References

1860

          Oregon
                    The Oregonian runs an article about President Abraham Lincoln and his “intimate friend,” Joshua                     Speed, who, it said, used to be “roommates.” A number of historians today believe that Lincoln and                     Speed had a long-term relationship.

Educational Criteria​

Historical References

1867

Congressional ACTs of Congress: 

​Governmental Agencies Formed: 

Constitutional Amendments & Policy: 

Treaties: 

Supreme Court Rulings: 

          Oregon
                    Hungarian writer Karl-Maria Kertbeny (nee Benkert) invents the word “homosexual” to describe                     people attracted to the same sex and is responsible for the term’s first known use in print in his                     pamphlet, Paragraph 143 of the Prussian Penal Code of 14 April 1851 and Its Reaffirmation as                     Paragraph 152 in the Proposed Penal Code for the North German Confederation, in which Kertbeny                     argued that the state should not involve itself in the private sexual affairs of its citizens. Kertbeny also                     created the term “heterosexual” and other terms meant to sort human sexual activity according to                     different types of sexual preference. Kertbeny 3 was known to correspond with German jurist Karl                     Heinrich Ulrichs, another forerunner in the gay rights movement. Kertbeny’s emphasis on the right to                     privacy was overshadowed by the psychiatric and medical professions’ adoption of his terminology to                     describe “mental conditions.” Although classification of homosexuality as a mental condition                     represented a change from earlier assumptions that homosexuality derived from deliberate                     sinfulness and wickedness, it perpetuated beliefs that homosexuality represented mentally and                     socially aberrant behavior in need of correction.

United States LGBT History for 1860 - 1869

1867

          Oregon
                    “Father of the LGBT Movement” Karl-Heinrich Ulrichs is the first person to speak out for gay rights.

Public Domain & Copyright

1869

History 1800-1899

          National
                    Walt Whitman publishes his first “Calamus” poems in Leaves of Grass, celebrating his “love of                     comrades,” a veiled reference to his homosexuality. Whitman is typical of the new gay subculture                     emerging in American cities. Away from the prying eyes of family and small town neighbors, gay                     people in cities were freer to act on their sexual orientations than before and found it easier to meet                     others like themselves. Noted psychiatrist Havlock Ellis was to comment, after a 1915 visit to the                     United States that, “The world of sexual inverts, indeed, is a large one in any American city.”

1861