Thalamus Center - Early Childhood Psychological Development Growing Up Gay - M Kurylowicz: NO EVIDENCE SUPPORTS THESE [homosexual] STEREOTYPES - Judge Vaughn Walker Ruling

United States District Court
For the Northern District of California

Excerpts:
https://ecf.cand.uscourts.gov/cand/09cv2292/files/09cv2292-ORDER.pdf

76. Well-known stereotypes about gay men and lesbians include a belief that gays and lesbians are affluent, self-absorbed and incapable of forming long-term intimate relationships. Other stereotypes imagine gay men and lesbians as disease vectors or as child molesters who recruit young children into homosexuality. No evidence supports these stereotypes.

a. DIX1162 Randy Albelda, et al, Poverty in the Lesbian, Gay, and Bisexual Community, The Williams Institute at 1 (Mar 2009): “A popular stereotype paints lesbians and gay men as an affluent elite * * *. [T]he misleading myth of affluence steers policymakers, community organizations service providers, and the media away from fully understanding poverty among LGBT people.”;

b. Tr 474:12-19 (Chauncey: Medical pronouncements that were hostile to gays and lesbians provided a powerful source of legitimation to anti-homosexual sentiment and were themselves a manifestation of discrimination against gays and lesbians.);

c. Tr 820:23-822:5 (Meyer: One of the stereotypes that is part of the stigma surrounding gay men and lesbians is that gay men and lesbians are incapable of, uninterested in and not successful at having intimate relationships. Gay men and lesbians have been described as social isolates, as unconnected to society and people who do not participate in society the way everyone else does —— as “a pariah, so to speak.”);

d. PX1011 David Reuben, Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Sex (But Were Afraid to Ask) 129-151 at 143 (Van Rees 1969): “What about all of the homosexuals who live together happily for years? What about them? They are mighty rare birds among the homosexual flock. Moreover, the ‘happy’ part remains to be seen. The bitterest argument between husband and wife is a passionate love sonnet by comparison with a dialogue between a butch and his queen. Live together? Yes. Happily? Hardly.”;

e. Tr 361:23-363:9 (Chauncey: Even though not all sodomy laws solely penalized homosexual conduct, over the course of the twentieth century, sodomy laws came to symbolize the criminalization of homosexual sex in particular. This was most striking in Bowers v Hardwick, which reads as though the law at issue simply bears on homosexual sex when in fact the Georgia law at issue criminalized both homosexual and heterosexual sodomy.);

f. Tr 484:24-485:5 (Chauncey: The federal government was slow to respond to the AIDS crisis, and this was in part because of the association of AIDS with a “despised group.”);

g. Tr 585:22-586:8 (Peplau: There is no empirical support for the negative stereotypes that gay men and lesbians have trouble forming stable relationships or that those relationships are inferior to heterosexual relationships.);

h. PX2337 Employment of Homosexuals and Other Sex Perverts in Government, S Rep No 81-241, 81st Congress, 2d Sess (1950) at 4: “Most of the authorities agree and our investigation has shown that the presence of a sex pervert in a Government agency tends to have a corrosive influence on his fellow employees. These perverts will frequently attempt to entice normal individuals to engage in perverted practices. This is particularly true in the case of young and impressionable people who might come under the influence of a pervert. Government officials have the responsibility of keeping this type of corrosive influence out of the agencies under their control. It is particularly important that the thousands of young men and women who are brought into Federal jobs not be subjected to that type of influence while in the service of the Government. One homosexual can pollute a Government office.”;

i. Tr 395:6-25 (Chauncey: Like most outsider groups, there have been stereotypes associated with gay people; indeed, a range of groups, including medical professionals and religious groups, have worked in a coordinated way to develop stereotypical images of gay people.); j. Tr 397:2-6; Tr 397:25-398:5 (Chauncey: “[I]n some ways, the most dangerous stereotypes for homosexuals really developed between the 1930s and ‘50s, when there were a series of press and police campaigns that identified homosexuals as child molesters.” These press campaigns against assaults on children focused on sex perverts or sex deviants. Through these campaigns, the homosexual emerged as a sex deviant.);

k. PX2281 George Chauncey, The Postwar Sex Crime Panic, in William Graebner, ed, True Stories from the Past 160, 171 (McGraw-Hill 1993): Contains excerpts from widecirculation Coronet Magazine, Fall 1950: “Once a man assumes the role of homosexual, he often throws off all moral restraints. * * * Some male sex deviants do not stop with infecting their often-innocent partners: they descended through perversions to other forms of depravity, such as drug addiction, burglary, sadism, and even murder.”;

l. Tr 400:18-401:8 (Chauncey: This excerpt from Coronet Magazine, PX2281 at 171, depicts homosexuals as subjects of moral decay. In addition, there is a sense of homosexuality as a disease in which the carriers infect other people. And the term “innocent” pretty clearly indicates that the authors are talking about children.); m. PX2281 Chauncey, The Postwar Sex Crime Panic, at 170-171: Contains a statement made by a Special Assistant Attorney General of California in 1949: “The sex pervert, in his more innocuous form, is too frequently regarded as merely a ‘queer’ individual who never hurts anyone but himself. * * * All too often we lose sight of the fact that the homosexual is an inveterate seducer of the young of both sexes * * * and is ever seeking for younger victims.”;

n. Tr 402:21-24 (Chauncey: These articles (in PX2281) were mostly addressed to adults who were understandably concerned about the safety of their children, and who “were being taught to believe that homosexuals posed a threat to their children.”);

o. Tr 407:8-408:4 (Chauncey: One of the most enduring legacies of the emergence of these stereotypes is the creation and then reenforcement of a series of demonic images of homosexuals that stay with us today. This fear of homosexuals as child molesters or as recruiters continues to play a role in debates over gay rights, and with particular attention to gay teachers, parents and married couples —— people who might have close contact with children.);

p. Tr 1035:13-1036:19 (Lamb: Social science studies have disproven the hypothesis that gays and lesbians are more likely to abuse children.).

77. Religious beliefs that gay and lesbian relationships are sinful or inferior to heterosexual relationships harm gays and lesbians.