Maybe I should have cut the quoted part of that column shorter … though since you commented on aspects of the author’s “how this (Mc Carthy) applies today” extrapolation regarding a present day congressperson - I’ll respond a bit.
so … on my best day … would you call me a muslim (small m of course) ?
It mattered and was important to remove homosexuality from the DSM because so long as it was considered a mental illness, this could and was used as grounds to fire gay people from their jobs or prevent them from holding certain kinds of jobs, take their children away from them for being unfit parents, lock them up in mental institutions, coerce them into treatment programs that sought to change them, and much more. Some homosexuals who were put into mental institutions in the past had lobotomies performed on them. It was easier to make homosexual activity into a crime as long as homosexualty was considered to be a mental illness.
Yes. It was put in due to prejudice so it is right and just for it to be taken out.
Stop reducing homosexuals to children. Homosexuals have the right to decide for themselves whether they should make known or keep private their sexual desires. You are no better than the people who say homosexuals should just stay quiet and hide in the closet by claiming that homosexuals should run around telling everyone and anyone about their sexual proclivities or whatever. That’s up to the person to decide.
I never said what any particular gay person has to do. If someone wants to stay in the closet or come out, or if they want to be celibate or be in a same-sex relationship, it’s up to them. But it is undeniable that if all gay people had stayed in the closet and the Stonewall uprising had never taken place in 1969, we would still be treated as if we are mentally ill, consensual homosexual activity would still be a crime in many places, and we wouldn’t have gained all the other rights we now have. It is because so many gay people came out to their families, their friends and their co-workers that an openly gay man who is legally married to another man like Pete Buttegieg is now a serious candidate for president with a picture of himself and his spouse on the cover of Time Magazine. Huge changes in American society have taken place in the last few decades that I never would have imagined when I came out almost 40 years ago and the only information I could find about homosexuality in the place where I grew up was in books about abnormal psychology.Thorolfr:
Stop reducing homosexuals to children. Homosexuals have the right to decide for themselves whether they should make known or keep private their sexual desires. You are no better than the people who say homosexuals should just stay quiet and hide in the closet by claiming that homosexuals should run around telling everyone and anyone about their sexual proclivities or whatever. That’s up to the person to decide.
Please be accurate. We object to the lies and smear tactics he used. If you approve of his dishonest tactics, that’s up to you. But you do not have the right to attack those who don’t approve of them.
What lies and smear tactics was Sen. McCarthy using?
I’m not defending Communism, just the smear tactics which McCarthy and his supporters employed to link Communists to gay people. McCarthy linked homosexuality and communism together as “threats to the ‘American way of life’” and Senator Kenneth Wherry (1892-1951), the Republican minority leader, said in an interview with Max Lerner, “You can’t hardly separate homosexuals from subversives…we’re both Americans, aren’t we? I say, let’s get these fellows [closeted gay men in government positions] out of the government.”"
I’m actually quite impressed that even in the early 1950’s the principle problem and concern of U.S leadership with homosexuals being in government was not their sexual activities but that they were practically inseparable from subversives (i.e. Communists). All that quote you provided does is prove that the concern was not with homosexuals or even homosexuality but the belief or impression that homosexuals were simply subversives.
But there were no known cases in which this had happened. And being a homosexual did not make someone a “subversive” as Senator Wherry implied. Nor did being homosexual make someone, as McCarthy said, a threat to the “American way of life.” In one interview, McCarthy said, “If you want to be against McCarthy, boys, you’ve got to be either a Communist or a [anti-gay pejorative].” There is no way to make McCarthy sound almost reasonable.