Comments on: The Daily Agenda for Monday, December 31

By: G.I. Joe

G.I. Joe — Sat, 05 Jan 2013 14:51:16 +0000

To be fair, the article actually quotes two homosexual by name (although anonymously, so it could be made up). I actually find it quite positive for 1971.

Compared to the 1966 TIME magazine article Bose mentions, it’s light speed ahead in terms of positivism and optimism.

By: WildwoodGuy

WildwoodGuy — Thu, 03 Jan 2013 05:52:50 +0000

Jim,
Thank you for introducing me to Jennifer Higdon. I had never heard of her… and then suddenly, after you introduced us to her, I discover that my local classical radio station is hosting her *LIVE* this coming Saturday evening 1/5/13 at 8P PST on a show by local host Robert McBride. You can hear the program live at http://www.allclassical.org/
at 8p PST or, if you can’t catch it live, listen to it on demand by going to the website and hitting the ‘Audio Archive’ option, select Club Mod. They archive 2 weeks worth of shows for each of the locally created content.

As always Jim, you help to introduce us all to new artists and people I’ve never heard of before, and I want to thank you for that! (I never heard of Michael Tippett… and then realized his big work A Child of our Time had aired on Club Mod on Saturday, June 30. Yes… I listened… but didn’t realize the significance at the time.

Thank you Jim, for everything you do and for all the new things to which you introduce this old fossil.

By: Donny D.

Donny D. — Tue, 01 Jan 2013 10:40:43 +0000

Bose in St. Peter MN wrote,

In contrast to more recent coverage, it’s interesting that the reporter didn’t go to the Catholic Church or any other religious voices, so there were no scary quotes about gay people being an abomination or ruining the country.

No, there generally wouldn’t have been back then, because the big mission of the straight, oh, excuse me, MAINSTREAM print media was to convince every one of their readers that gay people are “sick”, so the quotes were all from psychologists and psychiatrists, tending heavily toward the latter. And there might or might not be a quote from a cop. Always against us, of course.

By: Bose in St. Peter MN

Bose in St. Peter MN — Mon, 31 Dec 2012 14:37:17 +0000

The full 11-page spread in that Time magazine is intriguing: Homosexuals in Revolt: The year one liberation movement turned militant. Keeping with the militant theme, only a couple of the gay people in photos is smiling out of the dozens shown. Troy Perry even looks somber and angry in the two shots of him.

Fun, too, to see that Jack Baker’s successful run for U of MN Student Association included posters of him wearing high heels.

In contrast to more recent coverage, it’s interesting that the reporter didn’t go to the Catholic Church or any other religious voices, so there were no scary quotes about gay people being an abomination or ruining the country. Of course, those sorts of condemnations weren’t needed from religious leaders with a sub-head like “A direct assault on laws and customs.”

And yet, in the segment about the MCC and Perry, the reporter tips his hit in an unexpected direction: “[Perry's] Sunday sermons, flavored by the Bible Belt, are laced with a wit that easily demolishes the traditional view of homosexuality as evil.”

Easily demolished? Wow.

By: Steve

Steve — Mon, 31 Dec 2012 14:17:52 +0000

Those “therapists” weren’t interested in objective research. After all they made money from “curing” people, so saying that being gay is an illness was in their best interest. They would either have structured their “studies” to produce a desired outcome (like Regnerus) or suppressed any inconvenient data.

By: Hunter

Hunter — Mon, 31 Dec 2012 13:19:44 +0000

PS — Happy New Year to you all.

By: Hunter

Hunter — Mon, 31 Dec 2012 13:18:53 +0000

For the time, the Life article was surprisingly even-handed, although it’s instructive that the author(s) didn’t manage to include any actual statements from “militants” or any other gays — only attributed attitudes. It’s hard to believe that no one would speak for attribution at that point. There’s also the fact that relying on psychotherapists to any degree was questionable: they were, after all, basing their findings on patient populations, so there’s built-in bias in what passed for their study populations, and they were markedly resistant to any broader research. Interesting take on the attitudes at the time, though.