Reddit user asks about lesser-known LGBTQ+ history facts – the responses are fascinating
Participants carrying balloons spelling out “Chicago” during the 53rd annual Chicago Pride Parade on 30 June, 2024, in Chicago, Illinois. (KAMIL KRZACZYNSKI/AFP via Getty Images/Canva)
Participants carrying balloons spelling out "Chicago" during the 53rd annual Chicago Pride Parade on 30 June, 2024, in Chicago, Illinois. (KAMIL KRZACZYNSKI/AFP via Getty Images/Canva)
A Reddit user asked people to share lesser-known facts about LGBTQ+ history, and the responses were fascinating.
Posted on 19 December, a Reddit user asked: “What’s an interesting or lesser-known fact about LGBTQ+ history that most people might not know?”
The post has received more than 50 upvotes and over 30 comments, some of which shed light on interesting, and lesser-discussed facts.
“The first Pride was really in Chicago! A day before NYC Pride Parade,” a top comment reads.
According to Chicago Pride’s website, its Pride event is rooted in the revolutionary events of the Stonewall Riots. The birth of Pride in Chicago came in 1970 on 27 June, when it made history as the first city to host a Gay Liberation March. The first Pride parade in New York City took place the following day, on 28 June 1970.
Another user highlighted the history of “the pink triangle”, which was forced onto queer men as a badge of shame during the rise of Nazism in the 1930s. On 6 May 1933, the Nazis closed Magnus Hirschfeld’s Institute for Sexual Science, burning its extensive collection on the streets, which led to the loss of much of Berlin’s gay culture.
“The true numbers of queer people lost to the Holocaust will never be known,” the post added.
According to the Holocaust Memorial Day Trust, an estimated 10-15,000 men who were accused of homosexuality were deported to concentration camps. Most died while there.
“That gays and lesbians almost had their own country on an island off the coast of Australia,” another commenter shared, to which the creator of the question responded: “That’s truly fascinating. I’ve never heard of this before.”
As highlighted by the Gender Justice Project – an Australian organisation advocating for intersectional justice and feminism – in protest of the government’s bigotry, a group of queer activists at Brisbane Pride decided to create their own “Gay and Lesbian Kingdom of the Coral Sea Islands”.
The Kingdom was declared in 2004, in response to legislation that failed to recognise marriage equality. However, the Kingdom was dissolved on 17 November, 2017, following a “yes” vote in Australian Marriage Law Postal Survey, which legalised same-sex marriage.
Another commenter shared: “There was a gay bar in New Orleans called the UpStairs Lounge. In June of 1973, it burned in an arson attack, the deadliest attack on a gay club till Pulse in 2016.”
The attack on the UpStairs Lounge killed 32 people and injured many more. It was the largest mass murder of LGBTQ+ citizens in the US until the Pulse nightclub massacre in 2016.
In 2013, Archbishop of New Orleans Gregory Aymond broke the Catholic Church’s silence on the arson, stating that “the church does not condone violence and hatred” and should have released a statement to “be in solidarity with the victims and their families” at the time of the attack.
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