I was alone at the time and in tears, and I decided to come clean — yes, I'm gay, I told them. The reactions started coming in and, to my relief and surprise, they were overwhelmingly positive. While I did lose a few friends, the ones closest to me became even closer, because I no longer had to lie about who I was and for the first time they knew what was really going on in my life. Pensacola will always hold a place in my heart for changing me in the way it did. A descriptor for people who do not conform to stereotypical appearances, behaviors, or traits associated with their sex assigned at birth. It was in the relatively freeing atmosphere of the Weimar Republic that gay communities and networks grew and developed in unprecedented ways. More German men chose to live openly as gay. Some joined “friendship leagues” ( Freundschaftsverbände ), groups that politically and socially organized gay men, lesbian women, and others. Gay men gathered together at meeting places, such as bars, that catered to a gay clientele. The most famous of these was the Eldorado in Berlin. In contrast, the network of gay men that developed around author Adolf Brand and his organization Gemeinschaft der Eigenen ( The Community of Kindred Spirits ) took a different approach. Brand’s organization became, over time, more right-wing and nationalist. Brand and Hirschfeld agreed on the issue of decriminalization. Both men also promoted public discussions of sexuality. However, they disagreed on conceptual and political issues regarding gender and nationalism. It was just over a week after a coalition of populist and right-wing parties won a majority of votes in Italy’s parliamentary election, and the former senior adviser to President Donald Trump sounded positively besotted as he gushed about the manliness and brio of Benito Mussolini. “He has all that virility,” Steve Bannon told The Spectator of London. “He also had amazing fashion sense, right, that whole thing with the uniforms.”

In 2012, DepEd enacted a Child Protection Policy, which it describes as a “zero tolerance policy for any act of child abuse, exploitation, violence, discrimination, bullying and other forms of abuse.” [17] Among the acts prohibited by the policy are all forms of bullying and discrimination in schools, including on the basis of sexual orientation and gender identity. [18] Since the legalisation of gay civil partnerships in Britain, His Majesty's Armed Forces immediately recognised civil partnerships and granted married gay couples exactly the same rights to allowances and housing as straight couples. The Ministry of Defence stated "We're pleased personnel registered in a same sex relationship now have equal rights to married couples." The uniform, but also the work clothes, the regulation outfits, the sports gear, the fetishist outfits — these clothes and accessories excite libido and imagination though the promise of masculine sex overflowing with testosterone, hot games of domination and submission, exhibitionism, and worship.” The mistreatment that students faced in schools was exacerbated by discriminatory policies and practices that excluded them from fully participating in the school environment. Schools impose rigid gender norms on students in a variety of ways—for example, through gendered uniforms or dress codes, restrictions on hair length, gendered restrooms, classes and activities that differ for boys and girls, and close scrutiny of same-sex friendships and relationships. For example, Marisol D., a 21-year-old transgender woman, said:

To the Department of Education

Government apologises to veterans for egregious historic LGBT policy in the Armed Forces". GOV.UK . Retrieved 24 July 2023. Stonewall, a British LGBT rights pressure group, spearheaded the movement to rescind British military prohibitions against openly LGBT servicemembers. It began in 1986, when Robert Ely, who had served in the British Army for seventeen years, approached Stonewall. The discovery of a letter had led to his sexual orientation being disclosed and he was subjected to an investigation and thrown out of the army. Already in the mid- to late-nineteenth century, there were indications of nascent and growing gay communities in Germany. At this time, the nature of human sexuality became an area of scientific investigation and debate in Europe and the United States. Germany was at the forefront of this development, not least because of debates regarding Paragraph 175. Paragraph 175 was the statute of the German criminal code that banned sexual relations between men. It was enacted in 1871 following the unification of the German Empire and the codification of German law. Vito Raimondi, a tax policeman from Turin, said the group would combat the isolation felt by uniformed gays afraid to come out. 'I was at a Gay Pride event when a colleague, who had been standing on the fringes, saw me by the stage and decided to come over to greet me. It was a great moment and the proof we must be more visible,' he said.

In this report, pseudonyms are used for all interviewees who are students, teachers, or administrators in schools. Unless requested by interviewees, pseudonyms are not used for individuals and organizations who work in a public capacity on the issues discussed in this report. Glossary Identifying as a gay man was never explicitly criminalized in Germany. However, the Nazi campaign against homosexuality and the regime’s zealous enforcement of Paragraph 175 made life in Nazi Germany dangerous for gay men. UK Parliament Poised to Repeal Final Discriminatory Law Relating to Homosexuality and the Armed Forces". 8 January 2016. Not all men arrested under Paragraph 175 shared the same fate. Typically, an arrest would lead to a trial before a court. The court would either acquit or convict the accused and sentence them to a fixed prison sentence. The conviction rate was approximately 50 percent. Most convicted men were released after serving their prison sentence. In rarer cases, the Kripo or the Gestapo would send a man directly to a concentration camp as a “homosexual” (“ homosexuell ”) offender. Typically, but not always, men sent to concentration camps in this way had multiple convictions or other extenuating circumstances. The Kripo and the Gestapo relied on tips or denunciations from the public to gather information about men’s intimate lives and uncover potential violations of Paragraph 175. A neighbor, acquaintance, colleague, friend, or family member could inform the police of their suspicions. The language people used in denunciations makes it clear that these Germans tended to agree with Nazi attitudes towards homosexuality. Denouncers referred to those they denounced as “effeminate,” “unmanly,” and “perverse.” Unlike raids, denunciations were a very effective tool of repression. These acts resulted in perhaps tens of thousands of arrests and convictions. InterrogationsIn the mid- to late 1930s, the police raided bars and other meeting places that they believed to be popular with gay men. The police set up cordons around bars or other locations, and questioned anyone who seemed suspicious. Some men caught up in raids would be released if there was no proof against them. Those whom the police deemed guilty would be tried for violations of Paragraph 175 or, in some cases, sent directly to a concentration camp. As advocates have pointed out, however, monitoring and implementation of the Child Protection Policy is uneven. One analysis notes that “[u]nfortunately, no monitoring is done on its implementation and hence whether it is helping LGBT children in schools.” [21] A collective of LGBT organizations in early 2017 concluded “such mechanisms did not deter the prevalence of violence [LGBT] children experience.” [22] In interviews with Human Rights Watch, advocates and school personnel noted that many child protection committees are not trained to recognize or deal with LGBT issues, and overlook policies and practices, discussed below, that overtly discriminate against LGBT youth. [23] The Anti-Bullying Law In the early twenty-first century, the German government opened four memorials to Nazi victims in central Berlin. The largest is the Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe, which opened in 2005. A few years later, in May 2008, the M emorial to Homosexuals Persecuted under Nazism ( Denkmal für die im Nationalsozialismus verfolgten Homosexuellen ) was unveiled nearby in Tiergarten park in central Berlin. When students face these issues—whether in isolation or together—the school can become a difficult or hostile environment. In addition to physical and psychological injury, students described how bullying, discrimination, and exclusion caused them to lose concentration, skip class, or seek to transfer schools—all impairing their right to education. For the right to education to have meaning for all students—including LGBT students—teachers, administrators, and lawmakers need to work together with LGBT advocates to ensure that schools become safer and more inclusive places for LGBT children to learn. Key Recommendations To the Congress of the Philippines

There were gay men who took the risk of resisting the Nazi state for political and personal reasons. Some gay men joined underground anti-Nazi resistance groups or helped hide Jews. Documenting and Memorializing Gay Experiences In fall 1934, the Berlin Gestapo (political police) instructed local police forces to send them lists of all men believed to have been engaged in same-sex behavior. Police in various parts of Germany had been keeping such lists for many years. However, centralizing this list in the hands of the Berlin Gestapo was new. In addition, the Gestapo specified that local offices should be sure to note if these men were members of Nazi organizations and if they had any prior criminal convictions under Paragraph 175. These lists have come to be known as “pink lists,” although this was not what the Nazis or the police called them. The British Army, Royal Navy and Royal Air Force all require new recruits to undergo Equality and Diversity training [9] [10] [11] and have a unified diversity strategy that is set by the Ministry of Defence – and which recognises everyone's unique contribution, their talents and experience. Core Values of Commitment, Courage, Discipline, Respect for Others, Integrity and Loyalty are their basic standards.Between 5,000 and 15,000 men were imprisoned in concentration camps as “homosexual” (“ homosexuell ”) offenders. This group of prisoners was typically required to wear a pink triangle on their camp uniforms as part of the prisoner classification system. Many, but not all, of these pink triangle prisoners identified as gay. In spring 1945, Allied soldiers liberated concentration camps and freed prisoners, including those wearing the pink triangle. But the end of the war and the defeat of the Nazi regime did not necessarily bring a sense of liberation for gay men. They remained marginalized in German society. Most notably, sexual relations between men remained illegal in Germany throughout much of the twentieth century. 1 This meant that many men serving sentences for allegedly violating Paragraph 175 remained in prison after the war. Tens of thousands more were convicted in the postwar era. A Tagalog term for a person assigned male at birth whose gender expression is feminine and who may identify as gay or as a woman; it can be used pejoratively as a slur for an effeminate individual. Go to a theater, go to a coffeehouse, go to the zoo, go to an amusement park, go to town, go out to the suburbs even; everywhere the principle of majority rule is lording about in pride. Old couples, middle-aged couples, young couples, lovers, families, children, children, children, children, children and, to top it off, those blasted baby carriages—all of these things in procession, a cheering, advancing tide.