I found this article because it was cited in that open letter to the NYT that we were talking about yesterday. The letter criticized the NYT for its recent approach to transgenderism, but it also went back into the archive:
In 1963, the New York Times published a front-page story with the title “Growth of Overt Homosexuality in City Provokes Wide Concern,” which stated that homosexuals saw their own sexuality as “an inborn, incurable disease”—one that scientists, the Times announced, now thought could be “cured.”
I was curious about those scientists. But it turns out there's much, much more in that 1963 article, one of the most interesting and complicated newspaper articles I have ever read. The article begins on the front page of the December 17, 1963 issue. That is, it's 25 days after the assassination of JFK.
What was this article really trying to say? We're told NYC has what is probably "the greatest homosexual population in the world," which I take to mean the largest number, though I bet it was true that this was "the greatest homosexual population in the world" in the other sense of the word "great." The article is full of material that nudges the reader to conclude that the "problem of homosexuality" isn't a proper matter for criminal law enforcement. The police commissioner is quoted saying it's "medical and sociological in nature."
A gay male reader could easily find the parts of the article that encourage him to move to New York City. Choose "an occupation in which his clique is predominant," and he "can shape for himself a life lived almost exclusively in an inverted world from which the rough, unsympathetic edges of straight society can be almost totally excluded."
The article contrasts the opinions of the medical experts with the activists:
Two conflicting viewpoints converge today to overcome the silence and promote public discussion.
The first is the organized homophile movement — a minority of militant homosexuals that is openly agitating for removal of legal, social and cultural discriminations against sexual inverts.
Fundamental to this aim is the concept that homosexuality is an incurable, congenital disorder (this is disputed by the bulk of the scientific evidence) and that homosexuals should be treated by an increasingly tolerant society as just another minority.
This view is challenged by a second group, the analytical psychiatrists, who advocate an end to what it calls a head-in-sand approach to homosexuality.
They have what they consider to be overwhelming evidence that homosexuals are created — generally by ill-adjusted parents — not born.
They assert that homosexuality can be cured by sophisticated analytical and therapeutic techniques.
More significantly, the weight of the most recent findings suggests that public discussion of the nature of these parental misdeeds and attitudes that tend to foster homosexual development of children could improve family environments and reduced the incidence of sexual inversion.
We're told of a 9-year study of gay men in psychoanalysis which found, in almost all cases, "some combination of what they termed a 'close-binding, intimate' mother and/or a hostile, detached or unrespected father, or other aberrations."
The "explicitly hostile" father came in for special blame, and researchers concluded that "a constructive, supportive, warmly related father precludes the possibility of a homosexual son; he acts as a neutralizing, protective agent should the mother make seductive or close-binding attempts."
The researchers claimed that 27% of their patients "achieved a heterosexual orientation." They were "firmly convinced that psychoanalysts may well orient themselves to a heterosexual objective in treating homosexual patients."
The article ends with the opinion of gay men as reported by a young writer named Randolfe Wicker. He asked 300 homosexuals to answer two questions: "If you and a son would you want him to be homosexual?" and "If a quick, easy cure were available, would you take it?"
Only 2% of the men said yes to the first question. But 97% said they would not take the "quick, easy cure"!
That's how the article ends. There's plenty in this article to offend and outrage people of today, 60 years distant from that historical era. But I wouldn't be surprised if the article writer was himself gay, thought the psychoanalysts were full of it, and intended to get out the message that gay men can have a good and satisfying life if they move to New York City.
That headline — "Growth of Overt Homosexuality In City Provokes Wide Concern" — really means gay men ought to concern themselves with moving to New York City.
***
These days, Randolfe Wicker is 85. You can read about him here, in Wikipedia. Here he is on the Les Crane show in 1964:
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49 comments:
The reason for the "Hostile father" is probably a RESULT of the Gayness, not the cause.
This is what the cure looks like in intolerant, somewhat psychotic societies:
"Iran is one of a handful of countries where homosexual acts are punishable by death. Clerics do, however accept the idea that a person may be trapped in a body of the wrong sex. So homosexuals can be pushed into having gender reassignment surgery - and to avoid it many flee the country."
https://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-29832690
South Africa also sucks. In the 1970s, the South African military transitioned at least 900 gay men and women. These people (at least the ones who didn't die) were given new identity documents, discharged from the military, and told to cut themselves off from family and friends.
December 17th, 1963: "Growth of Overt Homosexuality In City Provokes Wide Concern."
February 15th, 2023: "Disgraced Biden DOE official Sam Brinton does not wish to appear in person at arraignment for 2nd theft of a woman's luggage."
From "provokes wide concern" to "puppy-player purloins panties" in 60 years.
60. Fucking. Years.
They didn't trust The Science?
Funny how they picked up two land-line telephone receivers to answer questions on the on-air Les Crane "Hot Line."
Well, if the experts say it, it must be so.
About 10 years after this the American Psychological Association (APA) made a fool of itself by rapidly flip-flopping on whether homosexuality was a mental illness. (Same era as Roe v. Wade and death penalty overturn by the USSC.) The APA eventually settled on "not mental illness" -- leading to a détente that lasted until AIDS in the 1980s. The cultural breakthrough was when Rock Hudson admitted being gay and with AIDS, and to a lesser degree Freddie Mercury of Queen.
For more info, see a detailed history of doctors and homosexuality rather than often narrow activist websites or the APA's own website: http://aglp.org/gap/1_history/
The 20th century analytical therapists who followed Sigmund Freud were very very very often full of sh*t. Some of them thought they could cure hardcore mental illness, such as the schizophrenics hearing voices, through talk therapy. That generation also invented the frontal lobotomy, as it was the only way to control violently mentally ill people other than a straightjacket or padded room. Rhetorical question: Does a lobotomy lead to a better life than literally smashing one's head into walls until bloody and unconscious?
The overreach of the post-WW2 moralistic/Christian/"sexual inversion" generation led to a backlash that's now reaching a logical maximum. A generation ago the National Man-Boy Love Association (NAMBLA) was in the fringe, but now many on the left speak openly about "minor attracted persons." Parents are not told about gender transitions, doctors profit from child puberty blockers and surgery. We all know this from the news and Althouse posts.
Predicting political pendulum swings can be tricky, but...perhaps we'll be back in the 1960s in another 60 years...it certainly could happen.
As always I must end the simple facts of evolution: lifestyle details don't matter as long as you reproduce. Without a reproductive next generation any subculture or ideology will die off.
a life lived almost exclusively in an inverted world
I read Remembrance of Things Past in the old English translation as a teenager -- probably too young. The translator used, if I recall correctly, the term "invert" for homosexual, and for the longest term I didn't understand what was being referred to. At some point I figured it out, but in retrospect an awful lot of stuff at the level of plot simply went over my head. I don't know what the modern translation (or translations?) use. I began reading the first book in French, but set it aside and never picked it back up, so I don't know whether the translator just took it straight from the French. Perhaps "invert" was a delicate way of referring to homosexuals. But that's what went through my mind upon seeing this phrase.
"Only 2% of the men said yes to the first question. But 97% said they would not take the "quick, easy cure"!"
An awful lot of women believe that abortion should be legal. But very few wish they had aborted their living child.
Remember when Freudian analysis was considered "the science" and enlightened people accept its findings....A lot of Freud is now discredited, but people still buy into Marx. Enlightened people continue to think that his opinions offer "the science" of history and economics.....Ironic, and not in an Alanis Morissette sense, to ponder how much neurosis and poverty were caused by followers of Freud and Marx.
The prof elides speaking of the AIDS epidemic, as usual, for the obvious reasons.
Having a homosexual child is about the same as having a kid die in a car wreck caused by a drunk. Mom joins up with MADD.
You see, the solution to homosexual men killing themselves with their sexual conduct by the 10s of thousands (according to the Moms) was for them to get married, because it was the guilt we normals imposed on the men that drove them to killing themselves. All of society needed to be reordered, not Mom’s house.
Of course, the getting married part didn’t stop the suicidal sexual behavior of gay men. The moms were wrong.
"some combination of what they termed a 'close-binding, intimate' mother and/or a hostile, detached or unrespected father, or other aberrations."
Wait!!......Wut???.......Isn't that normal!?!?
The Science is never wrong.
"can shape for himself a life lived almost exclusively in an inverted world from which the rough, unsympathetic edges of straight society can be almost totally excluded."
How can anyone read that statement, and take it seriously? The "rough, unsympathetic edges of straight society"?? Please provide examples.
Inverted??? I'm sure that's on the list of words-not-to-be-used.
It seems that the NYT's has been writing for the same OMG! demographic for at least 50 years.
Transgender spectrum.
"If you and a son would you want him"
Is that their typo?
Cisgender (i.e. same-sexual)
The politically congruent ("=") activists are doing themselves and the people no favors by adopting the Pro-Choice ethical religious games of feminist/masculinist human rites performed for social progress. The advent of Levine's dreams of personal affirmation through vicarious corruption have only exacerbated an already divergent movement.
Ann if you turned your prodigious and curious mind to the question of what medical and lived experience of being trans is in this country, I'd be super interested in the result, no matter what came out.
I'm way less interested in you doing what Jesse Signal and the rest are doing -- pouring over every single word and comma of trans care arguments and studies looking for statistical weakness or logical gaps, while leaning on anecdotes, gut instinct, and "doctors were wrong about phrenology" type arguments to promote legislation to stop people from accessing medical care that they -- and very often their parents -- want. (Which is precisely what's happening.)
I'm aware that this sort of comment suggesting you change your focus annoys you. Ah well, your posts on this matter annoy me. It's always easier to poke holes in others' arguments than to take seriously the holes in your own, and it begets results like this post, as well as your closed-minded response to the letter yesterday.
The only thing I can add that is of interest to this blog post is a link to one of the most fascinating episodes of "This American Life" ever aired. It was hosted by Alix Spiegel, who went on to be the mental health beat reporter for NPR, and has since been a lead producer at a number of other public radio programs.
It was a somewhat personal story for Alix Spiegel, since her own father had been a president of the American Psychiatric Association and (not much of a spoiler alert here) his father -- Alix's grandfather Dr. John Spiegel -- had been president of the APA shortly after the time period featured in Althouse's blog post. Dr. John Spiegel, who led the APA when homosexuality was still a recognized disorder, later came out as gay.
This is one of the most beautifully-produced public radio show episodes I've ever heard. It was a landmark in the history of This American Life. It is called "81 Words," relating to the number of words in the historic change to the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual (DSM) in which organized academic psychiatry basically made homosexuality no longer a psychiatric disorder.
Here is the link: 81 Words.
Now, here is the interesting thing for me. I found this story, lovingly and carefully told by Alix Spiegel, to be oddly unconvincing. She makes the case that the making of homosexuality as a psychiatric disorder was never evidence-based in the first place. And in her telling of how it was made to be no longer a disorder in the DSM, I found that the process that she recounted and reported was just as lacking in evidence. It is just a bunch of personal stories. Before, during and after.
But I'll let listeners decide for themselves. Just do yourself a favor and listen to it. It's about an hour.
I think I have recommended this podcast to Althouse previously; I don't recall having ever gotten a response.
and take it seriously? The "rough, unsympathetic edges of straight society"??
You can't, and they confirmed their ulterior motives when they attacked Mormons for the outcome of Democrat voices in minority communities. Conservatives (i.e. Americans) adhere to principles of a secular religion (i.e. behavioral protocol), where behaviors are treated in three ways: normalize, tolerate, or reject. Trans/homosexuality, and, in fact, all classes in the transgender spectrum, was/s tolerated as behaviors with no redeeming value. Trans/neo is rejected, at least until an individual passes the ages of confusion and reaches the age of majority, as a barbaric practice akin to elective abortion, a wicked solution.
I found 'invert' early in my reading, and figured it out pretty quickly. Right up there with prevert, pervert, and provert.
NAMBLA? North American Marlon Brando Look Alikes? H/t South Park.
The more we learn about how complicated our emotions are and how we are motivated and how complex our decision making processes we are the more people need to back off of telling individuals how to feel and what to do.
Right now we are stuck in these endless cycles of one group telling the other group what to do. Then the other group seizing power and inflicting their hate and past suffering on the other group.
The Science is never wrong.
The science demonstrated around four decades earlier that trans/neogender, unlike trans/homosexual, stability cannot be predicted, and, in fact, that neither dissonance nor abortive intent are mitigated in the majority of subjects with corruption of mind and body through medical, surgical, or psychiatric treatment.
the suicidal sexual behavior of gay men. The moms were wrong.
The moms with sympathetic appeal, empathetic cause, of Pro-Choice ethical religious sects. #NotHim #NotHer #NotMeToo
A gay man in the family is not so bad for the others. But it is a tragedy for the gay man. He gives up on having his own children. But maybe the social life makes up for that in part. The ones that I have done legal wok for are very bright and creative guys. But they are twisted by having to put on a show that they know is at best a lie. And that limits their self esteem. God have mercy on us all.
I note that there's nearly no mention of what may be the primary influencer on gay sexual preferences... Childhood sexual abuse.
I think I know a fair number of gay males and lesbians; nearly all of them, when the issue ever came up, mentioned some form of sexual abuse in their childhood years, going back to early childhood and running right up through their adolescent and late teens.
This anecdotal experience cues in well with the things I've read over the years, including the research highlighted by Clayton Cramer.
The weird thing is hearing some gays describing their peer's preference for youth and the inexperienced as being due to their attempts to both recapture their youth and at the same time, get revenge on the innocent by forcing them to experience the same thing.
You often run into that crap in the military; the mentality that says "I was subjected to abuse in training, therefore I shall abuse when I'm in a position to do the training..." I would speculate that this is a fairly common behavioral syndrome in human beings.
Invert = Confirmed Batchelor.
WHen I read this phrase in Old-timey books as a kid, I just thought "Confirmed Batchelor's" were just grumpy old and middle-aged guys who didn't want to get married, and play around, drink, smoke, and gamble.
But it was obviously code for something else.
"Inverted??? I'm sure that's on the list of words-not-to-be-used."
Right. Of course. Though it's not as bad as "perverted," though perverted in in the article too. Also "deviate" (the noun) and "deviant" (the noun)... at least pick one. It's like they lost their mind.
There are many ugly things in this article. It is an artifact of 1963.
There's plenty in it about the gay rights movement, and you can see the trends shifting within that single text. It's fascinating.
I've been one person with one set of values for over 75 years. In the Sixties I was told that aligned me with the right; oh, no, sorry, the extremist left; oh, wait the suburbs. Now I'm aligned with the suburbs; oh wait, the extremist right; oh, wait the left (I support the Ukrainians). In short, there's a sociological sorting always going on in the mind of the suburbs which sorting I no longer believe in even though I'm from the suburbs. I think the only categorical imperative is really "from the suburbs" which is a world-wide category like "the black earth belt" in Ukraine and Russia. I think I'd have more in common with other suburbanites, anywhere in the world than with any other group and I think all the other groups are working toward getting the better bits of the suburban life style for themselves A rancher may love being a rancher but the family'd get in a suburban kitchen. Janis Joplin was from the suburbs, so was Marianne Faithful, so was Kamala Harris, so was Hillary Clinton, so was Bill Gates, so was Donald Trump. As suburbanites we automatically know what other suburbanites think of us based on our/their mental dress code. We give a credence to what a suburbanite - however disguised - says which we do not give, not really, to the people the suburbanite may be disguised as. Disguised as Hispanic like AOC, yes, listen; Hispanic Catholic, living in New Mexico for ten generations - pay no attention. BLM person buying large mansions in the suburbs, yes, listen to the voice of the black community; Milwaukee residents enduring toxic schools, criminals returned to streets, a murder rate that has doubled only in the black community, no, ignore them.
In relation to the topic this is what I'm getting at - the suburbs themselves are the answer to a lot of problems - green, clean, crime-free, good schools, good jobs. But we aren't great thinkers out here. If "move to the suburbs" isn't the answer, we actually don't know what to say. Yet we're stepping out of Locke and stepping out of Hegel and out of Marx and out of Freud and into the dark. Yet we are living an answer to all the unknowns and the others are following us. "ramifications of the unknown that appear as trials" is phrase I learned from Robert Duncan, when I was disguised as hippie in the Sixties. I stopped reading him because I felt he tried to find more in the political than is there - but he really tried.
That reminds me of a poem he wrote before he got lost in a dark forest:
Often I Am Permitted to Return to a Meadow
as if it were a scene made-up by the mind,
that is not mine, but is a made place,
that is mine, it is so near to the heart,
an eternal pasture folded in all thought
so that there is a hall therein
that is a made place, created by light
wherefrom the shadows that are forms fall.
Wherefrom fall all architectures I am
I say are likenesses of the First Beloved
whose flowers are flames lit to the Lady.
She it is Queen Under The Hill
whose hosts are a disturbance of words within words
that is a field folded.
It is only a dream of the grass blowing
east against the source of the sun
in an hour before the sun’s going down
whose secret we see in a children’s game
of ring a round of roses told.
Often I am permitted to return to a meadow
as if it were a given property of the mind
that certain bounds hold against chaos,
that is a place of first permission,
everlasting omen of what is.
From covert perversion to overt inversion, with right of reversion.
"Though it's not as bad as "perverted," though perverted in in the article too."
Sorry, no. "Perverted" isn't in the article. So they are lightening up on the pejoratives.
The Science is never wrong.
Science is a philosophy and practice in the near-domain, a limited frame of reference, where accuracy is inversely proportional to offsets in time and space from the observer.
This article is a prophetic warning about the oncoming AIDS epidemic.
Somehow, prof kinda didn’t notice that at all.
Prof, I’ve got some stupid, compulsive, perverted kinks. I’ve never tried to make a civil rights movement out of them.
Take a hint.
Am I misunderstanding? Are people in this thread actually contending that straight society was NOT "rough and unsympathetic" to gay people in 1963?
the suicidal sexual behavior of gay men.
Syphilis kills quite horribly, regardless of sexual orientation. AIDS, for that matter, primarily kills heterosexuals in Africa. Gonorrhea and chlamydia aren't fun either. Straight men don't have some innate commitment to lifetime pair-bonding.
He gives up on having his own children.
This is simply false; he can adopt or have his own genetic children via surrogate. That is, unless the people who like to say "I wish everyone would mind their own business and stop forcing their lifestyles on others" pass laws to forbid this.
nearly all of them, when the issue ever came up, mentioned some form of sexual abuse in their childhood years
But you don't have any data for all of the gay people with whom the subject didn't come up. Also, what about when the subject came up with your straight friends? How many of them had a history of abuse?
This was all perfectly standard thinking in my youth. Some kind of dysfunction, genetic or acquired. You could argue about its morality, but not about its essential lack of health. That was obvious: this part of these people is not functioning properly.
Still seems pretty obvious to me.
Chuck, I've listened to the "81 Words" episode of This American Life, as well. I think it's well worth a listen. Plus, it's only, what, 45 minutes tops? Maybe less.
I also recall feeling unconvinced by the story. I can't remember exactly why anymore, so I may need to relisten to it.
Invert: I don't know whether the translator just took it straight from the French
He did. inverti was the common French term for a long time until "homosexual" gradually replaced it. Today, "gay" is used in both Quebec and France.
"Inverted??? I'm sure that's on the list of words-not-to-be-used."
Inverted, divergent, dysfunctional, and the bigotry of political congruence ("="), including the arbitrary equity and inclusion of "Respect for Marriage Act". The albinophobic and exclusive imagery under DIEversity schemes is a progressive cause that they should reconsider.
So much of this seems to be ideas and ideologies as opposed to biological realities.
I think sexual orientation might be, simply put, an idea. And so it becomes an ideology.
I think heterosexuality has a biological component. Men and women breed and give our genes to offspring. This is basic Darwin stuff, who's some kind of important scientist.
As a Christian, my theology teaches me that we all have free will. Free will explains sin and it explains all kinds of sexuality, including bestiality, necrophilia, and pedophilia.
I concede too the possibility that there may be mental illness involved. And with sexuality that's not only possible, but highly likely, at least if Dr. Freud was right on anything.
All of these areas are extremely complicated, and "social scientists" make up all kinds of shit and pretend like they are God and know all the answers.
I hope the Millennial children who have emerged from the Ivy League one-party state get smacked down, brutally, by Republicans, classical liberals, and any other adult who has some kind of memory and wasn't born yesterday.
There are many ugly things in this article. It is an artifact of 1963.
.....and in another 60 years, the comments considered acceptable will have changed again.
"Only 2% of the men said yes to the first question. But 97% said they would not take the "quick, easy cure"!"
Gay sex is MUCH easier to come by than heterosexual sex for men. That is why no one who has already embraced the life would turn from it. I’ve known a lot of gay men throughout my life.
There is a type of gay who could have gone either way. They dated women when young but had a bad break up or humiliating rejection from a woman and at just that point when they were most vulnerable regarding women they were offered sex with a man and took it.
From then on they had sex with men because it was easily available and not as humiliating as being rejected by women. The strange thing is these are usually the kind of gay who tries to form long standing partially monogamous relationships with only occasional outside flings. They are also the same men who end up alone in their old age. Rejected by a long time partner for someone younger and never finding someone again as most older hetero men could since they are heavily outnumbered by available women.
It is EXTREMELY BAD in the long run for men who could swing either way to choose men but they can’t resist the easy sex. I’ve never seen one of these men have a happy ending with a long time partner who sticks with them to the end. A few manage to hold onto a relationship by letting their partner screw anything and everything. Often rent boys. Those men are often also physically as well as mentally abused by their partners.
Heterosexuality is a better path for humans. Period.
Syphilis kills quite horribly, regardless of sexual orientation. AIDS, for that matter, primarily kills heterosexuals in Africa. Gonorrhea and chlamydia aren't fun either. Straight men don't have some innate commitment to lifetime pair-bonding.
Pathogenic progress with socially liberal lifestyles. HIV was primarily exchanged through fecal transmission. Ethical fluidity that preempts moral convictions is an individual choice.
he can adopt or have his own genetic children via surrogate.
Adopt, yes, in a trans/biological experiment. A child via surrogate was normalized with gender ideology that reduces women to a sum of their sex-correlated attributes.
"Am I misunderstanding? Are people in this thread actually contending that straight society was NOT "rough and unsympathetic" to gay people in 1963?"
IRC, Gays were put in concentration camps. They were No. 1 in the victim parade. Next to the oppressed women, Jews, Muslims, Catholics, Blacks, Browns, Asians, immigrants, and the Irish.
It was a sad world in 1963. Almost as bad as Nazi Germany.
IRC, Gays were put in concentration camps. They were No. 1 in the victim parade.
Yes, as I recall, whether it was AIDS, domestic abuse, drugs deals, etc., trans/homosexuals were the majority victims of other trans/homosexuals. Very much like the victims of Some, Select [Black] Lives Matter (SS BLM). Even Mormons got in to the act with a regime of tolerance, short of celebration. #HateLovesAbortion
Did that Superb Owl commercial with Travolta fall into overt or covert homosexuality?
This arena seems like an earlier days example of controlling discussions in science.
"As always I must end the simple facts of evolution: lifestyle details don't matter as long as you reproduce. Without a reproductive next generation any subculture or ideology will die off."
Subculture, ideology, and evolution don't have anything to do with each other unless you mean some kind of social Darwinism.
But let's say you meant for genetic traits. What you say is true at the species level but not the individual level, at least for community-dependent species. Here's a specific example:
Having an aunt or uncle is an evolutionary advantage to you, even if they don't reproduce. Those with aunts or uncles have more adult protective figures as children, and therefore are more likely to survive until reproduction. This is independent of whether the aunts and uncles have kids (which may strengthen or weaken the effect, or both). If you want empirical evidence, aunts and uncles often form very strong bonds with their nieces and nephews! This is not the case for many other species, where babies might find themselves eaten by aunts or uncles.
We could even say that having 10% of the population less likely to reproduce but there to help care for siblings and children and help the community flourish is incredibly beneficial to the success of the human species over other forms of competitive life.
Looking at evolution from an individual perspective is about ideology that privileges individuality over community formation (a different discussion entirely, once I once had a huge argument with someone from the Holy See about -- guess where I landed...), not about the mechanism of evolution.
To put it a different way: by your evolutionary logic, shouldn't there be no gay people?
Pervert is a functional term of art similar to "incel".
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