Daphne Willemsen

But the suppression had worked so well that it was a lot of scientists and the public's first interaction with this idea.

And so the public had some thoughts.

People took out letters condemning the research.

We got a beautiful article with the title of your tax dollars wasted studying gay goals, which personally I don't think is a waste, but that's just me.

On the other side, there were several people who were neutral to very positive about the research.

A lot of farmers were like, yeah, duh.

We've been seeing this in our domesticated animals for a really long time.

So they would write into the researchers and say, this is what my rams do.

On the other side...

a lot of the queer community was thrilled because at the time, the main argument against homosexuality in people was that it was unnatural.

And here was pretty irrefutable proof that it was natural.

So obviously we know that it didn't end homophobia, even though we had some brief hope there.

But what it did do is usher in some really cool research by the rest of the scientific community.