Canada’s Official Gaydar — The Fruit MachineDuring the 1950′s and 1960′s a wave of homophobia

Canada’s Official Gaydar — The Fruit MachineDuring the 1950′s and 1960′s a wave of homophobia spread throughout the US and Canada as irrational fears grew that homosexuality within the government was threatening to undermine freedom and liberty. In both countries, massive witch hunts were conducted to remove homosexuals from civil service, police, and the military.  In Canada the government took this hunt one step further by developing a special machine that was supposedly able to tell if a person was gay or not.  Called “The Fruit Machine”, “fruit” being a slang term for homosexuals, it consisted of a dentist style chair with a TV screen. The subject would site in the chair and be shown a series of pictures, some completely normal, others featuring erotic pictures of men and women.  In the meantime the persons heart rate and pupils would be recorded.  It was theorized that when the subjects saw the erotic pictures, the pupils would dilate. Subjects were told the test was to measure stress response.The test were conducted by a group called Section A-3, a part of the Royal Mounted Canadian Police tasked with rooting out homosexuals from government jobs, the military, and law enforcement.  Despite the moral and ethical problems of out people who are gay, the Fruit Machine had several technical and scientific problems.  Along with breakdowns of the machine itself, it was found that different wavelengths of light would cause the pupils to dilate, not necessarily the erotic pictures.  In addition, word got out about the true purpose of the test, leading to a lack of willing volunteers. The project was defunded in the late 1960′s.  By then hundreds of homosexuals had lost their jobs, and the RMCP had assembled files on over 9,000 suspected homosexuals. -- source link

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