Opinion Lambda Lore
 This Week in Lambda history
After last issue’s trip down memory lane, I decided that perhaps a column on gay chronology better suits the purpose of this space rather than waxing nostalgic about love’s labor lost. Well, maybe until something prompts me to go down that lane again. Anyway, enjoy “This Week in Lambda History.”
15 September
1967—University of Utah professor Victor B. Cline tells a Utah Youth Protector Committee that pornography contributed to a psychological aberration experienced by a 14 year-old Southern Utah boy.
16 September
1967—Salt Lake City’s vice officers lead a morals drive along the 500 block of West 200 South with a massive roundup of prostitutes. Salt Lake City was ranked in the top third of cities its size for prostitution in a survey conducted by national social-health organizations.
19 September
1900—Frank Billings, charged with having sex with a 13 year-old youth, is found guilty in Salt Lake County Third District Court. He is sentenced to Utah State Prison for 10 years. Billings claimed the youth made up the story after he had whipped him for breaking a bed.
21 September
1955—“Three Boise Men Admit Sex Charges” was the headline of the Idaho Daily Statesman. This begins the public disclosure of sexual relationships in Boise between men and boys and male prostitution.
22 September
1969—Brigham Young University’s administration privately agree to curtail electric shock aversion therapy for homosexual-oriented BYU students. The program, however, continues for decades.
24 September
1932—Transient Charles Brown is tried in Utah Third District Court for the infamous crime against nature for raping a fellow hobo in the Rio Grande Depot train yards. He is only sentenced to one year in prison because the prosecuting attorney argued that the state was broke, saying, “All the interest that the state has in this case, or could have, is just a technical theory of a violation of the law … in view of the fact that in the time of this depression, when the county and the city and all of us need money for the relief of our citizens … the expense required to keep this defendant there [prison] for from three to 20 years would be a whole lot more than what would benefit the state.”
1958—A 28 year-old Salt Lake City man is sentenced in police court to 90 days in jail on charges of being a disorderly person. He was arrested by vice squad officers who alleged the defendant attempted indecent liberties on an officer at the Salt Lake Public Library at 15 S. State.
26 September
1942—Robert E. Little of Salt Lake City is sentenced in Third District Court to serve three to 20 years in Utah state prison for sodomy.
27 September
1958—Salt Lake City Judge Arthur J. Mays, in dealing with cases involving homosexuals, states: “If a man who has been convicted of a crime involving homosexuality wants treatment, the court will consent and periodically check on the defendant’s progress. And if the man cooperates with psychiatrists, and medical reports indicate we can expect no further trouble from the man, the court is inclined to suspend the jail sentences if it is a first offense.”
29 September
1954—A 33 year-old Bountiful, man pleads guilty to disorderly conduct (homosexuality) charges and is fined $73 and sentenced to 60 days in jail. The judge suspended jail on payment of fine and good behavior.
30 September
1958—The Salt Lake Tribune’s editor opposes prison sentences for men arrested for homosexual activities and urges local courts to give suspended sentences and professional counseling to all those convicted of homosexual conduct.
Ben Williams is the founder and president of the Utah Stonewall Historical Society at utahstonewallhistoricalsociety.com
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