Newton Arvin: A Sign of the Times

Panic Queer True Crime

In 1960, Smith College's Professor Newton Arvin and two of his colleagues were swept up in a scandal concocted in large part as a way of shaming being queer out of existence.

Efforts to control the flow of what is erotica or smut is an ongoing crusade in the United States and in many places in the world. When those crusades are weaponized against targeted groups of people they can be lethal.

Some of you listening to this episode might think a professor at a private college is a fairly privileged person, and you're not wrong, but his homosexuality stripped away much of that privilege.

The other reason I'm sharing this story is that Newton Arvin and his two colleagues are stand-ins for the hundreds, perhaps thousands of mostly gay men who were arrested, jailed, and had their lives ruined for the offense of being gay.

The potential loss of one's freedom and profession is both unbelievable from today's vantage point and entirely possible to imagine happening again.

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