anti-cult tendencies in the 70s along with sodomy and custody laws

[musiclily88]

I'm writing a story, and I've been doing some reading and research about cults/communes/compounds/collectives during the 70s in the US. However, I have a few questions, and a lot relate to the government, sodomy laws, and custody laws

Comments

[orange_fell]

Can you clarify the scenario in question 2? Was the whole family in the cult? When the parents split up, did the father leave the cult and the mother stay in? Or maybe the father was an outsider and when she left him the mother fled into the cult? Finally, if the mother is a cult member, why is she leaving their compound or whatever to go get psychiatric care? A lot of cults are not very friendly toward their members getting medical attention, especially treatment for their mental health, either for religious reasons or because mentally unstable people can be easy "marks" to prey on, or both.

I don't think the cult could get in trouble for taking care of the kid while the mother is in the hospital, though. As long as the child is in safe hands ("she's staying with family friends") the hospital probably won't get involved.

[umlautless]

I was just about to make a lot of the same points, particularly about leaving for medical attention.

If the father knows the woman is in the cult, he's going to have some leverage to use that in the legal portion of a custody battle (a very common thing for abusers to do, punish the ex by claiming she's an unfit parent --because she works full time, because she's part of a religion that's questionable, etc-- and getting custody of the kid).

[musiclily88]

Thanks, this is really helpful!

[musiclily88]

Sure, sorry I worded it so poorly.

The father was indeed an outsider and the mother fled him to the safety of the commune, yes. I also realized I was too wishy-washy with using the words cult and commune, since I'm really describing a commune rather than a cult but I am incorporating a lot of the negative backlash that cults got at the time (and outsiders in the story are going to assume that the commune is in fact a cult, rather than people living together peacefully, etc).

Awesome, thank you!
I appreciate your help

[lolmac]

Responses to homosexuality will vary depending on location, but not much: anywhere that isn't a liberal-leaning urban environment can be assumed to be violently homophobic, and even the coastal cities were only "safer" by comparison. Google checking about violence against gays during that time will give you plenty of information here.

The sodomy laws were basically a tool for making the persecution technically legal; the possibility of prosecution was only a tiny tiny tip of the overall homophobia iceberg. Getting beaten to a pulp was a more likely risk than getting arrested (although both could happen on the same night, at the hands of the same people).

Also: current concepts of queer (if you mean genderqueer) hadn't really even begun to develop, and bisexuals were generally ostracized by everyone. Your period is less than a decade after Stonewall -- and you're right in the middle of Anita Bryant's heyday. Ugly, ugly, ugly.

[musiclily88]

This is definitely the impression I got from the outside reading, thank you so much for commenting on it!

(and ditto on the ugly, ugly, ugly, sigh)

[sethg_prime]

Also, when the cops raided gay bars and arrested the patrons, the names of the people arrested would sometimes show up in the newspaper; even if you were never prosecuted, you’d be fired.

There was a legal case where a gay male couple took in some foster children, and after a newspaper article described “community opposition”, the state Department of Social Services yanked the foster kids from the home, the couple sued, and the case went all the way up to the state supreme court (which ruled in the couple’s favor). This was in Massachusetts, in 1985, under a Democratic governor.

[musiclily88]

Oh! I didn't know about the newspapers, thank you so much.
I appreciate your help!

[lolmac]

Re communes and "cults": these are different entities. A commune is a place to live and a way of life; a cult is a religion. Both are protected under the US Constitution. There has to be some legal grounds for action to be taken. Be aware that, although a few cults made it into the news, most did not. Ditto for most communes.

[musiclily88]

Truth, I'm writing about a commune but am going to address the negative backlash against the news-worthy cults, etc, and explain about how drastically different the two groups actually are.

Thanks for your helpful comments!

[lolmac]

Glad to help!

From what I saw and heard privately (growing up in the western US in that era), most communes fell apart because idealistic visions of the pure, spiritual life of Growing Things and Living Close to the Land didn't include the grim realities of mucking out stalls, weeding crops, and hard manual labor in trying conditions. There was (and is) a strong "live and let live" ethos in the west, which allowed for a fair amount of "just leave the hippies alone and they'll either learn some sense or go back where they came from". In some areas, they learned to cope and are actually still there, although the idealism has often gotten a little tattered around the edges.

Best of luck with your story!

[musiclily88]

Absolutely, I was talking about this premise with a friend of mine and I was like, "I love the idea of peace and harmony but I kind of hate the idea of fixing my own roof and building fences for goat paddocks...."

[musiclily88]

This is great information, thank you so much! Giving me a lot to think about here, I really appreciate it.

[orange_fell]

There were rumors about bad treatment in the cult run by one of the more famous gurus at a big central compound in Oregon--sorry, I'm blanking on his full name, and I'd rather not misquote --which turned out probably deserved the suspicion of their neighbors. Apparently the compound brought in a lot of money into the local economy and nobody acted on it until much later, when things ended in prosecutions and news reports about the guru's decidedly non-ascetic personal lifestyle.

That sounds like the Rajneeshees: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rajneesh

[zellieh]

"the ex-husband trying to take the child during her stay. Is this feasible