Oscar Wilde and Alan Turing are probably the most famous cases of homosexual men persecuted for their sexuality - both cases happened in England. Are there other cases in Europe / United States were well known people were imprisoned for their sexuality ?

by Aberfrog

Or was this something specific to Great Britain ?

I live in Austria and i couldn't say that I have heard of any well known person being imprisoned here - I am sure that people outside of the public eye went to prison for "homosexual acts" and so on - the law about that was just changed in 1976 after all - but I couldn't name one.

Subs-man

Both Oscar Wilde & Alan Turing were persecuted under the 1885 Criminal Law Amendment Act specifically section 11 (also known as the "Labouchere Amendment" after Northampton MP Henry Labouchere)

I'm sure it wasn't specific to the UK but I can't think of any other case outside the UK where this happened. I'm sure it still happened & that I just don't know about it.

I did have a previous answer about the cases of Wilde & Turing with more historical context if anyone was interested in that however (thanks to Reddit's shitty search function) I can't find it at the minute but I'll keep looking.

Perhaps /u/victoryfanfare, /u/cephalopodie, /u/prehensilefoot et al may have more information on this area as my memory's failing.