Jack Kemp

FDR's 1919 entrapment and encouragement of gay sailors in Newport
Jack Kemp
As long as liberals want to tear down statues of discriminatory Presidents, how about telling them this true story? How many Hollywood gays can we enlist to demand the FDR Memorial in Washington be torn down?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Newport_sex_scandal
Newport sex scandal
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The Newport sex scandal arose in 1919 from the United States Navy's investigation of illicit sexual behavior on the part of Navy personnel in Newport, Rhode Island. It targeted homosexual contacts between Navy personnel and the civilian population. Initially it attracted little public notice, but eventually the investigation—its methods and use of enlisted personnel—and the trial attracted national news coverage and provoked a Congressional investigation that ended with Secretary of the Navy Josephus Daniels and Assistant Secretary of the Navy (and future president of the United States) Franklin D. Roosevelt being rebuked by a Congressional committee.

Background
In February 1919, Thomas Brunelle and Chief Machinist's Mate Ervin Arnold were both patients at the Naval Training Station hospital in Newport. Brunelle told Arnold the details of the subculture to which he belonged in Newport, centered at the Army and Navy YMCA and the Newport Art Club, where local civilian homosexuals regularly made contact with one another and with naval personnel. Arnold undertook a personal investigation to verify Brunelle's account and documented his findings. He then presented his Navy superiors with detailed reports of effeminate behavior, cross-dressing, and parties involving sexual activity, liquor and cocaine.

SECTION OMITTED
Arrests and trial
Arrests began on April 4, and by April 22, fifteen sailors had been arrested. Each was brought before a military tribunal and heard men they recognized as former sexual partners provide graphic testimony of their encounters. Older naval officers were confounded by the terms used by the investigators. Once the operatives had presented their evidence before the court, the accused were encouraged to incriminate others and many did so in hopes of leniency. Brunelle did so, but withheld the names of his closest friends. The three-week military trial ended with the court-martial of 17 sailors charged with sodomy and "scandalous conduct." Most were sent to the naval prison at the Portsmouth Naval Shipyard in Maine. Two more were dishonorably discharged and two others were found innocent with no further action.
Roosevelt's embarrassment
The Providence Journal, under publisher John R. Rathom, covered the trial proceedings daily, often with a critical eye toward the prosecution's case. On January 8, 1920, Rev. Samuel Neal Kent, an Episcopal clergyman, was found not guilty on all charges. In his charge to the jury in that case, the judge was at pains to discredit the witnesses who described their participation in illicit sexual acts. He reasoned that since no military or governmental authority could legitimately order them to participate in such acts against their will, they were either willing participants whose complaints were groundless or they were acting under the compulsion of unlawful commands on the part of their superiors. His analysis fueled opposition in Newport's religious community.

SECTION OMITTED

While investigations dragged, Roosevelt resigned from his position as Assistant Secretary of the Navy in July 1920 when he accepted the Democratic Party's nomination for vice president. He and presidential candidate James M. Cox were on the losing end of Warren G. Harding's landslide victory for the Republicans.

On July 19, 1921, a subcommittee of the Senate Committee on Naval Affairs denounced both Daniels and Roosevelt for the methods used in the Newport investigations. The New York Times reported that most of the details of the affair were "of an unprintable nature", but explained that the committee believed that Daniels and Roosevelt knew that "enlisted men of the navy were used as participants in immoral practices for the purpose of obtaining evidence." The committee report declared that using enlisted men in this way "violated the code of the American citizen and ignored the rights of every American boy who enlisted in the navy to fight for his country." The committee report also made public the earlier determination of a naval court-martial. To that court's assessment that Roosevelt's behavior was "unfortunate and ill-advised", the committee added "reprehensible".

SECTION OMITTED

Any damage to Roosevelt's political prospects paled when he was stricken with a paralytic illness while vacationing in August 1921 at Campobello Island in Canada.
Reply Reply All Forward













"

Posted by: Timothy Birdnow at 09:02 AM | No Comments | Add Comment
Post contains 739 words, total size 5 kb.