Homosexuality in the United States

In the inter-war years, some small groups of homosexuals were organized, for example, the Chicago Society for Human Rights in 1934–5, but these were ephemeral. Most homosexuals chose to conceal their sexual orientation on account of the incomprehension and hostility of the general public. Literary efforts to deal with the subject were soon suppressed. While members of the public continued to regard homosexuality variously as a sin, a crime, or, at least, a repulsive moral aberration, for some doctors it had graduated to the status of illness, for which a number of radical cures were tried. A minority which opposed the view of homosexuality as a disease, took its lead from the German, Dr Magnus Hirschfeld, who regarded it as an unchangeable inborn sexual variation, neither to be treated nor punished. However, the general recodification of law which many states undertook around 1950 reflected a public opinion which was still firmly opposed to homosexuality; heavy fines and prison sentences were imposed on offenders.

A principal agency in the modification of attitudes towards homosexuality was the massive research carried out by Alfred Kinsey and his associates at the Institute for Sex Research at the University of Indiana. His research, published as Sexual Behavior in the Human Male (1948), and Sexual Behavior in the Human Female (1953), was the most comprehensive of its type ever carried out.