A brief history of lbian, gay, bisexual, and transgenr social movements

HOW ALED KSEY ARMED THE EARLY GAY RIGHTS MOVEMENT WH REARCH

* kinsey gay *

There was a time when one out of every two Amerins Gallup polled knew Aled Ksey’s name, and to gay men, lbians, bisexuals, and transgenr pneers cludg Louise Lawrence and Christe Jensen he was a livg hero. Sadly, for the last quarter century or so, llg Aled Ksey “the man who ma the homosexual movement possible” has e not om that movement but the anti-gay dtry. Ksey’s role is traceable to the rebirth of the gay rights movement the Uned Stat after the first effort by Henry Gerber and his Society for Human Rights was smothered to ath by thori Chigo 1925.

Next to Ksey on the Wall, late fellow honoree Harry Hay had long dreamed of an anizatn of gays and gave Ksey and his rearch cred for mobilizg him 1948. So, wh my py [of the book] unr one arm, a sheaf of papers unr the other, I go through the entire gay muny as I know at that time – which isn’t much. Hay, still married himself, hosted several gathergs ostensibly to discs the book everyone was talkg about but actually to promote his ias for anizg; fdg ltle tert, even mockery and hostily, until November 1950 when he and four others found the Mattache Society, the first endurg gay rights group the Uned Stat.

The Senate submtee vtigatg employment of ‘homosexuals and other moral perverts’ by the Feral Government had better read the Ksey report before go very far. In 1952 and 1953, Mattache applied Ksey statistics the ver letter to the first-ever gay qutnnaire sent to polil ndidat – “there are at least 150, 000 such persons the Los Angel area alone” – which was, turn, quoted an article the Los Angel Mirror about the group that was posive enough that Mattache distributed thoands of pi. Ksey agreed to bee an rmal adviser to Mattache 1953 after they agreed to help him fd terview subjects for his next planned book, Sex and the Law: gays “who had had any ntact wh the police, whether led to nvictn or not.

WHERE DO I FALL ON THE KSEY SLE? (GAY TT)

They asked him about the “flood gate” argument that crimalizatn would lead to an crease homosexualy and the “Rake’s Progrs” argument that would rult more homosexual adults pursug sex wh mors. Ksey told them that crimalizatn (or ls enforcement) other untri and his study of over 6000 mal wh homosexual experienc monstrated there was no reason to believe such fears. He add that, “We have never seen a person [wh predomately homosexual experienc who has] been affected by penal punishment or clil treatment to further velopment of an exclively or primarily heterosexual pattern.

Acrdg to ONE historian Craig Loft Masked Voic: Gay Men and Lbians Cold War Ameri s staff was “eply fluenced by Aled Ksey’s famo two reports [and] his radil view that homosexualy was merely a benign variatn of human sexualy and not some horrible geic mistake. Lbian novelist Valerie Taylor the May 1961 Mattache Review: “Probably the reams of material wrten passnate fense of the homophile have done ls to further the e of tolerance than Ksey’s sgle, tached statement that 37 percent of men and [13] percent of women who he terviewed admted havg [had at least one same-sex experience to asm].