Open Access“Illegal Loves and Sexual Deviancy: Homosexuality as a Threat in Cold War Canada”
Author(s) -
Erin Gallagher-Cohoon
Publication year - 2013
Publication title -
constellations
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
ISSN - 2562-0509
DOI - 10.29173/cons19672
Subject(s) - homosexuality , criminalization , criminology , conceptualization , sodomy , sexology , medicalization , sociology , cold war , power (physics) , mental illness , law , gender studies , psychology , mental health , political science , human sexuality , psychiatry , politics , physics , quantum mechanics , artificial intelligence , computer science
This paper analyzes the criminalization and medicalization of homosexuality during the early twentieth century in Canada. Through court records and medical texts the discourse of homosexuality as a threat to the family unit and to the nation is contextualized within Cold War rhetoric. A Foucaultian conceptualization of power and discipline helps frame questions regarding homosexuality as a criminal offense and as a mental illness. It is argued that both state control and societal pressures constructed the homosexual as criminal, the homosexual as mental patient and, as a result, the homosexual as Communist threat.