United States LGBT History for 1952
Washington D.C.
First appearance of "homosexual" in SCOTUS case Sweeney v. Woodall, 344 U. S. 86
President Harry S. Truman
Michigan
New state law provides for prison sentences of one day to life for repeat sex offenders.
Utah
Second Counselor J. Reuben Clark gives a talk at the Relief Society general conference warning against “self-pollution, prostitution, and homosexuality, which it is tragic to say, is found among both sexes.” He states that homosexuals “exercised great influence in shaping our art, literature music, and drama” implying the idea that homosexuals were outside the Mormon culture but that homosexuality could be imported and spread. The Church Relief Society magazine publishes this talk in full.
Oregon
At campaign stops in Eugene and then Portland, Republican Vice Presidential candidate Richard Nixon speaks innuendo that Democratic Presidential candidate Adlai Stevenson is Gay. Stevenson had entered into an agreement with opponent Dwight Eisenhower that Stevenson would not raise Eisenhower’s adulterous affair with Kay Summersby in return for Eisenhower’s pledge not to raise Stevenson’s homosexuality. Nixon apparently wasn’t party to the agreement.
Adlai Stevenson
State equality and discrimination bills
Washington D.C.
Immigrants are banned from the U.S. if they are found to have a “psychopathic personality,” including homosexuality.
National
Christine Jorgensen becomes America’s first modern transsexual after returning home from a sex- change operation in Denmark.
California
Using Virginia Prince's correspondence network for its initial subscription list, a handful of transgender people in Southern California launched Transvestia: The Journal of the American Society for Equality in Dress, which published two issues. The Society that launched the journal also only briefly existed in Southern California.
Kay Summersby
Oregon
Psychiatrists object to the planned showing of the film Danger! Strangers in Portland public schools. The film concerns a man kidnapping a girl. One psychiatrist warns that the film is “not at all a true pattern of the homosexual.” Thus, local officials thought that Gay men were interested in girls.
Oregon
Portland Mayor Dorothy Lee, up for reelection, proposes a five point program aimed at ridding Portland of “sexual deviates.” The program is not enacted and voters throw Lee out of office.
Oregon
The book USA Confidential claims there is a “fairy club” at Portland’s Lincoln High School.
Oregon
Longtime physician and activist Marie Equi, 80 years of age, dies of renal disease in a nursing home located outside Portland. Her vault lies side-by-side with Harriet Speckart, her lover of 13 years.
Richard Nixon
National
The American Psychiatric Association lists homosexuality as a “sociopathic personality disturbance” in its first publication of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders. Immediately following the manual’s release, many professionals in medicine, mental health and social sciences criticize the categorization due to lack of empirical and scientific data.
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