[Updated 1995 Press release from Times Change Press.]

Pioneering Book On Early Gay History Reissued

The Early Homosexual Rights Movement (1864-1935) Revised Edition

by John Lauritsen and David Thorstad, ISBN 0-87810-041-5,

illustrated, 128 pp, bibliography & index; $9.95, paperback.

Published by TIMES CHANGE PRESS, Ojai, CA, 1995.

This new edition of a book originally published in 1974 has

been substantially amended and updated, with the addition of an

afterword. It also newly includes the text of a historic 1928

speech by Kurt Hiller, an outspoken German defender of gay rights,

addressed to the Second International Conference for Sexual

Reform, held in Copenhagen.

The Early Homosexual Rights Movement (1864-1935) begins

with an account of such early German writers as Karl Heinrich

Ulrichs, Karoly Maria Kertbeny (German-Hungarian), and Magnus

Hirschfeld, the Berlin physician who in 1897 co-founded the

Scientific Humanitarian Committee — the first gay liberation

organization — which endured for 36 years, until it was snuffed

out by the rise of Nazism. The book follows the spread of

movements for gay rights to other parts of Europe, England, and

the United States. The antigay role of the Stalinists is

described, as well as that of the Nazis. The stories of Oscar

Wilde, Sir Richard Burton, Walt Whitman, and Edward Carpenter are

included.

At the time of its first publication, the book was hailed as

“a landmark in gay awareness because it reveals the presence of

gay pride a century before the current movement began.” (Sammy

Staggs in Library Journal). Choice described it as “highly

readable and of interest to both professionals and

nonprofessionals.”

It also won kudos from leading scholars and literary

figures:

A very useful beginning in the difficult job of

unearthing information about the “first” gay rights

movement.... A vital new historical perspective.

— Martin Duberman

Thorstad and Lauritsen ... have begun to enlighten our

darkness. — Eric Bentley

A book like this is of immense value.... It is a

reminder to other minorities that homosexuals are

their brother-victims of persecution. And, to the

vast, unthinking but not heartless majority of

heterosexuals, it is a challenge.

— Christopher Isherwood

David Thorstad is a former president of New York's Gay

Activists Alliance and is active in other gay organizations; he is

a book editor. John Lauritsen has been active in the gay movement

since he joined the Gay Liberation Front in the summer of 1969; he

is a retired survey research analyst.