Born too soon and started too late

Back in the 1960s, long before a U.S. senator got busted for lewd behavior in an airport bathroom, it was called "the tearoom trade."

But social researchers knew almost nothing about it.

So a young graduate student at Washington University in St. Louis started digging. He spent months hanging out in the public restrooms of St. Louis' Forest Park. He wanted to observe the tearoom trade in action: men who met for brief, anonymous homosexual trysts in public. He wanted to discover what compelled them.

Laud Humphreys' research was pioneering. It shattered stereotypes. It also cost him his job.

Posted by Brad on August 31, 2007 at 4:06 PM | (1) |
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