Dr. Josephine Jackson on the perils of homosexuality (1937)

Guiding Your Life, a 1937 sexual education book by Dr. Josephine Jackson, claims that homosexuality is a "deadly perversion" and a "sickening futility." Homosexuals are doomed to unhappiness because, even if they try heterosexual mating, they are unable to appreciate "the great mission of reproduction." Homosexual apologists are just "following the law of compensation" when they tout their own virtues and talents; their sexual identity "clothes itself in the guise of artistry, calls itself the badge of genius, makes claim for freedom of action but leads finally to utter hopelessness and frustration."

Parents should watch for signs of homosexuality just as they'd watch for signs of measles, for, while no one is immune to these diseases, infection can be effectively guarded against. The symptoms of homosexuality are "devotion" to a same-sex friend, where the devotion is of "unwarranted degree, persistence, and exclusiveness." Children may pass through "an attack of the disease of mild and relatively harmless degree." An adolescent's same-sex crush will yield only humiliation unless the crush is himself a pervert, in which case a boy is lured to his "utter undoing" and a girl has a relationship that "degrades and defiles," because deep same-sex crushes "spoil the vine of love." A lesbian is "losing out on the structure of true femininity" because men and women are like chemical elements that need to combine to be each other's psychological and physical complements.

How can parents prevent their children from becoming homosexuals? "[Boys] should cultivate the companionship of girls; a liking will soon come. Then logic, intuition and a sense of humor will carry them out of the morass..."

The worst occurs when the homosexual tries to convert a "normally endowed" person.

None of her claims are backed up logically or empirically.

Josephine A. Jackson, M.D. Guiding Your Life: With Psychology As Key. New York, NY: D. Appleton-Century Company, Inc. 1937. Page 91, 150-158.

(I read this book and took these notes c. 1999.)