annerisms" and "repeating certain words from the homosexual vocabulary and watching for signs of recognition." The second article (Newsweek, Oct. 10, 1949), headlined "Queer People," reported that homosexuals committed "the most dastardly and horrifying of crimes" and "should be placed in an institution." And a third, published by Time (Dec. 25, 1950), reported that homosexuals who worked in the government were security risks because they could be blackmailed. The sources cited for each story were (usually unnamed) officials who represented the institution to which homosexuals were presumably a threat: Army medical officers in reports that homosexuals were a threat to the military; law enforcement officials in reports that they were a threat to public safety; and senators in reports that they were a security risk. "The Abnormal," a Time headline from 1950, introduced the second major theme of the period: What causes homosexuality, and what should be done about it? Homosexuality, this and other articles reported, was a mental disorder. Some reported that the disorder was a result of homosexuals being "overwhelmed by the ordinary shocks of life," such as birth. Another stated: "Certain damaging childhood experiences cause anxieties that do not allow the person to express his feelings toward a member of the opposite sex" (Newsweek, June 15, 1959). And parents were to blame, as some articles make clear: mothers who had been too strong an influence, fathers too weak, resulting in an effeminate son. (More than 90 percent of the articles from the 1940's through the 80's focused on men, with lesbians an afterthought, if a thought at all.) As a solution to the alleged problem, six out of seven articles opined that psychotherapy was the answer. The main sources for all these articles were psychiatrists. The 60's: To Punish or to Pity? Words Used in the 1960'saberrant ...
