Being gay, obviously, I faced a lot of hardship during my school & college time – dealing with discrimination and bullying from people my entire childhood. It still feels like a significant wound when I think about it today. Since I reached out to my parents it was like a huge weight had been lifted off my chest. They were super cool about it, being an Indian parent, I wasn’t expecting this reaction even today when I’m troubled they are my go-to people!

In our society, the general thought (for no valid reason) is that it’s shameful to be homosexual, even harmful.

I found my life purpose when I started my brand Qucciberry for my community. We often find ourselves in an awkward position when we try something in the big brand fashion stores. The outfits /shoes that we really like don’t fit.

For example, if a queer goes to the women section and wants to try shoes in the style of their choice but the company does not make shoes in bigger sizes and they are forced to buy from the men section, which is not of their choice.

I with Qucciberry, am trying to help my community, to be their first choice of fashion and style.

Qucciberry, broadcasts –lifestyle, clothing & accessories with the best quality. Proudly designed & made in India that our community loves.

Our brand mission is to build, educate, and bring awareness to society about LGBTQ community.

Join us and showcase your pride and spread nothing but good vibes, love, and positivity with our pride collection to celebrate the LGBTQ community.

In 1924, Henry Gerber, a German immigrant, founded in Chicago the Society for Human Rights, the first documented gay rights organization in the United States. During his U.S. Army service in World War I, Gerber was inspired to create his organization by the Scientific-Humanitarian Committee, a “homosexual emancipation” group in Germany.

Gerber’s small group published a few issues of its newsletter “Friendship and Freedom,” the country’s first gay-interest newsletter. Police raids caused the group to disband in 1925—but 90 years later, the U.S. government designated Gerber’s Chicago house a National Historic Landmark.

The gay rights movement stagnated for the next few decades, though LGBT individuals around the world did come into the spotlight a few times.

For example, English poet and author Radclyffe Hall stirred up controversy in 1928 when she published her lesbian-themed novel, The Well of Loneliness. And during World War II, the Nazis held homosexual men in concentration camps, branding them with the infamous pink triangle badge, which was also given to sexual predators.

In 1950, Harry Hay founded the Mattachine Foundation, one of the first gay rights group in USA. The Los Angeles organization coined the term “homophile,” which was considered less clinical and focused on sexual activity than “homosexual.”

The gay rights movement saw some early progress in the 1960s. In 1961, Illinois became the first state to do away with its anti-sodomy laws, effectively decriminalizing homosexuality, and a local TV station in California aired the first documentary about homosexuality, called The Rejected.

The Stonewall Inn

A few years later, in 1969, a now-famous event catalyzed the gay rights movement: The Stonewall Riots.

The clandestine gay club Stonewall Inn was an institution in Greenwich Village NY, because it was large, cheap, allowed dancing and welcomed drag queens and homeless youths.

But in the early hours of June 28, 1969, New York City police raided the Stonewall Inn. Fed up with years of police harassment, patrons and neighbourhood residents began throwing objects at police as they loaded the arrested into police vans. The scene eventually exploded into a full-blown riot, with subsequent protests that lasted for five more days.

Christopher Street Liberation Day

Shortly after the Stonewall uprising, members of the Mattachine Society split off to form the Gay Liberation Front, a radical group that launched public demonstrations, protests, and confrontations with political officials.

In 1970, at the one-year anniversary of the Stonewall Riots, New York City community members marched through local streets in commemoration of the event. Named the Christopher Street Liberation Day, the march is now considered the country’s first gay pride parade. Activists also turned the once-disreputable Pink Triangle into a symbol of gay pride.

Gay Political Victories

The increased visibility and activism of LGBT individuals in the 1970s helped the movement make progress on multiple fronts. In 1977, for instance, the New York Supreme Court ruled that transgender woman Renée Richards could play at the United States Open tennis tournament as a woman.

Additionally, several openly LGBT individuals secured public office positions: Kathy Kozachenko won a seat to the Ann Harbor, Michigan, City Council in 1974, becoming the first out American to be elected to public office.

Harvey Milk, who campaigned on a pro-gay rights platform, became the San Francisco city supervisor in 1978, becoming the first openly gay man elected to a political office in California.

Milk asked Gilbert Baker, an artist and gay rights activist, to create an emblem that represents the movement and would be seen as a symbol of pride. Baker designed and stitched together the first rainbow flag, which he unveiled at a pride parade in 1978.

The following year, in 1979, more than 100,000 people took part in the first National March on Washington for Lesbian and Gay Rights.

Outbreak of AIDS

The outbreak of AIDS in the United States dominated the struggle for gay rights in the 1980s and early 1990s. In 1981, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention published a report about five previously healthy homosexual men becoming infected with a rare type of pneumonia.

By 1984, researchers had identified the cause of AIDS—the human immunodeficiency virus, or HIV—and the Food and Drug Administration licensed the first commercial blood test for HIV in 1985. Two years later, the first antiretroviral medication for HIV, azidothymidine (AZT), became available.

Gay rights proponents held the second National March on Washington for Lesbian and Gay Rights in 1987. The occasion marked the first national coverage of ACT UP (AIDS Coalition To Unleash Power), an advocacy group seeking to improve the lives of AIDS victims.

The World Health Organization in 1988 declared December 1 to be World AIDS Day. By the end of the decade, there were at least 100,000 reported cases of AIDS in the United States.

Gay Marriage and Beyond

In 1992, the District of Columbia passed a law that allowed gay and lesbian couples to register as domestic partners, granting them some of the rights of marriage (the city of San Francisco passed a similar ordinance three years prior and California would later extend those rights to the entire state in 1999).

In 1993, the highest court in Hawaii ruled that a ban on gay marriage may go against the state’s constitution. State voters disagreed, however, and in 1998 passed a law banning same-sex marriage.

Federal lawmakers also disagreed, and Congress passed the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA), which Clinton signed into law in 1996. The law prevented the government from granting federal marriage benefits to same-sex couples and allowed states to refuse to recognize same-sex marriage certificates from other states.

Though marriage rights backtracked, gay rights advocates scored other victories. In 1994, a new anti-hate-crime law allowed judges to impose harsher sentences if a crime was motivated by a victim’s sexual orientation.

The Matthew Shepard Act

In 2003, gay rights proponents had another bit of happy news: the U.S. Supreme Court, in Lawrence v. Texas, struck down the state’s anti-sodomy law. The landmark ruling effectively decriminalized homosexual relations nationwide.

And in 2009, President Barack Obama signed into law a new hate crime act. Commonly known as the Matthew Shepard Act, the new law extended the reach of the 1994 hate crime law.

The act was a response to the 1998 murder of 21-year-old Matthew Shepard, who was pistol-whipped, tortured, tied to a fence, and left to die. The murder was thought to be driven by Shepard’s perceived homosexuality.

In 2011, President Obama fulfilled a campaign promise to repeal DADT; by that time, more than 12,000 officers had been discharged from the military under DADT for refusing to hide their sexuality.

A couple of years later, the Supreme Court ruled against Section 3 of DOMA, which allowed the government to deny federal benefits to married same-sex couples. DOMA soon become powerless, when in 2015 the Supreme Court ruled that states cannot ban same-sex marriage, making gay marriage legal throughout the country.

Transgender Rights

One day after that landmark 2015 ruling, the Boy Scouts of America lifted its ban against openly gay leaders and employees. And in 2017, it reversed a century-old ban against transgender boys, finally catching up with the Girl Scouts of the USA, which had long been inclusive of LGBT leaders and children (the organization had accepted its first transgender Girl Scout in 2011).

In 2016, the U.S. military lifted its ban on transgender people serving openly. In March 2018, President Donald Trump announced a new transgender policy for the military that again banned most transgendered people from military service.

Though LGBT Americans now have same-sex marriage rights and numerous other rights that seemed farfetched 100 years ago, the work of advocates is not over.

Universal workplace anti-discrimination laws for LGBT Americans is still lacking. Gay rights proponents must also content with an increasing number of “religious liberty” state laws, which allow business to deny service to LGBT individuals due to religious beliefs, as well as “bathroom laws” that prevent transgender individuals from using public bathrooms that don’t correspond to their sex at birth.

Gay Marriage Legalized

Massachusetts was the first state to legalize gay marriage, and the first legal same-sex marriage was performed on May 17, 2004—a day when seventy-seven other couples across the state also tied the knot.

Gay marriage was finally ruled legal by the Supreme Court in June 2015.

Contrary to popular belief, mythology and historical texts show that Vedic System recognised Homosexual Unions.

Amara Das Wilhelm’s book “Tritiya-Prakriti: People of the Third Sex”, compiles years of extensive research of Sanskrit texts from medieval and ancient India, and proves that homosexuals and the “third gender” were not only in existence in Indian society back then, but that these identities were also widely accepted.

Citing from the chapter “Purushayita” in the Kama Sutra, a 2nd century ancient Indian Hindu text, the book mentions that lesbians were called “swarinis”. These women often married other women and raised children together. They were also readily accepted both within the ‘third gender’ community and ordinary society.

The book further made mention of gay men or “klibas”, which though could refer to impotent men, represented mostly men who were impotent with women due to their “homosexual tendencies”.
They (gay men) were thoroughly referenced in the chapter “Auparishtaka” in the Kama Sutra.The Kama Sutra’s homosexual man could either be effeminate or masculine. While they were known to be involved in relationships of a frivolous nature, they were also known to marry each other.

The book further mentions that there were eight different kinds of marriages that existed under the Vedic system, and out of those, a homosexual marriage between two gay men or two lesbians were classified under the “gandharva” or celestial variety – “a union of love and cohabitation, without the need for parental approval”.

In Khajuraho

It’s impossible to talk about homosexuality in ancient India without referring to one of its most affirmative and visual ‘proofs’, so to speak. The sculptures in the Khajuraho temple of Madhya Pradesh are known for their overt homosexual imagery. The temple is popularly believed to have been built sometime around the 12th century.

The sculptures embedded in the Khajuraho temple depict what seem to be sexual fluidity between man and man and woman and woman.

While the sculptures also depict “accepted” sexual relations between male and female entities, it is well-known for showcasing the existence of intimacy between members of the same sex.

Bhagirathi – The King Born of Two Queens

According to Krittivasi Ramayan, composed by 15th century Bengali poet Krittibas Ojha, King Sagara of Ayodhya was desperate to maintain his bloodline after losing most of his sons to Kapila sage’s wrath.

The threat to the dynasty further worsened, when Dilip, his only heir, died before he could give his two queens the magic potion that would make them pregnant. But according to the poem, the widows drank the potion, and made love to each other to conceive a child, with one of them becoming pregnant.

The child was none of other than King Bhagirathi, who is known in mythology for bringing the Ganges down to earth from the heavens.

Varuna and Mitra

Varuna and Mitra, famously referred to as the “same-sex couple” in the ancient Indian scripture of the Rig Veda, were often depicted riding a shark or crocodile or sitting side-by-side on a golden chariot together.

According to the Shatapatha Brahmana, a prose text describing Vedic rituals, history and mythology, they are representatives of the two half-moons.

According to the Bhagavata Purana, Varuna and Mitra also had children.

Even Rakshasas in the Ramayana

Now, who can turn a blind eye to the Ramayana? Valmiki’s famous epic, written somewhere between the 5th and 6th centuries, also mentions homosexuality.

Valmiki’s Ramayana depicts Hanuman witnessing Rakshasa women kissing and embracing those women who had been kissed and embraced by Ravana. This is a clear acknowledgement of same-sex intimacy in Indian history and tradition.

In a nutshell, if we go by these ancient references in Indian history and mythology, then it appears that ancient “Indian society” did indeed “recognise” homosexuality through that period, and in many cases, even accepted it.

Therefore, there is enough evidence that affirms existence and acknowledgment of homosexuality in Indian history.