How California police partments targeted gay men stg operatns for a century - Pensula Prs

Contents:

• IS STG GAY?
• HOW CALIFORNIA POLICE PARTMENTS TARGETED GAY MEN STG OPERATNS FOR A CENTURY
• D.C. POLICE TARGET GAY MEN ONLE STG
• STGGAY STORI
• THE HANDSOME UNRVER P S. IS HE ENTRAPPG GAY MEN OR CLEANG UP A PARK?

IS STG GAY?

The then-45-year-old star had been crossg over to actg and recently played a bisexual character the film The the followg pag are a few of our favore quot om that terview, acpanied by photos of his set on Advote:When you did your gay sex scen The Grotque, did you feel anythg for the other actor sexually?

LONG BEACH — San Carlos-based civil rights attorney Bce Nickerson timat that between 40, 000 and 50, 000 people California, maly gay men, have been arrted illegimate police y operatns sce 1979, the year the California Supreme Court refed lewd nduct to clu a qutn of whether an actn was highly offensive to an observer. The same month, five men settled a class-actn lawsu related to siar stg operatns of gay men public rtrooms wh the San Jose Police Department for $125, 000 total, which end up beg about $15, 000 per platiff after subtractg legal fe.

San Carlos-based civil rights attorney Bce Nickerson, who reprented Moroney, timat that between 40, 000 and 50, 000 people California, maly gay men, have been arrted illegimate police y operatns sce 1979, the year the California Supreme Court refed lewd nduct to clu a qutn of whether an actn was highly offensive to an observer. The 2010 play “ The Twentieth-Century Way” by Tom Jabson tells the te story of two actors hired by the Long Beach Police Department 1914 to arrt gay men public bathrooms. A 1966 report tled “The Consentg Adult Homosexual and the Law: An Empiril Study of Enforcement and Admistratn Los Angel County” published the UCLA Law Review nclud that y operatns were neher a jtified nor effective practice.

HOW CALIFORNIA POLICE PARTMENTS TARGETED GAY MEN STG OPERATNS FOR A CENTURY

A scriptn of police y operatns a paper published the 1965-66 UCLA Law Review tled “The Consentg Adult Homosexual and the Law: An Empiril Study of Enforcement and Admistratn Los Angel County. Fam, who reprented the San Jose platiffs alongsi Nickerson and employment law attorney Lori Costanzo, said that officers ed to go unrver at gay bars Stockton, as well as areas Alameda County known for transgenr prostutn. Months earlier, the Port Authory of New York and New Jersey Police Department was sued and acced of g pla-clothed officers to target gay men at b termal urals, acrdg to The Guardian.

D.C. POLICE TARGET GAY MEN ONLE STG

In this paper, I exame a succsn of am nstcted for this story, their rpective sponsors, and the ame elements whose shared meang unrli the temporal nstctns of “gay, ” “homosexual, ” and “queer. And the days of rts outsi the Greenwich Village’s Stonewall Inn the summer of 1969 are almost universally nsired to have signaled the start of the morn gay liberatn movement the Uned Stat and other wtern societi.

[1]The associatn between gays and their alli and munism appears to have two sourc: the liberatn iology of some early lears of the homophile Mattache Society, and the McCarthy-era belief … Contue readg De Jong argu the news media of the perd were plic the negative portrayal of gays, sce they never qutned policians’ negative statements about them. Generally speakg, then, lbians and gays were amed as “others, ” which allowed society’s domant groups to perceive those who do not nform to cultural norms as a threat to social stabily ( Jong, 2006). The ame not only nflated the ncepts of pedophilia wh homosexualy, but also supported the ntentn that gays as sexual viat evably would be driven to molt young girls as well as young boys.

Alwood (1996) noted that the Miami Herald, s verage of attacks on small children the cy 1954, reported that police were focg on an enclave of gay bars known as “Powr Puff Lane. The story tailed the months-long vtigatn of homosexual activy an unrground public rtroom the cy’s Central Park, which culmated hidn-mera surveillance and the subsequent arrts of 18 men over a perd of several days. As the article noted, homosexual sodomy alone was at the time nsired to be such a ser offense that rried a potential sentence of one to 20 years the state penentiary (Gaynor, 1962).

STGGAY STORI

" A more pervasive relatnship between homosexual behavr and child moltatn was suggted by the sentence, “The chief also urged the public to operate cleang abnormal sex activy om Mansfield by reportg persons actg spicly around children, parks and playgrounds” (2). As was the se the Miami Herald verage a few years before, the article uncrilly repeated the police partment’s relatg of male homosexualy wh the sexual moltatn of young girls, and then extend the relatnship to clu murr: "Chief Kyler said the vtigatn of male sex viat began shortly after the killg of ne year-old Jean Bertoch and seven year-old Connie Lynn Hurrell near North Lake Park Saturday, June 23. Near the end of the article, the reporter repeated Kyler’s nflatn of the ncepts of homosexualy and murr, but aga uncrilly failed to dite whether the acced ever had mted any sort of homosexual act, let alone a public place: “Chief Kyler said today ‘The vtigatn is an oute of the btal murr of two ltle girls North Lake Park.

The reporter noted the nnectn state law between homosexualy and mental illns, which reflected the nclns of much of the muny of mental health profsn of the perd: “Prosecutor Rex Larson said today that the law requir persons charged wh sodomy be given a psychiatric examatn” (2).

But the nstctn of gay men as mentally ill also was supported by the reputed self-reports of the acced, who perhaps had ternalized that shared cultural unrstandg: “Some of the spects reportedly seemed “relieved” at beg ught…Officials said one man said he was glad was over.

THE HANDSOME UNRVER P S. IS HE ENTRAPPG GAY MEN OR CLEANG UP A PARK?

The term “viant” was ed 12 tim to refer to men who engage homosexual behavr; variatns of the word “pervert” were ed six tim; “abnormal” was ed three tim; and “praved” and “pravy” each were ed once.

As the newspaper article, same-sex sire and homosexual acts were intified as crim not only agast the state, but agast nature: “Law enforcement officials agree that practic of sex perversn are acquired patterns of abnormal pravy, and that such practic are vlatn of both natural and moral law.