Max Lerner: "why homosexuality gives our society so much concern", July 11-18, 1950

In July 1950, Max Lerner began a series of articles on homosexuality in his daily column in the New York Post.

The first, dated July 11, entitled "The Tortured Problem ... The Making of Homosexuals," focuses on various psychological theories of the causation and character of homosexuality, briefly raising, without answering it, "the question of why homosexuality gives our society so much concern."110

The Senator and the Purge

On July 17, Lerner's Post column, entitled "The Senator and the Purge," includes a revealing interview with antihomosexual crusader Senator Kenneth Wherry:

In a long interview, Senator Kenneth Wherry (R-Nebr.) talked to me about his crusade to harry every last "pervert" from the Federal government services.... Now in his second term, he has been a power in the Senate as Republican whip and now as floor leader. A man with a hearty manner in the traditional fashion of American politics, a bit pouchy, with glasses and graying hair, he looks like any small-town lawyer or businessman. Sometimes his answers to my questions became harangues so violent as to make me think he would explode, until I saw that they left him unshaken and c friendly as ever. Despite years of hard work and political tension, life seems to have left no writing of any kind on his face. It is the face of a man for whom there are no social complexities, no psychological subtleties, few private tragedies.

I asked Senator Wherry whether the problem of homosexuals in the government was primarily a moral or a security issue. He answered that it was both, but security was uppermost in his mind. I asked whether he made a connection between homosexuals and Communists. "You can't hardly separate homosexuals from subversives," the Senator told me. "Mind you, I don't say every homosexual is a subversive, and I don't say every subversive is a homosexual. But a man of low morality is a menace in the government, whatever he is, and they are all tied up together."

"You don't mean to say, Senator," I asked, "that there are no homosexuals who might be Democrats or even Republicans?"

"I don't say that by any means," he answered. "But this whole thing is tied together. "

I asked whether he would be content to get the homosexuals out of the "sensitive posts," leaving alone those that have nothing to do with military security. There might be "associations," he said, between men in the sensitive and the minor posts. "There -should be no people of that type working in any position in the government. "

I asked whether the Senator knew the Kinsey findings about the extent of homosexuality in the male population. He had heard of them. "In the light of these figures, Senator," I asked him, "are you aware of the task which the purge of all homosexuals from government jobs opens up?"

"Take this straight," he answered, pounding his desk for emphasis. "I don't agree with the figures. I've read them all, but I don't agree with them. But regardless of the figures, I'll take the full responsibility for cleaning all of them out of the government. "

I asked on what he based his view that homosexuals represent an unusual security risk. I cited a group of American psychiatrists who hold that a heterosexual with promiscuous morals may also be a security risk, that some men might be reckless gamblers or confirmed alcoholics and get themselves entangled or blackmailed.

The Senator's answer was firm: "You can stretch the security risk further if you want to," he said, "but right now I want to start with the homosexuals. When we get through with them, then we'll see what comes next."

This brought me to the question of definitions. "You must have a clear idea, Senator," I said, "of what a homosexual is. It is a problem that has been troubling the psychiatrists and statisticians. Can you tell me what your idea is?"

"Quite simple," answered the Senator. "A homosexual is a diseased man, an abnormal man."

I persisted. "Do you mean one who has made a habit of homosexuality? Would you include someone who, perhaps in his teens, had some homosexual relations and has never had them since? Would you include those who are capable of both kinds of relation, some who may even be raising families?"

"You can handle it without requiring a definition," the Senator answered. "I'm convinced in my own mind that any homosexual is a bad risk."

"But how about those who get pushed out of their jobs when they are only in minor posts, when no security risk is involved, and when they are forced to resign for something they may have done years ago?"

"They resign voluntarily, don't they?" asked the Senator. "That's an admission of their guilt. That's all I need. My feeling is that there will be very few people hurt."

I cited a case in the State Department of a man who had once served in an American embassy and had allowed himself as a young man to be used by the ambassador. He is now in his forties, and his case is troubling the security officials.

"It might have happened," answered Senator Wherry, "but I'm not going to define what a homosexual is. I say not many will be hurt. The Army and Navy have used their rule of thumb on this. The military has done a good job."

"But not a complete job," I pointed out, "if we follow the Kinsey figures. They show that thirty per cent of the men between twenty and twenty-four-the age group most represented in the armed services-have had some homosexual experience.

Would you have all of them purged?"

"I repeat," answered Senator Wherry, "we should weed out all of them wherever they are on the government payroll." ...

I raised a question about the encroachments on privacy. "Get this straight," answered Senator Wherry, "no one believes. in freedom of speech more than I do. I don't like anyone snooping around. But I don't like Kinsey snooping around either."

I asked him what he meant by Kinsey's snooping around. He said, "That's how he got the figures, isn't it?" I said that the Kinsey interviews were voluntary and asked whether he had ever had a chance to study Kinsey's book or his methods.

"Well," he answered, "all I know is that Kinsey has never contacted me. Has he contacted you?"

I said I'd had a friendly talk with Dr. Kinsey, and I offered to get the Senator in touch with him.

"But look, Lerner," Senator Wherry continued, breaking the cobwebs of our discussion, "we're both Americans, aren't we? I say, let's get these fellows out of the government." ;,

"We have to know what fellows we're talking about, Senator," I answered. "That's just what is bothering many of us. What homosexuals are bad risks? How do you treat the others? Can they be helped? Would you, Senator, bring doctors and psychiatrists into the picture and make them part of the machinery for dealing with this problem?"

"No," he answered, "I don't think doctors are needed. We can handle this by rule of thumb."lll

Liutenant Blick of the Vice Squad

The next day, July 18, Lerner's column, entitled "Lieutenant Blick of the Vice Squad," presents an amazing expose.

In an age of experts Lieutenant Roy E. Blick, of the District of Columbia Police Department, rates as a very important man in Washington. He is head of the Vice Squad, one of whose tasks is to deal with homosexuals. "Go see Blick," I was repeatedly told as I tried to track down the security story about homosexuals. "He has the facts and figures." So I did.

Lieutenant Blick is a tough cop. When I came into his office he was in the midst of a phone conversation about homosexuals which would have been wonderful detail for a documentary except that no one would dare put it on the screen. Burly, graying, and just ungrammatical enough to match a Hollywood pattern for police lieutenants, Blick has been on the Vice Squad nineteen years, and he has a pride in his job. He has four detectives on his squad who do nothing but check on homosexuals.

He seemed worried about our interview. He didn't like being caught, he said, "between the Democrats and the Republicans." He was referring to his star-witness testimony before the Hill-Wherry subcommittee, in which he had given his classic estimate of five thousand homosexuals in Washington.

"I had no idea," Lieutenant Blick told me, "that I was getting into a political football." When I asked what made him think the homosexual inquiry was just politics, he said darkly, "Something I heard this morning," but wouldn't elaborate. The committee summons to him had come as a surprise. I asked how it could have been, since Senator Wherry had talked privately with him before he had sprung him dramatically on the committee.

"Yes, the Senator came down here," he admitted, "and talked about these cases with me. But I didn't know what the com'mittee wanted me for. I' came there without a note. The figures I gave them were guesses, my own guesses, not official figures."

"We would all like to know," I said, "on what basis you reached your guesses." Blick seemed to grow more restless at this point. He squirmed and twisted, thrust his hands up in a helpless gesture.

"We have these police records," he finally said. "You take the list. Well, every one of these fellows has friends. You multiply the list by a certain percentage-say three per cent or four per cent.""

"Do you mean," I asked, "that your police list is only three or four per cent of the total, and you multiply it by twenty-five or thirty?"

A faltering "Yes."

"If your final estimate was five thousand, does that mean your police list was less than two hundred?"

"No," he answered doubtfully. Then he added, "I mean five per cent."

"You mean then that you multiplied your list by twenty?"

Again a "Yes," then a "No." Finally, "I multiply my list by five."

"You mean you started with a list of one thousand and multiplied by five to get five thousand?"

Blick shifted his gaze around the room. Again the upward thrust of the hands, as if to say "How did a good cop ever get into this sort of situation?" But he didn't answer my question.

I made a fresh start. "You have a list of the men you arrested?" He did.

"You also have a larger list, including men you never arrested?" After hesitation--yes, he had a larger list as well.

"Did the fellows you arrested give the names of others?"

"Yes," he answered, this time with eagerness, "everyone of these fellows has five or six friends. Take Smith. We bring him in. We say to him, 'Who are your friends?' He says, 'I have none.' I say, 'Oh, come on, Smith. We know you fellows go around in gangs. We know you go to rug parties. Who are your friends?' Then he tells us--Jones, Robinson."

"So you put Jones and Robinson down on your list?" I asked.

"Yes, we put them down."

"And that's how you compiled your list?" Yes, it was.

"But you said a while ago that you took the count of the men you arrested, and multiplied by five."

Yes, I did."

"Well, which do you do? Multiply by five, or add all the friends you find out about?"

"I do both."

"How much of each?"

Blick finally broke into a smile of relief. "Well, it's sixty-forty. Sixty per cent of it I put the friends down on the list, and forty per cent of it I multiply by five."

This adventure in higher mathematics had exhausted both of us. I thought back grimly to the reverent way Senators and security officers used Blick's estimate of five thousand homosexuals in Washington, with 3,750 in the government, and I reflected that this was how a statistic got to be born.

"Do you think five thousand are too many?" Blick asked me.

I thought of the Kinsey figures. "If you mean just any kind of homosexual, and use it loosely," I answered, "I suspect you are conservative."

He clutched eagerly at my answer. "That's what I keep saying," he went on, "I'm conservative in my figures. I'm conservative about everything, Mr. Lerner."

I asked how he got his figure for the number of homosexuals working for the government.

"Oh," he said, "I took the five thousand for Washington. And I figured that three out of four of them worked for the government."

We spent a long time talking about what types he counted as homosexuals for the purpose of his figures, but the problem of definition proved even more exhausting to both of us than that of statistics. Lieutenant Blick was a cop, not a logician or a mathematician....

Lieutenant Blick glows at Senator Wherry's recommendation that the District Vice Squad be strengthened with a greater appropriation. He also wishes he had a Lesbian squad.112

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