How the Cold War 'fruit machine' tried to determine gay from straight

It's not fiction although it sounds like something straight out of a dystopian novel.

The so-called "fruit machine" was a homosexuality detection system commissioned by the Canadian governmentduring the Cold War and developed largely byapsychologist at Carleton University in Ottawa to keep LGBT people out of the public service or military.

While the machine is long gone, itslegacy isback in the news after the federal governmentwas hit witha class-action lawsuitthis week from former public servants wholost their jobs because of their sexual orientation.

• Ottawa faces class-action lawsuit over firedLGBT civil servants

Gay and lesbian civil servants weredriven out of the Canadian military and public service beginning in the 1950s, but the practice continued after homosexuality was removed from the Criminal Code in the 1960s.

At the time, homosexuals were perceived by the governmentas weak, unreliableand potentially disloyal. The government feared they might be easy targets for Soviet spies who could blackmail them into giving up important secrets and thus commissionedthe machine to determine a person's sexual identity through involuntary biological responses.

The project "was a series of psychological tests,"saidPatriziaGentile, an associate professor at Carleton University and the author of The Canadian War on Queers.

In one test, for example, subjects were shown pictures that would "arouse desire," said Gentile, while cameras took pictures of their pupils, to seeif they dilated.

'Product of his time'

The machine was used by the federal government throughout the 1960s, until the Defence Research Board which was laterfolded into the Department of National Defence pulled funding in 1967.

The device was never able to establisha "discernable difference," betweenthe biological responses of heterosexuals and LGBT individuals,Gentile wrote in her book.

The machine was based on research by Frank Robert Wake, a Carleton University psychologist who died in 1993.

"I think he was a product of his time, definitely. But that doesn't of course excuse the fact that he came up with research that was discriminatory and harmful to a lot of people's lives," Gentile told CBC Radio'sOttawa Morningon Thursday.

"He is part of the Cold War culture and this culture of fear, where homosexuals and communists were conflated."

According toDoug Elliott, a longtime gay rights activist and the Toronto lawyer leading theclass-action lawsuit, as many as9,000 people could be eligible to join it.

The Liberal government is planning an apology to the country's LGBTcommunity for the past discrimination, but it's unclear when it will act.