Utah
Sodomy or “crime against nature” becomes illegal in Utah Territory. Sodomy is reduced from a felony to a class B misdemeanor.
Washington D.C.
President Dwight Eisenhower newly-inaugurated issues Executive Order 10450, ordering the dismissal of government workers who engage in “sexual perversion” and other immoral acts. Henceforth, homosexuals are banned from working for the federal government or any of its private contractors. Homosexuals are listed in the executive order as security risks, along with alcoholics and neurotics. Employees of federal, state and local governments also must take “loyalty oaths” to gain employment, swearing (among other things) that they are not homosexual.
United States LGBT History for 1953
California
The most famous individual to be arrested under the oral copulation and vagrancy law was civil rights activist Bayard Rustin, who received 60 days in jail after pleading guilty in Pasadena to a lesser charge of "sex perversion" (as consensual sodomy was known in California at the time).
Georgia
Twenty-nine out of 30 men arrested during an 8 day period, charged with engaging in homosexual acts in the Atlanta public library restroom, lose their jobs after newspapers printed their names and home addresses at least 6 times
President Harry S. Truman
State equality and discrimination bills
National
U.S. physician Harry Benjamin repurposes the term “transsexual” to apply to individuals who express an intense desire to change their sex.
National
James Daly came out to his family after divorcing his wife. His struggle to come to terms with his sexual orientation put a rift between him and his family. As homosexuality was still considered a mental illness, he and his wife tried and failed at "curing" him. After their divorce, Daly decided to limit his contact with his children out of fear that they would end up mentally ill themselves.
National
“The Heart in Exile” is published and dives into suffering of the homosexual.
National
The Kinsey report on women’s sexuality is released, and includes a discussion of lesbian behavior among women.
Oregon
Oregon joins the parade of states enacting a “psychopathic offender” law. These laws were scientifically unfounded and operated from the premise that “sexual deviates” operated at a middle level of mental functioning, neither sane nor insane. The result in most states was a rounding up of homosexuals for “cure” in mental institutions.
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