The persistent belief that homosexuality was a kind of contagion inspired conservatives to compare LGBT anti-discrimination laws to sexual indoctrination. An unsuccessful 1992 ballot initiative in Oregon, for instance, would have made it illegal to use state, regional, or local funds to “promote, encourage, or facilitate homosexuality.” (The lesbian feminist attorney and activist Nan D. Hunter wryly nicknamed this legislative agenda “No Promo Homo.”)
The idea that gay men and lesbians “recruited” children to become homosexuals mirrored the anti-porn movement’s notions that sexually explicit words and images could cause violent behavior. Both campaigns likewise characterized sexual desires as forces that required vigilant supervision.
Granting even the most basic antidiscrimination protections to LGBT Americans was controversial. The same year that Oregon’s initiative failed, Colorado adopted a constitutional amendment that made it illegal for local governments or the state to ban discrimination against gay men and lesbians.
With clear echoes of earlier arguments against civil rights for Black Americans, the amendment’s supporters derided the LGBT equality movement as a plea for “special rights” that disadvantaged straight people. Taken together, these arguments warned that queer people were sex deviants intent on pushing heterosexuals to the margins of American life.
These anti-LGBTQ measures coincided with headline-grabbing child abductions in the late 1970s and 1980s, which in turn spawned a new era of child safety advocacy. Reports of child abductions and assaults had not increased demonstrably, but sensationalist news coverage gave the appearance of an escalating crisis. By the middle of the 1980s, innumerable cardboard milk cartons for sale in the United States featured a photograph of one of these “missing children.” Television networks launched programs devoted to cracking cold cases.
While not all these cases involved evidence of sexual assault, fears of sexually deviant criminals fueled a widening panic over “stranger danger” and child abuse. The overwhelming majority of child sex abuse was still committed—as it had been for centuries—by family members and acquaintances, not strangers.
Conservatives blamed the apparent rise in sexual crimes against children on feminism, gay rights, and the expansion of sexual freedoms during the previous decades. The anti-tax, pro-military right won support from religious traditionalists by making “family values” a cornerstone of the emerging Republican coalition. As President Ronald Reagan signed into law the Missing Children’s Act of 1982, he and his allies argued that sexual liberation had created a culture that encouraged child abuse.
Arguments against the sexual revolution associated it with other left-leaning causes, grouping Black nationalist and antiwar protesters with feminists and gay liberationists as stokers of social chaos. Sexual conservatism once again served the interests of white privilege.
