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“The "fruit machine" was employed in Canada in the 1950s and 1960s during a campaign to eliminate all gay men from the civil service, the Royal Canadian Mounted
by zeristor 7y ago
“The "fruit machine" was employed in Canada in the 1950s and 1960s during a campaign to eliminate all gay men from the civil service, the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP), and the military.”
O Canada
I imagine this level of national homophobia was standard in most countries at the time. The irony of branding homosexuals as security risks because they could be blackmailed seems to be the sickest form of circular logic.
- Haga 7y agoThey made excellent spies though.
- smcl 7y agoI don’t think whoever was responsible for this policy genuinely believed that they were making the RCMP more effective by eliminating risk of blackmail. I think they started with “I don’t want gay men working here” and searched around for justification that they thought was a little less unpalatable.
- DanBC 7y agoIn the 1960's "I don't want gay men to work here" was acceptable and would not have been seen as unpalatable. Same sex sexual activity was made legal in Canada in 1969.
- gtsteve 7y agoThere's blackmail, but also it was the zeitgeist at the time that homosexuals were in some way morally compromised in the same way that drug users are seen as immoral (personally I don't feel that drug users are immoral but I feel I'm in the minority). I sometimes come into contact with more old-fashioned industries where I hear similarly old-fashioned ideas from time to time. The idea is dying but not dead yet unfortunately.
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]