What follows is a video produced in 1961 by Sid Davis Productions. Baby Boomers will likely remember being fed a steady stream of black-and-white informational videos at school. Many Baby Boomers are homophobic, as were their parents and grandchildren. Imagine watching the following video. As an impressionable child, what opinion would you have of gay men? Boys, mentally ill homosexuals are out to either rape you or murder you in out-of-the-way places. These deviant men spent their days and nights trolling for young, impressionable boys, hoping to either sexually violate them or kill them. That’s the sick message of this video.
Bruce Gerencser, 66, lives in rural Northwest Ohio with his wife of 45 years. He and his wife have six grown children and thirteen grandchildren. Bruce pastored Evangelical churches for twenty-five years in Ohio, Texas, and Michigan. Bruce left the ministry in 2005, and in 2008 he left Christianity. Bruce is now a humanist and an atheist.
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I remember this nasty little film (or certainly one like it) being shown at my young people’s after-church meeting in the UK. It contributed to my spending most of my life closeted and closed down. If that’s what my church said ‘homosexuals’ were really like, it must be true. I didn’t want to be one of those men!
This video was shown in public schools???? No wonder so many Boomers are ANTI-LGBTQ. While there are some good pieces of advice about being aware of one’s surroundings and so forth, the assumption that all gay men are predators is wrong and messed up (but yes, I remember being told that when I was a kid). Growing up in the 70s and 80s, the messaging to us was “stranger danger” – that everyone was a potential threat. It wasnt isolated to one particular group. Hitchhiking? No way would my friends or I ever do that. See a lone man at a park? Stay away. That’s what we were taught. But this video goes above and beyond.
That film does exactly what today’s anti-LGBTQ (especially anti-trans) do: It takes a normal fear and says that a marginalized group of people is responsible for it while,’as OC points out, giving advice that makes sense in almost any situation (e.g., being aware of one’s surroundings).
I couldn’t help but to notice how Ralph (the first gay man) looked like a stereotype or caricature of a Cold War double agent. I read an implicit equation between homosexuality and Communism, especially given that the film was made as the Cold War was ramping up in the wake of McCarthyism.