While reading the extract below, keep in mind that the author is talking about a time in this country, the 1950s, when every state in the union outlawed same sex relations among consenting adults.  No prostitution or public sexual conduct was necessary to be convicted of "the crime against nature".  Gay men and women, caught up in police witch hunts, often had to denounce others.  And in addition to being locked up in jail, people’s names, and sometimes photographs were published, and homes and jobs would be lost…

Across the country there was an alarming vagueness in legal definitions as to who might be classified as a sexual psychopath.  State laws defined a sexual psychopath as someone who had a "propensity" to commit sex offenses (Michigan and Missouri) or who "lacked the power to control his sexual impulses" (Massachusetts and Nebraska).  In most states, however, authorities couldn’t just pluck such a person off the street and label him a sexual psychopath.  In Alabama, for instance, the suspect had to be convicted of a sex crime first.  Under the proposed Iowa legislation, such a person had to be charged with – but not necessarily convicted of – a "public offense."  In Nebraska, on the other hand, a suspect didn’t have to be charged; all that was needed were certain facts showing "good cause" and the process of classification as a sexual psychopath could begin.  And in Minnesota, the only requirements were a petition by a county attorney and an examination by "two duly licensed doctors of medicine."

Whatever their individual wordings, such laws were intended to bring about the indefinite of dangerous or socially undesirable people.  In all these states, a sexual psychopath could not be released from detention until psychiatrists rule that he was "cured" or at the very least no longer posed a threat to society.

Despite their good intentions, sexual psychopath laws invariably took a catch-all approach to sexual offenses.  The intended targets may have been rapists and murderers, but in almost every state with a sexual psychopath law, little or no distinction was made between violent and non-violent offenses, between consensual and nonconsensual behavior, or between harmless "sexual deviates" and dangerous sex criminals.  An adult homosexual man who had sex with his lover in the privacy of his bedroom was as deviant as a child murderer.  A person who had a pornographic book or photograph hidden in a night table faced the same punishment as a rapist.  All these people were lumped into one category – that of the sexual psychopath – and could be incarcerated in a state hospital indefinitely.

New York lawyer and judge Morris Ploscowe, one of the most prominent critics of sexual psychopath laws at the time, found that these were most often used to punish and isolate minor offenders rather then dangerous predators.  In Minnesota, which enacted its sexual psychopath law in the ’30s, some 200 people were committed to state hospitals in the first ten years of the law’s existence, according to Ploscowe.  Most were detained for homosexual activity, not for being hard-core sex criminals.

–Neal Miller: Sex-Crime Panic

This may be difficult for some of my heterosexual readers to grasp here…but back in those days, mere possession of pornography was enough to get you lumped in with rapists, murderers…and homosexuals.  What may be difficult for some of my younger gay readers to grasp, is that a heterosexual charged with possession of pornography back then would likely be more appalled to to find themselves being compared to homosexuals then to rapists and murderers.  The stigma of being homosexual really was that profound.  You were more despicable then even rapists and murderers.  More despicable even, then a communist.

When the U.S. Supreme Court abolished the sodomy laws in 2003, fourteen states still had some form of sodomy law on the books…four of them applying only to conduct between members of the same sex.  In Idaho and Michigan you could get life for it.  That was only six years ago.

If you’re curious, Miller’s book, Sex Crime Panic is a good place to begin developing an understanding of what Stonewall means to your gay and lesbian neighbors.  Miller details events that took place in Iowa in 1955, following the rape and murder of two children.  To address a growing public anti-gay hysteria, authorities arrested 20 gay men who they never even claimed had anything to do with the murders, had them declared "sexual psychopaths" and locked them up in a state mental hospital indefinitely.  The only thing unique about Miller’s story, is that someone actually went to the trouble to document it all, finally.