Yeah. Innocent my left foot. Her name was Karen Balkin. Didn’t she die in the end of the movie from a lightning strike? Or am I confusing this with the end of some other movie? The Bad Seed, perhaps?
Not really a nitpik, but my mom was filling us with horror stories by the late 60’s, when I was old enough to barely understand.
One day she had an adult hippy pot smoker acquaintance drive his VW bus over to where we were and she had us go up to his van and take a whiff of his pot. She then told us if we ever smell that smell, we should RUN AWAY.
I was too young to really understand. I ended up more afraid of VW buses and vehicles that stop and open their doors, than that smell, that didn’t really even register to me.
She also taught us to always walk along the street facing traffic, because if you walked on the other side a car would stop and swoop you up and kidnap you. Actually, I might have that backwards, and it’s the passenger in the car who might open the door and swoop you away. Never could remember that one.
In the 70’s, man/boy relationships were considered fairly healthy and normal, at least in the midwest where I was growing up. Seems a few times mom sent me off to spend some quality man-time with one of her adult male friends (she was a single parent) and it was normal to sleep in the same bed with them. Never got molested, really. Well, until the priest thing, but that’s a whole other story.
Back in Dallas in the 1950s, it was called “The crime against Nature” and if one party was an adult and the other under age, the adult could expect to also be charged with “contributing to the delinquency of a minor.” As was posted earlier, the adult’s name and address would be published and it isn’t going too far to say that his life could be in danger. This isn’t a Texas bash, but homosexuality simply wasn’t tolerated in Dallas, back in those days.
There was a case here a few months back where two male high school students were caught together on campus. I don’t recall their ages; in any case, all the local news outlets simply reported it as a “crime against nature,” with the actual details coming to light later. (I’m pretty sure that was also one of the actual charges, too.)
Regarding the video “Boys Beware”, why is it that so many ‘educational’ films like this from the 50’s have no live sound? There’s always cheesy music and a narrator. It’s obviously cheaper this way. Is there a name for this style?
Surely if one party is an adult and the other under age the situation is precisely the same today, ie the adult’s name and whereabouts could be published as a known sex offender?
“The Children’s Hour” was based on a real incident that took place in Scotland in 1810. A student named Jane Cumming (seriously) accused two of her teachers, Jane Pirie and Marianne Woods, of having an affair. The girl’s grandmother encouraged other parents to remove their children from the school. The teachers sued the grandmother and won, but their reputations never recovered. LGBT historian Liliam Faderman wrote a book about it called “Scotch Verdict.”
Figures. Life is almost always worse than fiction.
Sodomy? 1950s? - Alan Turing is another data point.
After significantly helping the allies to win WWII and kickstarting what we now think of as modern computer science, he was arrested for homosexuality, imprisoned, and made to take female hormones. This treatment is believed by many to have been a contributory factor in his suicide.
I know this view of homosexuality was ‘of its time’, but he did so much for us, and in return, we shat on him. Bloody shameful.
Off-topic, but the British computer industry pretty much died when Turing did.
The UK was a leading innovator in early computers, but never produced much of anything after Turing died. (Except Tony Hoare’s QuickSort, and he is really Ireland, not England.)
So, instead of conflating “homosexual” with “child molester” like we did back in the Bad Old Days, now we conflate “man” with “child molester”. Progress, indeed. :rolleyes:
Oh, I don’t know, Tim Berners-Lee had a bright idea or two.
This reminds me of an article in *The Atlantic * a while back on being gay in Saudi Arabia (somewhere around there). I don’t have any more to add except to say that it is clearly possible to find the love, no matter how hardcore the laws are.
Well, no, but isn’t it common sense not to hitchhike? You wouldn’t encourage your own kids to accept rides from strange men (or women, for that matter), would you?
I think that was largely because Turing and the people who had worked with him at Bletchley Park were all sworn to secrecy after the war. It’s difficult to advance computer technology if you aren’t allowed to talk to anyone about the discoveries and innovations you’ve already made. All you can do is wait for someone else to re-discover the technology independently.
Mom first started working as a rural teacher when she was 16 (her birthday is late in the year). As the buses going to the capital would go there on the morning and back in the afternoon, they were about useless for the teachers, who wanted to go to the capital on Saturday afternoon and back to the village Monday morning. This was in northern Spain in 1957. Google images of “pencil skirt”…
She tells of hitchiking and being picked up by truckers (the only people who did those routes), who would offer to help mentioning “I’m married, dear” and, if the offer had been rejected, gentlemanly turn their backs while the young lady climbed in. I mean, with those skirts you pretty much had to wear the skirt as a belt in order to get in the cab.
Nope. But I suspect in 60 years, we’ll think Stranger Danger videos are just as hilariously over the top as this one.
…while we’re comparing notes on the new AVG Home Security Total Virus and Air Purifier System from the comfort of our biosealed pods.
He was the coauthor of one of the first books that I ever read on packet switched networks, back in the early days of computer networks.
Yeah, that’s a good point, considering we have way more to fear from people we know than from random men lurking in parking lots or stairwells.
Remember, trust no one!
I had this “stranger danger” book when I was a small child (early '80s), and I think my mom still has it. That thing was way over the top…it’s OK to let a clown or the Easter Bunny into your house, but don’t get in the late-model sedan driven by the guy with the snazzy haircut and aviator sunglasses!
Looking at that link, the book appears to have first been published in 1967, and the cartoon graphics clearly reflect this. But I vividly recall that the pages with the “actual stranger” featured a late '70s/early '80s car.