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Homosexuality and the Law

By Jim Andris For the Alestle

In 1967 the National Institute of Mental Health appointed a Task Force on Homosexuality. In 1969 they issued their Final Report. Following a number of imminent bodies, for example, the Ninth International Congress on Criminal Law, the Task Force recommended that legal penalties against acts, in private by consenting adults be removed.

They noted that many homosexuals are good citizens and that legal penalties caused much anguish in these people's lives. They stated that no evidence indicates that these laws in any way decrease the incidence of homosexulaity or homosexual acts, and persons are now seldom brought to trial under these laws. Finally, they emphasized that this would in no way effect existing legal penalties against seducing minors or violating public decency. Several states have now removed these legal penalties, including Illinois.

Homosexual rights are gaining ground in two areas—local legislation and case law. According to the Advocate, more than 1.25 million gay men and women are now protected by employment rights legislation forbidding discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation. Cities having such legislation include Detroit, Washington D.C., San Francisco, San Jose, Palo Alto, Berkeley, Ann Arbor, Minneapolis, Ithica, Seattle, Toronto, and Portland, Or. Public attitude seems to be more favorable in some areas
than others. For example, in Columbus, Ohio, local newspapers raised such a storm of indignation that the mayor vetoed such a bill. On the other hand, Gov. Anderson of Minnesota congratulated State Senator Allan Spears after Spears came out publicly as an open gay state legislator.

Case law represents another field of advance for gay rights. For example, a U.S. Court of Appeals in Boston recently ruled favorably regarding the right of the Gay Students Organization at the University of New Hampshire to hold social functions on the campus. The administration had banned its social events claiming that they were disruptive and offensive to the community. According to It's Time, monthly newsletter of the National Gay Task Force for July, 1974, a case before the Supreme Court could be as significant as the school desegregation cases were for the black movement.

Joseph Ancafora III, a gay teacher transferred out of his Maryland classroom when school board officials discovered he was gay, had had a friend of the court suit filed for him by Lambda Legal Defense and Education Fund, Inc. Lambda asked the Court to review the Appeals Court refusal to order his reinstatement because he did not indicate on his application forms that he was a member of a gay students' organization. Lambda argued that under previous decisions ofthe Supreme Court interpreting the constitutional right to freedom of association, Ancafora was not required to reveal his membership.

In his book Out of the Closets, former SIU-E professor Laud Humphreys has attempted to build a case that homosexuals are oppressed. He defines oppression as the situation obtaining "when those holding authority systematically impose burdens upon relatively powerless segments of society." He documents three kinds of oppression—Iegal-physical, occupational-financial, and ego-destructive burdens.

The foremost legal burden is the so-called "consensual sodomy" statutes which exist in more than 40 states and which make it illegal for consenting adults of the same sex to have sexual relations. Homosexual sex acts, in the vast majority of cases are what Edwin Schur calls "crimes without victims"—that is, both parties willingly participate and involve no one else. These laws are very hard to enforce, because of lack of complaints.

Humphreys' experience is that over half the homosexual men he has interviewed in seven years of research have been questioned or arrested in connection with their sexual activities. He contrasts this situation with the heterosexual one. While there were 107 arrests one year in Buffalo of females for prostitution, only one man was arrested for patronizing a prostitute. He also points out that for homosexuals who desire to be faithful to one another, there is no legitimating institution, as in the case of heterosexualtiy.

In the past, the government has maintained a contradictory standard for homosexuals, Humphreys maintains. They have long been dismissed from top security positions because of their alleged susceptibility to blackmail. Yet George Grimm lost his security clearance and his job after he refused to submit to blackmail and answered truthfully all questions put to him.

Because of their "outlaw" status, Humphreys maintains, homosexuals are pursued by police, yet frequently not protected when victimized. This encourages gangs and individual thugs to engage in attacks upon them ranging from verbal intimidation to blackmail and homicide, yet many homosexuals fear even contacting the police.

Humphreys hypothesizes that a homosexual's occupational and financial success is closely correlated with his or her ability to deny their gay identity, i.e. pass as "straight." He cites as an example the reactions of an attorney professing a long record of working for civil rights to a 1971 proposed addition to New York State's fair employment act which would protect people in spite of their sexual orientation. The attorney pointed out to Humphreys that the proposed law would make it discriminatory for parents to refuse homosexuals as baby sitters.

Humphreys countered that some of his best baby sitters had been homosexual, and that no one objects to a heterosexual girl or boy sitting with a child of the opposite sex. The atorney then countered that homosexuals shouldn't be employed in schools. Humphreys suggested that some of his best teachers had been gay, and quoted D. J. West, an expert, as saying that homosexuals do not generally desire sexual relations with children. Dr. George Weinberg agrees that child molestation is primarily a heterosexual offense.

Dr. Humphreys argues that homosexuals are alone among discriminated minorities in being denied the military as a source of occupational and financial advancement. They are excluded from such employment and systematically ferreted out and discharged. Collin Williams and Martin Weinberg, conducting research on this topic, estimated that not less than 2000 persons a year are discharged from the military for homosexuality- connected reasons. In addition, such information may make its way into national data banks and virtually insure little chance for the labeled individual to find gainful employ- ment.

Through these and other methods, Humphreys maintians, the dominant and powerful segment of society keep homosexuals subjugated. They are defined by the law and the government as perverts, criminals, and moral degenerates . Then the power-holding sector sets out to prove their definition is right with every gay or suspected gay which they encounter.