On Tuesday, April 15, 2003 from 7 pm to 9 pm, there will be a program at the Reitz Union Auditorium about lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender history at the University of Florida and in the local community as part of the 150th anniversary of UF and Pride Awareness Month.

The program will begin with a brief recognition of the Rainbow Alliance Awards for Service/Research. 150 Years of LGBT History will include a screening of the documentary "Behind Closed Doors: The Dark Legacy of the Johns Committee," and a panel discussion with a historical perspective. The theme of the Sesquicentennial Celebration at UF is "Honoring the past, shaping the future," and 150 Years of LGBT History will reflect the highlights and lowlights of the past and how they are shaping the future for the LGBT community.

This program is being organized by the LGBT Concerns Committee at the University of Florida and is being sponsored by the Pride Student Union, Gator Gay-Straight Alliance, the Rainbow Alliance, and the Pride Community Center of North
Central Florida. GatorGSA will be tabling in Turlington Plaza on 14 and 15 April during the day to promote the program and to educate the community about the history of gay people at UF and in Florida.

More information on the film can be found at www.behindcloseddoorsfilm.com. If you're interested in the full text of the Johns Committee Report, you may also look it up on WebLuis.

Check out some flyers featuring definitions from the comprehensive Glossary of Homosexual Terms in the report (they should be in a PDF file appropriately named).

Here are some of the quotes GGSA have selected for use in flyers:

1. The 1963 Florida Legislature created the Legislative Investigation Committee…to investigate and report on “the extent of infiltration into agencies supported by state funds by practicing homosexuals, the effect thereof on said agencies and the public, and the policies of various state agencies in dealing therewith.”
2. Many facets of homosexual practice as it exists in Florida today pose a threat to the health and moral well-being of a sizable portion of our population, particularly our youth.
3. [An] official who has made a study of homosexuality suggests that its practice is the basis of “the most insidious crime of all.”
4. The homosexual is unconsciously a masochistic injustice collector who has shifted the ‘power to mistreat’ from woman to man.
5. Society would feel better if there were no homosexuals, but our laws have to face the truth that every society in one way or another produces certain aberrancies. In a religious society you have heresies, in a wilderness society, renegades, and in this society, homosexuality. (Society must change itself to lose homosexuality. It can’t be stamped out.)
6. Suffice it to say that such links do exist and that the homosexual, subject to abnormal external and internal pressures, tends to neuroticism and mental imbalance, a predilection opening pathways to crime and conduct far beyond the veil of rationality.
7. The homosexuals’ motto is: Today’s Trade is Tomorrow’s Competition. This motto is spoken in every language in the civilized world. We must teach the homosexual, make him understand that we will not tolerate his recruitment for youth.
8. We recommend, and have initiated, the formulation of legislation providing A Homosexual Practices Control Act for Florida.
9. It behooves us all to come to know the nature of the homosexual, for he is with us in every area of the state. It behooves us, too, to define for him and for ourselves, the conditions which govern his presence.