Queer and Questioning

Queer and Questioning

Test your knowledge of LGBT history with this quiz

By Liz Massey

To be a member of the LGBT community today is to live in the midst of great change. A few decades ago, few thought legalized same-sex marriage would ever happen; today, the issue is at the forefront of the queer equality movement.

Yet, as much as things change, it's important to remember where our community has been. With that in mind, here is a brief LGBT history quiz, covering some of the high points of our past.

Karl Maria Kertbeny

1. In what year was the term "homosexual" first used?: a) 1900
b) 1776
c) 1869
d) 1688

Answer: c) 1869. Austrian-Hungarian writer Karl Maria Kertbeny first used the term to describe what he considered healthy love for one's own gender, in an anonymous leaflet arguing against the adoption of an "unnatural fornication" law throughout a united Germany.

2. In 1977, Harvey Milk became the first out gay male politician to be elected to office in the United States. Who was the first out lesbian to be elected?: a) Rita Mae Brown
b) Elaine Noble
c) Tammy Baldwin
d) Kathy Kozachenko

Answer: d) Kathy Kozachenko, who was elected to the Ann Arbor, Mich., city council in 1974 at the age of 22. Later that same year, Elaine Noble, an out lesbian, was elected to the Massachusetts State House.

3. Which university was the first to create a research center for gay and lesbian studies?: a) UCLA
b) University of Kansas
c) City University of New York
d) Arizona State University

Answer: c) The City University of New York, which founded The Center for Lesbian and Gay Studies in 1991 as the first university-based research center in the United States dedicated to the study of historical, cultural, and political issues of concern to lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender individuals and communities.

Lisa Ben

4. What was the name of the first LGBT publication produced in North America?: a) Vice Versa
b) Our Time
c) The Advocate
d) Lavender Jane

Answer: a) Vice Versa, which was published by a 25-year-old lesbian writing under the pseudonym Lisa Ben (an anagram for lesbian). It was published for nine issues in 1947 and 1948, when Ben availed herself of a company typewriter at her day job at RKO Studios in Los Angeles to create a publication that contained reviews, poetry, letters to the editor, original fiction and commentaries.

Paragraph 175

5. What was the name of the part of the German criminal code that kept gay victims of the Holocaust imprisoned in Nazi concentration camps for years after the camps were liberated by the Allies in 1945?: a) Section 222
b) Paragraph 175
c) The Code of Sodom
d) Rule 969

Answer: b) Paragraph 175. During the Nazi era, approximately 100,000 men were arrested under the law for being homosexuals; an estimated 10,000 to 15,000 were incarcerated in concentration camps and forced to wear the pink triangle. The German government never paid restitutions to the gay victims of the Nazi regime. West Germany limited the scope of Paragraph 175 in 1969, and it was abolished entirely in 1994.

Paul Splittorff

6. Which professional athlete has NOT come out as LGBT publicly?: a) Martina Navratilova (tennis)
b) Dave Kopay (football)
c) Muffin Spencer-Devlin (golf)
d) Paul Splittorff (baseball)

Answer: d) Splittorff, who played baseball for the Kansas City Royals and died in May, 2011, never came out publicly, nor was he rumored to be gay. Navratilova came out publicly in 1981; Kopay in 1977; and Spencer-Devlin in 1996.

Madchen In Uniform

7. What was the name of the first pro-lesbian film?: a) Mäechden in Uniform
b) The Children's Hour
c) Gidget Goes Gay
d) Desert Hearts

Answer: a) Machden in Uniform, released in 1931. The movie was directed by Leontine Sagan, one of the first women directors in Germany, and featured an all-female cast and storyline that centered on a student in a girls' boarding school in Prussia falling in love with one of her teachers.

The Christopher Street Rebellion

8.The Stonewall riots of June 1969 were also known originally by what other nickname?: a) The Sissy Rebellion
b) The Gay Revolution
c) The Battle of Stonewall
d) The Christopher Street Rebellion

Answer: d) Christopher Street Rebellion. The Stonewall Inn was located on Christopher Street in New York City, and in the early years following the riots, "Stonewall" and "Christopher Street" were both used to reference gay liberation organizations. The march in New York on the first anniversary of the riots was called the Christopher Street Liberation Day March.

9. When the syndrome that would later be known as AIDS was first identified, what was it called?: a) Gay Related Immune Deficiency (GRID)
b) Community Acquired Immune Dysfunction
c) "The Gay Cancer"
d) All of the above

Answer: d) All of the above. The first reference to the disease as Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome or AIDS came in September 1982 in a publication of the Center for Disease Control.
Quiz - Christine Before

Christine Jorgenson

10. In what year did Christine Jorgensen become the first person publicly known to receive sex-reassignment surgery?: a) 1932
b) 1952
c) 1968
d) 2002

Answer: b) 1952. Jorgensen, formerly George William Jorgensen Jr., traveled to Denmark to undergo several surgeries to change her sex. When Jorgensen returned to New York in February, 1953, she became an instant celebrity. She wrote an autobiography in 1967, was interviewed numerous times over the years on the TV talk-show circuit, and worked as a photographer, an actress and nightclub entertainer. She died of cancer in 1989.

Scoring guide:: 9-10 - Potential LGBT history teacher
6-8 - Informed activist
4-5 - Community booster
0-3 - Time to hit the books!