Society for Human Rights

The Society for Human Rights was an American LGBT Rights organization established in Chicago in 1924. Society founder Henry Gerber was inspired to create it by German Doctor Magnus Hirschfeld and his work with the Scientific-Humanitarian Committee. It was the first recognized gay rights organization in the United States, having received a charter from the state of Illinois, and produced the first American publication for homosexuals, Friendship and Freedom. A few months after being chartered, the group ceased to exist in the wake of the arrest of several of the Society's members. Despite its short existence and small size, the Society has been recognized as a precursor to the modern gay liberation movement.

Henry Gerber emigrated from Germany in 1913, settling with his family in Chicago because of its large German-speaking population. Within a few years of his arrival he experienced discrimination based on his sexual orientation when he was temporarily committed to a mental institution in 1917 for being homosexual.

With the United States's entry into World War I, Gerber enlisted in the United States Army. After the war, he served as a printer and proofreader with the Allied Army of Occupation in Coblenz, Germany, from 1920 to 1923.

During his time in Germany, Gerber learned about Magnus Hirschfeld and the work he and his Scientific-Humanitarian Committee were doing to reform anti-homosexual German law, especially Paragraph 175, which criminalized sex between men. Gerber traveled to Berlin, which supported a thriving gay subculture, on several occasions and subscribed to at least one homophile magazine. Gerber marveled at the development of the gay community in Berlin and later wrote "I had always bitterly felt the injustice with which my own American society accused the homosexual of 'immoral acts.' What could be done about it, I thought. Unlike Germany, where the homosexual was partially organized and where sex legislation was uniform for the whole country, the United States was in a condition of chaos and misunderstanding concerning its sex laws, and no one was trying to unravel the tangle and bring relief to the abused." He was particularly impressed with the work of a group called Bund für Menschenrechte (Association for Human Rights) and absorbed a number of Hirschfeld's ideas, including the notion that homosexual men were naturally effeminate. Following his military service, Gerber returned to the United States and went to work for the post office in Chicago.

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