Opposition to Homosexuality and the Gay Liberation Movement
The Media:
The media was often used as an effective tool for campaigning AGAINST homosexuality in the late fifties and early sixties. By associating homosexuality with crime, sin and pedophilia it made it very easy to scare many individuals away from homosexuality and even teach them to hate it. The following videos from that time period demonstrate the media's ability to instill hatred and fear against homosexuality as a whole in its viewers.
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The Homosexual as a PedophileThis educational video on the Homosexual in the 50s is effective in making very harsh and untrue generalizations about homosexuality. Claiming that all homosexuals are manipulative, mentally ill and dangerous pedophiles, it successfully portrays the homosexual as your typical villain, plain and simple. This negative characterization starts right off the bat with the words "Boys Beware" sprawled across the screen. A Lt. of Inglewood Police Department then comes in, establishing himself as a trustworthy source; as "the Good Guy". The video then goes on to show several different examples of boys who were drawn in by the manipulation of the homosexual. In each example, the homosexual was portrayed to be mentally ill and dangerous. In the first case, for example, the Homosexual Ralph was said to be sick. "A sickness that was not visible like smallpox but no less dangerous and contagious... a sickness of the mind". Each case ended with either the pedophilic homosexual being arrested, the young boy involved with the homosexual being arrested, or the young boy being murdered or raped. I can see how this video would be successful in scaring young boys away from homosexuality, or from any strangers at all for that matter.
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"And you will be caught... don't think you wont be"In this video, a detective of the 60's gives a very impassioned speech against homosexuality to a large group of high school students. He describes homosexuality as a sickness, insisting that one "turns" gay or lesbian. He then goes on to rant about how homosexuality is a serious crime and how the police department is working extremely hard to arrest each and every homosexual out there. In the end, he alludes to the popular belief that homosexuality is a sin and that if the police department doesn't catch them that they were going to catch themselves. This police officer does a fantastic job at eliciting fear in his audience. You can tell by the uncomfortable facial expressions of the students who were listening.
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"Vice, Degradation, and Human Misery"This video gives a few different examples of how negatively homosexuals had been portrayed in the media. The way the narrator makes homosexuals out to be dirty, sick, and evil, describing a local gay bar as "a marketplace of vice, degradation and human misery." He makes a reference to how the police department has kept tabs on the number of homosexuals in the city, insisting that they were all criminals. The video also talks about how homosexuality was a mental illness and that it could be caused by prolonged exposure to gay magazines.
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The Women's Movement
Many women who were members of the National Organization for Women (NOW) believed that they should not make lesbian rights a part of their agenda in fear of it hindering their cause. Famous women's rights activist and writer Betty Friedan often referred to lesbians as "The Lavender Menace", that often tried to steal the show from the general Women's movement. She didn't believe that the lesbian cause applied to the majority of women.
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Psychologists
Charles SocaridesCharles Socarides was a well known psychologist who held a firm believe that homosexuality was a "medical disorder which has reached epidemiologic proportions", and that it could be cured through various forms of psychotherapy. He believed that homosexuality was a maladaptation in behavior resulting from experiences in early childhood life. In one of his most famous books, titled "The Overt Homosexual" (1968) Socarides lays out the characteristics of the homosexual illness and how it should be treated.
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Sandor Rado |