An Introduction to LGBT Elders - Howard Brown Health Center

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SLIDE 28MODULE1234Individuals who were young adults at this time are now about 80 years old.“Homosexuality as a public issue in American life remained in the postwar closetuntil the publication of a remarkable book about sexual behavior. In 1948, AlfredKinsey, an Indiana University zoologist, published his report on human sexuality.He shocked the conventional wisdom by asserting that one third of all Americanmen had had at least one homosexual experience after puberty. And he becamethe first significant opinion maker to argue that scientists should divorce theirjudgments about sexuality from the “religious background” of the culture. He alsoenraged the psychiatric establishment by suggesting that homosexual inclinationsmight not be “abnormal or unnatural,” or even “constitute evidence of neuroses.”These assertions made this huge national best seller the first essential documentof gay liberation. By adopting a disinterested tone and divorcing all of hisjudgments from the traditional Judeo-Christian influences, Kinsey helped manyAmericans to think about sex in ways they never had before”.Furthermore, 10% of males were more or less exclusively homosexual and 8%of males were exclusively homosexual for at least three years between the ages of16 and 55. This is where the frequently quoted “10%” figure comes from. 2-6%of women reported more or less exclusively homosexual experience or response.First notion that sexuality is viewed as a spectrum.RCook-Daniels, L. (2007). Livingmemory LGBT history timeline:current Elders would have been thisold when these events happened. Retrievedfrom http://www.forge-forward.org/handouts/LGBT_elder_timeline.pdfFord, C. S. & Beach, F. A. (1951). Patternsof sexual behavior. New York:Harper and Row.Group for the Advancement of Psychiatry(GAP). (2007). The history ofpsychiatry & homosexuality. In LGBTMental Health Syllabus. Retrieved fromhttp://www.aglp.org/gap/1_history/Kaiser, C. (1994, July 04). Life beforestonewall. In Newsweek. Retrievedfrom http://www.newsweek.com/1994/07/03/life-before-stonewall.htmlKinsey, A. C., Pomeroy, W. B., & Martin,C. E. (1948). Sexual behavior in thehuman male. Philadelphia: Saunders.56Nurses Health Education About LGBT Elders : Teacher’s Guide26
SLIDE 29MODULE1234Individuals who were young adults at this time are now about 70 years old.But those who came of age in the ‘50s remember a period of terrible repression,which was partly a reaction to the visibility homosexuals had achieved in the ‘40s.“The homosexual menace continued as a theme of American political culturethroughout the McCarthy era,” wrote historian John D’Emilio (1983, p. 43).Right-wing crusaders targeted homosexuals along with communists as securityrisks. Virtually no one was open about homosexuality. When a State Departmentofficial testified at the beginning of 1950 that most of the 91 department employeeswho had been fired for moral turpitude were gay, his remarks sparked a witchhunt inside the federal government. State and local authorities followed the leadof the Feds in trying to eliminate homosexuals from all government employment.“Those who engage in overt acts of perversion lack the emotional stability ofnormal persons,” a Senate committee asserted in a typical report in 1950. “Indulgencein acts of sex perversion weakens the moral fiber of the individual”.Practically every public reference to gays was a negative one.Throughout the 1950s and 1960s, the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) andpolice departments kept lists of known homosexuals, their favored establishments,and friends; the U.S. Post Office kept track of addresses where materialpertaining to homosexuality was mailed (Edsall, 2003, p. 278). State and localgovernments followed suit: bars catering to homosexuals were shut down, andtheir customers were arrested and exposed in newspapers. Cities performed“sweeps” to rid neighborhoods, parks, bars, and beaches of gays. They outlawedthe wearing of opposite gender clothes, and universities expelled instructorssuspected of being homosexual (Adam, 1987, p. 59.) Thousands of gay men andwomen were publicly humiliated, physically harassed, fired, jailed, or institutionalizedin mental hospitals. Many lived double lives, keeping their private livessecret from their professional ones.Understand that adaptive behavior of not disclosing LGBT status isadaptive and necessary for survival.RAdam, B. (1987). The rise of a gayand lesbian movement. Boston:Twayne.D’Emillo, J. (1983). Sexual politics,sexual communities: The making ofa homosexual minority in the UnitedStates, 1940 – 1970. Chicago, IL: Universityof Chicago Press.Edsall, N. (2003). Toward Stonewall:Homosexuality and society in themodern western world. Charlottesville:University of Virginia Press.Kaiser, C. (1994, July 03). Life beforeStonewall. Newsweek. Retrievedfrom http://www.newsweek.com/1994/07/03/life-before-stonewall.html56Nurses Health Education About LGBT Elders : Teacher’s Guide27
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