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November 26th, 2009
 | 05:55 pm - Thankful
photo story by quickbits33407
I’M VERY THANKFUL FOR MY CHOSEN FAMILY:
PATRICK
ALAN
BARCLAY
BOB
BRIAN
CHRIS
CHRIS
DAN
DAN
DAVE
DAVID
DEREK
DON
DOUGLAS
ED
GEORGE
GEORGE
GERRY
GLENN
JEFF
JIM
JIM
JOHN
KATHRYN
LOLITA
MATT
MIKE
NAYLAND
NELSON
OLLI
PETER
PHILIP
RAY
SCOTT
SCOTT
SCOTT
TED
TERRY
AND MY BIO ONE:
DORIS
TERI
DIANA
SCOTT
BRENT
ALAN
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November 25th, 2009
 | 01:19 pm - The homosexual: Hungry for youth – Life Magazine’s “Homosexuality in America,” part 5
( click for larger )
(pink highlighting notes some of biased and sensationalistic words and reporting, as well some of the more maddening or outrageous historical details.)
Life magazine, June 26, 1964
HOMOSEXUALITY IN AMERICA
By Paul Welch
Photographed for LIFE by Bill Eppridge
A Legal-Religious Debate Grows over Personal Immorality
[CONTINUED FROM HERE]
Although the antihomosexual stand taken by the Los Angeles police is unswervingly tough, it reflects the attitude of most U.S. law-enforcement agencies on the subject. Yet within the past decade this position has been criticized by legal and religious groups -- here and abroad -- which have asked for more social and official tolerance of homosexuals. They frequently quote "the Wolfenden Report," the famous statement on homosexuality made in 1957 by a British governmental committee headed by Sir John Wolfenden. The committee recommended that Britain change its sex laws so that "homosexual behavior between consenting adults in private should no longer be a criminal offense." In its argument, the committee held the view that "there must remain a realm of private morality and immorality which is, in brief and crude terms, not the law's business."
The position of the Wolfenden Committee has since been supported by spokesmen from various religions. A group of Quakers in Britain challenged the view that homosexuality is immoral. In a pamphlet titled "Towards a Quaker View of Sex," published in 1963, it was suggested that society "should no more deplore homosexuality than lefthandedness…. Homosexual affection can be as selfless as heterosexual affection and therefore we cannot see that it is in some way morally worse."
A Catholic viewpoint, which does not condone homosexuality but does regard it as a psychological problem, has been provided in a book, Counselling the Catholic, written for U.S. parish priests by Father George Hagmaier, C.S.P. and Father Robert Gleason, S.I. The book makes the point that in order to “bring one’s activity into accord with objective morality, one needs knowledge and one needs freedom. A defect in either will ordinarily imply some lessening of responsibility.” The authors conclude that, because they are subjected to this psychological disturbance, homosexuals do not have this freedom.
Many of the recommendations of the Wolfenden Committee were adopted by the American Law Institute when it wrote a model penal code. In 1961 Illinois based a redraft of its penal code on the American Law Institute's paper, which, in effect, says that a person's private sex life is none of the law's business. An explanatory note in the draft of the Illinois code states that it "is not intended to proscribe any sexual conduct between consenting adults unless such conduct adversely affects one of the key interests sought to be protected." The "key interests" specifically in mind were preventing the use of force and child exploitation and protecting public sensibilities and the family institution.
Other states, including New York and California, currently are considering penal code revisions similar to Illinois’. But in Florida early this year the Legislative Investigation Committee’s consideration of homosexuality produced an inflammatory report, calling for tougher laws to support the conclusion that “the problem today is one of control, and that established procedures and stern penalties will serve both as encouragement to law enforcement officials and as a deterrent to the homosexual [who is] hungry for youth.” Its recommendations would make psychiatric examination of offenders mandatory and create a control file on homosexuals which would be available to public employment agencies throughout the state. The report, which included an opening-page picture of two men kissing and photographs of nude men and boys, was so irresponsible that it brought attacks from the Dade County state’s attorney and the Miami Herald, which described it as an “official obscenity.”
[caption 1] On Main St. in Los Angeles, the “frantic hour” comes when homosexuals face their last chance for a pickup that night.
[TO BE CONTINUED]
To read the entire series:
The Way We Were (Reported) - Part 1
When gay was in quotation marks - Part 2
The bitterness of individual homosexuals - Part 3
The Homosexual Faces Arrest, Disgrace - Part 4
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November 24th, 2009
 | 10:14 am - I left my giblets in San Francisco
![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif) mudcub and I are traveling out to San Francisco for Thanksgiving weekend, to enjoy the hospitality and hawt cuisine of George/sfogreekbear. We'll also be seeing Dave/bootbeartx, flying in from Dallas, and hopefully we'll get a chance to see some of our S.F. friends, including bigjohnsf and Steve/cop4cbt, and, I expect, we'll be running into a bunch of you on the patios of The Regal Beagle and the Loin Stare.
Is there anything special happening this weekend, or other opportunities for LJ get-togethers? Let us know with a comment here.
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| 09:44 am - The Homosexual Faces Arrest, Disgrace - Life magazine’s “Homosexuality in America,” part 4
 
( click for larger )
(In previous installments I had used pink to highlight some of the biased and sensationalistic reporting by the reporter and the Life magazine editors. In this section the reporting is largely objective, so pink is used to highlight some of the more maddening or outrageous historical details.)
Life magazine, June 26, 1964
HOMOSEXUALITY IN AMERICA
By Paul Welch
Photographed for LIFE by Bill Eppridge
In a Constant Conflict with the Law, the Homosexual Faces Arrest, Disgrace
[CONTINUED FROM HERE]
Actually, there is no law in California -- or in any other state -- against being a homosexual. The laws which police enforce are directed at specific sexual acts. For the most part, these laws make it a crime to engage in any sex activity which could not result in procreation.
It is also unlawful in California to solicit anyone in a public place to engage in a lewd act. Under these laws, the police are able to make arrests. In many cases, a conviction results in a homosexual being registered as a "sex offender" (along with rapists) in the state of California.
Inspector James Fisk says that the 3,069 arrests for homosexual offenses made in Los Angeles last year represent merely a "token number" of those that should have been made. "We're barely touching the surface of the problem," Fisk says. "The pervert is no longer as secretive as he was. He's aggressive and his aggressiveness is getting worse because of more homosexual activity.”
As part of its antihomosexual drive the Los Angeles police force has compiled an “educational” pamphlet for law enforcement officers entitled “Some Characteristics of the Homosexual.” The strongly opinionated pamphlet includes the warning what the homosexuals really want is “a fruit world.”
In their unrelenting crackdown on homosexuals, the Los Angeles police use two approaches: one is an effort to deter homosexual activity in public, and the other is an arrest effort. The first includes patrolling, in uniform, rest rooms and other known loitering places, such as Selma Avenue. Then the police go the rounds of the "gay" bars to make their presence felt. To arrest homosexuals, the police have an undercover operation in which officers dressed to look like homosexuals -- tight pants, sneakers, sweaters or jackets -- prowl the streets and bars. The officers are instructed never to make an overt advance; they can only provide an opportunity for the homosexual to proposition them. Arrests are made after the officer has received a specific proposition.
In a typical arrest effort in Hollywood this spring, a plainclothes officer loitered under the streetlight at the corner of Sunset Boulevard and Stanley Avenue. Soon a car slowly turned the corner only Stanley and the officer drifted into the darkness down the block. When the car pulled over to the curb, the officer (“Jim”) approached it. After a few minutes of idle talk the driver established that his name was Jerry. He lived many blocks away, but Jim indicated that he himself had a “place on Wilcox” (actually the police station). Part of the conversation, which the officer hoped would enable him to make an arrest, went like this:
Officer: What’s on your mind after we get home? That’s what I want to know.
Jerry: Well, what’s on your mind?
Officer: Well… I don’t know.
Jerry: You don’t?
Officer: Well, that is to say [laughs]… there isn’t anything to drink at my place, you know.
Jerry: Well, I can always drink coffee. I don’t drink anything stronger.
Officer: Uh huh… Well, anything else…?
Jerry: Anything else?
Officer: I said, is there anything else?
Jerry: To drink?
Officer: No.
Jerry: No?
Officer: I was just wondering… maybe… what else you had in mind, if anything.
Jerry: (sighs deeply) At this point I don’t care.
Officer: Well, I don’t exactly know how to take that.
Jerry: Well… how do you want it to go?
Officer: Like I say, it’s up to you, Jerry.
Jerry: Well, you call it and… we’ll go from there. I’m your guest… self-invited.
Officer: Well… I know, but… I wouldn’t want to be a presumptive host, you might say. In other words, a good host always looks out for the welfare of his guests. You understand? So… I’ll leave it up to you.
Jerry: Well… we can just let the chips fall where they may or forget it.
Officer: I always say, if you know what you want and aren’t man enough to ask for it, why then to heck with it. You know? (laughs)
Jerry: Yeah, I know.
Officer: Well, there’s no use wasting any more of your time… or mine, I guess. Jerry?
Jerry: Well? I don’t know. It’s up to you.
Officer: You don’t know? What’s the matter, are you afraid?
Jerry: Well, isn’t everybody?
Officer: I’m not afraid of you.
Jerry: I don’t know you and you don’t know me.
Officer: Well, that’s true, but… still and all, like I say, I’m not… although maybe I should be. I don’t know. You’re not a policeman, are you?
Jerry: No.
Officer: Well, you could be.
Jerry: So could you.
Officer: Well, that’s true. I understand they got a whole lot of plainclothesmen then use, so I don’t know what to think sometimes. But that’s why you got to be kind of careful.
Jerry: Uh huh… it pays.
Officer: You understand of course.
Jerry: So, maybe we just better drop it at that.
Officer: Oh? Well…
Jerry: I mean (laughs), we’re both getting a little on the leery side.
Officer: Yeah… Well, so long.
Jerry: I won’t take any more of your time.
The police officer had decided that the encounter was not going to reward him with an arrest. Jerry drove away and the officer went back to work on the corner.
[TO BE CONTINUED]
[caption 1] A policeman in tight-pants disguise waits on a Hollywood street to be solicited by homosexuals cruising by in cars.
[caption 2] Decoy officer and partner lead handcuffed homosexual away in Hollywood. When arrested for soliciting, he burst into tears.
To read the entire series:
The Way We Were (Reported) - Part 1
When gay was in quotation marks - Part 2
The bitterness of individual homosexuals - Part 3
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November 23rd, 2009
 | 10:56 am - lolitasir, Media Star
Photographs by Todd Heisler from the New York Times
Why I adore lolitasir, Reason #346: Lolita was interviewed and photographed for the New York Times as part of a series of profiles of New Yorkers called “One in 8 Million,” and she talks frankly about her involvement in BDSM. On the Times website it’s presented as a slideshow with an NPR-like audio file, and you can see and listen to it here: http://www.nytimes.com/packages/html/nyregion/1-in-8-million/index.html# (it’s only about two minutes long).
I love the piece, as it captures Lolita’s beauty, personality, and even her lovely voice and New York accent! The photographer, Todd Heisler, is very talented, as you can see here. It must have been strange to have a photographer follow you around all day! And it was also published in yesterday’s Metro section of the widely-read Sunday edition, taking up an entire half page with a bonus photo that didn’t appear in the online slideshow.
Readers are able to comment on the piece online (look for the link at the end), and I was surprised at how Lolita’s enlightened and frank talk about sexuality brought out some horribly prudish comments. A couple of them got my jockstrap in a twist, and motivated me to write a response, which was rejected for publication by the moderator, so I thought I’d repost it here:
LFranklin, you are wrong. Newspapers are very much the appropriate venue for learning about people who are different from you.
And Robert M, the series is called "One in 8 Million," and there are over one TRILLION web pages (as of Google's count in July 2008), so the only way your kid is going to be "two clicks away" from this is if he or she was specifically searching it out, which would be nearly impossible given that it's largely an audio file. But if your kid was searching out information about sex on the internet, you should be glad, since statistics show that states and communities with the least amount of sex education have the highest teen pregnancy rates. And you're also fortunate if your kid is showing the intellectual curiosity to browse around the NYTimes website, as there are far worse things for your child to see, considering the amount of violence, gore, and bigotry that IS on the web.
Mostly I'm dumbfounded that both Robert M and LFranklin (or anyone else) thinks that EVERYTHING on the web should conform to their narrow ideas of what's appropriate. Please learn how to use the "BACK" button on your web browser, talk to your children about the internet and the real world, and cease your "but what about the children?!" hand-wringing.
Thankfully, the positive comments now overwhelmingly outnumber the negative ones.
I also got to hang with Lolita yesterday, first at a surprise 30th birthday party for Kerry/rogueboi -- 30 people at a Viennese café in Brooklyn! It was organized by his adorable partner, Michael/dragbear, and was truly a surprise (evidence here), since his birthday isn’t until next weekend, so go on over to rogueboi’s LJ and wish him a Happy Birthday!
Then, along with mudcub, naylandblake, boymeat, and kathryntact, we went on a walking expedition of Soho to procure sweets (exotic Vosges chocolate truffles, Eileen’s Cheesecake, and Rice to Riches’s 24 varieties of gourmet rice pudding), ending up at Venus Body Arts in the East Village to get mud’s new piercing, which Lolita thoughtfully documented, as shown in my previous post, all of which was merely a cap to a delightful and culture-packed weekend with mud.
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