ABSTRACT
It is often said that history is written by the victors, though it also seems true that the history of the victors is the history of men, their wars, their nations, their women and children (the nation’s possessions). Maybe it is also true that the undesirables in that nation are not considered to be included among the victors, or among the nation’s possessions. They are outcasts and remain undesirables in their own nation, as has been the case for many groups in society both in the allied countries and in Germany after World War II. Population policies 2 have prevailed in peacetime, as they did both before the war, and before Hitler’s rise to power in Germany. Homosexuals (meaning here gay men) and lesbians have been among the many groups that were victims of this policy before, during and after the war – and, in far too many places, still are outcasts and looked upon as criminals.
The attitude toward homosexual behaviour often provides a reliable clue as to the rigidity of all other sexual attitudes in a particular society. Where the obsession with sexual deviance is strong, the conforming majority usually can be assumed to strain under its self-imposed sexual restrictions. The greater the need to persecute others, the greater the need to control oneself, to resist the temptations of sexual freedom. (Haeberle 1989, p. 373)
