As Billy Graham approaches his ninety-
fifth birthday, heterosexual Christians around the globe prepare to toast his never-ending crusade against sexual deviation. Although Billy has brought his ministry to the spiritually needy everywhere, it wasn’t until he visited a New York City porn shop in the summer of 1969 that he fully realized how far America had descended into sin and depravity.

As he subsequently told Time: “One day, I put on dark glasses and a hat and pasted on long sideburns, and I went to some of these stores in New York. I had thought Sweden was bad, but Sweden hasn’t gone near to the depths of various sex deviations and obsessions that we have….there are sections of this country that have sunk as low as anything in history.”

This statement is curiously at odds with the photograph, taken at the time of his visit, and raises several questions. Why did he say he was in disguise when he wasn’t? Had he been in disguise on previous trips to such establishments? And how did he know these porno shops were worse than Sweden’s? Furthermore, what exactly was the hand in his pocket doing?

The seedy Times Square of old is largely gone, but Rick Perlstein found some reminders of its sordid past.