Tom of Finland

NOTE: PREVIOUS CONTENT DELETED.

What I love most about the new office is its extensive library collection. This morning O was going through a pile of books to be added to the shelves. She took out F.Valentine Hooven III's Tom of Finland His Life and Times from the pile and we started browsing through it. It read:

" Gay men had little reason to be happy in 1957. Homosexuality was a crime in every country on earth, frequently punishable by death. The phrase "secet homosexual" was redundant and the term "in the closet" was meaningless as yet since virtually all homosexuals were in the closet, except for those imprisoned, institutionalized or dead."

"In the East Bloc, homosexuality was handled with simplicity to be expected of a centrally directed society. The party line, as stated in Pravda with sweeping finality, was "There are no homosexuals in the Soviet Union." Period, Anyone who thought he might be homosexual was sent to Siberia to think it over for the rest of his life."

"The only reputable voices to disagree came from the psychiatric community. Psychiatrists claimed that the homosexual was neither a criminal nor a sinner. They said he was sick, and they treated those who fell into their hands with shock therapy and, for specially stubborn cases, prefrontal lobotomies."