Gaybars.com lists 15 gars in the state. Gaychurches.org lists one predominantly gay church with 65 others that are welcoming. My roommate went to college in Iowa and found his campus to be a welcoming and sheltering oasis in a sea of clueless heterosexuality.

I am absolutely certain that Iowa is a lovely place filled with wonderful people. And I mean no insult to the great state or her people.

But I suspect that any anthropologist that were looking at the culture of Iowans would find homosexuality to be decidedly rare – or at least not a significant part of the dominant culture. Such an anthropologist would probably have to seek out such activity.

That being said, that Iowa has a thriving gay community proves my point . So too did probably some of the 29 cultures in which there was no reference to homosexuality.

Just cuz it ain’t visible up front don’t mean it ain’t there.

That is so not true. There a lot of gay life in Iowa and not just the larger cities.

That could have included the United States in 1952. Heck, if you were writing about the culture in Iowa today you would find hmosexaulity to be “rare”.

To start with the data itself… Ford and Beach didn’t go visit 79 individual cultures around the World with a clipboard and reel-to-reel recorder. Instead, they raided the archives at Yale (?).

Some of these cultural studies did not make mention of homosexuality — doesn’t mean it didn’t exist or occur, obviously; but the studies were silent on the subject, or noted the topic had not been covered etc. (we are talking pre-1951 here, when such reticence was not uncommon). Some of these cultural studies were rather old, even then.

But what they did find was that (at least) 49 of these cultures are recorded as viewing homosexuality as an entirely normal sexuality. One that was accepted, even lauded by some.

Now… the interesting bit… in 1952 homosexuality was also first declared a mental illness in the DSM 1.

Declared so by (essentially) white American psychoanalysts drawing on the older and negative views of white European psychoanalysts.

As Ford and Beach too obviously displayed — this was a wrong declaration, hide-bound in its own culture and prejudice; and ultimately reflecting social mores rather than science and research.

If most of the cultures did not view homosexuality as a pathological state… why did 1952 America?

It took 21 years for that error to begin to be corrected, even though it was plainly a flawed and narrowly-based opinion right from the start.

Personally I rate Ford and Beach as at least as significant as Kinsey and Hooker, in terms of the bombshell it contains. It was ignored by medical professionals because… Ford and Beach were anthropologists.

P.S. Ben, that was my first thought too, they didn’t even have cell phones back then let alone the internet (among an infinite number of other significant variables) – how relevant a study could it be? -On TOP of the appeal to tradition!

A vastly different world– one which you oculd be killed, jailed, or committed for this crime against nature not to be named among Christians.

I always wonder how this kind of inteelectual and moral dishonesty allows these homobigots to sleep at night.

I’ve always handled that one with a simple analogy:

Telling a gay man he can marry any woman he wants is like telling a man in a wheelchair he can use any staircase he wants.

It is technically possible that a man in a wheelchair could use the handrail to pull himself and his chair up a staircase. It is technically possible he could simply leave the chair at the bottom, climbing up the stairs using his hands and elbows.

Sure, it’s technically possible that I could marry a woman: but the question is, why should I have to? Why should she have to? We have escalators that allow people who have a different way of moving around to get where they need to go.

As a Certified Cameronite, Kern has completed her own evolution to the lowest depths of extremist rhetoric. She now joins the ranks of so many others who care neither for the truth, ethics, or simple human decency in their zeal to render LGBT citizens as second class — or worse.

Rep. Sally Kern: . . .I do not support laws that would force employers to check their First Amendment rights to freedom of religion, speech, and association at the workplace door.

In addition to her references to bogus studies and distortions of legitimate ones, I find her entire thought processes extremely troubling coming from a legislator. So! She would like for any employer or employee to be able to express their most hateful or bigotted opinions in the work place, including the right to, evidently, only associate with people of whom she approves? Hmmmmmm?!? This begs the question(s): “Sally! Does this extend to the Aryan Brotherhood? Are you also in favor of them NOT checking their “rights to freedom of religion, speech, and association at the workplace door”???!!!!

As an aside, I always find it laughable when people like Kern speak of “special rights”. I mean, come on… who exactly is seeking “special rights”? Us or those who: (1)have written into law the right to marry as being their personal exclusive right; (2) who is lobbying for preferential treatment to be given to their singular sectarian and denominational beliefs to the exclusion of all others, etc.?

She’s a real piece of work.