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The word homophile is a synonym for homosexual or gay. "Homo" mean 'same' and "phile" means 'friend/love'.
The word homo had previously been explicity linked to sex with the invention of the word "homosexual" in 1869. However, homophile had somewhat different connotations: it was a word used by activists, first in Germany of the 1920s and 1930s, then in the 1950s and early-to-mid-1960s in the USA.
The virulently anti-gay quasi-history The Pink Swastika claims that the term homophile was coined by Karl Gunther Heimsoth, the doctor of SA head Ernst Rohm. There were many gay men in the early SA of the 1920s, so this may or may not be correct. This alleged 'fact' has not yet been refuted, although many of the 'facts' in The Pink Swastika have been shown to be half-truths and falsehoods.
Since 1969 the term has since fallen almost completely out of common use, after bitter disputes. So it strongly connotes one of those earlier periods. A reference to a "homophile group" would almost always refer to one of the pre-1969 period.
Notable U.S. homophile groups were the Mattachine Society for men and the Daughters of Bilitis for women.
The term was also used in the key French gay publication of the 1950s, Arcadie, in articles such as : "Un Homophile au temps des buchers" & "Petits homophiles du grand siecle".
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