Bars, clubs, and night spots that catered to a homosexual clientele, even if nonhomosexuals were there slumming, were frequently targets for police raids instigated by public outrage or by politicians promising to make public spaces “safe” for women, children, and families. More dangerous to homosexuals, however, were the legal and moral crusades that emerged in the late 1930s. These climaxed in the summer of 1937, when widespread panic broke out over alleged sexual psychopaths who would harm and murder children. The frightening image of the sexual psychopath was clearly linked to the emerging
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