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Popular Culture Review
The linking of Jews and child molestation is as old as Christianity. The
“common knowledge” was immortalized by Geoffrey Chaucer in the tale the
Prioress told on the way to Canterbury. Shakespeare used a similar stereotype in
The Merchant o f Venice. Anti-Semitism has a long history in America as well. It
seems less than coincidental that the two Americans executed for treason during
the McCarthy era were Jewish: the “Communist spies” Julius and Ethel
Rosenberg. Homosexuals were a “natural” addition to Jews and Communists,
especially since they were defined primarily by their sexuality, an
uncomfortable topic rarely openly discussed in post-WWn “Christian” America.
The stereotyping worked and quickly took root. During the McCarthy
era more homosexuals were “weeded out” and fired than Communists. Gays
were regularly barred from taverns and restaurants, barred from public
assembly, and barred from using the U.S. Postal Service to send newsletters. In
1953 President Dwight Eisenhower signed an executive order barring
homosexuals from government jobs as well as other forms of employment. And,
as Professor Chauncey noted, homosexuals had no freedom of assembly or
speech and could be arrested on simple “suspicion”—behaviors such as
“gesturing with limp wrists,” walking “with a sway to the hips,” and “wearing
tight fitting trousers”—and sent to mental hospitals until “cured,” despite claims
by prison doctors that “cures” were not possible. Those pri