In this list, published in 1964 by Harry Hay’s pioneering gay rights group the Mattachine Society (Hay also founded the Radical Faeries), we see the penalties for things like sodomy, fornication and adultery in the United States. Or as we like to call it now, a successful Saturday night. Except adultery, that one can be messy.
Good ‘ole Connecticut referred to sodomy, for instance, as the “crime against nature,” and it carried a hefty sentence of 30 years in prison. Kentucky might give you 2-5 years, and in Massachusetts or Minnesota you’d face 20 years.
Fornication was viewed with much less severity, and would typically result in a $20-500 fine. Seems pretty reasonably, no?
Check out the bizarre figures below, and take a moment to be thankful we don’t live in the “good old days”:
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h/t Dangerous Minds
Desert Boy
Fifty years was a long time ago.
Ron Jackson
The worst part of this is that we STILL in 2015 have Presidential candidates, members of congress, Governors, and Judges who want to “bring back these good ‘ole days”.
Why? The number one factor cited is RELIGION.
It’s disgusting.
jwtraveler
@Ron Jackson: You’re right. But if you look at the opinions of young people today (even young Christians and Republicans), those ideas are fading. There is plenty of reason for hope that as the old fogies die off we are moving toward a more open-minded, progressive and humane view of human sexuality. Look at how much progress has been made on gay marriage in just the last few years.
crowebobby
@Desert Boy: Not if you’ve lived it.
zan
2015 is still a bad year for more people https://youtu.be/CqDgnBlu664
AJAnders
Damn. 30 years for sodomy in Connecticut. But a range of 5 to 60 years in North Carolina. And one year to life in Nevada.
Largest fines for adultery were in Maine and Vermont. But just a $10.00 fine in Maryland for adultery? I’m wondering if that’s a typo.
My natural instincts were to look and see if the fines were harsher in the southern states but the whole country was pretty much equally f*cked up during those days about trivial things. Glad I wasn’t around to be a part of it.
Desert Boy
@Ron Jackson: The entire GOP presidential field is anti-marriage equality. The Republican party is the party of Archie Bunker.
Mack
I can remember in the 60’s and early 70’s if you were in a bar that was suspected as being a gay bar you could expect the “Vice Squad” to make an appearance on a Friday or Saturday night. They would walk in and check ID’s and eye anyone looking suspicious. Some things have changed but the Teapublikans wants to take us back to the days of yesteryear.
Merv
This is all due to Christianity. These are the Christian equivalent of Sharia law. My fear is that the thousands of years of repression will just slowly fade away without a proper accounting of who and what was responsible.
Will L
When we got our apartment in 1978, we HAD to get a two bedroom. There was an ordinance about two men renting one bedroom. The manager knew (and was real sweet) but she had to do it. Gay bars were an open secret but as Mack says you could expect to be closely watched for the slightest thing.
rickhfx
@Ron Jackson:
religion = hate.
Religion does not support equal rights.
Equal rights is the bottom line. EQUAL RIGHTS, you support it or you don’t.
We have along way to go.
Religion wants the right to discriminate.
Bob LaBlah
@Desert Boy: “Fifty years was a long time ago.”
Not for me it wasn’t.
martinbakman
@Ron Jackson: I agree, it is disgusting.
The dogma coming out of Focus-on-the-Family has included sideways comments about how re-criminalization of homosexuality is a good thing. Forcing gay men into the closet would be their optimal solution. Their rhetoric remains a hot button that helps raise a lot of cash.
Even 90 year old Phyllis Schaffly has written a new book about defeating the gay agenda.
As long as their kind keep sending them money, these creeps will not stop.
Billysees
@Merv:
“My fear is that the thousands of years of repression will just slowly fade away without a proper accounting of who and what was responsible.”
Who really cares about ‘a proper accounting’ and ‘who and what was responsible’.
As long as the repression is fading or gone altogether is what’s important. Good riddance to all of that repression stuff.
Maharajah
So, being a Floridian, my tally would have been;
24 years and 3 months for living my life as I currently do…and that would have been if I were white. As a man of color, the KKK would have had a field day!
Daggerman
…I’m literally so angry about this! Sodomy IS nature!!! Homosexuality’s been going on for thousands of years, why has this pathetic human race decided to dismiss it as some dreadful crime?–and unfairly treat individuals badly, what’s so amazingly different?? Think about it. The strangest part is why are we NOW slowly accepting it?? If people weren’t so ignorant and got out in the World they would learn that Sodomy IS natural and perfectly normal.
Dave4445
For a little perspective the SCOTUS upheld sodomy laws in Georgia and many other states in the 1980s, ruled them Constitutional. Ruling on a case where two men were arrested in their home for having sex, while having sex. These laws weren’t overturned until 2003 in Lawrence v Texas. Louisiana is using a loophole in the ruling to prosecute minors for having gay sex. The ruling only applies to adults. Hardly a bleep in the news about it. It’s still 1964 in Louisiana, arresting underage prostitutes trying to survive because they were kicked out of their homes for being gay.
Dave4445
@AJAnders: The whole country has a history of severe racism and segregation, sexism, homophobia, etc. Scapegoating the South for everything is a denial of history.