Homosexuality in the Media
Colfax & Josephine
Created By: Liv
Sponsored By: Pando
From 1930 to 1960, portrayals of LGBTQ people in the media were largely censored. If mentioned by the news media at all, news coverage, such as a 1965 article from the Denver Post, called homosexuals “a serious problem” in society.
The Homosexuals was a rare journalistic portrayal of gay men, the first of its kind to be shown on a national television network. Broadcast on CBS in 1967, the investigative news program was produced by William Peters, Fred Friendly, and Harry Morgan, and anchored by Mike Wallace. The hour-long production showed interviews with psychiatrists, gay men, legal experts, and an example of a police sting.
At the end of the documentary, Mike 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.”
Yet The Homosexuals included some notes of acceptance for its subjects by their own parents and by society at large. Warren Adkins, whose real name was Jack Nichols, was interviewed in the documentary and noted “I never would imagine that if I had blond hair that I would worry what genes or chromosomes caused my blond hair… My homosexuality to me is very much in the same category.” Though media depictions of gayness remained controversial for another generation, an authentic voice provided by activists like Nichols provided a stark contrast to the professional opinions that previously maligned LGBTQ people.