LGBTQIA+ History Month and beyond
By Amy Moran, Ph. D
In 1820, German-Jewish playwright Heinrich Heine wrote: “This was but a prelude; where they burn books, they ultimately burn people.”
On April 6, 1933, the Nazi German Student Association announced a nationwide initiative against “the un-German spirit” and developed a literary blacklist of titles, authors and topics they deemed objectionable. On May 10 of that same year, only 34 days later, a massive book burning event was scheduled, 40,000 people showed up to watch, and 5,000 students with blazing torches paraded past them, uninterrupted.
The German Minister of Propaganda declared that “The era of exaggerated Jewish intellectualism is now at an end,” entrusting that the flames would erase “the intellectual garbage of the past.” Within the month, 34 additional book burnings took place throughout Germany. Some 20,000 books were burned, including those the Nazis raided at the Institute for Sexual Science, founded in 1919, by the gay Jewish physician Magnus Hirschfeld, an LGBTQIA+ rights advocate who studied gender and sexuality.
October is LGBTQIA+ History Month, and many events in our nation today hark back to fascisms elsewhere in the past. We’re seeing the erosion of American humanity in the dissolution of social programs, in the disappearance of people legally attending their immigration hearings through unprecedented use of ICE agents, the deployment of National Guard troops in lower-crime areas for intimidation purposes, and the erasure of intersex and transgender people from government websites and policies governing healthcare, education, media and historic record.
Events that affirm fascist ideologies arise from multiple institutions simultaneously, and they happen fast. Since the current president’s Jan. 20, 2025, inauguration, these events (and others) impacting LGBTQIA+ people and our communities are arguably ideological backlash by white- supremacist heteropatriarchy against hard-fought progress:
Jan. 20, 2025: The president signed the Executive Order Defending Women from Gender Ideology Extremism and Restoring Biological Truth to the Federal Government, falsely claiming only female and male sexes exist, dismissing the range of gender identities and expressions, and demanding discontinuation of previous guidelines, including:
- Back-to-School Message for Transgender Students from the U.S. departments of Justice, Education, and Health and Human Services
- U.S. Department of Education Toolkit: Creating Inclusive and Nondiscriminatory School Environments for LGBTQI+ Students
- U.S. Department of Education Supporting LGBTQI+ Youth and Families in School
- Supporting Intersex Students: A Resource for Students, Families, and Educators
- Confronting Anti-LGBTQI+ Harassment in Schools: A Resource for Students and Families
Feb. 13, 2025: The National Park Service removed the word “queer” and the “T’ for transgender from the Stonewall National Monument website, referring only to “LGB people.”
March 27, 2025: The president signed the Executive Order Restoring Truth and Sanity to American History, which attempts to whitewash otherwise events-based, social science-supported history in museums and elsewhere.
Actions like these are today’s book burnings. Erasing people and experiences to artificially glorify problematic parts of America’s past—rather than acknowledge, learn from and refuse to repeat them—serves to affirm a white-supremacist, capitalist, heteropatriarchal present. This kind of nationalism downplays cruelties, pretending they never happened and ultimately preparing to repeat them. However, teaching humanities, teaching humanely and working in schools with a humane ideology can help counteract it for our students.
Let us know how you’re incorporating LGBTQIA+ history in school and coping with this political/cultural moment at RainbowConnectionNJEA@gmail.com.
For more information
Germany’s Institute for Sexual Science (1919-1933)
Government Documents Affirming LGBTQIA+ Communities
- https://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/ED613280.pdf (Note: You may see that some of the links inside these links are now defunct because of current government anti-queer ideology and censorship.)
LGBTQIA+ History Month