running the show unchallenged until the mid-seventies.
2) I think there was a general change in the 1960s from thinking "I personally disapprove of this individual behaviour, so even though there's no evidence that it harms individuals or society, I will disapprove of it publicly" to "I personally disapprove of this individual behaviour, but there's no evidence that it harms individuals or society, so I will live and let live".
3) because of the above, sociological and psychological research had assumed that homosexuality was pathological until the late 1960s. So if you were basing your viewpoint on actual scholarship, you had to wait for researchers to do some.
4) (this is off the top of my head) I suspect that widespread recognition of systemic prejudice based on race and gender (in addition to economics, which is pretty fundamental) had to come before widespread recognition of systemic prejudice based on sexuality, simply because you can stay in the closet about sexuality.
my answer: four thoughts:
1) m/m sex was mostly decriminalised in 1967. People who started adolescence before 1967, who if straight had generally started from a viewpoint of "gay sex is a crime", were running the show unchallenged until the mid-seventies.
2) I think there was a general change in the 1960s from thinking "I personally disapprove of this individual behaviour, so even though there's no evidence that it harms individuals or society, I will disapprove of it publicly" to "I personally disapprove of this individual behaviour, but there's no evidence that it harms individuals or society, so I will live and let live".
3) because of the above, sociological and psychological research had assumed that homosexuality was pathological until the late 1960s. So if you were basing your viewpoint on actual scholarship, you had to wait for researchers to do some.
4) (this is off the top of my head) I suspect that widespread recognition of systemic prejudice based on race and gender (in addition to economics, which is pretty fundamental) had to come before widespread recognition of systemic prejudice based on sexuality, simply because you can stay in the closet about sexuality.
