Old-School Homophobia

As George Santyana once said, "Those who forget the past are doomed to repeat it." It is so very, very easy to forget the past, especially when the past has to do with sex. It's really easy to forget how far we've come with regard to sex. Right now, we can at least talk about gay marriage as a possibility, if not an inevitability.  But it's only been thirty-some years since being gay or lesbian stopped being officially classified as a mental illness.

That's what Boys Beware! is about.  It's an artifact of those times, when "homosexual" was as casually associated with pathology as a person with their shadow. It was released in 1961 by Sid Davis Productions and shown in classrooms across the country in order to warn the youth of America about the danger of predatory men hanging out in public restrooms. At one point, homosexuality is described as "a sickness that [is] not visible like smallpox, but no less dangerous and contagious."

At first blush, it feels a bit absurd; after all, this is the type of film that The Simpsons has mocked for years with the washed-up movie idol Troy McClure who's been reduced to shilling for cheap infomercials and making "educational" films like "Fuzzy Bunny's Guide to You-Know-What" and "Man vs. Nature: The Road to Victory." I'm pretty fascinated by old-fashioned propaganda, and even the most pathological can get a certain kind of camp appreciation from me. But this one I can't laugh at. Its blatant, shameless homophobia seems so alien, and yet so damn familiar.  The ex-gay movement and the hysteria over "sex predators" both grow from the same rotten soil that spawned Sid Davis's film, and millions of dollars are spent every year to make sure they flower and grow.  This is an ugly, ugly film, and that's what makes it valuable: not only does it remind us that we've accomplished great things and come a long way, but that we still haven't gone as far as we need to.