What it was like just 45 years ago. . . .With Mike Wallace's death over the weekend the controversial program he produced and anchored in 1967 on the taboo subject of Homosexuality and bitterly regretted making in 1996 is making the rounds.
May I suggest you read the news report before watching the 45 minute dvd. . . reading the words there is important before you watch the film.. . . . . . .justin
http://news.yahoo.com/blogs/cutline/homosexuals-mike-wallace-controversial-1967-cbs-report-gets-170733217.html
May I suggest you read the news report before watching the 45 minute dvd. . . reading the words there is important before you watch the film.. . . . . . .justin
http://news.yahoo.com/blogs/cutline/homosexuals-mike-wallace-controversial-1967-cbs-report-gets-170733217.html
7 comments:
Some of us remember seeing it the first time it ran and being very frightened.
The other thing which is kind of interesting about this is the mention in the cut line of Charles Socarides. The great irony is that his son, Richard Socarides, was an openly gay member of the Clinton White House and is a major mover and shaker in gay rights organizations.
Actually, it's a good documentary on the views of that era.
Interesting, the part about Idaho, where every social activity was thought of as a possible homosexual cover.
Justin, the 1962 documentary is the real way it was. I think back and it was a curse, you would not want to live a gay life and the thinking back then was exactly the way that Wallace wanted his story of Gays. So Much comes back to the way it was. Great Strides have come about and the religious way as is the same as yesterday. Except the dissendents. Yeah. We still are looked down upon. Not like it use to be. Glad you found this bit of History. Thank You for letting us remember the Way it Was.
Yes, Richard, I can well imagine you'd find that report with Mike Wallace scary as hell...literally!
What is more scary is how people just believed -- and many still do!-- all this stuff. "They" represented the medical, theological, psychological, sociological. criminological thinking of the day. And sadly, some of these strong ideas still persist! As society we can be/act so sophisticated, and yet act like actual primitives vis a vis human sexuality and expression.
AND. . how many gays still live under these "old fears" still being propagated (but not as widely) today. . how many???
Justin, I read it and listened and watched it. Never had seen the first time it aired. I had just been married 2yrs and was busy with starting up a household. I said 1962, memory is not the greatest. I never stopped going to Adult Book Stores. Just was my way of staying hidden. The Joy to be free, and not to look back. Still in Limbo.
In 1967 I was a 22 y/o DJ at a Kings Cross disco. It was during the war in Vietnam and lots of American sailors took their R&R leave in Kings Cross, where they patronised our club. It was the first time I'd seen guys dance with each other. They figured if that's what they did aboard ship, why not in a disco? Pretty soon, all the Aussies (guys and girls) followed suit, and were dancing in same-sex pairs, or solo, and nobody gave a hoot.
The situation Mike Wallace describes in the report (and I remember him from 60 Minutes) seems totally alien to what I remember from those days in Oz.
There was no shortage of gays... I knew plenty... but we didn't label ourselves or mix exclusively. The club was open to everyone, and everyone got along just fine.
But maybe we were young and innocent back then, and I suspect the older generation was not as tolerant or accommodating.
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