Conduct Unbecoming an Officer and a Doctor: Medical Attitudes toward Homosexuality and the Court Martial of Dr. Percy Ryberg

Abstract

This article explores the criminalization and medicalization of homosexuality within military culture during World War II through the general court martial of Flight Lieutenant Percy Ryberg, a medical officer stationed in the United Kingdom with the Royal Canadian Air Force. In December 1944, Ryberg faced a charge of conduct unbecoming an officer and a gentleman for renting a London apartment with airmen accused of homosexual activity. The unusual circumstances of a medically trained expert on human sexuality standing trial made the court martial proceedings an exceptional forum to explore medical and military attitudes toward homosexuality in the wartime environment. In his bestselling advice manual, Health, Sex and Birth Control (1942), Ryberg had denounced the persecution of homosexual people by calling for greater humanity and understanding, yet once implicated in the scandal, he still felt the need to affirm moral revulsion with physical same-sex acts. Ryberg’s defence rested on an assumption that a mental homosexual inclination could be separated from its physical expression. As he discovered, however, asserting medical expertise about the taboo subject risked impugning his own reputation and professional standing. From the prosecution’s perspective, failure to have identified the airmen as homosexual cast Ryberg as either complicit and deceptive, or a poor doctor. The case problematizes the role of medical professionals in the study of homosexuality during the mid twentieth century, as personal bias and prejudiced attitudes often undermined claims to clinical objectivity and emotional distance.