“A SECRET WORLD GROWS OPEN AND BOLDER. SOCIETY IS FORCED TO LOOK AT IT—AND TRY TO UNDERS

“A SECRET WORLD GROWS OPEN AND BOLDER. SOCIETY IS FORCED TO LOOK AT IT—AND TRY TO UNDERSTAND IT…HOMOSEXUALITY IN AMERICA,“ by Paul Welch, @life, June 26, 1964.
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On June 26, 1964, fifty-three years ago today, @life offered a fourteen-page "report on homosexuality” that more accurately can be described as a report on America’s ignorance of, and distaste for, homosexuals. The subjects, according to the author, “are part of what they call the ‘gay world,’ which is actually a sad and often sordid world…This social disorder, which society tries to suppress…does present a problem–and parents are especially concerned.”
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While the article was groundbreaking in that it featured now-familiar names (e.g., pioneer José Sarria), places (e.g., legendary leather bar The Toolbox (pictured)), and organizations (e.g., Mattachine Society and ONE), it also perpetuated stereotypes (listing, for example, “those professions favored by homosexuals” as “interior decorating, fashion design, hairstyling, dance and theater”), emphasized self-loathing among gay men (quoting a bar owner as saying, “This is a place for men, a place without all those screaming faggots, fuzzy sweaters, and sneakers”), and explored the tension between the equally harmful views of law enforcement (describing the “unrelenting crackdown on homosexuals” in Los Angeles) and certain religious organizations, which “[did] not condone homosexuality but [did] regard it as a psychological problem.”
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Interestingly, the article noted a recent legal challenge to the Civil Service Commission’s regulations prohibiting homosexuals from working in the federal government; while not named in the article, Bruce C. Scott, a member of the Mattachine Society of Washington, D.C., was behind that challenge. On June 26, 1965, a year after the LIFE article, Mattachine Washington and other groups made history by picketing the Civil Service Commission in support of Scott’s case. #lgbthistory #HavePrideInHistory #Resist (at San Francisco, California)