A bizarre public information video from 1965 intended to warn how popular magazines promote homosexuality and communism has been unearthed.
The film, called ‘Perversion for Profit’, has now become an online hit among modern viewers for its unintentionally comical delivery and hysterical message.
The underground cult-classic reveals how homosexuality was spoken of in the United States only fifty years ago.
Narrated with zeal by news reporter George Putman, ‘Perversion for Profit’ explains how magazines containing nudity are a communist conspiracy corrupting young viewers, leading to violence and perverted attitudes regarding sex – namely homosexuality, which is equated with paeodophilia.
It starts: ‘Hello there, I’m George Putman. I’d like to begin with a fact. A simple, yet shocking, fact. It is this: A flood tide of filth is engulfing our country in the form of newsstand obscenity. It is threatening to pervert an entire generation of our American children.’
The video then pans across a plethora of sexually explicit images from 1960s magazines – including of gay publications – to argue how mainstream pornography will erode the integrity of American culture just as it supposedly did to other civilizations like ‘magnificent Egypt, classical Greece, imperial Rome’.
Putman explains: ‘Through this material, today’s youth is even enticed to enter the world of homosexuals, lesbians, sadists, masochists and other sex deviants. They tell youngsters that it’s smart, it’s thrilling; it provides kicks to be a homosexual, a sadist and every other kind of deviant. This weakening also leads to vulnerability to communism.’
The film begins by advising us to be wary of pornography which may appear at the local newsstand, malt shop or drugstore – and different kinds of allegedly dangerous magazines are shown including ‘girlie’ (pictured) and ‘physique’ publications from the underground gay literature of the day. As the above picture is shown, narrator George Pitman warns that the magazines present ‘stark nudity on slick paper’
Putman explains that, ‘for the sake of decency’, the producers of the film ‘have partially covered the pictures and disguised the identity of the models.’ Ironically, however, the nudity is barely obscured at all in the film. He says these magazines directly lead to a homosexuality and sexual ‘deviancy’ while implying that the young men pictured in these journals show that gay men are nearly all child molesters
Putman (pictured) ends the film with an appeal to his viewers to outlaw and eradicate sexually explicit materials in mainstream culture. He passionately exclaims: ‘We must save our nation from decay and deliver our children from the horrors of perversion. We must make our land, the land of the free, a safe home. Oh, God, deliver us, Americans, from evil’
Narrated with zeal, ‘Perversion for Profit’ explains how magazines containing nudity are a communist conspiracy corrupting young viewers, leading to violence and perverted attitudes regarding sex – namely homosexuality, which is equated with paeodophilia. It starts: ‘Hello there, I’m George Putman. I’d like to begin with a fact. A simple, yet shocking, fact. It is this: A flood-tide of filth is engulfing our country in the form of newsstand obscenity. It is threatening to pervert an entire generation of our American children’
Putman also speaks about a picture of a naked woman reclining in a farm near a goat, which supposedly has ‘overtones of bestiality’, and another photo of several topless women which ‘has lesbian implications’
‘Perversion for Profit’ claims that this mainstream pornography is responsible for horrific crimes. Putman says: ‘A young boy in Philadelphia raped and killed a five-year old girl and while he was testifying that he had been stimulated to this heinous crime by reading a nudist magazine’
Pictured: A screenshot showing a homosexual magazine that appears in the public information film. As the camera pans over the above image, Putman speaks of sadness about the ‘young face and bright smile which could be the hope of the world’
In the film, Putman continues to describe the most despicable type of magazines – ‘physique’ and ‘men’s adventure’ publications, which show male nudes
Putman explains at one point in the film: ‘Through this material, today’s youth is even enticed to enter the world of homosexuals, lesbians, sadists, masochists and other sex deviants. They tell youngsters that it’s smart, it’s thrilling; it provides kicks to be a homosexual, a sadist and every other kind of deviant. This weakening also leads to vulnerability to communism’
A still from the film which Putman explains reveals an obsession with ‘sodomy’. ‘Perversion for Profit’ was produced by Charles Keating, who founded an anti-pornography organisation called Citizens for Decent Literature (CDL) and believed that homosexuals should be imprisoned
In 1969, Keating’s national reputation on the issue led President Nixon to appoint him to the ‘President’s Commission on Obscenity and Pornography’. Keating later served four and a half years in prison for multiple counts of wire fraud, racketeering and conspiracy for his notorious involvement in The Lincolns Savings and Loan scam. His convictions were overturned in 1996 and he was released. Pictured: A screengrab showing the racy magazines
The narrator extensively shows topless shots of women, which demonstrate a worrying ‘preoccupation with the female breast’
The film explains: ‘Psychiatrists believe that prolonged exposure of even the normal male adult to this kind of publication, though he may not be aware of its true nature, will nevertheless pervert’. Putman goes on: ‘Think then of the consequences to the inexperienced youth, who in purchasing and studying this material becomes a pawn for these misfits. These homosexuals, who have a slogan that betrays the evil of the breed: ‘Today’s conquest,’ they say, ‘is tomorrow’s competition’. See the tender age at which homosexuals prefer their conquests. Look here at the young face.’
The video pans across a plethora of sexually explicit images from 1960s magazines – including of gay publications – to argue how mainstream pornography will erode the integrity of American culture just as it supposedly did to other civilizations like ‘magnificent Egypt, classical Greece, imperial Rome’
The bizarre public information video from 1965 is intended to warn how popular magazines promote homosexuality and communism has been unearthed. But it has now become an online hit among modern viewers for its unintentionally comical delivery and hysterical message
Serious: News reporter George Putman narrates the video in a room featuring a map of the United States and a flag in a set similar to a classroom