"The Homosexuals" is a 1967 episode of the documentary television series CBS Reports. The hour-long broadcast featured a discussion of a number of topics related to homosexuality and homosexuals. Mike Wallace anchored the episode, which aired on March 7, 1967. Although this was the first network documentary dealing with the topic of homosexuality, it was not the first televised in the United States. That was The Rejected, produced and aired in 1961 on KQED, a public television station in San Francisco.[1]
Three years in the making, "The Homosexuals" went through two producers and multiple revisions. The episode included interviews with several gay men, psychiatrists, legal experts and cultural critics, interspersed with footage of a gay bar and a police sex sting. "The Homosexuals" garnered mixed critical response. The network received praise from some quarters and criticism from others for even airing the program.
Production
The program was initially proposed in 1964.[2] The first version was produced by William Peters, with production supervised by executive producer Fred W. Friendly.[3] Upon accepting the assignment, Peters began his research by reading books and consulting with experts in the field. Peters suggested that the program focus exclusively on gay men and that he cover lesbians in a second program, and Friendly agreed.[4] Principal filming took place starting in the fall of 1964 and continued through early 1965.[5] Peters interviewed men in San Francisco, Philadelphia, Charlotte and New York City, accumulating 30 hours of footage.[4] The identities of several of the men were obscured in some fashion, either in shadow or, in one instance, behind a large potted palm tree.[6] Also interviewed were psychiatrist Charles Socarides, who strongly advocated the position that homosexuality is a mental disorder, and fellow psychiatrist Irving Bieber, who shared Socarides' opinion of homosexuality as pathology. Interspersed with these interview segments was footage, described as being in the cinéma vérité style, of the inside of a gay bar along with shots of hustlers working a street corner and a teenager being arrested in a public sex sting.[7]
After assembling a rough cut, Peters approached Mike Wallace to anchor the hour. Wallace was initially reluctant but after viewing the program enthusiastically agreed.[4] Despite his enthusiasm, Wallace's commentary disparaged homosexuals.
The average homosexual, if there be such, is promiscuous. He is not interested or capable of a lasting relationship like that of a heterosexual marriage. His sex life, his love life, consists of a series of one–chance encounters at the clubs and bars he inhabits. And even on the streets of the city — the pick-up, the one night stand, these are characteristics of the homosexual relationship.[8]
Friendly generally approved of the first version but believed that it was necessary to include information on same-sex sexual practices. When those practices were explained to him, however, he changed his mind.[3] While the documentary was still in production, Friendly was promoted to the presidency of CBS News but left soon after over a disagreement over the network's coverage of the Vietnam War. He was replaced by Richard S. Salant, who was known for his cost-consciousness, which put the future of the documentary and the CBS Reports series in question.[4]
Salant did try to kill the documentary, but stories about it began appearing in the trade press, putting CBS into a potentially embarrassing situation were it not to air. In mid-1965, Salant gave Peters the go-ahead to complete the episode. Peters worked with the New York chapter of the Mattachine Society to secure interviews with two additional gay subjects, Lars Larson and Jack Nichols, both of whom were fully accepting of their sexuality. Nichols later recalled his encounter with Wallace:
[A]fter we finished and the camera was turned off, Mike Wallace sat down with me and talked for about half an hour. He said, "You know, you answered all of my questions capably, but I have a feeling that you don't really believe that homosexuality is as acceptable as you make it sound." I asked him why he would say that. "Because," he said, "in your heart I think you know it's wrong." It was infuriating. I told him I thought being gay was just fine, but that in his heart he thought it was wrong.[9]
Peters added more footage of psychiatrists espousing that model along with scenes from the 1965 convention of the East Coast Homophile Organizations. CBS gave final approval to "The Homosexuals" and scheduled it to air in the spring of 1966.[5]
Salant later pulled the episode from the schedule and assigned producer Harry Morgan to re-edit it. According to Wallace, Salant found the piece sensationalistic; however, C. A. Tripp, a psychologist who had put CBS in touch with his patient Larson, claimed that Salant felt the piece was pro-homosexuality.[3] Morgan scrapped all but about 10 minutes of Peters' final cut. CBS felt that the self-accepting gay men made too favorable of an impression, so Morgan edited two of the interviews to make the men seem unhappier.[10] According to Wallace, no sponsor would buy time during the episode because of the taboo nature of the subject matter. Commercial spots were filled by public service announcements for the Peace Corps and the Internal Revenue Service.[3]
Overview
The first interview subject was a gay man, Lars Larson, who appeared undisguised and who spoke positively about his sexuality. Following his interview, Wallace gave the results of a CBS News poll that found that Americans considered homosexuality more harmful to the United States than adultery, abortion or prostitution, that two-thirds of Americans described their reaction to homosexuality as "disgust, discomfort or fear" and that one in ten described their reaction as "hatred". Just ten percent believed homosexuality was a crime but the majority still believed it should be criminally sanctioned.[11]
A gay man with his face hidden behind a potted plant
Following the poll, another gay man was interviewed from his psychiatrist's couch with his face obscured by shadow. He described coming out to his family, saying they treated him "like some wounded animal they were going to send to the vet."[12] Following this man was another unobscured subject Jack Nichols (who had taken on the pseudonym "Warren Adkins" for the program), co-founder of the Washington, D.C. branch of the Mattachine Society. He contrasted the comments of the previous subject, saying that he had come out to his family at age 14 and, far from being treated like a sick animal, they treated him with warmth and understanding.[13]
After remarks from Socarides advocating the disease model of homosexuality, Wallace discussed the legal aspects of homosexuality, noting that England was preparing to de-criminalize homosexual acts. Federal judge James Braxton Craven, Jr. from North Carolina advocated a re-evaluation of United States law, commenting, "Is it not time to redraft a criminal statute first enacted in 1533?" Following footage of Nichols and Mattachine D.C. co-founder Frank Kamenypicketing Independence Hall and the State Department, Kameny, under his real name, advocated a re-examination of federal law that placed a blanket ban on known homosexuals receiving security clearances.[14]
Next, Albert Goldman (then an English professor at Columbia University) and author and playwright Gore Vidal debated homosexuality, with an emphasis on the presence of homosexuals in the creative arts. Goldman asserted that homosexuality "is just one of a number of...things all tending toward the subversion, toward the final erosion, of our cultural values." Vidal, asserting that homosexuality is as natural as heterosexuality, countered by saying "The United States is living out some mad Protestant nineteenth-century dream of human behavior....I think the so-called breaking of the moral fiber of this country is one of the healthiest things that's begun to happen."[15]
Wallace closed with an interview with a gay man, with a wife and two children, who claimed that the narcissism of gay men made it impossible for two men to form a long-term loving relationship. Wrapping up the hour, Wallace concluded:
The dilemma of the homosexual: told by the medical profession he is sick; by the law that he's a criminal; shunned by employers; rejected by heterosexual society. Incapable of a fulfilling relationship with a woman, or for that matter with a man. At the center of his life he remains anonymous. A displaced person. An outsider.[16]
Also discussed were religious attitudes toward homosexuality and the Boise homosexuality scandal, a sweeping investigation of a supposed "homosexual underground" in Boise, Idaho, in 1955.
Critical reaction
Critical response of the time to the program was mixed. The New York Times, The Washington Star, and the Chicago Daily News praised CBS for addressing the subject. George Gent of the Times, however, commented on the anti-gay bias of the show, noting that it would "have been better to give the minority viewpoint that homosexuals are just as normal as anyone else a chance to speak for itself."[17] The Chicago Tribune titled its review "TV No Spot to Unload Garbage" and attacked CBS for presenting such material to young and impressionable viewers.[18]
More recent critical attention to "The Homosexuals" has also been mixed, trending to the negative. In one corner, anchor Mike Wallace is praised for debunking negative stereotypes about gay men.[19] In the other, Wallace's commentary is condemned as "a string of gross generalizations and negative stereotypes [that] sounds as if it was scripted by Rev. Jerry Falwell."[20] In noting that approximately 20% of television viewers in the United States saw the program, LGBT activist Wayne Besen labels the broadcast "the single most destructive hour of antigay propaganda in our nation's history."[21] He says that the episode "not only had a devastating effect on public opinion but also was a nuclear bomb dropped on the psyches of gay and lesbian Americans, who, prior to this show, had never been represented as a group on national television."[22]
Participants' response and personal consequences
Lars Larson, the first interview subject, was infuriated after seeing the finished program. He had been led to believe that the episode would present a far more positive picture of American gay life.[23] Larson, whose interview had been altered to make him seem less happy, filed a formal fraud complaint and withdrew his release.[24] "They had some rather nasty, angry anti-gay people on there who were treated as professionals," he said. "I had no problem with Harry Morgan or Mike Wallace because they were thorough. But obviously others in the decision-making process were truly upset with homosexuality. They saw it as a threat to the human race and were out to kill as best they could."[25] Jack Nichols was fired from his job as a hotel sales manager the day after the program aired.[26]
For his part, anchor Mike Wallace came to regret his participation in the episode. "I should have known better," he said in 1992.[25] Speaking in 1996, Wallace stated, "That is — God help us — what our understanding was of the homosexual lifestyle a mere twenty-five years ago because nobody was out of the closet and because that's what we heard from doctors — that's what Socarides told us, it was a matter of shame."[27] However, Wallace was at the time of broadcast close friends with noted designer James Amster (creator of the landmark Amster Yard courtyard in New York City) and Amster's male long-term companion, men whom Wallace later described as "a wonderful old married couple" and "[b]oth people that [he] admired". Despite this personal knowledge, Wallace relied on the American Psychiatric Association's categorization of homosexuality as a mental illness rather than his own experience in creating the episode. As recently as 1995, Wallace told an interviewer that he believed homosexuals could change their orientation if they really wanted to.[16]
The Mattachine Society, founded in 1950, was an early national gay rights organization in the United States, perhaps preceded only by Chicago's Society for Human Rights. Communist and labor activist Harry Hay formed the group with a collection of male friends in Los Angeles to protect and improve the rights of gay men. Branches formed in other cities, and by 1961 the Society had splintered into regional groups.
Marcus Welby, M.D. is an American medical drama television series that aired on ABC from September 23, 1969, to July 29, 1976. It starred Robert Young as the title character, a family practitioner with a kind bedside manner, who made house calls and was on a first-name basis with many of his patients; James Brolin as his partner Steven Kiley, a younger doctor; and Elena Verdugo as Consuelo Lopez, Welby and Kiley's dedicated and loving nurse and office manager.
John Richard "Jack" Nichols Jr. was an American gay rights activist. He co-founded the Washington, D.C., branch of the Mattachine Society in 1961 with Franklin E. Kameny. He appeared in the 1967 CBS documentary, CBS Reports: The Homosexuals, under the pseudonym Warren Adkins.
This is a list of notable events in the history of LGBT rights that took place in the 1960s.
CBS Reports is the umbrella title used for documentaries by CBS News which aired starting in 1959 through the 1990s. The series sometimes aired as a wheel series rotating with 60 Minutes, as a series of its own, or as specials. The program aired as a constant series from 1959 to 1971.
"Gay Power, Gay Politics" is a 1980 episode of the American documentary television series CBS Reports. It was anchored by Harry Reasoner with reportage by George Crile. Crile also produced the episode with co-producer Grace Diekhaus. He conceived the show after becoming aware of the 1979 National March on Washington for Lesbian and Gay Rights and took as his focus the 1979 San Francisco mayoral election. After intermittent shooting over several months in 1979 with the cooperation of prominent members of the city's LGBT community, CBS aired "Gay Power, Gay Politics" on April 26, 1980.
The Rejected is a made-for-television documentary film about homosexuality, produced for KQED in San Francisco by John W. Reavis. The Rejected was the first documentary program on homosexuality broadcast on American television. It was first shown on KQED on September 11, 1961, and was later syndicated to National Educational Television (NET) stations across the United States. The Rejected received positive critical reviews.
Harold Leland "Hal" Call was an American businessperson, LGBT rights activist, and U.S. Army veteran. He served as president of the Mattachine Society and in the 1950s, was one of the first gay activists to speak publicly on television. Call founded printing presses for LGBT publications and later opened gay adult shops and pornographic film screening venues. He received a Purple Heart for his service in the Pacific War.
A zap is a form of political direct action that came into use in the 1970s in the United States. Popularized by the early gay liberation group Gay Activists Alliance, a zap was a raucous public demonstration designed to embarrass a public figure or celebrity while calling the attention of both gays and straights to issues of gay rights.
"The Outrage" is a 1974 episode of Marcus Welby, M.D., a long-running American medical drama on ABC. The episode tells the story of a teenage boy who is raped by his male teacher. The episode, which originally aired October 8, 1974, sparked controversy and anger for its equation of homosexuality to pedophilia. "The Outrage" was targeted for protests by LGBT rights groups and several network affiliates refused to broadcast it.
"The Other Martin Loring" is a 1973 episode of Marcus Welby, M.D., an American medical drama that aired on ABC. It tells the story of a middle-aged man facing several health issues, which seem to stem from his repression of his homosexuality. The episode aired on February 20, 1973, and was met with concern and protests from LGBT rights activists for its equating of homosexuality and illness.
"Flowers of Evil" is a 1974 episode of the American police procedural television series Police Woman. The episode features Sgt. Suzanne "Pepper" Anderson going undercover at a nursing home to investigate a murder. She uncovers a trio of lesbians who are robbing and murdering their elderly residents. The episode, the eighth of the first season, originally aired on November 8, 1974.
Jodie Dallas is a fictional character from the 1977 American sitcom Soap. He was played by Billy Crystal. The son of central character Mary Campbell, Jodie works as a television commercial director. Jodie was among the first gay characters on American television. Despite being gay, Jodie fathered a child through a one-night stand, and many of his storylines throughout the series centered on his involvement with women. Jodie had relationships with two other women but maintained throughout the series that he was still gay. The series ended with Jodie, as the result of hypnotherapy, believing he was an elderly Jewish man.
"The Boys in the Bar" is the sixteenth episode of the first season of the American situation comedy television series Cheers. It originally aired on January 27, 1983, on NBC. It is co-written by Ken Levine and David Isaacs and directed by James Burrows. This episode's narrative deals with homosexuality, coming out, and homophobia. It was inspired by the coming out story of former Los Angeles Dodgers baseball player, Glenn Burke. In this episode, Sam's former teammate, Tom—portrayed by Alan Autry—reveals his homosexuality and Sam slowly becomes supportive of him. The bar's regular customers express their disdain toward Sam's support and fear that because of Sam's support of Tom, the bar will become a place full of homosexuals. The episode's Nielsen ratings at its initial airing were low but improved after subsequent airings on NBC. This episode has received more attention since.
In the 1990s, more LGBTQ characters began to be depicted in animated series than in any of the years before. Some Western animation like South Park, The Ambiguously Gay Duo, and The Simpsons, would include such characters. The representation in 1990s series would also influence series in the 2000s.
Capsuto, Steven (2000). Alternate Channels: The Uncensored Story of Gay and Lesbian Images on Radio and Television. Ballantine Books. ISBN0-345-41243-5.
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