ABSTRACT
From the outset, the gay and women’s liberation movements that burst forth on the public stage in the late 1960s looked forward to a world transformed by political and cultural revolutions, but members of these movements also forged historical arguments to counter the idea that homosexuality was unhealthy and socially pernicious. Where lesbians were concerned, famous women—from Sappho to Gertrude Stein—whose homosexuality had been practically erased, were posthumously recruited as distinguished forebears. The justification for the attention given to eminent lesbians of past eras was similar to that most frequently encountered today: role models. This was not a novel argument, insofar as the homosexuality of distinguished individuals has been a consistent feature of organized efforts to obtain social approbation and decriminalization of homosexuality. Magnus Hirschfeld, who founded the Scientific Humanitarian Committee in Berlin in 1898 and later established the Institute for Sexual Science to promote sexual reform and tolerance of homosexuality in particular, compiled lists of famous homosexuals to promote his cause. However, the difference between the rationale for these earlier efforts and those made since the 1960s is that Hirschfeld and his contemporaries believed that this information would change social mores in a population they considered largely heterosexual, while members of liberation groups were more concerned with problems of self-regard among gay men and lesbians.
