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Timeline of LGBT Mormon history in the 1950s

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History of LGBT people and Mormonism in the 1950s

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This is a timeline of LGBT Mormon history in the 1950s, part of a series of timelines consisting of events, publications, and speeches about LGBTQ+ individuals, topics around sexual orientation and gender minorities, and the community of members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS Church). Although the historical record is often scarce, evidence points to queer individuals having existed in the Mormon community since its beginnings. However, top LDS leaders only started regularly addressing queer topics in public in the late 1950s. Since 1970, the LDS Church has had at least one official publication or speech from a high-ranking leader referencing LGBT topics every year, and a greater number of LGBT Mormon and former Mormon individuals have received media coverage.

Timeline

1952

In the 1950s Apostle J. Reuben Clark gave several of the first public speeches by a high-ranking LDS leader to use the term "homosexual."
  • October – An increase in US public discourse around homosexuality in the McCarthyist Lavender scare era contributed to the first explicit mention of the term homosexual in general conference. Apostle Clark lamented that homosexuality is found among men and women, and that homosexual people exercise great influence in shaping culture. After this LDS leaders started regularly addressing queer topics in public especially towards the end of the decade.

1954

  • May – While administrating as an apostle, Spencer Kimball discussed sexual sins at a BYU address condemning any abhorrent, unmentionable, unnatural, unholy, impure, heinous sexual practices with another person. He further said the belief that God "made me this way, gave me these desires and passions" was untrue, and that we can "overcome and become perfect". The speech was printed as a pamphlet and given to missionaries.
  • July – Apostle Harold B. Lee interpreted several scriptures in the Old and New Testament as describing homosexuality as the most abhorred sin in God's sight which justified the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah.
  • October – Apostle Clark again addressed homosexuality in conference when in the October priesthood session he mentions that those guilty of "the filthy crime of homosexuality" are not a part of the "Army of the Lord to fight evil".

1955

  • October – A Boise, Idaho, gay witch hunt was launched to hunt down gay men among moral panic over several local arrests of males for same-sex sexual activity. This resulted in nearly 1,500 people questioned, producing hundreds of names of suspected homosexuals including several Mormons. Author John Gerassi cites an oppressive environment engendered by the predominantly LDS population in his seminal 1966 work Boys of Boise as a contributing factor for the illegal sexual activity and subsequent witch hunts. The documentary The Fall of '55 was made about the events in 2006.

1957

  • April – Apostle Clark cited Old Testament punishments for sexual sins to highlight that "sex transgression is tragically serious" in the April General Conference. He stated "for homosexuality, it was death to the male and the prescription or penalty for the female I do not know."
  • October – The LDS Salt Lake City judge Marcellus Snow stated that he planned to use more jail time (up to six months) for people suspected of homosexual acts in order to prevent them from "proselyting our youth". During a months-long sting operation, male Salt Lake City vice squad undercover agents arrested about 6 men who were accused of making sexual advances in a Salt Lake City theater and tavern widely known as a male homosexual hotspot.

1958

This highly influential publication was the first publicly available book by a general authority to explicitly outline church stances on homosexuality.
  • 1958 – General authority Bruce R. McConkie published Mormon Doctrine, in which he states that homosexuality is "among Lucifer's chief means of leading souls to hell". In the section on "Chastity" he states that it is better to be "dead clean, than alive unclean" and that many Mormon parents would rather their child "come back in a pine box with virtue than return alive without it". The book was viewed by many members both then and now as representing official doctrine despite never being endorsed by the church.
  • May – LDS police sergeant Theon Southworth over the Salt Lake City anti-vice department announced increased efforts to catch homosexual men. His three officers assigned to patrol known sexual cruising locations officers had arrested 23 men for same-sex sexual activity in the month of May alone. The increased arrests continued and several months later a city judge remarked that several of the men arrested were very prominent members of the community, and The Salt Lake Tribune commended the judge's actions stating "Homosexuality is a social evil that must be fought", but that imprisonment was not the answer as confinement may "spread the 'disease'" to others. The anti-vice squad activities occurred under the direction of LDS influential right-wing author Cleon Skousen who had been appointed as the Salt Lake City police chief in 1956, but was removed in 1960 for overzealousness in his police raiding.
  • October – After reports of homosexual activity in the Utah State Prison made Utah headlines in September, the church's newspaper published an interview with a former inmate there who stated that about 25% of the inmates there were participating in homosexual activities. LDS chief deputy county attorney Jay Banks suggested that homosexual inmates be moved into a separate building and that "it would take the warden about a half hour to separate the homos and agitators from the rest of the prisoners".

1959

  • 1959 – The apostle Mark E. Petersen was appointed to work with Kimball over instances of homosexuality.
  • 1959 – Church leaders begin their electroshock aversion therapy program on BYU campus in an attempt to change the sexual orientation of gay teens and men. The on-campus program lasted over three decades into the mid-90s.
  • 1959 – The fictional book Advise and Consent is released featuring the story of a married Mormon US senator named Brigham Anderson from Utah who has an affair with another man. It won a Pulitzer Prize and was later made into a film in 1962. The novel's plot takes place during the ongoing 1950s McCarthyist Lavender Scare era when thousands of lesbian and gay applicants were barred from federal employment as national security threats under President Eisenhower's Executive Order 10450, and over 5,000 federal employees were fired under suspicions of being homosexual.
  • January – The church's newspaper published an editorial written by the apostle and Deseret News editor Mark Petersen. It approved the LDS Salt Lake City police chief Cleon Skousen's denouncement of pushes to legalize homosexuality. The punitive attitude towards homosexuality in the editorial was criticized by a psychologist in a later issue's letter to the editor.
  • January – LDS chairman of the Utah State Board of Corrections Leslie David Burbridge stated that about 10% of teen boys at the Ogden juvenile reform Utah State Industrial School had had a homosexual experience with 90% of those having occurred before entering the school. LDS superintendent of the school Claud Harmon Pratt stated that in the past seven years there had been under six reported incidents of homosexuality at the school.
  • May – In a Salt Lake Temple meeting with senior apostles BYU president Ernest Wilkinson recorded that church president David McKay stated "homosexuality was worse than immorality, that it is a filthy and unnatural habit."
  • November – LDS member Dr. Jay S. Broadbent representing Provo in a Utah state meeting on pornography discussed ordinances to curtail explicit pornography including gay pornography being sent through the mail in the state, along with beefcake magazines which were soft-core homoerotic magazines printed under the pretext of promoting fitness, health, and bodybuilding to skirt Comstock obscenity laws, including those reinforced by Roth v. United States in 1957.

See also

References

  1. ^ Quinn, D. Michael (1996). Same-Sex Dynamics among Nineteenth-Century Americans: A Mormon Example. University of Illinois Press. ISBN 978-0252022050.
  2. ^ Winkler, Douglas A. (May 2008). Lavender Sons of Zion: A History of Gay Men in Salt Lake City, 1950–1979. Salt Lake City, Utah: University of Utah Department of History. ISBN 9780549493075.
  3. Young, Neil J. (July 1, 2016). Out of Obscurity: Mormonism Since 1945. Oxford University Press. ISBN 978-0199358229. Retrieved May 26, 2017.
  4. Clark, J. Reuben (October 2, 1952). "Home and the Building of Home Life". Relief Society Magazine: 793–794. Retrieved November 3, 2016. ... he crimes for which Sodom and Gomorrah were destroyed–we have coined a softer name for them than came from old; we now speak of homosexuality, which, it is tragic to say, is found among both sexes. ...Not without foundation is the contention of some that the homosexuals are today exercising great influence in shaping our art, literature, music, and drama.
  5. ^ O'Donovan, Rocky Connell (1994). "'The Abominable and Detestable Crime against Nature': A Brief History of Homosexuality and Mormonism, 1840-1980". Multiply and Replenish: Mormon Essays on Sex and Family. Salt Lake City: Signature Books. ISBN 1-56085-050-7. Retrieved November 27, 2016.
  6. Williams, Clarence D. (October 3, 1952). "Save Chastity of Youth, Clark Warns". The Salt Lake Tribune. p. 10A.
  7. Kimball, Spencer (1970). "Be Ye Clean: Steps to Repentance and Forgiveness". Deseret Book. pp. 11–13. Retrieved April 3, 2023 – via LDS Church History Catalog.
  8. Kimball, Spencer (1977). Faith Precedes the Miracle (PDF). Salt Lake City, Utah: Deseret Book. pp. 174–175. ISBN 978-0877474906. Retrieved April 3, 2023 – via Archive.org.
  9. McDannell, Colleen (October 2, 2018). Sister Saints: Mormon Women since the End of Polygamy. Oxford University Press. p. 82. ISBN 978-0-19-022133-1 – via Google Books.
  10. Williams, Clyde J. (1996). The Teachings of Harold B. Lee. Salt Lake City, Utah: Bookcraft Inc. ISBN 1570084831.
  11. Lee, Harold (July 1, 1954). The Flood (Speech). BYU Summer School Lecture. Provo, Utah: LDS Church.
  12. Clark, J. Reuben (October 2, 1954). 125th Semi-Annual General Conference (PDF). LDS Church. p. 79. Retrieved November 15, 2016.
  13. "Timeline of Mormon Thinking About Homosexuality". RationalFaiths.com. Rational Faiths. November 3, 2013. Archived from the original on November 4, 2016. Retrieved November 15, 2016.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: bot: original URL status unknown (link)
  14. Marcus, Eric. "Morris Foote". makinggayhistory.com. Pineapple Street Media. According to the late journalist John Gersassi—whose 1966 book, 'The Boys of Boise: Furor, Vice and Folly in an American City,' chronicles the scandal—the police questioned nearly fifteen hundred Boise citizens and gathered the names of hundreds of suspected homosexuals by the time the investigation ran its course the following year. All told, sixteen men were arrested on charges ranging from 'lewd and lascivious conduct with minor children under the age of sixteen' to 'infamous crimes against nature.' Of the sixteen, ten went to jail, including several whose only crime had been to engage in sex with another consenting adult male.
  15. Barclay, Donald (April 22, 1981). "Coming Out in Boise". University News. Boise State University. p. 9.
  16. Gerassi, John G. (November 1, 2001). "The Boys". The Boys of Boise: Furor, Vice and Folly in an American City (Reprint ed.). Seattle: University of Washington Press. pp. 30, 31. ISBN 0295981679. 'Of course, in Boise there's the extra element of the power of the Mormons ... The atmosphere is stifling, and the pressure to conform enormous. The city fathers or bigwigs take it upon themselves to impose standards for everyone else.' ... 'Of the sixty-five kids, thirty-five were Mormons ....' Butler did interview thirty-two of the sixty-five kids who were thought to have been involved in some way with the homosexuals. ... 'Most of the kids who had participated had done for a combination of kicks and rebellion against parental authority.'
  17. Clark, J. Reuben (April 1957). Sexual Sin (PDF). Scriptures.BYU.EDU: LDS Church. p. 87. Archived from the original (PDF) on July 1, 2015. Retrieved March 9, 2022.
  18. "3rd District Judge Marcellus K. Snow Dies". The Salt Lake Tribune. August 14, 1978. p. C1 – via Newspapers.com. was a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and was the grandson of Erastus Snow, Mormon pioneer leader.
  19. ^ "Stiffer Sentences in Prospect for S.L. Morals Offenders". The Salt Lake Tribune. October 14, 1957. p. 20 – via Newspapers.com.
  20. McConkie, Bruce R. (1958). Mormon Doctrine. Deseret Book.
  21. ^ Prince, Gregory A. (2019). Gay Rights and the Mormon Church: Intended Actions, Unintended Consequences. Salt Lake City: The University of Utah Press. ISBN 9781607816638.
  22. "T. Southworth Succumbs, 73". The Salt Lake Tribune. October 1, 1977. p. A14 – via Newspapers.com.
  23. ^ "Police Nab 23 in 27-Day Morals Drive". The Salt Lake Tribune. May 29, 1958. p. 10 – via Newspapers.com.
  24. "May Reveals Policy in Morals Cases". The Salt Lake Tribune. September 27, 1958. p. 16 – via Newspapers.com.
  25. "A Wise Court Policy". The Salt Lake Tribune. September 30, 1958. p. 12 – via Newspapers.com.
  26. Zaitchik, Alexander (September 16, 2009). "Meet the man who changed Glenn Beck's life". Salon.
  27. ^ "Vice in Prison Described by Former Inmate". Deseret News. October 20, 1958. p. 1B – via Newspapers.com.
  28. "Death: Jay E. Banks". Deseret News. August 30, 1998.
  29. "Graham Quits as Warden; Prison Tightens Operation: Laxity Curb Sought by Officers". Deseret News. September 24, 1958. p. 1B. Archived from the original on March 1, 2022 – via Newspapers.com.
  30. Kimball, Edward L.; Kimball, Andrew E. (1977). Spencer W. Kimball: Twelfth President of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Salt Lake City: Bookcraft. ISBN 0884943305. Also available at archive.org
  31. Quinn, D. Michael (January 15, 1997). The Mormon Hierarchy: Extensions of Power (1 ed.). Salt Lake City, Utah: Signature Books. ISBN 1560850604. Retrieved June 15, 2017.
  32. Phillips, Rick (2005). Conservative Christian Identity & Same-Sex Orientation: The Case of Gay Mormons (PDF). Frankfurt, Germany: Peter Lang Publishing. ISBN 0820474800. Archived from the original on April 18, 2017. Retrieved May 31, 2017.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: bot: original URL status unknown (link)
  33. Tapper, Jake (October 6, 2006). "A Brief History Of Gays In Government". ABC News. 1959 – Political thriller 'Advise and Consent' features fictional Utah Sen. Brigham Anderson driven to suicide when political enemies threaten to expose a gay affair from his youth.
  34. Simon, Scott (September 2, 2009). "At 50, a D.C. Novel With Legs". The Wall Street Journal. The man who turns out to almost unwillingly stand in the way of confirmation is an unflinchingly honest young senator from Utah who has concealed a wartime homosexual tryst. ... Drury's most appealing character is Brigham Anderson, the young senator from Utah. When Otto Preminger brought 'Advise and Consent' to the screen in 1962, the senator's homosexuality is called a "tired old sin.' But in Drury's book, Brigham Anderson is candid and unapologetic to those closest to him. 'It didn't seem horrible at the time,' he says, 'and I am not going to say now that it did, even to you.'
  35. Rich, Frank (May 15, 2005). "Just How Gay Is the Right?". The New York Times. In 'Advise and Consent,' the handsome young senator with a gay secret (Don Murray) is from Utah—a striking antecedent of the closeted conservative Mormon lawyer in Tony Kushner's 'Angels in America.' For a public official to be identified as gay in the Washington of the 1950s and 1960s meant not only career suicide but also potentially actual suicide. Yet Drury, a staunchly anti-Communist conservative of his time, regarded the character as sympathetic, not a villain. The senator's gay affair, he wrote, was 'purely personal and harmed no one else.'
  36. Sears, Brad; Hunter, Nan D.; Mallory, Christy (September 2009). Documenting Discrimination on the Basis of Sexual Orientation and Gender Identity in State Employment (PDF). Los Angeles: The Williams Institute on Sexual Orientation and Gender Identity Law and Public Policy at UCLA School of Law. pp. 5–3. Archived from the original (PDF) on February 6, 2017. Retrieved March 9, 2022. From 1947 to 1961, more than 5,000 allegedly homosexual federal civil servants lost their jobs in the purges for no reason other than sexual orientation, and thousands of applicants were also rejected for federal employment for the same reason. During this period, more than 1,000 men and women were fired for suspected homosexuality from the State Department alone—a far greater number than were dismissed for their membership in the Communist party. The Cold War and anti-communist efforts provided the setting in which a sustained attack upon gay men and lesbians took place. The history of this 'Lavender Scare' by the federal government has been extensively documented by historian David Johnson. Johnson has demonstrated that during this era government officials intentionally engaged in campaigns to associate homosexuality with Communism: 'homosexual' and 'pervert' became synonyms for 'Communist' and 'traitor.' LGBT people were treated as a national security threat, demanding the attention of Congress, the courts, statehouses, and the media.
  37. "An interview with David K. Johnson author of The Lavender Scare: The Cold War Persecution of Gays and Lesbians in the Federal Government". press.uchicago.edu. The University of Chicago. 2004. The Lavender Scare helped fan the flames of the Red Scare. In popular discourse, communists and homosexuals were often conflated. Both groups were perceived as hidden subcultures with their own meeting places, literature, cultural codes, and bonds of loyalty. Both groups were thought to recruit to their ranks the psychologically weak or disturbed. And both groups were considered immoral and godless. Many people believed that the two groups were working together to undermine the government.
  38. Roberts, Paul (August 1983). A History of the Development and Objectives of the LDS Church News Section of the Deseret News (Masters of Arts). BYU. Archived from the original on November 8, 2019. Elder Petersen wrote the first editorial and nearly every one into the 1980s.
  39. "Devoted Publishers, Editors Have Upheld Vision of News". Deseret News. June 15, 1990.
  40. Petersen, Mark (January 3, 1959). "Mankind–Men or Beasts?". Deseret News. p. 8A. Archived from the original on March 3, 2022 – via Newspapers.com.
  41. Landward, John (January 19, 1959). "Punishment Not Best Answer". Deseret News. p. 14A – via Newspapers.com.
  42. "Obituary: Grace Kirkham Burbidge". Deseret News. September 27, 2001.
  43. "'Misquoted' on Perversion, Burbidge Says". The Ogden Standard-Examiner. January 19, 1959. p. 16 – via Newspapers.com.
  44. "Claud Harmon Pratt". The Salt Lake Tribune. November 24, 2001. p. D10 – via Newspapers.com.
  45. "Perversion Charge 'Ill Advised,' Pratt Claims". The Ogden Standard-Examiner. January 18, 1959. p. 16A – via Newspapers.com.
  46. "Dr Jay Standring Broadbent Obituary". Daily Herald. A4. February 8, 2010.
  47. "Anti-Pornography Forces Ask New City Ordinance". Daily Herald. November 20, 1959. p. 5 – via Newspapers.com.
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