| The
writer Karl Maria Kertbeny
coined the word "homosexual" as part of a
broader system for the classification of sexual
types. He called men who are attracted to women
heterosexual, masturbators monosexualists, and devotees of
anal intercourse pygists, and coined a variety of other
words to describe every imaginable variation in sexual
taste. In retrospect, his classificatory zeal seems
peculiar, but he had good intentions. He believed
that each of his sexual categories is rooted in heredity,
and used that argument as a basis for opposition to Paragraph
175 and other laws against consensual sex between men.
In spite of Kertbeny's
arguments, the term homosexual was quickly adopted by
doctors like Richard von Krafft-Ebing
who used it as a diagnosis for mental illness.
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