‘It Is Not the Homosexual Who Is Perverse’

This chapter explores the complex transition from ‘homophile’ to ‘gay’ politics in the early 1970s, particularly focusing on conflicts over Rosa von Praunheim’s film, It Is Not the Homosexual Who Is Perverse, but the Society in Which He Lives—screened on national television in January 1973. The chapter demonstrates that homosexual politics, especially in this early period of gay liberation, between 1969 and 1973, were exceedingly fraught, and cannot be reduced to a simple story of generational conflict between ‘reformist’ or ‘integrationist’ homophiles versus ‘leftist’ or ‘radical’ gays. These debates were not just about what homosexuals thought and felt about wider society, but were informed by what that society thought and felt about them. Through the case study of the furore over Praunheim’s film, this chapter therefore also reveals the ambivalence of the wider public and the liberal media to the early claims of gay liberation.