With LGBT History Month (Feb 2011) again upon us, Adrian Gillan asks Who’s Who in Gay & Lesbian History? co-author and celebrated Australian historian, Professor Robert Aldrich, what we can all learn about the gay present from our queer past.

What has struck you most as you have studied homosexuality through its history?

The sheer variety of “same-sex” relationships throughout history is particularly striking: from life-long partnerships to casual encounters, from intimate platonic friendships with no stains on the sheets to steamy liaisons and initiation rites. And LGBT history is a way to “recover” a past that was often hidden, even denied. But it is also a way of gaining a different perspective on more general historical issues.

Have your studies given you any insights into the root causes of homophobia; and why on Earth people get so upset about same-sex relations?

In many societies, pleasure is considered dangerous. So homosexual practices – minus marriage, procreative sex and child-rearing – have been viewed as unacceptably hedonistic; and authorities have tried to control it. Homosexuality has also challenged notions of masculinity and femininity in places where religion, medicine, the law and the economy sought to maintain social and gender divisions. And many heterosexuals, including some of the most rabid homophobes, are afraid of “the queer within”.

What do you think was the most homo-friendly culture in “Western” history and why?

We mustn’t idealise periods of the past but perhaps it is the one that has emerged in certain parts of Europe, North America and Australasia in recent decades. Just think of the mayors or Paris and Berlin, “Queer as Folk” or the Sydney Mardi Gras. Though homophobia endures, never before have gay people been so protected - in those parts - by anti-discriminatory laws. From dark back rooms to the ivory towers of academia, much of contemporary “Western” society is remarkably open to gay culture.

And, historically, the most homophobic in “the West”?

Being a homosexual in places like Hitler’s Germany or Stalin’s Russia was life-threatening. However, some societies are ostensibly homophobic, yet a “homosexual” life flourishes. McCarthyism in America was an era of grim homophobic repression, but even there, gay men and women created opportunities in bars and bath-houses; and set up early gay political organisations and social groups. There may even be a certain frisson of pleasure for some practicing homosexuals dodging priests, parents and police.

How do you think current “Western” attitudes to homosexuality – particularly in the US, UK & Australia - relate to the past that has shaped them?

Albeit only in some countries and still partially, contemporary Western law codes have only recently freed themselves from the centuries-old influence of Judeo-Christian beliefs. Also, contemporary sexual cultures are often embedded in social contexts. Look at the exuberance of gay life here in Australia. Here it is linked to beach culture, to a certain “larrikin” tradition in Australian history, to the sexual experimentation in Australia’s past - in convict prisons or the outback - and to the notion of “mateship”.

Do you think it a blinkered arrogance of modern “Western” culture to see ourselves as more enlightened on sexuality than past cultures; or, indeed, other cultures around the world today?

Homosexuals remain unprotected from discrimination in many American states. In Britain and Australia there remain social vestiges of past conservative regimes. And anti-gay attitudes persists in many parts of Eastern Europe and the Balkans - even Italy. That said, many non-Western societies do practice even more extraordinary homophobia: the beheading of homosexuals in Saudi Arabia, the stance of Robert Mugabe in Zimbabwe or, indeed, the criminalisation of homosexual acts throughout much of Africa – the list is long.

Closer to home, few historians believe in a straight - much less narrow - path of history. Consider Germany. The first homosexual emancipation movement in Europe emerged there in the 1890s, and by the 1920s there was a flourishing gay and lesbian culture in Berlin and other cities. It all came to an end with Hitler in 1933: the Sexological Institute library was burned, the homosexual movement outlawed and thousands of homosexuals went to concentration camps. This is a reminder of the need for continual vigilance – even in the so-called “West”.

If you had to choose the four or five most significant homosexual figures in “Western” history, in terms of their sexuality, who would you choose and why?

Although I’ve co-edited a Who’s Who in gay and lesbian history, with biographies of some one thousand gay and lesbian figures, I cannot isolate a handful. We were not trying to compile a “best of” listing. Who is and is not important depends on personal perspectives and cultural traditions. Would a man and a woman compile the same list? Would a Spaniard or an Australian? Would a sportsman or a musician?

And perhaps we should also think of the countless unknown figures – the “average” women and men who battled discrimination and disease; who created a life for themselves and their lovers against all odds; or who expanded and animated gay, lesbian and wider culture around the world.

Robert Aldrich (www.arts.usyd.edu.au/departs/history/staff/profiles/aldrich.shtml) is a Professor at the University of Sydney and has written numerous books on gay history. He co-edited two volumes of Who's Who in Gay & Lesbian History with Garry Wotherspoon (Routledge, 2001); authored Colonialism & Homosexuality (Routledge 2003); and edited Gay Life & Culture: A World History (Thames & Hudson, 2006).

Visit Rictor Norton’s magnificent online LGBT History resource: www.rictornorton.co.uk

Adrian Gillan