Daily Spotlight - Paulette Mahurin

The Persecution of Mildred Dunlap

By

Paulette Mahurin

In 1895, shortly after Britain changed its laws to make homosexual activity a criminal offense, Oscar Wilde was tried and convicted for “indecency.” He was sentenced to two years of hard labor; slept on a hard wood board, ate watery porridge, was ordered to walk a treadmill for six hours a day and was denied pencil and paper. All this, for loving another man, wanting to be with that person, all very natural for him, no different than any other part of nature that can’t help itself from what presents, like a dog from wagging its taie, a cat from meowing, a bird from taking flight or a leaf of grass from being green.

When the news of Wilde’s imprisonment went out over telegraphs worldwide, it changed attitudes about same sex relationships from that of a social tolerance to an overt hatred and abuse. In my research of the book, I came across an article in the New York Times, dated April 5, 1895, in which it rallied against the immorality of homosexuality and Oscar Wilde in particular. This was a watershed time, a very dark time, historically for gays. It was also a time when lesbians, were they found out, labeled (diagnosed by physicians) as “insane” the treatment was rape, so they would learn to enjoy sex with a man.

This is the backdrop of my story, about a lesbian couple living in a small Nevada ranching town, that became subject to the outcry and abuse leveled verbally against the news that a gay man was convicted of a criminal offense. The news set the town into a frenzy of hatred and prejudice causing Mildred to want to hide her relationship with her partner. When she devises a plan to show interest in another man, whose wife is dying, who she knew would never be interested in her (a very plain looking woman) and therefore reject her advances, everything backfires into twists and turns into the unimaginable.

The Persecution of Mildred Dunlap is a chronicle of hatred and prejudice, bigotry, with all its unintended and devastating consequences and how love and friendship heal.

(Paulette Mahurin, an award-winning author, is a Nurse Practitioner who lives in Ojai, California with her husband Terry and their two dogs--Max and Bella. She practices women’s health in a rural clinic and writes in her spare time.  All profits from sales to her book are going to the Santa Paula Animal Rescue Center, the first and only no-kill shelter in Ventura County, CA) 

PRESS ARTICLE: VC STAR Sept. 9, 2012 Sunday Life Section:

 http://www.vcstar.com/news/2012/sep/08/ojai-authors-historical-novel-teaches-tolerance/

SHELTER PROFITS ARE GOING TO: 

http://www.santapaulaarc.org/

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