(Transcript - link for video at the bottom of page. Original production by Powered by Rainbow. Presented by Professor Pride )
From 1924 to 1972, the director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, also known as the FBI in America, was a man named John Edgar Hoover.
For his time in office, he was emotionally, and what many believed to be sexually, involved with his assistant Clyde Tolson.
John Hoover was massively against infidelity and a major enemy of the Kennedy family, because they were widely known for having extra marital affairs.
But in September of 1937, John Hoover made his claim to fame by writing an article called “War on the Sex Criminals”.
Because of his position at the FBI, it was immediately printed in the New York Herald Tribune and reprinted in papers across the country and around the world.
Even though he himself was homosexual, his article clearly incited fears in the public concerning the more public homosexuals.
Basically, if you spoke out in favour of equality or even held hands in public with your same sex partner, Hoover thought you should be a criminal of the state.
In his article he wrote, “the present apathy of the public towards perverts, generally regarded as harmless, should be changed to one of suspicious scrutiny.
The harmless pervert of today can be, and often is, the lonesome mutilator and murderer of tomorrow.
The ordinary offender turns into a dangerous predatory animal, preying upon society, because he has been taught he can get away with it.”
His words were purposefully left vague. He never mentioned homosexuality specifically in the article, but it was clearly implied.
Now keep in mind he wasn't just saying this as an ordinary citizen, he was saying this as the director of the FBI. Basically, his position of power gave him immediate credibility without anyone questioning his opinions, nor asking him to back those opinions up with facts or evidence.
He was, in not so vague words, saying if we didn't imprison homosexuals they were going to keep doing crimes until they raped young children, murdered someone or mutilated someone.
Later he was drawing a clear line for society between homosexuality and paedophilia, basically saying, they are one and the same, which is clearly not true.
But because of his position at the FBI, people believed him blindly. At the time, they thought he must have seen some evidence in crime rates to back up his claim. They thought maybe murderers, paedophiles and rapists were being caught and admitting to acting in same sex desires earlier in their lives, and that maybe there was a trend going on.
But the truth is, no evidence ever suggested that. Nonetheless, shortly after his opinion piece was published, Illinois, California, Michigan, Minnesota and Ohio passed sexual psychopath laws.
This was followed by almost every state in America doing the same, all because of this one, wildly inaccurate, opinion article by John Hoover.
These laws were somewhat different in every state, but generally speaking they allowed courts to imprison whomever they called “sexual psychopaths” for undetermined amounts of time in mental institutions across the country.
And although the laws were somewhat different, again in every state, the one thing they all agreed upon is the very vague language used to describe what constituted the criminal. This was all in a very targeted effort, so the law could be applied, as indiscriminately as possible.
Shortly after the laws were rushed through the government and passed, the law enforcement and government alike started using the “sexual psychopath” term interchangeably with child molester, homosexual, sex offender, sex degenerate, and even communist.
This was all based on Hoover's original article. The law enforcement and government even did massive campaigns, which cost the taxpayers millions of dollars, to find homosexuals before they acted out worse.
Because, again, Hoover claimed if society didn't stop homosexuals, they will keep doing worse and worse actions until they murder or molest someone.
So the government blindly followed Hoover, as if it needs repeating, without any evidence to back his claims.
And based on that campaign, families across the country started turning in their gay children to the government and dropping them off at mental institutions for the rest of their lives to live among actual mental, insane individuals.
In these asylums, the homosexual patients were subjected to isolation, electrocution, lobotomies and worse torture, all of which are against the Geneva Convention but was being conducted until 1989 on American soil.
The worst part of the story, as if the rest was all sunshine and rainbows so far, is how well it worked. Millions of gay people were being rounded up and sent to mental institutions for the rest of their lives.
They were put under heavy medication to keep them brain dead, and to keep them from acting up. And even though, here we are, some 90 years later, with evidence to prove John Hoover lied in his opinion article in 1937, public perception has been forever damaged.
Many from his generation, and generations to come, will be born and raised with that mentality. They will swear to their dying day that being homosexual has a direct link to paedophilia, even though no evidence, even remotely, suggests such wild accusations.
So, sadly, it was because of a gay man, who had deep internalised homophobia, that he never came out as gay, but merely because of his position running the FBI, the media and the public blindly followed his opinions without ever asking him for evidence to back his claims.
The public followed his opinions and handed over their sons, daughters and neighbours for the rest of their lives. And even now, people with evidence to prove he was wrong, will forever believe that our pride movement is just a front for someday committing crimes against children.
But, for the record, the LGBTQIA community has never, and will never, stand with paedophilia or the MAP movement. We will never support such horrible actions, no matter what some John Hoover once claimed.
Commentaires