America’s New McCarthyism:
Homosexual Stereotypes,
Myths, and the Politics of Fear
Stereotypes fall in the face of humanity. You toodle along,
thinking that all gay men wear leather after dark and should
never, ever be permitted around a Little League field. And
then one day your best fiiend fi*om college, the one your kids
adore, comes out to you.
—^Anna Quindlen
Throughout history stereotypes and myths have been used to incite fear
and fuel prejudice against minorities and people who are “different.” AfiicanAmericans, Hispanics, Asians, Jews and, of course, women have all suffered
fi-om fi*audulent (and usually mean-spirited) misrepresentations used by those in
power to keep minorities “in their place.” As gay Americans strive toward
equality for themselves and their families, stereotypes and myths have once
again become primary weapons to keep them “in their place.” And once again,
those using the most vile stereotypes and myths bill themselves as “Christian”
defenders of morality and “traditional values.”
One of the most fi-equently heard stereotypes claims homosexuals are
inveterate child molesters: crazed sexual perverts vAio prey upon and recruit
children. But as University of Chicago historian George Chauncey pointed out
in Why Marriage? The History Shaping Today's Debate Over Gay Equality
(Basic Books, 2004), the claim that homosexuals recruit children and the
stereotype of them as child molesters are relatively new and grew out of:
. . . the anxious years following the Second World War, wJien
communists, criminal syndicates, and other half-invisible
specters seemed to threaten the nation and when demonic new
stereotypes of homosexuals were created and backed by
government sanctions___The old tropes of anti-Semitic
rhetoric. . . were especially influential in shaping depictions
of homosexuals___And like Jews, they were depicted as a
threat to children. In the most dangerous element of this new
image, the escalation of antigay policing was accompanied,
inspired, and justified by press and police campaigns that
fomented stereotypes of homosexuals as child molesters. (1819)