The Way I See It Nell Russell, Minneapolis Spokesman (Article, April 1950)
Full Text
THE WAY I SEE IT
BY NELL DODSON RUSSELL
The charges made by Senator Joe McCarthy that the State Department has allegedly been over-run with [homosexuals] has caused some of our more conservative citizens to turn rainbow-hued from shock.
I agree that [homosexuals] may make poor security risks because they can be so easily influenced by individuals for whom they form emotional attachments.
I also have reason to believe that there may be many more [homosexuals] in government service today than the American public would ever suspect.
This brings up another point. There are more [homosexuals] everyplace today than the American public would ever suspect.
[Homosexuality] has increased in this country particularly during and since the war years. I [worked] around show business so long that I have long since ceased to be startled by it. I have lived in New York long enough not to be shocked by it.
However, one of thee first things I noticed on returning her was the increase in [homosexuality]. There was a time when [homosexuals] would flaunt their peculiar type of "glamour" mostly by night and within the boundaries of their own worlds. Now, one sees them riding the subways in the early morning rush hour, parading the aisles of the Broadway theatres shortly before curtain time, haunting the bars on Eighth Avenue downtown in the forties and fifties.
There are female homos who travel in small groups. I saw four of them drive up before a Harlem barbecue spot, the other night. Two were white, two were Negro. At first I thought it was four [teenage] boys because they were driving a pre-war, open-top jalopy. They had on shirts and jeans. Their hair was cut like a man's. They had the defiant, swaggering stride of [teenage] boys.
It was only after I saw them get out of the car that I realized they were, or had been, women.
The thing has become so prevalent here that when one sees a handsome, broad-shouldered male with well-chiseled features and immaculate tailoring, the question immediately arises: "Is he a he-he or a he-she?"
The most dangerous type of male [homosexual], however, is the one who uses marriage to conceal his off-record activities. This group includes male movie stars, business executives, stage personalities, nightclub stars, sports figures, newspaper columnists, authors, composers, and professional men.
It is time for the American public to face the facts of [homosexuality] like it has faced the facts of cancer, tuberculosis, epilepsy.
[Homosexuals] range all the way from swaggering, masculine woman and the painted, effeminate man to the respectable-looking, beautifully turned-out career woman and her dignified-appearing, well-developed male counterpart.
They are bred and cultured in our best school, homes and churches. They teach in our schools and universities. They perform on our motion picture screens and stages. They write our books, paint our pictures, sometimes compete in our best athletic events.
They come from the slums and the dark by-ways. They come from the social register and the smart suburbs.
[Homosexualism] is the refuge of sons who have been mothered too much but not wisely. It is the haven of the unwanted, the frustrated, the bored and the least loved. It collects some of our most brilliant people and our most vicious people. It wraps within itself those who would have been different had they been given the chance, the inner strength or the outer hardness.
It must be a sign of the times that the frustration, the dissatisfaction has made physical and emotional perverts of so many people.
