Professor Stein Comments on LGBTQ History Debate

NBC NEWS -- Marc Stein, a History professor at San Francisco State University who has written extensively about LGBTQ history, said scholars tend to separate individuals’ acts and desires — of which there often is some kind of historical evidence — from their identities, communities or movements, which tend to take on actual labels.

“In the era before there was any notion of same-sex sexual identity, it does a disservice to the specificity of historical periods to project or impose current terms,” Stein said. “On some level, many of us would argue that there were no gay people or lesbians before the terms existed.”

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