Lavender sons of zion: a history of gay men in Salt Lake City, 1950-1979

D. Winkler

This dissertation uses oral history, court records, newspaper articles, essays and public speeches by Mormon Church leaders to document the lives of gay men in Salt Lake City from 1950 to 1979. The dissertation begins with the childhood and adolescent experiences of gay men raised in Utah or the Mormon Church during the 1940s and 1950s. Aside from a general concern about 'moral cleanliness,' Mormon Church officials made few explicit references to homosexuality, and interviews revealed that the subject was seldom raised in narrators' families. Consequently, boys freely engaged in homosexual activity with friends, oblivious to its social significance. However, reticence gave way to vigilance and repression as the antigay ideology of the Cold War penetrated Utah. Like a gathering storm, tightening law enforcement in the 1950s foreshadowed the Mormon Church's more aggressive, forthright approach to homosexuality in the 1960s. The church employed secular means to ensure spiritual purity, selectively embracing psychiatry and law enforcement methods to root out homosexuality among church members. Despite such putatively hostile conditions, however, gays in Salt Lake City enjoyed opportunities for social and sexual interaction.