The "girl" problem and due process

[madmusic]

Gay rights, marriage rights, procreation rights, abortion rights and criminal rights are so intertwined they depend on each other. When one starts falling, they all tumble.

The understand their interconnectedness, we must begin with "the girl problem." During the Progressive Era, sterilization of women and criminals was accepted practice due to the careful and methodical political promotion of sterilization. Actually, long before sterilization the "girl problem" was a problem:

"Americans began using the term feebleminded in the 1850s, when state asylums, or "idiot schools," emerged. Individuals exhibiting a lack of productivity or other behavior deemed by institutional professionals as "backward" were housed in state institutions for the "feebleminded." Yet it was not until the early twentieth century, when eugenics linked feeblemindedness to "race suicide" and the "girl problem, " that social commentators expressed anxiety about the "menace of the feebleminded."1

A small cadre of conservatives at the Eugenics Record Office wrote and promoted carefully crafted laws. Their great victory was the sterilization of Carrie Buck, a "promiscuous" teen sterilized for feeblemindedness. The U.S. Supreme Court ruling in Buck v. Bell is infamous , and in 1927, sterilization was legal across the United States.

Once Hitler rose to power, eugenicists raved at his success, but they soon saw the coming backlash and quit using the word eugenics, and at the same time hijacked the liberal emphasis on environmental causes.

"Beginning in the 1930s, then, eugenicists who had previously established their careers on the principles of heredity seemingly contradicted themselves by inviting environmental factors to come into play, a move that previous historians have interpreted as an indication of eugenic defeat. But, ultimately, this was a smart tactic. It saved the movement from extinction, and it also widened eugenicists' sphere of influence and further popularized their goal to improve civilization by making reproduction a social and medical responsibility rather than an individual right."2

The debate then, as now, was the rights of society v. the rights of individuals.

"In the 1930s, the nuclear family became a central subject of public policy and popular debate. Scrutinized by sociologists and eulogized by New Dealers, the American family emerged as an institution essential for surviving the Depression but also threatened by it."3 And, "Thus eugenicists shared the widespread concern over the destructive impact of the Depression on the American family. Yet they believed that the Depression did not cause the decline of the family but merely revealed how unstable it had become. They argued that promiscuity, not poverty, was at the root of family pathology."

So it was no suprise that in 1937 another case caught the public's eye and resulted in another victory for eugenics. That was the Ann Cooper Hewitt case. Ann, a minor, was covertly sterilized on the orders of her mother. Eugenicists pounced on the case with the hopes more children would be sterilized privatly via private doctors. It was "hard work" to get the states to play along as with the coming success of Hitler, but they had a plan:

"ugenicists popularized a doctrine of reproductive morality that countered selfish individualism with social responsibility. They transformed the politics of reproduction from a private matter of personal liberty to a public issue of racial health and, with the assistance of the widely publicized Cooper Hewitt trial, convinced the public that sacrificing reproductive freedom for the sake of stabilizing the American family was well worth it."4

So eugenicists shifted from genetics to a focus on motherhood, and only a fit, stable and moral mother should have children, and states, with the help of a few busybodies, would decide who was fit. Today, we still see this debate rage on despite the rants from the right that Margaret Sanger was a eugenicist. What was so bad about Ann Cooper Hewitt? She was very naughty for her time and she suffered from "instability of mind and impulsive tendencies":

"Clearly Mrs. Hewitt's distress at her daughter's actions stemmed from the fact that Ann threatened her mother's rigid boundaries of class and race, as well as propriety. Ann challenged her mother's authority by independently asserting herself in relationships with men outside her own class and race."5

Another possiblity that might factor is is "In the will of her late father, Peter Cooper Hewitt, Ann was to receive two-thirds of the millionaire's estate, but if she died childless, the estate would revert to her mother."6

Ann lost her case and the eugenicists won by claiming to care about the environment Ann's children would grow up in were Ann their mother. Now that controlled motherhood was settled law and accepted by the public, what about men? We move from a "girl problem" to the "man problem" in a twisted plot that is really only another chapter of the same story.

All through the eugenics movement men were sterilized or castrated for crimes, though far fewer men than women were sterilized. The reason is obvious: women and birth are directly related. Men, however, could harm or corrupt women and children, and therefore the family, and so could women:

"Many of the sterilization statues that were hurriedly passed were ill-founded because they were based on insufficient scientific knowledge. Rapists, those guilty of carnal knowledge, sexual perverts, syphilitics, drunkards, drug fiends, habitual criminals, lunatics, prostitutes, sodomists, are only some of the categories subject to legalized sterilization in the various states... Most states also listed 'moral degenerates and sexual perverts,' which usually encompassed homosexuals."7

One such case was SKINNER v. OKLAHOMA, decided in the U.S. Supreme Court on June 1, 1942. At last the eugenicsts lost one, and all reproductive rights cases base their foundations on this case. Oklahoma's Habitual Criminal Sterilization Act privided that "If the court or jury finds that the defendant is an "habitual criminal" and that he "may be rendered sexually sterile without detriment to his or her general health," then the court "shall render judgment to the effect that said defendant be rendered sexually sterile" by the operation of vasectomy in case of a male, and of salpingectomy in case of a female."8

Skinner was no angel:

"Petitioner was convicted in 1926 of the crime of stealing chickens, and was sentenced to the Oklahoma State Reformatory. In 1929 he was convicted of the crime of robbery with firearms, and was sentenced to the reformatory. In 1934 he was convicted again of robbery with firearms, and was sentenced to the penitentiary. He was confined there in 1935 when the Act was passed. In 1936 the Attorney General instituted proceedings against him. Petitioner in his answer challenged the Act as unconstitutional by reason of the Fourteenth Amendment."9

Interestingly, the Court left open some issues:

"Several objections to the constitutionality of the Act have been pressed upon us. It is urged that the Act cannot be sustained as an exercise of the police power, in view of the state of scientific authorities respecting inheritability of criminal traits. It is argued that due process is lacking because, under this Act, unlike the Act upheld in Buck v. Bell, 274 U.S. 200, the defendant is given no opportunity to be heard on the issue as to whether he is the probable potential parent of socially undesirable offspring. It is also suggested that the Act is penal in character and that the sterilization provided for is cruel and unusual punishment and violative of the Fourteenth Amendment. We pass those points without intimating an opinion on them, for there is a feature of the Act which clearly condemns it. That is, its failure to meet the requirements of the equal protection clause of the Fourteenth Amendment."10

So the Court refused to overturn Buck v. Bell and sterilzation is still legal throughout the land, but it is limited:

"We are dealing here with legislation which involves one of the basic civil rights of man. Marriage and procreation are fundamental to the very existence and survival of the race. The power to sterilize, if exercised, may have subtle, far-reaching and devastating effects. In evil or reckless hands it can cause races or types which are inimical to the dominant group to wither and disappear. There is no redemption for the individual whom the law touches. Any experiment which the State conducts is to his irreparable injury. He is forever deprived of a basic liberty... The guaranty of "equal protection of the laws is a pledge of the protection of equal laws." When the law lays an unequal hand on those who have committed intrinsically the same quality of offense and sterilizes one and not the other, it has made as invidious a discrimination as if it had selected a particular race or nationality for oppressive treatment."11

It should be clear by now what the moral debate is really about today: the state v. individual liberty. It should also be clear what conservative family values really means: control of your mind, and if the state can't control that, they will take control of your body via incarceration and eventually, if they continue to win, through sterilization. Because Skinner, a criminal, had rights, we all have liberty, and we must fight to keep it on a daily basis. The reactionary movement is strong and the fight against it is tough, but as we move closer to modern times in our historical story, it may become obvious how flimsy our rights to liberty really are. Let us keep in mind Justice Stone's concurring opinion in Skinner:

"Science has found and the law has recognized that there are certain types of mental deficiency associated with delinquency which are inheritable. But the State does not contend -- nor can there be any pretense -- that either common knowledge or experience, or scientific investigation, has given assurance that the criminal tendencies of any class of habitual offenders are universally or even generally inheritable."

So if the science of eugenics is ever a certain science, and sterilization is applied equally, the Court, it would seem, would agree with State sterilization when "either common knowledge or experience, or scientific investigation, assurance that the criminal tendencies of any class of habitual offenders are universally or even generally inheritable."

That's some scary stuff. And political rights are often nothing more than a popularity contest, with the tyranny of the majority having control, maybe enough control to sterilize any sub-class it deems a sub-class.At different points in history, that was just about all of us.

There are cases in the news, and legal cases from the recent and distant past, that cry for a "So what!" Who cares if THEY are sterilized. Let's take a look at a couple of those and imagine them as the Skinner case. Would we retain our liberty if the Skinner case were fresh before the Court today? I think not, and think the Supreme Court of today may have ruled against Skinner, and all those liberties based on the ruling would be lost. For example, in People v. Blankenship, decided by the Fourth Appellate District, September 29, 1936, we find:

"Defendant was charged with the crime of statutory rape of which, upon arraignment, he entered a plea of guilty and made application for probation... Among the facts which were exposed during this examination it appeared that the defendant was then almost 23 years of age and the female upon whom the crime was perpetrated was 13... It also appeared that medical examination of the parties showed that both were afflicted with syphilis. There was, however, no positive evidence which showed that the defendant had communicated the disease to the girl... Judgment was thereupon pronounced whereby the defendant was sentenced to confinement in San Quentin prison. Execution of the judgment was suspended for a period of five years upon certain conditions, only one of which is material on this appeal. This condition was that within ten days from the date of the order suspending execution of the sentence the defendant should submit to an operation for sterilization."

Now what if this case were ruled on today and the courts lacked the precedent of Skinner? How would the courts rule? This is how this court ruled:

"It may be conceded that intelligent medical science has succeeded in producing a cure for syphilis which is efficacious in the great majority of cases. However, as the trial court very properly observed, it was not so much concerned with curing the disease with which appellant was afflicted as it was with preventing appellant from transmitting the disease to his possible posterity. If reproduction is desirable to the end that the race shall continue it is equally desirable that the race shall be a healthy race and not one whose members are afflicted by a loathsome and debilitating disease." 10

In short, do the five years or get cut, you sicko. He did the five years, but there were probably times when the knife sounded better. That's how much power the state has over the decision to procreate or not to procreate. That is the question.

But it's rational, isn't it? All for the social good, right? Let's look at another more recent case. In State v. Oakly, "the Wisconsin Supreme Court touched off a national debate by upholding a probation condition placed on a man convicted of intentional failure to pay child support. The probation condition prohibited David W. Oakley from fathering children for the term of his probation unless he could prove that he was capable of supporting the nine children he had already fathered and any additional children he wanted to have. The ruling created a conflict between child welfare concerns and the fundamental right to
privacy and procreative control."11

What's wrong with that? As Devon A. Corneal continues, it becomes obvious, and his essay esplains clearly how and why crimianl law and the Right to Procreate are so intertwined and stand or fall together. Part 1 of the article concerns us most, and Corneal opens with the history of the right to procreate though Skiiner, then moves to Griswold v. Connecticut: "In 1965... Griswold established the fundamental right to privacy for married couples and stands as the first of a series of contraceptive cases that built upon Skinner to firmly establish procreation as a fundamental right." Then, "While Griswold only protected a married couple's privacy, six years later the Court expanded the privacy right to individuals in Eisenstadt v. Baird. The Court noted that, for privacy to have any meaning, it must extend to individuals." Once more, "The final case establishing the fundamental right to procreate is Carey v. Population Services International, Inc. In Carey, the Court followed the reasoning of Eisenstadt and expanded the right to contraceptive access and information to minors.

Now, given the above history of eugenics and all the repression the State's Rights/eugenics movement achieved, is it any wonder they are upset? Think about it. They came so close to "bettering the human race" and beginning with Skinner, caput! Nothing will incite a reactionaly to action like a little progress. What happened then?

"In 1973, the Court's ruling in Roe v. Wade established a woman's right to choose to terminate her pregnancy. In Roe, the Court invalidated a Texas law prohibiting all abortions except those necessary to save the life of the mother. Interestingly, the Court no longer found privacy in the penumbras of the Bill of Rights as it had earlier in Griswold, but rather found privacy protection in the Fourteenth Amendment. The Court stated that, although the Constitution does not expressly mention the right to privacy, such a right has been, and will continue to be, recognized by the Court as fundamental and 'implicit in the concept of ordered liberty.'"

There's that "liberty" word again, and the Fourteenth Amendment so important in Skinner. The "L" word, the evil word, the antisocial word: LIBERTY. See why Supreme Court nominations are so important? Do you see what is at stake? It is not just gay rights, not just women's freedom of their bodies rights, not just abortion rights, not just crimianl rights or marriage and procreation rights, it is LIBERTY in general that is the real fight.

Download the PDF LIMITING THE RIGHT TO PROCREATE: STATE V. OAKLEY for a closer look.

What happend in State v. Oakley since 2001? The states are still trying it. See State v. Talty, 103 Ohio St.3d 177, a 2004 case (Appellant, Sean Talty, challenges the imposition of a condition of community control that ordered him to make "all reasonable efforts to avoid conceiving another child" during his five-year probationary period.)

Whenever you see a case like this, think of Carrie Buck, Ann Cooper Hewitt and thank God Skinner was lucky enough to have a good lawyer. And the next time some conservative cries about "getting off on a technicailty" or too much emphasis on procedure, tell him, "AMERICA, LOVE OR LEAVE IT (by moving to China)". Due process equals liberty. Remember that. And the focus may mostly be on men currently, but the boomerang of law will hit us all between the eyes if we let it. When laws lose their balance, we all lose some liberty.

[madmusic]

1. missed the cites in the copy/paste

1. Building a Better Race: Gender, Sexuality, and Eugenics from the Turn of the Century to the Baby BoomBook by Wendy Kline; University of California Press, 2001
2. Ibid
3. Ibid
4. Ibid.
5. Ibid.
6. Ibid.
7. Quoted in “Moral Panic” by Phillip Jenkins.
8. SKINNER v. OKLAHOMA , 316 U.S. 535
9. People v. Blankenship, 16 Cal.App.2d 606
10. Ibid
11. LIMITING THE RIGHT TO PROCREATE: STATE V. OAKLEY AND THE NEED FOR STRICT SCRUTINY OF PROBATION CONDITIONS, by Devon A. Corneal: SETON HALL LAW REVIEW.

[Biernuts]

2. Buck v.Bell

I'm not going downstairs @3am to look it up in a case law book. If my memory holds true, Buck v. Bell has never been overturned directly. The case does have a footnote that the reasoning of this decision has been widely criticized. No wonder... The opinion stated words to the effect "... when our society can require the supreme sacrifice from our finest citizens, it certainly may require lessor sacrifices from our lessor citizens." (Carrie Bell was judged "feeble-minded")

[madmusic]

3. True, Buck v. Bell was never overturned

And Skinner has a lot of holes in it. For example, if larceny also required sterilization, the equal protection argument against it would be lost. Solution, sterilize everyone ever arrested. Nice and tight and legal.

I was surprised to learn that under federal law, larceny is now a crime of violence, along with many others. Maybe it's just tough on crime, or a way to deport the illegals for violent crimes, or maybe it's something else. It is strange that so many non-violent acts are now violent.

[newyawker99]

6. Hi Biernuts!!

Welcome to DU!! :toast:

[Biernuts]

18. Thanx

[bigwillq]

14. Hello.

Welcome to DU! :hi:

[NMMNG]

4. I work with adults who have developmental disabilities,

(mental retardation and secondary diagnoses) and adults who have mental illnesses.

Up through the 1970s it was routine individuals in both groups to be sterilized against their will, primarily because it was feared that they might pass their disorders on to their offspring should they reproduce. In the US more than 64,000 individuals were forcibly sterilized from the 1900s through the 1970s. ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Compulsory_sterilization ) A number of the individuals I've known who formerly lived in state institutions had tubal ligations or hysterectomies for non-medical reasons. (Curiously enough, actual medical issues such as breast cancer and scoliosis were not attended to :eyes:.)



As evidenced by your post, the control freaks have a distinct need to rein in peoples' reproductive systems and, to a lesser extent, their sex organs. They'd actually like to have full control over peoples' sex organs but the drive to engage in sex is so strong that no amount of preaching or legislating will ever stop people from doing it, so the control freaks are at a distinct disadvantage in that area. Unfortunately they do have an advantage when it comes to limiting access to abortion and birth control, which is a shame in this world with its overpopulation and economic disparities.

[TahitiNut]

8. Strangely enough, we see "control freaks" on DU advocating ...

... castration/sterilization quite frequently. :wtf: So, that's "liberal/progressive"??? :dunce:

[NMMNG]

10. That's hardly "liberal/progressive"

That's scary. :scared:

[madmusic]

12. Another feminist perspective

Nicole Hahn Rafter is a feminist who approaches the subject from the legal/social perspective. Laws, after all, are king.

[madmusic]

20. Backdoor to Eugenics

by Troy Duster; Routledge, 2003

Foreword: Advocating a “Genethics”

Conservatism has always been linked to forms of thought that tend to reduce the social to the natural—the historical to the biological. But something new is happening in this era of cultural reaction: Recent progress in molecular biology and the discovery of the genetic basis of certain illnesses are beginning to revive the old eugenics (which had been discredited by association with the Nazis) and above all the old mythologies, which, clothed in the biological sciences, were sometimes used to legitimize social differences. If it is true that some genetic deficiencies are unevenly distributed among ethnic groups, why couldn’t it be so for many other traits? And why shouldn’t we ask genetics for the explanation for differences in intelligence, criminality, and mental illness? We know that at the end of the 1960s, a Berkeley psychologist reopened the old debate about the genetics of intelligence, arguing in the Harvard Educational Review that blacks performed more poorly than whites on IQ tests because of their genetic makeup. This was a reaction to prevalent views about the social determination of behavior, and it was quickly picked up by neoconservatives at Commentary and elsewhere. Today the new genetics brings a “halo of legitimacy” to racist and reactionary stereotypes: Purely genetic arguments are invoked with increasing frequency to account for behaviors which, like intelligence and the propensity to violence, are the results of complex combinations of factors.

Troy Duster, a sociology professor at Berkeley, well known for his works on morality and law (especially The Legislation of Morality: Law, Drugs and Moral Judgment), here draws the connections between the resurgence of essentialist thinking and the rise of the new biotechnologies—technolo gies that have demonstrated the greater frequency of certain genetic deficiencies among “risk populations, ” which correspond rather precisely to ethnic groups. He cautions us against the risks of stigmatization, discrimination, and marginalization inherent in screening policies, and in the increasingly sophisticated tests they bring to bear, in a society where power is unevenly distributed. Will the systematic use of such tests by insurance companies, employers, courts, schools, and even public health professionals create a caste of “biological pariahs, ” defined by their biological or neurological status as unfit for education, employment, or insurance? State bureaucracies (such as the National Center for Human Genome Research) are sociologically disposed to perpetuate themselves and increase their reach, notably by extending the range of available tests and by making some screening obligatory. Isn’t there a risk, in this process, of slipping from mass screening to the screening of target populations, and from voluntary to mandatory testing? And shouldn’t we fear that the uses of genetics will be determined more by economic and social power relations than by scientific or purely medical needs (as the differential treatment of groups such as blacks and Jews suggests, who differ in terms of genetic risks but more importantly in their social positions)?

The worst outcome, without question, would be if routine bureaucratic practices of genetic intervention slowly imposed the eugenic worldview and a form of scientifically and bureaucratically accredited racism. It is clear that the indisputable therapeutic virtues of many forms of genetic screening risk granting a renewed legitimacy to old attempts to ground the social structure on eugenics—whether a eugenics of criminal tendencies or of intelligence. How can we deny the link between the forceful return of conservative thinking and the favorable climate offered by progress in genetics, when we observe that “a review of the Reader’s Guide to Periodical Literature from 1976 to 1982 revealed a 231 percent increase in articles that attempted to explain the genetic basis for crime, mental illness, intelligence, and alcoholism during this brief six-year period. Even more remarkably, between 1983 and 1988, articles that attributed a genetic basis to crime appeared more than four times as frequently as they had during the previous decade” (see p. 93, chapter six). There is no need to evoke the Orwellian myth of a controlled society based on genetics to understand the danger of a state-controlled genetic database. (This is no longer a utopian fiction: In California, every pregnant woman receives a genetic examination, and all anomalies are recorded in a central database at the Centers for Disease Control in Atlanta. ) It is this kind of covert eugenics, perhaps more dangerous because it is more refined, that Troy Duster reveals here. In doing so, he brings together the talents of the sociologist with those of the most lucid and courageous geneticists, in the service of what one of them, David Suzuki, has called a “genethics” based on the refusal to establish simple and direct causality between the genetic properties and the behaviors of individuals.

—Pierre Bourdieu
Translated from the French by Emmanuelle Saada

[American Tragedy]

5. Why is this dubbed "the girl problem"?

Don't men constitute the other half of reproduction, and aren't there also men who are feeble-minded, criminal, or otherwise regarded as undesirable?

[lectrobyte]

7. Kind of curious about that myself. Perhaps folks thought that a girl

considered "feeble minded" was more likely to be "taken advantage of" and end up pregnant?

[madmusic]

11. Yes, and now the "dysfunctional family" problem

Eugenic research, or the now discredited pseudo-science of it, found that some families had a history of crime and other social ills. The eugenicists first blamed bad genes, but when real science proved that would be impossible to control, since so many "normal" people could carry a dormant bad gene, the eugenicists shifted their focus to the "dysfunctional family." Though they didn't call it that. The shift was away from genetics to the environment of the child. Now that genetic science is more precise, the shift is returning. For example:

"Genetic surveillance would thus shift from the individual to the family," the scientists, Frederick R. Bieber and David Lazer, say in an article in today's issue of Science.

Kinship-based DNA searching is already used in Britain but has not become routine in the United States.

Such searches might be valuable in generating leads, Dr. Bieber said, because 46 percent of prisoners said they had close relatives who either were or had been incarcerated, a Department of Justice survey found in 1996.

....

Dr. Bieber said he expected possible objections to a method that places whole families under suspicion. But, he said, "we have a duty to victims to use any reasonable methods as long as there is a basis in law, and this would give investigators new leads in some cases."

Source: NY Times.

Maybe there is no way to stop this, or maybe it is actually the right thing to do. The Buck v. Bell story is a tragic one, and a strong warning that should be considered in the debate since Buck v. Bell is still the law across the country.

[AngryAmish]

9. Weird connection b/w eugenics and Planned Parenthood

Planned Parenthood started out in part as a way to improve the stock of the American people.

[Karenina]

13. Kick!

:kick:

[bobbieinok]

15. what about the history of using clitoridectomy to control/punish women??

(from 1867 British medical essay)

http://www.cirp.org/library/history/medicaltimes1867/

....

We have heard of questions put (not by Mr. Brown) to female out-patients after the following fashion:—"Do you feel any irritation in certain organs?" "Is it very bad?" "Does it induce you to rub them?" "Does the rubbing ever make you feel faint?" And if the patient answers these questions affirmatively it is said that the evidence of unnaturally excitation is regarded as complete.

Nervous young women, as it s well known, may be profoundly ignorant of the nature and drift of such questions. They delight to magnify their own sensations, they enjoy the Physician's sympathy and are sure to answer " yes " to any leading question whatever. But we say that if young women are subjected to such inquiries as these in out-patient rooms at Hospitals and Dispensaries, or by private Practitioners, the sooner the Profession speaks out the better. A Medical consultation may involve the worst contamination to the patient. We think we are justified in saying that the kind of evidence on which the guilt of the woman is assumed is itself an ethical offence.

That the performance of clitoridectomy on a woman without her knowledge and consent, as detailed by Dr. West, is an offence against Medical ethics, needs not to be said. We suspect it is amenable to the criminal law of the land.

It is an offence against Medical ethics, also, to obtain the woman's consent, nominally, while she is left in ignorance of the real scope and nature of the mutilation, and of the moral imputations which it involves. Consent to a thing whose nature is not known, is like the consent of an infant or lunatic—null and void. Equally do we repudiate, as an offence against Medical ethics, the performance of such an operation, even with the consent, nominal or real, of the patient, but without the full knowledge and consent of the persons on whom she is dependent, as wife or daughter. As the woman's character affects theirs, they have a right to decide whether a female relative should undergo this operation, with the disgrace it involves, or whether relief shall be sought from other means.

more....

[madmusic]

17. And the Nazi castration of gays

From the 1880's into the Nazi era, religious organizations similarly waged a concerted "moral purity" campaign against phenomena which they regarded as urban vice and decadence – abortion, prostitution, sexually-oriented publications and amusements, women working outside the home, homosexual relations – in short, the signs of changing gender and social structures characteristic of modern life. The most prominent of these efforts were associated with the Inner Mission, the national Protestant social welfare organization, which distributed tracts, set up youth groups, lobbied against legal reform, and advocated castration of sex offenders.5

Despite such attempts at regulation, the subcultures of homosexual men and women continued developing – albeit in a fairly precarious form – in the years before World War I. This development was grounded in two broader social shifts: 1) the emergence of sexuality in general into the public and more specifically the commercial sphere; and 2) the movement of women into factory work and into the rapidly expanding secretarial field – a movement that for the first time offered personal independence to significant numbers of working- and middle-class women.

After the turn of the century, sexual, social, and intellectual territories for homosexual men and women were expanding to include cafés and pastry shops, beer cellars, nightclubs, bath houses, bookstores, sports and hobby clubs, small hotels, apartment buildings and sections of neighborhoods. In some cases, these were mixed settings where the greeting ranged from toleration to genuine welcome; in others, they were specifically homosexual milieus, often run by entrepreneurs who were themselves homosexual. By 1914, Berlin alone had an estimated 40 homosexual bars – including a number catering particularly to lesbians – several homosexual periodicals, and one- to two-thousand male prostitutes. By the early 1920's, similar developments on a smaller scale had appeared in other German cities.6

For homosexuals whose primary experience had been isolation and confusion, the discovery of urban queer life could be a revelation. To quote from one contemporary observer, Magnus Hirschfeld – about whom we shall hear more shortly – "Uranians have been seen arriving from the depths of the provinces weeping tears of joy at the sight of this spectacle."7 The sense many homosexuals shared about Berlin was reflected in the name of the German capital's most famous queer nightclub of the 1920s and early 1930s, where the art déco neon signs spelled out "Eldorado" – recalling the mythic land of gold which the Conquistadors had sought in vain. And to make sure no that one missed the point, two large signs over the main entrance announced: "You've found it!"

Then what? RIGHT-WING REACTION & THE NAZI RISE TO POWER (1920 - 1933)

The Gay Holocaust was little known until recently.

[meow2u3]

16. The early feminists were pro-life because abortion was forced sometimes

A woman didn't even have a right to give birth if her husband decided so. She got an abortion whether she wanted it or not. IOW, abortion in the 19th century was far more commonplace than the impression given by the cons today.

Abortion was also a means for eugenics.

So, the early feminists were pro-life because they wanted to give a woman a right to reproduce without her husband's permission. I don't think a woman should have to ask her husband's permission for anything. Women are not kids.

[madmusic]

19. Abortion Laws

In the last half of the nineteenth century, there were dramatic changes in the laws relating to abortion. Before 1860, some states did not regulate abortion at all...

...

Abortion laws after 1860 were broader and more drastic. Between 1860 and 1880, states passed more than forty antiabortion laws. Over a dozen states banned abortion for the first time; others tightened their existing legislation. Organized medicine led the crusade against abortion. There were a number of reasons for their zeal. One was certainly professional, connected to a general campaign against "quacks." The new abortion laws put power in the hands of doctors...

But there were probably deeper social reasons for the campaign against abortion. Many women who wanted abortions were married. This was, to some observers, a most alarming fact. A woman's highest duty was to bear children, not to snuff out their lives...

Thus a woman who went to the abortionist and got rid of her baby was committing a terrible sin against society. She also sinned against womanhood, domesticity, humility, motherhood, and obedience, and against the general image of moderation and self-control so crucial to the nineteenth-century mind-set... The battle against abortion was tied into the eugenic madness, the sense of contracting horizons and the image of threatened values so prominent an aspect of the late nineteenth-century cultural scene.

Source: Crime and Punishment in American History p, 229-230.

[madmusic]

21. gay rights

This great victory for gays also rests on the Skinner foundation.

Lawrence v. Texas (2003) 539 U.S. , 03 C.D.O.S. 5559 (U.S. Sup Ct 6/26/03, 02-102)

Texas statute making it a crime for two persons of the same sex to engage in sexual conduct violates constitutional right to privacy. Decision rests on 14th amendment's substantive component. O'Connor's concurrence would rest decision on equal protection clauses.