History of LGBT Pride
The Industrial Revolution

In this era, due to the increased population and many different methods of travel and agriculture, the shift of opinions and views towards the LGBT (Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Trans) community can be clearly seen. It is a time when anything seems possible and the conflict between science and religion really takes hold of the 'common man'.

Throughout Europe and the rest of the world (over the next one hundred years) individual countries decriminalise or criminalise homosexuality, with a large number of opposing views developing. Many people feel the need to examine the issue of homosexuality and for the first time attempt to understand the logic behind the argument that has now raged for nearly two millennia.

In Britain, the last execution because of homosexuality happened in 1836 and in 1861 the law is altered so that the penalty for such acts became 10 years to life imprisonment.

On August 29, 1867, Karl-Heinrich Ulrichs became the first self-proclaimed homosexual to speak out publicly for homosexual rights when he pleaded at the Congress of German Jurists in Munich for a resolution urging the repeal of anti-homosexual laws. And less than two years later the term "homosexuality" appears in print for the first time in a German-Hungarian pamphlet written by Karl-Maria Kertbeny (1824–1882).

By 1892 the word bisexual" and "heterosexual" are first used in their current senses in Charles Gilbert Chaddock's translation of Kraft-Being's Psychopathia Sexualis. Three years later was the trial of Oscar Wilde, resulting in his being prosecuted under the Criminal Law Amendment Act of 1885 for "gross indecency" and sentenced to two years in prison. After this long and high profile imprisonment of a homosexual, Oscar Wilde chose a self imposed exile in France, where it homosexuality was decriminalised.

Next Section (20th Century)