In the late 1940s, Quakers in New York City managed the first government sponsored program to care for people who had been criminalized for homosexuality in the United States. It was called the Civilian Readjustment Committee (CRC) and it was run by the Quaker Emergency Service (QES) from 1946 to 1951. The QES was founded by the two New York Monthly Meetings during World War Two and its purpose was to give alternatives to military service for Quakers, many of whom were conscientious objectors. The New York Office of Civilian Defense authorized the QES to offer courses in first aid, home nursing, nutrition, recreation, and childcare, and to recruit conscientious objectors for work in hospitals and asylums. The QES also provided legal counsel to conscientious objectors, operated three nurseries in Harlem, and funded a mobile clinic for ill and injured people in Syria and Lebanon.

After World War Two, the QES restructured and diverted its resources into new projects, including an endeavor that aimed to limit the practice of sentencing people to conscripted labor or prison for violating Penal Law 722, section 8, a 1923 New York City ordinance against “degenerate disorderly conduct.” Penal Law 722, section 8, was on its face a broad and comprehensive municipal statute against all forms of public sex, but it was enforced primarily against men who had or solicited sex with men in subway toilets, movie theaters, and public parks. The QES perceived that men were increasingly seeking out sex in public spaces because they had been traumatized by the war and developed “psychiatric maladjustments.” In 1925, city officials estimated that the number of men arrested for “degeneracy” generally hovered between 250 and 750 per year.[1] These numbers ballooned in the 1940s and 1950s, when thousands of men were arrested by plainclothes officers running sting operations. According to a report from the Magistrate’s Court, the number of arrests in 1945 for violating Penal Law 722, section 8, was 2,147. By 1948, that number had risen to 3,289.[2] After years of helping communities in New York City and abroad cope with the trauma and devastation of war, the Quakers who managed the QES became interested in helping men cope with what they perceived as war-induced impulses to seek out sex with other men in public spaces.[3] From 1946 to 1951, about 15% to 20% of men who were caught for having sex, or soliciting sex, with other men in New York City were treated by psychiatrists at a “little Quaker clinic” in a Quaker meetinghouse, rather than being sent to labor work camps or prison. Historian Hugh Ryan has described the CRC clinic run by the Quakers as “the first-and only-alternative-to–sentencing programs for men arrested for their sexuality in the United States.”[4]

The visionary behind the creation of the CRC was the chairman of the QES, Josiah P. Marvel (1896-1959). Marvel was born into a Quaker family in Indiana and graduated from Earlham College. He was a patron of the arts and an early reproductive health advocate. While working for the American Friends Service Committee (AFSC) abroad, he was the only social worker allowed in Gestapo prisons in the Paris area, where he brought food and medical supplies to prisoners. He also arranged to have Belgian families receive life-saving provisions during the British coastal blockade, established medical services in internment camps for British civilians and Jews, and handled funds in France for the Jewish Joint Distribution Committee.[5]

While serving as the chairman of the QES, Marvel was introduced to Dr. George W. Henry, an associate professor of clinical psychology at Cornell University’s Medical College, a psychiatrist at New York Hospital, and a leading voice in the emerging field of psychiatric research on homosexuality. Henry was hired by the Selective Service to screen draftees for any signs of “homosexual proclivities,” and if detected, he would officially disbar them from military service. During World War Two, the Army rejected roughly 5,000 soldiers for homosexuality at the point of induction. Henry also worked in a private office donated by the Payne Whitney Clinic with soldiers who were discharged from military service for their “psychiatric maladjustment,” the military’s favorite euphemism for homosexuality.[6]

Marvel and Henry later approached Judge Edgar Bromberger, Chief Judge of the Magistrate’s Court, to discuss a therapeutic alternative to sending men to prison for violating Penal Law 722, section 8. In 1946, Bromberger and Marvel forged a contractual agreement that put Henry at the helm of a new clinic for men who had been arrested in public for having sex, or soliciting sex, with other men. The Magistrate’s Court would send men who had been charged with violating Penal Law 722, section 8, to a clinic installed at the Quaker meetinghouse. There they would receive examination by a psychiatrist, and a report would be given to the Magistrate’s Court before sentencing was decided by a judge.[7] Most sentences included ongoing visits with a psychiatrist at the clinic. Pastoral counseling by a Catholic priest, a Protestant minister, or a Jewish rabbi was sometimes recommended, but not in all cases.[8] The clinic also helped men with employment and, according to Ryan, “warned them against predatory lawyers, and even set them up on dates with one another.”[9]

A year into its operation, Marvel delighted in the clinic’s overwhelming success. Before the clinic opened, about 25% of men were rearrested within one year of their initial sentencing. In 1946, only four of 441 patients seen at the clinic were rearrested that same year.[10] Other reports give slight variations on these figures, but even if the rates of recidivism were close to what Marvel claimed, the clinic was tremendously successful in saving thousands of men from serving time in prison for soliciting sex from other men. A prison sentence for men charged with violating penal law 722, section 8, often led to housing eviction, public shame, estrangement from family, and loss of employment; the clinic helped men avoid prison and these other problems. The success of the clinic was evidenced by the number of men who came to the clinic voluntarily as well as the acclaim the clinic received from non-Quaker religious organizations and public social service agencies. The Medical Director of the Society for the Prevention of Crime, for example, wrote in 1948, “I am sure it does not partake of undue optimism to say that one day in the reasonably near future this type of service will be organically affiliated with the courts and will be publicly operated and maintained.”[11]

Despite the abundance of praise it received, the clinic experienced operational dysfunction and financial challenges that kept its continued existence in jeopardy. In 1947, only a year after it had opened, the clinic moved from the Quaker Meetinghouse into the Manhattan Court building at 300 Mulberry Street. The clinic’s staff were immediately unhappy with the poor equipment and unfurnished accommodations at their new location. Their patients also expressed discomfort with entering a courthouse. When they were treated in the Quaker meetinghouse, they felt a sense of warmth and welcome. Now they had to enter a busy court building and walk past police, lawyers, and court officials who might have participated in their arrests and convictions. Henry believed that the courthouse continually reminded his patients that they were criminals, further instilling in them a sense of shame and humiliation.

In 1948, Collier’s magazine published an article about the clinic, accusing the Quakers of supporting sex criminals with homicidal ideation and intent. This led the QES to fire Henry and the rest of the staff at the CRC. The clinic had been in operation for less than two years. The QES leadership eventually replaced Henry with Dr. Frederick Wertham, a German psychologist who had recently set up a free clinic for working-class African Americans in Harlem. Wertham re-opened the clinic at 153 East 53rd Street, a significant distance away from the Quaker Meetinghouse and the Magistrate’s Court. Under Wertham’s leadership, the clinic lacked vision and experienced difficulties managing a rising number of cases. Everything came to a halt in March 1951, when Marvel (who had been married to a woman for decades) was arrested for soliciting sex from an undercover police officer in a subway toilet. Within three weeks of Marvel’s arrest, the Magistrate’s court stopped sending clients to the clinic, and a week later the Quakers closed it permanently. As Hugh Ryan argues, “Dr. Wertham would tell one of the volunteer psychiatrists that he had to close the clinic because ‘there were things going on which I’m sure you didn’t know’--almost certainly a reference to Marvel’s arrest. The clients were abandoned, the volunteers were disbanded, and the New York City courts seemed to give up on understanding homosexuality at all.”[12] In appreciation for its work, however, the New York Times praised the CRC in a 1951 article titled “Quakers to Close Sex Case Clinic.” According to the Times, the CRC served over 15,000 people during its short existence.[13]

In many ways, the story of the CRC is about a small group of Quakers--including Marvel--who took action in support of a vulnerable group of people who were being targeted by law enforcement and unfairly punished by the criminal justice system. One might surmise that Quaker opposition to (state-sanctioned) violence, tenets of the Quaker faith that assert the equality of every person, and the historic experience of Friends in anti-slavery movements combined in the hearts and minds of the QES leaders when they first began to envision the purpose and role of the CRC. In many ways, the story of the CRC was also deeply personal for one important individual. After the clinic closed and its funds had been dispersed, Marvel retreated from public life and retired to his farm home in Vermont. On July 26, 1959, after years of living as a recluse, he tragically took his own life by overdosing on narcotics.[14]

Marvel lived in a world that perpetually sought to cause him and the people he loved harm, and often succeeded at doing so. One can interpret the CRC as an expression of his efforts to simultaneously help heal the city of New York from the trauma of war, resist predatory law enforcement practices, challenge discriminatory laws and court rulings, and insist that people who have sexual desires for other people of the same sex (presumptively including himself) deserve to be treated with dignity.  

Notes