This video makes me think of just how much progress HAS been made since the 1950s. Thank God. [YOUTUBE]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A5VNe9NTOxA&feature=player_embedded[/YOUTUBE]
Just, wow. lol That made me laugh and cringe all at once. I'm not sure what i learned from watching that. I think it's that if you hitch hike you have a chance of being picked up by a homosexual. Beware mind you, he might get you to your destination, but may crave an intimate relationship with the same sex; the depravity. I feel this PSA wasn't necessarily false, just misleading. It was almost comically homophobic. I'm not sure why not to trust homosexuals, or was it hitchhikers?
Makes you think about how far we've come. Have any of the older members of this forum noticed changes in attitudes in their time?
No, the video is real. That was a prevalent attitude in the 50s and even quite a bit in the 60s. There are still an awful lot of older people who can't get through their head that there's a difference between "gay man" and "pedophile." That's one of the ways Harvey Milk came to prominence. Some of the religious wingnuts tried to pass an initiative in California banning gay male teachers (or maybe just gay/lesbian, don't remember) with the justification that they are all pedophiles. He fought the initiative visibly and skillfully. Nowadays the idea that a gay man could not be a teacher may seem ludicrous but back then it was thought to be awful, in large part because of the prevalence of attitudes such as displayed in this video. (Did anyone notice that they implied that Billy or whatever the kid's name was, was in legal trouble for having sex with a gay man but was "let off" because he was otherwise a well-behaved kid? I suspect that was yet another way of indoctrinating and scaring any kid who was thinking about "becoming gay.")
Watching that now, it's hilarious. But it's definitely sad to see how prominent extreme views of homosexuality were only decades ago.
I love the part where the narrator says "They appear normal" like we're secretly aliens or something. We have come a long way, and thank goodness.
People are confusing homosexuality with pedophilia. They are not the same. They were made in the 50s when not a lot was known about it. Sad that some people still believe those ideas.
This is like one of those anti-communist (anti-anything, really) shorts aimed at dehumanising citizens. 1950s were a time when psychologists and doctors generally believed homosexuality was not a mental illness, but the general opinion was that homosexuals should be locked up like prisonners. Those were the days when we did not yet clearly see.
One never knows when the ho-mo-sexual is about... It was funny until I watched the full version. Wow. I thought noone talked about this stuff in the '50s. Too bad they assumed pedophiles must be homosexuals. Or is is the reverse?