September 18, 2006

The gay menace Greensboro, NC, 1957: Based on a police informant, 32 men were arrested and tried for "unnatural relationships". The investigation really took off until prominent men in the community started appearing on the list, then suddenly there was less interest in pursuing it. A brief, but interesting, article about this fun episode in history, found at Pandagon.

From the article: "The purpose, in the words of the police chief, was to 'remove these individuals from society who would prey upon our youth,' and to protect the town from what a presiding judge called 'a menace.'" "'It might have started with the (suspects) on the street, but it began to involve people who were upstanding in the community, people in the Jaycees, people who did paper drives,' Burch said recently. 'It just escalated to the point where the investigation was called off.'"