CHARACTER WEAKNESSES

1
CHARACTER WEAKNESSES FRUIT MACHINESAn
analysis of the anti-homosexual purge campaign in
the Canadian civil service1959-1964

• Gary Kinsman, Laurentian U.

2
enter the spy

• 1946 Royal Commission for Igor Gouzenko Soviet
  defector
• revealed Russian spy net
• hooded for security
• Cipher clerk, Russian Legation Ottawa, really KGB
  intelligence
• 1945, Gouzenko defected, claimed Soviet spy ring
  in UK
• Arrest 22 agents, 15 Soviet spies
• Assumed name, secret identity in Ont, died 1985.

Globe, 3.23.46
3

• Senator J McCarthy, 1950s, Unamerican Activities
  Committee "fear of exposure made gays subject
  to blackmail for espionage reasons"
• 1953 Eisenhower banned gays in fed jobs, however
  
• there were no cases of such blackmail
• states function to preserve public order and
  decency, to provide safeguards against
  exploitation, corruption

see notes
4
Globe 11.8.678

• Homosexuality viewed as threat to workplace
  discipline
• 1952 immigration ban on gays
• UK anti-Communist trials linked homosexuality,
  spying, treason
• Criminal Sexual Psychopath Act made consensual
  gay sex grounds for indefinite detention, 1948
• Required assessment by two psychiatrists
• then came
• Kinsey Reports 1948, 1953 Wolfenden Report 1957
  on decriminalization

1965Everett Klippert acknowledges to police
that he is gay, has had sex with men over a
24-year period, and is unlikely to change. In
1967, Klippert is sent to prison indefinitely as
a "dangerous sex offender," a sentence which was
backed up by the Supreme Court of Canada that
same year.
see notes
5
Homosexuals as national security danger

• sexual abnormalities target of hostile
  intelligence agencies
• As national security threat, RCMP collected names
  of thousands many lost their jobs
• purge campaigns in civil service, military, RCMP
• Govt funded research to detect homosexuals
• homosexuality invites exploitation
  homosexuals keep their habits hidden have other
  weaknesses such as excessive drinking, defiant
  attitude, seek out people with similar
  characteristicsdont inspire confidence required
  to fill positions of trust and responsibility

memo
6
Security Service of the RCMP

• Purpose of Special Branch, Character Weakness
  Section, was identification, dismissal of gay
  employees
• Files kept on 9,000 suspected homosexuals
• 400 resignations forced through threat of
  exposure, ruining careers, causing suicides

7
undercover surveillance

• informers, watched bars and parks
• identifying characteristics including wearing
  pinkie ring, driving white car
• In interviews suspects watched as key words were
  used "bag pipe, fish, restaurant, circus, camp,
  sew"
• tried to recruit Peaches Latour, well-known, drag
  queen in Ottawa, to identify gays
• Map with red dot on places gays lived map soon
  awash with red,
• --had to get larger map

reference
8

• Device developed to identify gays
• Subjects viewed pornography device measured
  pupils, perspiration, and pulse for supposed
  erotic response
• Dentists chair pulley with camera going towards
  pupils black box in front showed pictures
  ranging from mundane to sexually explicit photos
• People told machine rated stress
• Developed by psychologist, F.R. Wake, Carleton
• Used in 1950s/1960s
• Difficulty in finding research subjects
• experimented in controlling homosexuality through
  anti-depressants, aversion therapy

Fruit machine
9
Eventually homosexuality decriminalized

• homosexuality reconstructed from criminal to
  medical-scientific paradigm
• psychiatric discourse dominated until 1970s
• provided reformers, parliamentarians with
  interpretative framework to disassociate
  homosexuality from criminality
• while decriminalized in 1969, homosexuality
  remained pathological
• September 1968 Gallup Poll
• Do you think that homosexual behaviour, if it is
  conducted in private between men aged 21 and
  over, should or should not be a criminal act?
• 41 percent said Yes, 42 said No
• trudeau

clip
10
GAY PURGE

• 1948, National Defence, External Affairs seen
  vulnerable to subversion
• Security panel, small secretive committee of top
  civil servants, Mounties, National Defence
  officials
• Texts, practices focused on men . . . no
  lesbians?
• National security defined threat from communists,
  socialists, peace activists, unionists
• Character weaknesses included drunkenness,
  adultery, promiscuity, homosexuality
• They define secrecy as the threat making
  homosexuals vulnerable to subversion not
  noticing how they create the need for secrecy
  and invisibility as part of their security
  campaign

• Mounties viewed high schools as breeding ground
  for radicals
• see notes below

11
Kinsman bibliography

• (1996). The regulation of desire homo and hetero
  sexualities, second revised edition. Montreal
  Black Rose Books.
• (2004). "The Canadian Caold War on Queers Sexual
  Regulation and Resistance," In Richard Cavell,
  Ed., Love, Hate, and Fear in Canadas Cold War,
  Toronto University of Toronto Press/Green
  College Thematic Series), 108-132.
• (2003). "National Security as Moral Regulation
  Making the Normal and the Deviant in the Security
  Campaigns Against Gay Men and Lesbians." In
  Deborah Brock, ed., Making Normal Social
  Regulation in Canada, Toronto, ON
  Thomson/Nelson, 121-145.
• (2000). "Constructing Gay Men and Lesbians as
  National Security Risks, 1950-1970." In Whose
  National Security? Canadian State Surveillance
  and the Creation of Enemies. Ed. by G. Kinsman,
  D. Buse, and M. Steedman, Toronto, ON Between
  the Lines Press, 143-153.