M*A*S*H’s Revolutionary Gay Episode

there's an old military saying no secrets between sailors but on this 1974 episode of mash the secret is out about private western a non-heterosexual that nice boy well that's what i understand from some very reliable gossip and now that the private's gone public the camp is in an uproar about whether to turn him in but he's not the only one with something to hide look let's skip the manicure hey i'm matt baume i make videos about pop culture and this time we're talking about mash one of the first shows on television to tackle the issue of gay soldiers it was an issue that the country had been grappling with for decades before mash's gay episode aired and one that wouldn't be resolved until decades later making this an episode of tv made in the 1970s that uses the 1950s to talk about the 1990s so if you're not familiar with the show mash or the general heir of malays of the time it was a comedy drama that premiered in 1972 set in an army medical camp 20 years earlier in the 1950s mash was sometimes funny sometimes serious and often quite dark the biting satire of the us military and a critique of america's role in the then ongoing vietnam and cold wars now i know that doesn't sound like it's got the makings of a hit but it was one of the most popular shows on television to this day mash holds the record for the most watched episode in the history of tv it was huge and that's what makes this season 2 episode entitled george so amazing one of the creators later called it a miracle that they were allowed to say what they did about homosexuality at the time the episode starts with a young wounded soldier arriving at camp and meeting one of the doctors hawkeye played by alan alda you might recognize alan alda from 30 rock i'm a contest winner or from momentarily going upside down at the emmys the soldier is private george weston played by richard eli he was an early 70s heartthrob george has some combat wounds but also a few unexplained bruises looks like somebody used him for batting practice while he's recovering from his injuries he takes hawkeye aside with a surprising request as a matter of fact i was wondering when i could get out here get back to my outfit you went out of here after the army went to the trouble of arranging all this mud and lice most soldiers are happy to get a medical discharge and get sent home but george wants to be returned to his unit at first he doesn't want to say why but after a little hesitation he decides he can trust the doctor with his secret i've watched you around the hospital you care about people some of my best friends are people george chooses his words carefully here and just a reminder the show's set in the 1950s and they use some language that people don't use today george confesses to hawkeye that he did indeed get his bruises in a fight he tells him there have been two soldiers beat up in his outfit one colored and uh one homosexual so you're a negro they both know they can't talk openly about george being gay even though it's clear that that's what he's saying why not well back then coming out wouldn't just have made george a target for violence from other soldiers if the army found out that he was gay military rules were designed to ruin his entire life we'll talk about how that worked in just a little bit and if soldier's not allowed to talk about homosexuality reminds you of don't ask don't tell don't worry we're gonna get to that for now george just wants hawkeye to keep his secret and to send him back to the front lines to prove that he belonged there it's important to me that i finish my tour of duty now more than ever and at first it looks like that's just what's gonna happen but then one of the other officers frank hears a rumor from some other soldiers there's one of those in camp frank is disgusted by the idea that george is gay he can't even bring himself to say it one of those types that don't like girls even though he doesn't have any proof frank wants to expose george as gay and give him a dishonorable discharge for homosexuality that means it's up to hawkeye to stop him somehow so just how bad would that dishonorable discharge been well once the army hung a label of homosexuality on you you might never be able to work again depending on the circumstances of your discharge you could face a lot of different penalties and in some cases it was considered equivalent to a felony conviction which meant you'd lose the right to vote to own property to get government licenses you couldn't get a job and you also couldn't collect unemployment it effectively cut you off from society what the army itself called a downward spiral now quick side note it's not like gays in the military haven't gone hand in hand in the past back in 350 bc there was a group of warriors called the sacred band of thebes that was made up of 150 pairs of male lovers for more about them check out my patreon i've got a bonus video there about their whole story but when it comes to the us military their history with homosexuality is a little more spotty the army's first ban on homosexuality was established in 1916 and by the time this episode of mash aired about 50 years later the us government had developed a whole system for hunting for queer people and not just in the military but in any government job it's a time that's now called the lavender scare a moral panic and an organized campaign to expose anyone in government even suspected of homosexuality and it was pretty ruthless we looked at every part of the person's life just like a police department investigate vertices they pulled them out of bed in the middle of the night and set them up with whites they said to them we have your friend in the next room she's already told us that you're gay you give us the names of others and we'll go easier on you this homophobic witch-hunt was codified in 1953 when eisenhower signed an executive order that banned homosexuals from working for the government these were extrajudicial investigations meaning if you were suspected you had no right to a lawyer to see the evidence against you to appeal they also sent letters home telling their parents why they were being discharged so that they would not be able to go home and just fold themselves back into family life you know these were kids and that's exactly what frank wants to do to george to give him a dishonorable discharge that could ruin his life just based on a rumor even though as the other officers point out george hasn't given them any reason to do so has the man made a pass at you at me and anyone even when the lavender scare was in full swing it was clear that there was no basis for the policy other than just dumb prejudice in 1957 a report found that queer people posed no more threat to security than anyone else but it concluded that the hunt should continue simply because homosexuality is wrong it is evil and it is to be branded as such 1946 memo says quote the navy considers homosexuals acts morals offenses because they are morals offenses and here's another memo from just after world war ii recommending that the army create a program to indoctrinate officers into catching queer people that's literally the word they use indoctrination recruits were told that homosexuals are sick and a threat to the army they were ordered to keep an eye out for telltale traits of homosexuals for example an unnecessarily prissy way of walking there's no guidance on what the necessary amount of prissiness is and one more quick side note here the army wasn't always so uptight about the gays during the revolutionary war one of george washington's close advisors had a reputation for his intimate relationships with other men and he became known for throwing a party at valley forge where soldiers weren't allowed to wear pants a rule that mash itself observed on occasion i'll have more stories about that over on my patreon too anyway by the time we get to the 20th century the us army was instructing officers to report gay soldiers so they could be fired frank here is just following orders and he expects everyone else to do the same he goes to the commanding officer colonel blake and demands that he sign the discharge papers it's been brought to my attention that we have an undesirable in the post-op but then word gets back to hawkeye that frank is forcing the discharge to go through so hawkeye goes to find colonel blake and starts criticizing him for signing the discharge papers but then pierce i didn't sign how dare you do the right thing blake refused since all frank had to go on was a rumor so frank went above his head to another officer to get the forms even though nobody else in camp wants george kicked out of the army and this illustrates another problem with the ban on letting gay people serve it meant that thousands of qualified people who wanted to work and were valued by their co-workers could just vanish from the workplace all it took was one accusation and remember policies like these weren't limited to the military teachers clerks doctors scientists over 10 000 people are estimated to have lost their jobs in the lavender scare it was a disaster for the people who were fired losing qualified workers was a disaster for the government and having a constant churn of firing and replacing government workers was a disaster for the country but then something big changed and this witch hunt for gays reached a turning point right around the time this episode of mash aired that change started in 1958 when the government fired the wrong guy an astronomer named frank cammony he was working for the army's map service when he was accused and fired and frank kamini was furious he was determined to do something about it he became a full-time activist for the rest of his life he organized protests and picked at the white house in the 1960s he helped to remove homosexuality from the list of mental illnesses in the early 70s he's credited with creating the slogan gay is good inspired by the civil rights slogan black is beautiful one of frank comedy's big events was a protest called the annual reminder a picket in philadelphia every summer to show the world that queer people could be out and open and proud they held it every year starting in 1965 and then after the stonewall riots in 1969 organizers decided it was time to think bigger the next summer instead of the annual reminder they organized the first pride and in the span of a year queer protests went from a few dozen people to thousands along with that visibility came a new public debate in the early 70s about whether it was right to ban queer people from government jobs and that's the context in which this episode of mash aired ostensibly about the 1950s but really about a debate that was super timely in the 1970s in this episode of mash frank represents the past the lavender scare the witch hunts the indoctrination memo he's not going to give up on getting private west and discharged and he plans to go over his commanding officer's head as a surgeon and an officer i'm obliged to report any man who may jeopardize his unit well you just never know do you hawkeye and his friend john represent the future taking a clear stance that while frank's actions might be legal they're also morally wrong condemning somebody for something that's his own business next time you're browsing in the bible try to find a few words about compassion as the episode reaches its climax what frank doesn't know is that hawkeye and john have cooked up a little scheme they trick frank into admitting that years ago he paid for the answers to an exam so he could get his medical license i paid 400 for mine did you have the dumb nerve to judge someone else if that information got out frank could lose his license and his career just like he's threatening to do to george hawkeye points out that frank's in no position to judge whether someone else is fit to serve which frank doesn't love but he gets the message and he rips up the discharge papers the end it's pretty remarkable to hear an episode from the 1970s come down so decisively in favor of allowing queer people to serve and it's also remarkable how closely the arguments in this episode mirror the ones that you might hear in real life over the next few decades one year after this episode aired a soldier named leonard matlovich read an interview with the fired astronomer turned activist frank camely and it inspired matlich to come out go public and challenge the military ban on open service and just keeping quiet and my conscience just wouldn't let me do it anymore i had to come forward and say no more america and that was the start of a long process to end not just the ban on open military service but also the ban on homosexuals working in any government job some of those rules were rolled back the same year that matlovich went public others took longer to overturn at the start of the 1980s the government's official policy was homosexuality is incompatible with military service but by the end of the 80s a new government report found that homosexuality was quote unrelated to job performance in the same way as is being left or right-handed pressure kept mounting to repeal the ban in part because it was clear that queer people were serving and always had and were good at it i learned this from the marines you were in the marines yes they were looking for a few good men and so was i by the early 90s public officials were having arguments almost identical to the episode of mash conservatives said that homosexuality was unnatural and threatened unit cohesion just like frank claimed on mash civil rights groups said that it simply wasn't true and that forcing people to keep themselves hidden was harmful like hawkeye said that came to a head in 1993 when bill clinton signed a compromise into law the full name was don't ask don't tell don't pursue don't harass but for some reason people only remember the first two parts maybe because the army continued to pursue and harass reports showed that the government was spending hundreds of millions of dollars to investigate people fire them and train replacements for no benefit whatsoever again the problem wasn't homosexuals in the military it was that the military was forcing them to stay hidden finally in 2010 obama signed the repeal of don't ask don't tell and by the end of his administration he'd also repealed eisenhower's executive order that banned queer people from government jobs that hadn't been enforced for years but it had just remained on the books now this is not to say that the us military is now beyond reproach in fact it is a deeply problematic institution deserving of critique but the last hundred years of policy has shown that forcing queer people to hide in any profession whether soldier or astronomer or caseworker or astronaut helps nobody and everyone's better off when those restrictions go away repealing the bans means ending the legal need for queer people to keep secret you can see that change in this clip from a white house reception in 2009. it was just after obama was elected and he was welcoming a group of gay activists to the white house while he was speaking he happened to spot frank camene the astronomer who'd been fired in the 1950s who half a century earlier could only represent people on the other side of the white house walls a civil rights pioneer who's here today frank cammony and in 1965 he led a protest outside the white house which was at the time both an act of conscience but also an act of extraordinary courage and so we are proud of you frank and we are grateful to you it was 101 years from the military's first ban on homosexuals to obama's repeal of the ban on gay civil servants a century of unjust laws and the gay episode of mash came exactly in the middle of that a half-hour episode that came just at the moment in history when the tide was starting to turn when america was slowly shifting from the assumption that queer people are sick and threatening to realizing that the real threat is forcing good people to hide now in making this video i found a lot of fun stories that i just didn't have room for in this script for those stories check out my patreon i've got a video up now about the sacred band of thebes and i've got hours of bonus videos about other shows that i've talked about and i'll be posting more bonus videos in the coming weeks big thanks to jacob haywood an archivist at the us national archives for research help in this video now if you'll excuse me i've been asked to come up with a new slogan for the marines

Channel: Matt Baume

Views: 419,832

Keywords:

Id: 8ugsupVQXHE

Length: 14min 40sec (880 seconds)

Published: Sun Aug 22 2021