The Current and The Sea Gulls

I was listening to The Current’s Ana Maria Termonti on 99.1 this morning in the car. She visited the war museum in Ottawa this weekend, coinciding with the V.E day in Europe.

Amongst the gadgets there was a “Fruit Machine” that caught her attention. With all the knobs, dials and transmitters, it certainly looked more like a radio, she said. But in fact that was one of the instruments used in 1950s to detect homosexuals in the army, in order to dismiss them!

You are probably thinking back then also they were worried about STDs and wanted to avoid sexual contact between the soldiers. Well, not exactly! Who cares about diseases?

They believed that homosexual male soldiers were more likely to confess to the army secrets under torture. This radio machine that was called The Fruit Machine (!) supposedly picked up a signal when a homosexual soldier was in the room! Quite an invention, huh? I would say worth a Noble Hetero Prize!

Other methods of detecting soldiers’ sexual orientation included insider reporting (by a hired homosexual) and the picture test!

The picture test was another not so smart method, which involved the display of naked pictures (of men and women) and the measurement of pupil dilation of the soldiers’ eyes. I am not sure how accurate and effective the method was, but for some reason they weren’t smart enough to take their pants off for easier measurements during the “picture test”!!!

Of course, back then they had no idea about lesbianism! They thought homosexuality was a male disease or perversion! But what sounds rather more interesting to me is the correlation between one’s “pain threshold” and one’s preference for sexual partner. I wonder what this theory had to say about bisexuals? Perhaps the army should look into this!

On a totally different note, I participated in a webcast on Endocrine Disruption impacts of pharmaceuticals in the wastewater (given my thesis and all) at the Ministry last week. For those of you that don’t know, this means the feminization of male species or masculinization of female species of fish, man, birds, etc because of what is in our water supplies (pharmaceutical waste, pulp and paper waste, …). Funny enough, it sounds like the American government is pretty terrified that same-sex mating has become very common amongst the sea gulls!