The Dictionary of Homophobia (95 page)

Read The Dictionary of Homophobia Online

Authors: Louis-Georges Tin

Tags: #SOC012000

—Adoption; Anti-PaCS; Associations; European Law; Heterosexism; Jurisprudence; North America; Parenting; Rhetoric.

McCARTHY, Joseph

American Republican Senator Joseph McCarthy (1908–57) became the figurehead of the anti-Communist crusade in the United States between 1947 and 1954. This period, known simply as “McCarthyism,” was the equivalent of a witch hunt throughout American society against those who were perceived by conservative forces as “anti-American,” with presumed ties to the Communist Party and the Soviet Union. In fact, McCarthyism really started before McCarthy himself: simply put, it is the manifestation of a systematic and hateful expression against perceived dissent. More specifically, McCarthyism was the direct result of action to rout out would-be communists by the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), which since 1924 had been directed by J. Edgar
Hoover,
who discovered his administration’s
raison d’être
in this movement.

In the Cold War context of 1947 under the influence of President Harry Truman, a US senatorial commission was set up to investigate the “allegiance” of federal employees. The target of this commission was those who were found to be supporters of totalitarianism,
fascism
, or
communism
. The FBI got involved, helping to coordinate the investigation of all federal agencies. Following McCarthy’s infamous speech in Wheeling, West Virginia in 1950, in which he produced a list of people he claimed were known Communists working for the state department, the process became more radical. A few days later, Deputy Undersecretary of State John Peurifoy was called as witness by the commission. When asked about the number of employees who had resigned from the department since 1947, Peurifoy answered, “Ninety-one,” but added that most were homosexual. From then on the homosexual figure, the “pervert,” was directly linked to the communist figure, the “red.” For the first time in American history, homosexuality became a major political issue. The logic of the McCarthy-esque rhetoric on homosexuality was simple: homosexuals were individuals with weak characters, and thus particularly susceptible to blackmail, and more apt to belong to clandestine circles that were subject to foreign influences; as a result, homosexuals were “predestined” to be traitors to the nation. Under these conditions, it was determined that all jobs having to do with the nation’s security must be closed to them, particularly those under the federal administration. It is this logic that would prevail with the approval of the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1952, which closed American borders to “sexual deviants,” and President Dwight Eisenhower’s order in 1953 making “sexual
perversions
” an acceptable reason to exclude someone from working for the federal government.

McCarthy’s personal downfall in December 1954, which was arguably instigated by his ill-fated 1953 inquiry into the US
Army
(nothing came of the investigations) as well as recurring rumors about his close collaborator Roy Cohn’s homosexuality (which were later proven true), did not change the American public’s negative views on homosexuality. The issue remained at the heart of American public debate; further, the FBI’s mission to control the lives of homosexuals continued, and
discrimination
toward gays and lesbians gained a legal foothold.

It is estimated that between 1947 and 1950—before the apex of McCarthyism—more than 1,700 candidates for federal jobs were rejected because of their homosexuality; as well, more than 4,000 from the armed forces and closed to 500 government workers were fired. Between 1950 and 1953, historian John D’Emilio places the number of gays and lesbians fired from the federal administration at forty to sixty a month. Moreover, beginning in 1950, McCarthyism went beyond a simple “clean-up operation” to rid the civil service of homosexuals; it evolved into a national “panic” against homosexuals and their immoral ways. A year earlier in 1949,
Newsweek
magazine described homosexuals as “sexual murderers.” Soon, across the country, the
police
intensified raids on gay and lesbian bars and public cruising areas, and disseminated the names of those arrested. In certain states such as Idaho, obsolete anti-sodomy laws were revived, permitting the imprisonment of those convicted. And on a sordid, anecdotal note, in 1954 following a homophobic murder in Miami, a local newspaper advocated that gays themselves should be punished in such instances because they incite “normal” persons to commit such actions.

Beyond America, the McCarthy politic against gays and lesbians had consequences in Canada and the United Kingdom. There, too, anti-homosexual campaigns were focused on those working for the government in the name of “the enemy within.” In Canada, the movement was short-lived, but nonetheless led to a number of anti-immigrant measures similar to those adopted in the United States. More paradoxically, in the United Kingdom, it was precisely the McCarthy crisis that led to the constitution of the Wolfenden Commission in 1954, charged with investigating the problems of homosexuality and prostitution after a succession of high-profile men were convicted of homosexual offences. The commission’s resulting report was published in 1957, which surprisingly recommended that “homosexual behaviour between consenting adults in private should no longer be a criminal offence,” the first positive political action that would lead to
decriminalization
a decade later.

In the United States, the consequences of McCarthyism forced the emerging gay activist movement (e.g., the Mattachine Society, the Daughters of Bilitis) to keep a low profile, going as far as to cooperate with authorities on issues such as cruising in public places. Attempts at a more radical militancy among gay activists, which had nonetheless led to the foundation of the Mattachine Society, would not reach its apex until the
Stonewall
revolt in 1969. Still, certain debates from the era of McCarthyism remain topical to this day, such as that related to the presence of gays and lesbians in the military.
—Pierre-Olivier de Busscher

D’Emilio, John.
Sexual Politics, Sexual Communities
. Chicago/London: Univ. of Chicago Press, 1983.

———.
Making Trouble: Essays on Gay History, Politics, and the University
. New York/London: Routledge, 1992.

Reeves, Thomas.
The Life and Times of Joe McCarthy
. New York: Stein & Day, 1982.

—Armed Forces; England; Hoover, J. Edgar; North America; Peril; Police; Treason; Turing, Alan.

MEDIA

In the past, media has treated homosexuality in three different ways: with silence, condemnation, and mockery.

In the nineteenth century, newspapers did not mention homosexuality, but if they did, it was with contempt: common references to it included “shameful acts,” “vile morality,” and “abominable commerce.” The first major media frenzy over homosexuality in France happened when the Count de Germiny was arrested attempting a pickup at a street urinal on the Champs Elysées in 1876). For many English, it was “the unnameable
vice
, the unspeakable vice,
inter Christianos non nominandum
.” first put forward by professors, which meant that it was not to be discussed in classes or as part of any serious scientific discourse. In the 1920s, the
Times
of London published only one or two short articles on the subject each year (in some years, homosexuality was not mentioned at all) and, in the 1930s, the same newspaper no longer even used the word “homosexual”: homosexuality was now described as a “grave offense against morality,” and gay bars were “bars with a peculiar reputation.” In 1929, during the second conference of the World League for Sexual Reform held in London, the “taboo attitudes” of the press were denounced: the previous year, the
Daily Express
believed it had the right to write about the
Radclyffe Hall
affair: “There are certain vices in the world which, as they cannot be cured, must be endured, but in silence.” It must be said that in Anglo-Saxon countries, virtually all publications about homosexuality were subjected to obscenity laws, the most famous being the 1873 Comstock Law in the United States.

In France, the taboo against homosexuality was also very strong, even within the leftist press. When André
Gide
published
Corydon,
his book on homosexuality and its place in the world, without publicity in 1924, the satirical newspaper
Le Canard enchaîné
(The chained-up duck) published a significant news item: “Mr. André Gide wishes to announce that he does not give copies of his book (which can lead to
scandal
) either to critics or to his friends. This is good! But why not do that same favor to booksellers?”

The taboo also concerned images of homosexuality. The famous British satirical weekly
Punch
hardly published any gay cartoons between 1919 and 1939. Over in Hollywood, the Production Code (also known as the Hays Code), written in 1930 by a Presbyterian (Hays) and a Jesuit (Father Daniel Lord) and then adopted by the Motion Pictures Producers and Distributors Association (later the Motion Picture Association of America), identified morally acceptable and unacceptable content for motion pictures, making cinematic representations of homosexuality virtually impossible (it specified that “sexual
perversions
, even as an allusion, are forbidden”); the code remained in effect for over thirty-five years, until 1967, although in 1961, a revision of the code allowed for representation of “sexual aberrations” but only with “
discretion
, precaution and moderation.” That same year, the San Francisco public broadcaster KQED presented
The Rejected
, a one-hour “frank and outspoken appraisal of homosexuality” featuring Margaret Mead and others, regarded as the first television program on the subject anywhere in the world. But French television was for a long time terrified of the homosexual question: in 1973, an episode of the popular program
Les Dossiers de l’écran
on the subject of homosexuality was postponed on request from government authorities; it was postponed again in 1974, this time by Arthur Conte, the CEO of the program’s broadcaster, ORTF. It was only in January 1975 that the program was finally aired, with an audience of 19 million viewers.

The increase in homophobic attitudes around the last third of the nineteenth century meant that gays were consistently referred to in the media as perverts, murderers,
criminals
, and traitors. It must be said that articles on homosexuals were considered good for business, as proven by the media hype in France in 1903 over the Adelswärd-Fersen affair, whereby Jacques d’Adelswärd-Fersen, a young aristocrat, was tried for hosting orgiastic “black masses” in his apartment which involved underage boys, and then in 1908 over the Renard affair, in which a hotel concierge was accused of killing his employer due, in large part, to the fact of his homosexuality. The media became the mouthpiece for all discriminatory discourses, paraphrasing the opinions of psychiatrists that homosexuals were sick; of
police
that they were criminal; and of clergy that they were morally dangerous. One might also state that the consideration of homosexuality as an illness (particularly as a result of scandals, such as those in Britain involving Oscar
Wilde
, Guy Burgess, and Lord Montagu) was largely the work of the media (as well as cinema, which frequently suggested that homosexuality was criminal, as in Hitchcock’s 1948 film
Rope
.

Inappropriate references to homosexuality by the media continued into the 1960s. In 1962, an article in London’s
Sunday Pictorial
explained “how to flush out a homosexual.” In 1963, a headline in the
New York Times
read: “Homosexuality, by being more and more open in New York, creates general anxiety.” And in 1967 on
CBS Reports,
during one of the first network television programs on the subject, journalist Mike Wallace dared to opine that “the average homosexual … is incapable of having a long-lasting relationship such as heterosexual
marriage
.” Finally, in 1971 in France, when Ménie Grégoire devoted one of her RTL radio programs to “the painful problem of homosexuality,” only psychiatrists and church leaders were invited to participate. It would appear that most media believed that one could talk about homosexuality provided that it was condemned; some believe it to this day. In fact, tabloids have maintained their taste for this stigma; the well known Australian-American magnate Rupert Murdoch—chairman and CEO of the News Corporation, which owns the Fox network and the
New York Post
—is on record as being antigay, and many tabloid editors believe that homophobic articles are means to link their newspaper to popular opinion. Tabloid treatment of this subject is, unsurprisingly, in poor taste, and often focuses on
outing
or general speculation of whether certain celebrities are gay.

Satirical
caricature
was also used by the media to depict homosexuality. The earliest examples are from the English press in the eighteenth century, when the “molly” tied to the whipping post and the “fop” with his limp wrist were recurring images; and from France at the beginning of the nineteenth century, which included insulting representations of well-known figures such Jean Jacques Régis de Cambacérès—the homosexual lawyer responsible for the Napoleonic Code who was also behind the decriminalization of homosexuality in France—such as one in which he turns his back on women and plays with a turkey. The apex of caricature’s popularity was the period beginning with the
Eulenburg affair
in 1907 (which inspired numerous drawings in Germany and France in which homophobia was a little bit mixed with anti-militarism) until the 1960s. During this period, the satirical press in the 1920s and 30s in France thus denounced the “sentimental
heresy
” and the “German vice” (in 1933,
Fantasio
magazine presented Hitler as a lost queen). In England, “polari” (gay slang) was introduced in BBC entertainment programs at the end of the 50s. It is true that the “queen,” the “queer,” and the “fag” were the basis for hundreds of jokes and caricatures, complete with high voices, limp wrists, and effeminate gestures, passed down from the music hall to high school, barracks, and barrooms, giving heterosexuals the impression that homosexuals were ridiculous and defective. This less-than-sympathetic approach to comedy has never quite disappeared, either: it could be found in
La Cage aux Folles
and in the popular BBC television series
Are You Being Served?
(1972–85), as well as present day, in the obnoxious jokes of the French program
Les Grosses têtes
.

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