The Harmless Psychopath: Legal Debates Promoting the Decriminalization of Sodomy in the United States

Abstract

I n S e p t e m b e r 1940 p o l I c e arrested and charged thirty-five-year-old Bert Chapman with committing an “act of gross indecency” with John Bates, a consenting adult, at his home in Livingston County, Michigan. Before his trial, the prosecuting attorney filed a petition seeking to have Chapman certified as a criminal sexual psychopath and committed indefinitely to a psychiatric hospital. As required by the statute, the court appointed two psychiatrists, who examined Chapman and diagnosed him with “psychosexual deviation, homosexual (sexual psychopath).” The doctors warned that Chapman “must be considered a distinct sexual menace and a source of serious concern in a free community” not only because of his “homosexual practices” but also because “his psychosexual deviation is very likely to assume a much more ominous manifestation, that of pedophila [sic] (the use of children as sexual objects).” Despite their acknowledgment that Chapman had never exhibited any sexual interest in children, the psychiatrists found that the “possibility [of pedophilia] must be gravely considered.” After a brief hearing, the court accepted the psychiatrists’ findings and ruled that Chapman was a “criminal sexual psychopathic person.” The court ordered him confined to a psychiatric institution until he “shall have fully and permanently recovered from [his] psychopathy.” In committing a man to a psychiatric hospital, possibly for the rest of his life, for engaging in a consensual, entirely private sexual act, the People