A Psychiatrists' in 1956 Diagnoses For Black Male Dating White Male: "You Are in Love"
As a British historian of black civil rights currently in Washington DC and watching the genuine excitement following the supreme court's decision to overturn the Defense of Marriage Act (Report, 27 June), I feel it is an important moment to understand the civil rights and human implications.Bayard Rustin, a key civil rights tactician who organised the march on Washington in 1963, was persecuted due to being African American and for his political links to communism – but also due to his homosexuality. In the early 1980s, he said the barometer for civil rights in the US was changing focus upon how its gay citizens were treated – this was as the HIV/Aids epidemic struck an increasingly conservative America.
In the 1950s Rustin had a relationship with Tom Kahn, a white student radical – breaking a lot of social taboos at the time. Kahn had been struggling with his sexuality but upon meeting Rustin embraced his identity fully and engaged in the civil rights struggle in all its social and economic forms. Apparently Kahn went to a psychiatrist in 1956 to try and understand his sexual identity – the diagnosis was "you're in love". After the legal decisions last week and all the bluster of social conservatives, the simple diagnosis for America could not, perhaps, be simpler.
Dr Lee Sartain♥
University of Portsmouth
Dr Lee Sartain♥
University of Portsmouth
Comments