Bad Gays: A Homosexual History

by Huw Lemmey

The reasons why Radszuweit took such a turn after 1929 are best explained by the historian Laurie Marhoefer in their argument about the ‘Weimar Consensus’ on the regulation of sexuality. Again, the thesis is this: rather than understanding the Nazi rise to power as a mass public backlash against a permissive society gone mad, there was instead a broad consensus about sexuality in Weimar political life shared by a coalition of sexologists and politicians from left to centre, one which believed that ‘the state’s relationship to sexuality ought to be scientific and rational. In a new and democratic era, religious morality ought not to have a major influence on law and public policy.’26 Opposition to this consensus came from a coalition of conservative women’s movements, some moderate politicians, and right-wing conservatives and nationalists. The result of the battle between these factions was, in the functioning democracy of pre-1929 Weimar, ‘one of compromise … resulting in sexual liberation for some at the expense of others’.