Gay and Lesbian Journalism

News coverage of the lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender community has been guided by changes in social tolerance, legal proscriptions against homosexual acts, and the desire of gays to hide their sexual orientation to avoid the social stigma attached to homosexuality. Until the mid-twentieth century, the term homosexual was considered obscene, and mainstream newspapers shunned the topic for fear of offending readers and alienating advertisers. In rare instances when the importance of a story overrode these concerns, newspapers couched any reference to homosexuality in obscure terms that eluded the average reader. When Oscar Wilde was put on trial for “gross indecency” in 1895, he offered the first public defense of homosexuality in England, but The New York Times, for example, never expressly stated the playwright's offense. By the 1940s, newspapers and magazines highlighted the military's efforts to weed out homosexuals and other “undesirables” from the armed forces. The Washington, D.C., Evening Star celebrated the policy in a 1943 feature article headlined “How the Navy's Mind Detectives Seek Men of Sound Nerve for Warfare.” Newsweek explained in 1947 that military psychiatrists detected homosexuals by their effeminate looks or behavior and by “repeating certain words from the homosexual vocabulary and watching for signs of recognition.” However, many other publications continued to avoid the subject. In 1948, the Raleigh Times for example, refused to print a wire service report on Alfred Kinsey's Sexual Behavior in the Human Male, although they did inform readers that the story could be ordered by mail.

Depictions of homosexuality grew even darker in the 1950s, as newspapers relegated homosexuals to the crime pages. A string of articles in the Miami Herald, for example, described a crackdown on undesirables along a strip of beach. One official explained that the area had acquired a reputation as a “congregating place for males who try hard to look and act like women.” Similar stories were seen in New York City; Atlanta; Denver; Dayton, Ohio; and Washington, D.C., to name a few.

Homosexuals garnered greater negative attention as they became easy prey for Senator Joseph McCarthy and other politicians who were eager to capitalize on the nation's postwar paranoia. “Perverts Called Government Peril” blared a New York Times article that described concerns that homosexuals had infiltrated the federal workforce. In a similar fashion, a Washington Times-Herald[Page 662]article told readers: “Reds Entice Women Here in Sex Orgies.” Despite the sinister tone, the article was one of the few that acknowledged the existence of lesbians.