While I can’t speak to international gay rights movements, mobilization aided gay American citizens to find one another, initially through homophobic and exclusionary psychiatric screening (which prompted established communities to come up with evasive maneuvers to serve their country without discrimination, as well as inspired those who might be questioning to think more directly about their identity) and subsequently by bringing together people from all over the country into homosocial barracks and training facilities. Although lesbians were initially overlooked in these screens, leaders of WAC and other female enlisted and civilian groups eventually developed their own protocols for identifying and serving lesbians in their organizations. While the actual experiences of being gay in the military might have been enough to spur a gay rights movement, it was the Blue Discharges that directly led to the creation of many proto-gay rights groups: soldiers who were accused of being gay (regardless of their actual identity, as the qualifications for “being gay” sometimes just meant having a thin frame as a man or a short haircut as a woman) were dishonorably discharged from the military and were ineligible for many veterans’ services, including the GI Bill. Further, the military made available the reason for the blue discharge for potential future employers, which meant that service people could face a lifetime of employment and community discrimination, especially outside of major urban centers. Early rights organizations were assembled to counter these discharges and change the dishonorable tag to garner benefits and privacy for veterans, and many gay veterans moved to the cities like NY and SF that already supported larger gay populations and were therefore concentrated by the 1960s.

Allan Bérubé’s Coming Out Under Fire (1990) details the story of WW2. Margot Canady’s The Straight State (2011) contextualizes the story of WW2 and details the growing 20th century governmental awareness and classification of gay life in the military as it stemmed from increased population interaction and psychiatric intervention in immigration and welfare. George Chauncey’s Gay New York (1994) is a good place to start for a history of gay life starting in the Gilded Age.