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Remembering “The Homosexuals”

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Editor’s note: This guest post by Scott Wooledge was originally published at Daily Kos and is published here with his permission. Scott Wooledge writes at the Daily Kos under the handle Clarknt67.

44 years ago this week, March 7, 1967, CBS News aired a Special Report hosted by Mike Wallace titled simply, “The Homosexuals.”

https://youtube.com/watch?v=-AXAOT_swIE%3Ffs%3D1%26hl%3Den_US

Wallace begins quoting a 1967 CBS-commissioned opinion poll that showed “most Americans are repelled by the mere notion of homosexuality” and “two out of three look upon homosexuals with disgust, discomfort or fear. One out of ten says hatred.” He goes on to say:

The majority of Americans favor legal punishment even for homosexual acts performed in private between consenting adults. The homosexual, bitterly aware of his rejection, responds by going underground, they frequent their own clubs, bars and coffee houses where they can act out in the fashion that they want to.

Wayne Besen of Truth Wins Out calls this “the single most destructive hour of antigay propaganda in our nation’s history.”

It is definitely painful but important look into a bygone era, but one that is not so very far in our past (I was, myself, merely 21 days away from coming into this world).

Dave White took a fresh look at this documentary in an article for The Advocate last year. Describing his review process, he says:

I took notes. And when I was done my pad of paper was a laundry list of every horrible thing you’ve ever heard about the gays: smothering mothers, mental illness, animalistic sexual gratification, society’s repulsion, promiscuity, recruitment, etc.

Some quotes, some from Wallace, some from clergy and other “experts” on the subject:

“They frequent their own bars … where they can act out…”

“The average homosexual isn’t capable of love.”

“Homosexuality is, in fact, a mental illness.”

“The church has a great deal of sympathy for those who are handicapped in this way.”

“[Being a homosexual] automatically rules out that [the man in question] will remain happy.”

But what I find interesting is not so much the archaic, offensive language but the insight into how the law played into a culture of oppression. Wallace reminds us in 1967, Illinois was the only state that did not outlaw homosexual acts. (Most sodomy laws would live on until the Supreme Court struck them down in 6-3 ruling in Lawrence v. Texas in 2003.)

We’re now living in a time when finally the paradigm is shifting. But 1967, it was unquestioned that it was the appropriate place of government to manage, control, and contain the homosexuals and protect good society from them. In the clip below you will hear a police chief explain the importance of maintaining the “moral aptness here in the community” (which, at that time, would mean endless sting arrests, bar raids, in some places, even home invasions.) The government, top to bottom, was an enthusiastic participant and propagator of LGBT oppression.

But it seems, gratefully, that ship is turning around. But also it seems too that movement may have confused some people. I see people pointing to landmarks, like the passage of Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell in 1993 or Defense of Marriage Act in 1996, as somehow a marker of the beginning of the LGBT struggle for equality.

In fact, those moments in time only serve to illustrate that the LGBT community’s call for equality became too strident, too effective, too threatening and hence, legislative roadblocks had to be constructed to slow or stop it.

Below, I’ve share a six minute clip I found particularly heartbreaking and disturbing. The intro starts off, with seeming benevolent condescension, then takes a turn:

Most homosexuals do not consider themselves ill, and they are able to live with their condition fairly comfortably.

On the other hand, there are those whose compulsive behavior becomes a problem for the police. This is such an example.

Wallace then accompanies the police on a ride along where a 19-year old serviceman is picked up for trolling for sex in a public park bathroom. He is heard, but not shown, pleading and begging to deaf ears that his life will be over. And he’s probably right.

https://youtube.com/watch?v=Pa7OwUOur1M%3Ffs%3D1%26hl%3Den_US

What might have become of this young man after his arrest? Well, his name and picture would probably have been run in the local paper. He was a servicemember, so it was likely the police contacted his CO and he was dishonorably discharged.

But he was only 19, he might still be saved. His parents might have committed him to an asylum, for reparative therapy, that might have included electroshock, chemical or actual castration, and yes, even lobotomies.

But why would someone risk such consequences? There were no other options, of course. It was another time, there was no Craigslist, Grindr, or Facebook.

But much more significantly, municipalities across the country gave not a second thought to violating LGBT Americans’ First Amendment right to free association. Gay bars were illegal in much of the country. Even hosting a gathering of “known homosexuals” in the privacy of your home was often an arrestable offense. We see the circuitous nature of the oppression, where gay people are granted no space to exist in private, and are declared a public menace, which becomes a convenient excuse to hunt them down in private… And round and round we go.

In the clip, the police chief brags of the 3,000 arrests he’s made, and warns the problem is growing:

I’m concerned with the moral aptness here in the community and I’m opposed as a matter of principle to making anything which is improper or immoral conspicuous and by this conspicuousness making it easy for a person to engage in this kind of activity.

I can’t help thinking how similar these concerns of “conspicuousness” are like many current objections to marriage equality, which conservatives fear it will “make it easier for people to engage in this kind of activity.” We must keep them “less conspicuous” for the children! Or objections to repealing “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” confirmed it was best for everyone if gay people were kept as inconspicuous as possible (for the sake of “troop morale.”)

The police chief adds in a rueful tone:

The law is itself is much that, really, there isn’t a great deal we can do about those things that occur in private places.

A morality police’s lament: they can’t just knock down the doors of our bedrooms and put an end to our depravity once and for all. Thankfully, the Supreme Court definitively closed the door on that option in 2003.

To clarify, gay establishments existed, but they were most often clandestine operations. To even enter one was to risk arrest. Forbidding them opened the door to exploitation. They usually operated only by the grace of pay-offs to both police and the Mafia. Gays were subjected to an endless vicious cycle of exploitation from the law and the lawless alike. This pressure-cooker of corruption was, in part, what fed the critical mass that culminated in the famous Stonewall Riots of 1969.

By the 1980s the worst of this police harassment was a thing of the past. Although not entirely, the raids continue to this day, under dubious pretext from Texas to Atlanta to New York City. And the arrival of the AIDS crisis served as a bitter reminder we were still a disposable population, unworthy of attention or care.

After the special aired, Jack Nichols of the of the nascent LGBT rights organization, the Mattachine Society (founded in 1955) shared this anecdote of his encounter with Wallace:

[A]fter we finished and the camera was turned off, Mike Wallace sat down with me and talked for about half an hour. He said, “You know, you answered all of my questions capably, but I have a feeling that you don’t really believe that homosexuality is as acceptable as you make it sound.” I asked him why he would say that. “Because,” he said, “in your heart I think you know it’s wrong.” It was infuriating. I told him I thought being gay was just fine, but that in his heart he thought it was wrong.

From Wikipedia, (a very interesting read):

For his part, anchor Mike Wallace came to regret his participation in the episode. “I should have known better,” he said in 1992.

Speaking in 1996, Wallace stated, “That is — God help us — what our understanding was of the homosexual lifestyle a mere twenty-five years ago because nobody was out of the closet and because that’s what we heard from doctors — that’s what Socarides told us, it was a matter of shame.”

The Socarides he references would be Charles Socarides, a prominent Columbia University psychiatrist. He is featured in the documentary and was very active at the time, fighting the movement to remove homosexuality from the DSM as a mental illness. He also penned a book Homosexuality: A Freedom Too Far (a collection of anti-gay nonsense pseudo-science, still popular with anti-gay hate groups like Family Research Council). Sort of an East coast, elite Anita Bryant.

Today’s youth may associate the name Socarides with his son, Richard, who currently serves as President of Equality Matters and has served as LGBT liaison to the Clinton Administration, and has long been an outspoken voice for the LGBT equality movement.

Clearly we’ve come a long way, apparently you can now endure a sting operation like the serviceman’s and not only avoid jail and commitment but keep your Senate seat.

And LGBT images in the media aren’t this awful, by any means. But they still need a lot of work, 44 years later. It was less than a year ago, CNN’s Kyra Phillips wanted to address the issue of “Can homosexuality be cured?” “NO!” is already a long-held consensus opinion of the following leading professional organizations:

  • The American Psychiatric Association
  • The American Psychological Association
  • The American Psychoanalytical Association
  • The American Academy Of Pediatrics
  • The National Association of Social Workers

And these organizations would object to the question frame of “cure.” They think it’s definitely not an illness, and there’s no sound evidence orientation can be changed.

But apparently, those scientists and respected professionals don’t know what they’re talking about. No, Ms. Phillips of CNN—the one network committed to “Moving Truth Forward”—looked far and wide, until she found a discredited former-psychologist under a rock who would come on the air and tell her what she wanted to hear: “Yes.” That man was Richard Cohen. If his name is familiar you may remember his meltdown on the Rachel Maddow Show (when he had the misfortune of encountering a real journalist).

https://youtube.com/watch?v=TLlVDSfbzpE%3Ffs%3D1%26hl%3Den_US

Among the endorsers of Richard Cohen’s book, Coming out Straight?, Dr. Laura C. Schlessinger and Charles Socarides, who wrote before his death in 2005:

“This book is a testament to a heroic and successful struggle to regain one’s heterosexual destiny. It gives hope to many.”

–Charles W. Socarides, M.D., Author,

Homosexuality: A Freedom Too Far

How far we’ve come. How far we still have to go to marginalizing the voices of hate and ignorance that are featured in our media as credible sources.

The full hour video may be viewed via this link.

FYI: Wallace makes not a single reference to lesbians in the special. A very telling non-commentary comment on attitudes toward women’s sexuality, indeed.

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OPINION

Noem Defends Shooting Her 14-Month Old Puppy to Death, Brags She Has Media ‘Gasping’

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April 26, 2024

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Republican Governor Kristi Noem of South Dakota, a top potential Trump vice presidential running mate pick, revealed in a forthcoming book she “hated” her 14-month old puppy and shot it to death. Massive online outrage ensued, including accusations of “animal cruelty” and “cold-blooded murder,” but the pro-life former member of Congress is defending her actions and bragging she had the media “gasping.”

“Cricket was a wirehair pointer, about 14 months old,” Noem writes in her soon-to-be released book, according to The Guardian which reports “the dog, a female, had an ‘aggressive personality’ and needed to be trained to be used for hunting pheasant.”

“By taking Cricket on a pheasant hunt with older dogs, Noem says, she hoped to calm the young dog down and begin to teach her how to behave. Unfortunately, Cricket ruined the hunt, going ‘out of her mind with excitement, chasing all those birds and having the time of her life’.”

“Then, on the way home after the hunt, as Noem stopped to talk to a local family, Cricket escaped Noem’s truck and attacked the family’s chickens, ‘grabb[ing] one chicken at a time, crunching it to death with one bite, then dropping it to attack another’.”

READ MORE: President Hands Howard Stern Live Interview After NY Times Melts Down Over Biden Brush-Off

“Cricket the untrainable dog, Noem writes, behaved like ‘a trained assassin’.”

Except Cricket wasn’t trained. Online several people with experience training dogs have said Noem did everything wrong.

“I hated that dog,” Noem wrote, calling the young girl pup “untrainable,” “dangerous to anyone she came in contact with,” and “less than worthless … as a hunting dog.”

“At that moment,” Noem wrote, “I realized I had to put her down.”

“It was not a pleasant job,” she added, “but it had to be done. And after it was over, I realized another unpleasant job needed to be done.”

The Guardian reports Noem went on that day to slaughter a goat that “smelled ‘disgusting, musky, rancid’ and ‘loved to chase’ Noem’s children, knocking them down and ruining their clothes.”

She dragged both animals separately into a gravel pit and shot them one at a time. The puppy died after one shell, but the goat took two.

On social media Noem expressed no regret, no sadness, no empathy for the animals others say did not need to die, and certainly did not need to die so cruelly.

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But she did use the opportunity to promote her book.

Attorney and legal analyst Jeffrey Evan Gold says Governor Noem’s actions might have violated state law.

“You slaughtered a 14-month-old puppy because it wasn’t good at the ‘job’ you chose for it?” he asked. “SD § 40-1-2.3. ‘No person owning or responsible for the care of an animal may neglect, abandon, or mistreat the animal.'”

The Democratic National Committee released a statement saying, “Kristi Noem’s extreme record goes beyond bizarre rants about killing her pets – she also previously said a 10-year-old rape victim should be forced to carry out her pregnancy, does not support exceptions for rape or incest, and has threatened to throw pharmacists in jail for providing medication abortions.”

Former Trump White House Director of Strategic Communications Alyssa Farah Griffin, now a co-host on “The View” wrote, “There are countless organizations that re-home dogs from owners who are incapable of properly training and caring for them.”

The Lincoln Project’s Rick Wilson blasted the South Dakota governor.

“Kristi Noem is trash,” he began. “Decades with hunting- and bird-dogs, and the number I’ve killed because they were chicken-sharp or had too much prey drive is ZERO. Puppies need slow exposure to birds, and bird-scent.”

“She killed a puppy because she was lazy at training bird dogs, not because it was a bad dog,” he added. “Not every dog is for the field, but 99.9% of them are trainable or re-homeable. We have one now who was never going in the field, but I didn’t kill her. She’s sleeping on the couch. You down old dogs, hurt dogs, and sick dogs humanely, not by shooting them and tossing them in a gravel pit. Unsporting and deliberately cruel…but she wrote this to prove the cruelty is the point.”

Melissa Jo Peltier, a writer and producer of the “Dog Whisperer with Cesar Millan” series, also heaped strong criticism on Noem.

“After 10+ years working with Cesar Millan & other highly specialized trainers, I believe NO dog should be put down just because they can’t or won’t do what we decide WE want them to,” Peltier said in a lengthy statement. “Dogs MUST be who they are. Sadly, that’s often who WE teach them to be. And our species is a hot mess. I would have happily taken Kristi Noem’s puppy & rehomed it. What she did is animal cruelty & cold blooded murder in my book.”

READ MORE: ‘Blood on Your Hands’: Tennessee Republicans OK Arming Teachers After Deadly School Shooting

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OPINION

President Hands Howard Stern Live Interview After NY Times Melts Down Over Biden Brush-Off

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1 day ago

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April 26, 2024

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President Joe Biden gave an nearly-unannounced, last-minute, live exclusive interview Friday morning to Howard Stern, the SiriusXM radio host who for decades, from the mid-1990s to about 2015, was a top Trump friend, fan, and aficionado. But the impetus behind the President’s move appears to be a rare and unsigned statement from the The New York Times Company, defending the “paper of record” after months of anger from the public over what some say is its biased negative coverage of the Biden presidency and, especially, a Thursday report by Politico claiming Times Publisher A.G. Sulzberger is furious the President has refused to give the “Grey Lady” an in-person  interview.

“The Times’ desire for a sit-down interview with Biden by the newspaper’s White House team is no secret around the West Wing or within the D.C. bureau,” Politico reported. “Getting the president on the record with the paper of record is a top priority for publisher A.G. Sulzberger. So much so that last May, when Vice President Kamala Harris arrived at the newspaper’s midtown headquarters for an off-the-record meeting with around 40 Times journalists, Sulzberger devoted several minutes to asking her why Biden was still refusing to grant the paper — or any major newspaper — an interview.”

“In Sulzberger’s view,” Politico explained, “only an interview with a paper like the Times can verify that the 81-year-old Biden is still fit to hold the presidency.”

But it was this statement that made Politico’s scoop go viral.

READ MORE: Justices’ Views on Trump Immunity Stun Experts: ‘Watching the Constitution Be Rewritten’

“’All these Biden people think that the problem is Peter Baker or whatever reporter they’re mad at that day,’ one Times journalist said. ‘It’s A.G. He’s the one who is pissed [that] Biden hasn’t done any interviews and quietly encourages all the tough reporting on his age.'”

Popular Information founder Judd Legum in March documented The New York Times’ (and other top papers’) obsession with Biden’s age after the Hur Report.

Thursday evening the Times put out a “scorching” statement, as Politico later reported, not on the newspaper’s website but on the company’s corporate website, not addressing the Politico piece directly but calling it “troubling” that President Biden “has so actively and effectively avoided questions from independent journalists during his term.”

Media watchers and critics pushed back on the Times’ statement.

READ MORE: ‘To Do God Knows What’: Local Elections Official Reads Lara Trump the Riot Act

“NYT issues an unprecedented statement slamming Biden for ‘actively and effectively avoid[ing] questions from independent journalists during his term’ and claiming it’s their ‘independence’ that Biden dislikes, when it’s actually that they’re dying to trip him up,” wrote media critic Dan Froomkin, editor of Press Watch.

Froomkin also pointed to a 2017 report from Poynter, a top journalism site published by The Poynter Institute, that pointed out the poor job the Times did of interviewing then-President Trump.

Others, including former Biden Deputy Secretary of State Brian McKeon, debunked the Times’ claim President Biden hasn’t given interviews to independent journalists by pointing to Biden’s interviews with CBS News’ “60 Minutes” and a 20-minute sit-down interview with veteran journalist John Harwood for ProPublica.

Former Chicago Sun-Times editor Mark Jacob, now a media critic who publishes Stop the Presses, offered a more colorful take of Biden’s decision to go on Howard Stern.

The Times itself just last month reported on a “wide-ranging interview” President Biden gave to The New Yorker.

Watch the video and read the social media posts above or at this link.

READ MORE: ‘Doesn’t Care if Pregnant Women Live or Die’: Alito Slammed Over Emergency Abortion Remarks

 

 

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CNN Smacks Down Trump Rant Courthouse So ‘Heavily Guarded’ MAGA Cannot Attend His Trial

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April 26, 2024

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Donald Trump’s Friday morning claim Manhattan’s Criminal Courts Building is “heavily guarded” so his supporters cannot attend his trial was torched by a top CNN anchor. The ex-president, facing 34 felony charges in New York, had been urging his followers to show up and protest on the courthouse steps, but few have.

“I’m at the heavily guarded Courthouse. Security is that of Fort Knox, all so that MAGA will not be able to attend this trial, presided over by a highly conflicted pawn of the Democrat Party. It is a sight to behold! Getting ready to do my Courthouse presser. Two minutes!” Trump wrote Friday morning on his Truth Social account.

CNN’s Kaitlan Collins supplied a different view.

“Again, the courthouse is open the public. The park outside, where a handful of his supporters have gathered on trials days, is easily accessible,” she wrote minutes after his post.

READ MORE: ‘Assassination of Political Rivals as an Official Act’: AOC Warns Take Trump ‘Seriously’

Trump has tried to rile up his followers to come out and make a strong showing.

On Monday Trump urged his supporters to “rally behind MAGA” and “go out and peacefully protest” at courthouses across the country, while complaining that “people who truly LOVE our Country, and want to MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN, are not allowed to ‘Peacefully Protest,’ and are rudely and systematically shut down and ushered off to far away ‘holding areas,’ essentially denying them their Constitutional Rights.”

On Wednesday Trump claimed, “The Courthouse area in Lower Manhattan is in a COMPLETE LOCKDOWN mode, not for reasons of safety, but because they don’t want any of the thousands of MAGA supporters to be present. If they did the same thing at Columbia, and other locations, there would be no problem with the protesters!”

After detailing several of his false claims about security measures prohibiting his followers from being able to show their support and protest, CNN published a fact-check on Wednesday:

“Trump’s claims are all false. The police have not turned away ‘thousands of people’ from the courthouse during his trial; only a handful of Trump supporters have shown up to demonstrate near the building,” CNN reported.

“And while there are various security measures in place in the area, including some street closures enforced by police officers and barricades, it’s not true that ‘for blocks you can’t get near this courthouse.’ In reality, the designated protest zone for the trial is at a park directly across the street from the courthouse – and, in addition, people are permitted to drive right up to the front of the courthouse and walk into the building, which remains open to the public. If people show up early enough in the morning, they can even get into the trial courtroom itself or the overflow room that shows near-live video of the proceedings.”

READ MORE: Justices’ Views on Trump Immunity Stun Experts: ‘Watching the Constitution Be Rewritten’

 

 

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