Mansfield Gay Pri Associatn – Mansfield, Oh LGBTQ Organizatn

Contents:

• BEE A 2023 SPONSOR OR VENDOR:EMAIL:
• GAY PRI FTIVAL HELD MANSFIELD’S SOUTH PARK
• GAY DATG MANSFIELD
• MANSFIELD GAY PRI ASSOCIATN PARA AND FTIVAL
• CASE 11: THE MANSFIELD OH GAY SEX STG OF 1962
• LGBTQ+ AFFIRMG THERAPISTS MANSFIELD, OH
• FORMER PRINT OF THE MANSFIELD GAY PRI ASSOCIATN FOUND AD HIS HOME

BEE A 2023 SPONSOR OR VENDOR:EMAIL:

Mansfielrs have always had gay neighbors who were more or ls obv, more or ls known or wantg to be regnized as such. Certa profsns the bs of nductg a cy have always been typilly and stereotypilly staffed by gay people, and wasn’t ever really a urse every generatn you have the haters and bigots and judgmental folks who sist that everyone be jt like them. But as far as opprsg the gay muny go was not as big a al as, say, Italians and Pol the 1890s, or Ain-Amerins the 1910s, or even Irish the 1860s.

Gays were jt another cultural mory that were part of the meltg 1But 1962, Ameri had jt e through a of very nasty wch-huntg for Communists; scientists were droppg atomic bombs the Pacific and talkg about how many lns of Amerins our enemi uld kill wh siar bombs. Durg the ensug months there were 39 trials and — nvicted by home movi — the gay felons were sent off to Lima State Instutn for the Insane to be evaluated for their level of viancy.

GAY PRI FTIVAL HELD MANSFIELD’S SOUTH PARK

50 years laterTo regnize who we are today by lookg at who we once were, is appropriate to acknowledge that Mansfield has historilly done s share of shamg gay people. The oppose of shame is is signifint that Mansfield’s first Gay Pri celebratn, held 2015, was anized by a mtee of young adults who were born long after the cy buried the Central Park rtrooms. It is signifint that Mansfield’s first Gay Pri celebratn, held 2015, was anized by a mtee of young adults who were born long after the cy buried the Central Park rtrooms.

MANSFIELD, Oh — Lbian, gay, bisexual and transgenr (LGBT) dividuals, along wh fay, iends, and supporters gathered Saturday for a ftival and para South Park off Brkerhoff Avenue Coordator Ricky Leimeister said Saturday’s event was Mansfield’s first Gay Pri event, and important for the rpective muny. We know that a lot of the stigma agast beg gay om relign — and obvly we don’t support relign, ” said Print Ron Stephens.

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. Supreme Court cisns the late 1950s and early 1960s enabled distributn of homophile publitns, cludg those ntag gay male eroti (Watson, 2006).

GAY DATG MANSFIELD

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. But Augt of 1962 when Mansfield police staged their public rtroom stg operatn, the cultural view of gays rooted the 1950s prevailed. Most equently, gays were reprented by quot om policians and medil experts as sex perverts the same class wh rapists, sadists, and pedophil.

Journalists themselv generally avoid ntact wh lbians and gays and did not e them as sourc, bee they did not want to be perceived as pro-gay or munist. [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).

MANSFIELD GAY PRI ASSOCIATN PARA AND FTIVAL

Domant ncepts wh the ame clud gays as sners, gays as medil viat, and gays as bad cizens, sce they would betray their untry rather than have their sexualy exposed. De Jong (2006) found the ame to enjoy wispread popular acceptance and to have driven some of the popular fear of gay people.

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.

CASE 11: THE MANSFIELD OH GAY SEX STG OF 1962

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. The article was strangely silent on the subject of whether the acced himself had sought sex the park rtroom (Gaynor, 1962).

The first ame reprented the article is that gay men are fundamentally different and ferr to most of society; they are “the other.

It should be noted that the term “gay” never appears the article, which was fairly typil journalistic practice for the time. A third ame suggts the propensy of gay men to m far worse crimal acts than sodomy, cludg child moltatn and murr, and th pose a threat to the safety of muny. 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).

LGBTQ+ AFFIRMG THERAPISTS MANSFIELD, OH

" 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. A fal signifint ame suggts that gay men are ill; therefore, their apprehensn and treatment is for their benef, and they are grateful for .

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.

FORMER PRINT OF THE MANSFIELD GAY PRI ASSOCIATN FOUND AD HIS HOME

The chief ma clear that the tend dience for the film was other police partments, and related homosexualy and crimal activy, particularly child moltatn and murr. The first reprented gay men as different, as the “other;” they que lerally were to be set apart om the rt of society. 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.

The seemg terchangeabily of the terms scribg those who engage homosexual behavrs serv not only to cement their stat as “others, ” but also as reprehensible. 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. Neverthels, the film attempted to draw a nnectn between property crim and sex crim, which end a nflatn of tranvtism, homosexualy, and theft: “Some of the people start out by stealg women's unrclothg.

The send ame both equat homosexualy wh illns and employs a disease metaphor scribg the fluence of homosexual sodomy on larger society. Homosexualy as a marker of mental illns was tablished by intifitn of four of the surveillance film spects as “psychopaths” who had been mted to a state hospal.