Harvard's Secret Court Quotes

“The biblical basis of homophobia does not work as an explanation in that the bible is extremely hard on many behaviors that have never evoked the kind of pogroms, mob rage, and vigilante executions that homosexuality has provoked.”
― William Wright, Harvard's Secret Court: The Savage 1920 Purge of Campus Homosexuals

“If practiced among adults, homosexuality produces no victims or physical damage, unlike many crimes that do not evoke similar levels of outrage.”
― William Wright, Harvard's Secret Court: The Savage 1920 Purge of Campus Homosexuals

“There is nothing to say that a backlash from current tolerant attitudes is impossible, even in the United States, even at Harvard. All it would take would be some Taliban-like zealots to take control, any group from the many flourishing throughout the United States who believe they are hearing the voice of god when they are really hearing the darker corners of their Pliocene genomes.”
― William Wright, Harvard's Secret Court: The Savage 1920 Purge of Campus Homosexuals

“am full beyond words. And as is usual with me, I wept just a little. It’s silly weak, kiddish and all that, but, gee, to have done something real … One can if one will. Now I know it. We measure by material accomplishments, that is, in the eyes of society.… I think I am registering a comeback, to employ the vernacular. Now to burst into print and to begin—not to shine—but to show phosphorescent tendencies that may assemble into a little glow. Big fires from little sparks grow. You’re with me, dad’s with me; and there are many I rather feel will jump on top when my bus gets going. I have youth; I am acquiring faith, i.e. courage, confidence, right’s might: I am learning every day and developing every hour.… Fool that I am, I’d like to cry for a week, just from sheer happiness.… This year I am sure is the most glorious in my college so far after all.—If only I could find a girl, now. That is a big problem for me to thrash out—and it must be for myself, by myself, and with no other source or guide, less perchance it be Experience. I have so long avoided and put off telling this to you: but you must see it. After Emma, I have lost faith in your sex. That affair you never knew in detail. I can tell you of it some day, but not here and now.… Why I write this, I cannot say. I don’t know. But as I see engagements about me by the score—not that I think it even tolerable in one so young—but because I realize that I of equal age (in years) do not feel the slightest attraction or inclination to … (page missing)”
― William Wright, Harvard's Secret Court: The Savage 1920 Purge of Campus Homosexuals