Make a Gay-friendly USA..................In the 1800s

Remember the gay character in the movie "Wagon's East". When asked why he came west he said "the men, I hear the west is full of them".

He was right. In the west men outnumbered women sometimes 10-1.
 
Given there was no "gay identity" that early, I don't think Frederick the Great would "come out of the closet" in the modern mode.

He might admit preferring sodomy to heterosexual sex, but he wouldn't say he was "gay."

1. Catholics don't like him anyway because he's Protestant, no great loss.

2. The Lutheran church in Prussia was IIRC under royal control, so anyone who complains too loudly will be in trouble.

3. This is not all that long after the Peace of Westphalia, which included the whole concept of not screwing around with a sovereign state.

Starting a war over the King of Prussia telling everyone he'll commit sodomy if he damn well pleases isn't likely to happen.

Now, someone being ashamed of their king being a sodomite and assassinating him is more doable, especially if the king favors a male lover too much. Think Edward II in England, who gave his boyfriend and his boyfriend's dad too much power and was killed via hot-poker-in-the-bum by some annoyed nobles.
 
Well here is my ASB scenario to a US becoming more open to homosexuality in the 19th century. You accept the premise that Abraham Lincoln was gay, the claim is on dubious in the historiography but it is made. The assassination attempt seriously wounds Lincoln in 1865, but he survives. The brush with death makes Lincoln discontent with his lifestyle leads him to leave Mary Todd and the White House. He takes up residence in a hotel and begins to live openly gay. Under political pressure and possible death threats about his new lifestyle he decides to resign as President before the end of his term in 1866. Lincoln forms a company to move into the new Washington Territory to establish a colony. A group of a little over 1,000 men and women, mostly former Civil War soldiers, head west and eventually reach Grays Harbor. There they establish the colony of Happiness, attracting many cultural icons of the late 19th and early 20th century seeking its tolerant climate. Figures include Walt Whitman, Oscar Wilde, Nathalie Clifford Barney, Charlotte Saunders Cushman, and others. The influence of these figures leads the colony of Happiness, renamed Lincoln after the passing of the founder and President of the colony, leads it to become a cultural center in the United States.

Completely ASB, but I am not sure how you realistically achieve this in the 1800s. Perhaps as someone mentioned in the 1920s when there was some acceptance in cultural centers like Los Angeles and New York, but the 19th century is a reach.
 
Your problem is that gays dont reproduce. Homosexuality may have a genetic basis, but it is not a gene passed down from generation to generation like say being blue eyed. Even the most gay man and lesbian woman (if they decided to hold their noses and have sex), the child would have no more of a chance to be gay than anyone else. Maybe by the fact that because it would be highly encouraged and pushed that maybe more would be gay but still straight kids would outnumber gay ones.

So lets say you do have 1,000 gay people form a colony. Then what? They have some children, maybe raise them as a group but since only maybe at the most, 1 in 10 would be gay soon the numbers of straight offspring would outnumber the aging gay parents. And as things usually go, kids after a while reject their parents ways. Especially after they look around and figure out that theres is the only gay town in the US.
 

Nietzsche

Banned
Your problem is that gays dont reproduce. Homosexuality may have a genetic basis, but it is not a gene passed down from generation to generation like say being blue eyed. Even the most gay man and lesbian woman (if they decided to hold their noses and have sex), the child would have no more of a chance to be gay than anyone else. Maybe by the fact that because it would be highly encouraged and pushed that maybe more would be gay but still straight kids would outnumber gay ones.

So lets say you do have 1,000 gay people form a colony. Then what? They have some children, maybe raise them as a group but since only maybe at the most, 1 in 10 would be gay soon the numbers of straight offspring would outnumber the aging gay parents. And as things usually go, kids after a while reject their parents ways. Especially after they look around and figure out that theres is the only gay town in the US.
You've missed the point and idea of this thread entirely. I am impressed. I wasn't aware someone could be so off-mark.
 
Your problem is that gays dont reproduce... Even the most gay man and lesbian woman (if they decided to hold their noses and have sex), the child would have no more of a chance to be gay than anyone else...

So lets say you do have 1,000 gay people form a colony. Then what? They have some children, maybe raise them as a group but since only maybe at the most, 1 in 10 would be gay soon the numbers of straight offspring would outnumber the aging gay parents. And as things usually go, kids after a while reject their parents ways. Especially after they look around and figure out that theres is the only gay town in the US.
You criticism is certainly valid. The scenario I presented was very much in the category of ASB, but I was trying to produce a 19th century American version of the Frederick idea being thrown around.

To explain my thinking, the idea of a "colony" was in the vein of the Oneida Community. I really didn't think reproduction would be likely in the population of the colony. More what I thought was the idea of a haven that would attract people (mostly adults or at least teenagers) would maintain the population. The colony would be made up of adults to begin with that could build a colony, and certainly it would have been newsworthy at the time. If the colony attracted luminaries like I suggested in the scenario, it wouldn't be inconcievable that within a few decades that the colony would become home to other artists regardless of sexual orientation. And from there it would develop into a place that was tolerant of homosexuality as opposed to being a segregated community. Again very ASB, but I don't see a realistic proposal to make this happen. So I threw my idea out there.
 

Nietzsche

Banned
You criticism is certainly valid. The scenario I presented was very much in the category of ASB, but I was trying to produce a 19th century American version of the Frederick idea being thrown around.

To explain my thinking, the idea of a "colony" was in the vein of the Oneida Community. I really didn't think reproduction would be likely in the population of the colony. More what I thought was the idea of a haven that would attract people (mostly adults or at least teenagers) would maintain the population. The colony would be made up of adults to begin with that could build a colony, and certainly it would have been newsworthy at the time. If the colony attracted luminaries like I suggested in the scenario, it wouldn't be inconcievable that within a few decades that the colony would become home to other artists regardless of sexual orientation. And from there it would develop into a place that was tolerant of homosexuality as opposed to being a segregated community. Again very ASB, but I don't see a realistic proposal to make this happen. So I threw my idea out there.

I'm pretty sure the goal of Gay Rights isn't to make a 'Homosexual Colony'. It's about having homosexuals equal in the eyes of the law, and preferably in the eyes of society as well. I've offered a very easy way for this to start. Homosexuality(that would be, being attracted to ones' sex) will be given quite the boost by having one of the most influential leaders to ever live openly coming out. The stereotypes of 'pansy faggots' would never occur either, since Frederick was many things, but a pansy was not one of them.
 
I'm pretty sure the goal of Gay Rights isn't to make a 'Homosexual Colony'. It's about having homosexuals equal in the eyes of the law, and preferably in the eyes of society as well. I've offered a very easy way for this to start. Homosexuality(that would be, being attracted to ones' sex) will be given quite the boost by having one of the most influential leaders to ever live openly coming out. The stereotypes of 'pansy faggots' would never occur either, since Frederick was many things, but a pansy was not one of them.

Well not to merely argue semantics, but here is the original post:
Probably impossible, but I'm curious. I'm curious if we can make America a safe haven for Gay people in the 1800s. Bonus points if its early on or somewhere in the middle. Its probably ASB, but its less ASB than some other things.

My scenario creates a safe haven in the 19th century that could potential evolve into equality in the eyes of a majority of civil society. The Frederick scenario does make some sense, and is less ASB then mine. The reason I presented it was the goal was to make America a safe haven as opposed to making homosexuality accepted throughout the Western World in the 19th century.

Again just so we are clear, this isn't a utopian proposal. But was merely an idea with a few germs of truth twisted enough to maybe result in the outcome the author of the thread wanted.
 
Probably impossible, but I'm curious. I'm curious if we can make America a safe haven for Gay people in the 1800s. Bonus points if its early on or somewhere in the middle. Its probably ASB, but its less ASB than some other things.

Gays hadn't really been invented by then. Sodomy was considered a behaviour, not an orientation.
 
Well haven't alot of historians argued that america can't get away from it's Cotton Mather, and the whole puritan taint that founded this country?

Simply switch out prudish puritans for some fun loving liberals. They are still quite industrious, perhaps they intermarry more with the natives.

Then if/when the Founding Fathers go for the classicism and greekophilia, they take it to the logical extremes.

The Washington Monument will likely stay the same to our OTL though.
 
Probably impossible, but I'm curious. I'm curious if we can make America a safe haven for Gay people in the 1800s. Bonus points if its early on or somewhere in the middle. Its probably ASB, but its less ASB than some other things.
Uh, yeah, I can say officially as a gay man that that's just not happening, anywhere in the world at that point, with the potential exception of certain tolerant Native American tribes such as the Navajo, which actually accepted and tolerated transgendered people and even gave them a special place in their culture.

Still, that would soon change with the influence of Christian beliefs, so I do not see that anywhere would be a safe haven.
 
Uh, yeah, I can say officially as a gay man that that's just not happening, anywhere in the world at that point, with the potential exception of certain tolerant Native American tribes such as the Navajo, which actually accepted and tolerated transgendered people and even gave them a special place in their culture.

Still, that would soon change with the influence of Christian beliefs, so I do not see that anywhere would be a safe haven.

I wondered when someone would finally catch onto that.

The most likely POD would be if the Continental Congress agrees to the Delawares as the 14th state in what's now Ohio. But at that point many Delawares are Moravian Christians. If Congress decides setting up Native states is easier than endless fighting, you might see states like Dakota or Dinetah. Perhaps early gay activists are influenced by the example much like the Seneca Falls Declaration was influenced by the Iroquois. (See the book Sisters in Spirit.)
 
Homosexuals were generally accepted in the 1920's, but a new wave of conservatism crushed that. If you can have whatever caused the twenties to roar do so earlier, then possibly, a more tolerant US could emerge.

Conservatism wasn't as great a factor in the decline of homosexual tolerance during the Great Depression. I'm convinced that the social revolutions of the flapper era were crushed simply because of the dire financial crisis brought on after 1929. European, especially German, homosexual culture might be a different case. Did homosexual culture thrive in Berlin during the Great Depression?
 
Conservatism wasn't as great a factor in the decline of homosexual tolerance during the Great Depression. I'm convinced that the social revolutions of the flapper era were crushed simply because of the dire financial crisis brought on after 1929. European, especially German, homosexual culture might be a different case. Did homosexual culture thrive in Berlin during the Great Depression?
Incidentally, speaking of the acceptance of minorities homosexuals in the 1920s...what really needs to be done in schools, I think, is that when they cover this period they take special care to cover this and to show how it reversed itself after that decade. You almost never hear about this in any public school in the United States and I only found out about it, well, frankly, right now. (I blame the American educational system. :mad:)
 
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