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Speaker 1: This Day in History Class is a production of iHeartRadio.

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Speaker 1: Hello and welcome to This Day in History Class, a

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Speaker 1: show that unmasks history one day at a time. I'm

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Speaker 1: Gabe Lucier, and today we're talking about a lesser known

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Speaker 1: moral panic of the nineteen fifties, the so called Lavender Scare.

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Speaker 1: As a warning, today's episode centers on a policy of

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Speaker 1: government sanctioned homophobia and may be upsetting for some listeners.

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Speaker 1: The day was April twenty seventh, nineteen fifty three. US

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Speaker 1: President Dwight D. Eisenhower signed an executive order that banned

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Speaker 1: gay people from working for the federal government. It was

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Speaker 1: one of Iike's first official acts after taking office, a

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Speaker 1: clear sign to his Republican base that he intended to

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Speaker 1: keep his campaign promise to clean house after twenty years

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Speaker 1: of Democratic leadership. Eisenhower not only barred gay people from

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Speaker 1: working for any agency of the federal government, he also

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Speaker 1: ordered all federal contractors to fire their gay employees as well.

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Speaker 1: The anti gay witch hunts that ensued at federal agencies

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Speaker 1: eventually spilled over into local government and law enforcement, as

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Speaker 1: well as to the private sector. The stated intention of

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Speaker 1: Executive Order one zero four five zero was to combat

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Speaker 1: a risk to national security, but if you judge the

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Speaker 1: order by its fruits, the true goal seems to have

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Speaker 1: been to demonize an entire community, a task it accomplished

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Speaker 1: all too well. When Eisenhower's policy took effect, the US

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Speaker 1: was still in the grips of the Red Scare, a

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Speaker 1: period of nationwide hysteria over the perceived threat of communist infiltrators.

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Speaker 1: In the early nineteen fifties. Wisconsin Senator Joseph McCarthy stoked

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Speaker 1: this growing fear by launching a sweeping investigation into alleged

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Speaker 1: communist activity within the State Department and other branches of government.

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Speaker 1: As a result, thousands of federal employees lost their jobs,

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Speaker 1: the vast majority of whom were either falsely accused or

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Speaker 1: had done nothing more than join a political party. But

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Speaker 1: communist agents weren't the only imaginary enemies that McCarthy targeted.

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Speaker 1: At the same time, he also took aim at gay

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Speaker 1: men and lesbians in government, accusing them of being quote

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Speaker 1: unsafe risks due to their supposed vulnerability to blackmail. The

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Speaker 1: implication was that gay employees could be induced to reveal

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Speaker 1: state secrets in exchange for not being outed by foreign agents.

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Speaker 1: McCarthy even went a step further, though, by claiming that

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Speaker 1: every active Communist was quote twisted mentally or physically, and

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Speaker 1: that gay people would therefore be more susceptible to recruitment

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Speaker 1: due to their quote peculiar mental twists. In keeping with

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Speaker 1: his record, McCarthy's accusations were completely unfounded and were primarily

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Speaker 1: used as a smear tactic in place of actual evidence

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Speaker 1: of wrongdoing. He couldn't supply a single example of a

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Speaker 1: gay federal worker who had been blackmailed by Soviets, but

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Speaker 1: in America's Cold War culture of fear, it hardly mattered.

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Speaker 1: Being gay had been linked with communism in the public's mind,

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Speaker 1: and soon outraged citizens, reporters, and politicians started calling for

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Speaker 1: a federal investigation. They got their wish in the summer

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Speaker 1: of nineteen fifty, when a Senate committee investigated the employment

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Speaker 1: of quote homosexuals and other sex perverts in the government.

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Speaker 1: Like McCarthy, the committee came up empty handed in its

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Speaker 1: search for gay Soviet agents, but that didn't stop it

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Speaker 1: from concluding that gay men and lesbians had a quote

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Speaker 1: corrosive influence on other employees. That Senate report was widely circulated,

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Speaker 1: with many Republicans using it as a way to draw

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Speaker 1: a line between themselves and the Democrats in power. In

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Speaker 1: nineteen fifty two, for example, Illinois Senator Everett Dirksen promised

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Speaker 1: that a Republican victory in the November elections would ensure

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Speaker 1: the swift removal of all the quote lavender lads from

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Speaker 1: the State Department. When Dwight Eisenhower won the presidential election

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Speaker 1: later that year, Dirkson and his anti gay colleagues made

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Speaker 1: it a top priority to deliver on that promised removal,

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Speaker 1: and although Eisenhower had pushed back on his party's red baiting,

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Speaker 1: he didn't put up a fight when it came to

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Speaker 1: firing gays and lesbians. During his first few weeks in office,

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Speaker 1: he asked his National Security advisor, Robert Cutler to draft

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Speaker 1: what ultimately became Executive Order one zero four five zero.

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Speaker 1: The rationale behind it was the same one proposed by

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Speaker 1: McCarthy and his colleagues, that gay government officials were a

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Speaker 1: threat to national security. The new order kicked off what

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Speaker 1: later became known as the Lavender Scare, a systematic investigation, interrogation,

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Speaker 1: and purge of the federal workforce. The term for This

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Speaker 1: anti gay campaign comes from Senator Dirkson's lavender Lads, his

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Speaker 1: derogatory nickname for gay men, and of course it's also

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Speaker 1: a play on the term red scare, the other moral

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Speaker 1: panic that occurred alongside it. Once the executive Order was signed,

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Speaker 1: federal agents set to work scrutinizing the personal lives of

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Speaker 1: thousands of government employees. Those suspected of the crime of

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Speaker 1: being gay were typically questioned without an attorney and were

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Speaker 1: asked intimate questions about their sexuality. Some employees chose to

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Speaker 1: resign rather than answer, many others answered truthfully and were

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Speaker 1: promptly fired in return. Still, the government's anti gay policy

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Speaker 1: cost those men and women much more than their jobs.

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Speaker 1: Some of those who'd been outed were disowned by their

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Speaker 1: families or evicted by their landlords. Many had trouble finding

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Speaker 1: work due to the stigma surrounding their departure from federal service,

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Speaker 1: and some, having been vilified and humiliated on the national stage,

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Speaker 1: chose to end their lives. Sadly, the effects of the

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Speaker 1: executive Order were even more far reaching than that The

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Speaker 1: US government had effectively given tacit approval to discriminate against

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Speaker 1: employees based on their sexuality. And many businesses across the

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Speaker 1: country began to do just that. Public campaigns called for

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Speaker 1: known and suspected gays to be fired, and local police

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Speaker 1: forces began raiding gay bars and clubs, allegedly in the

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Speaker 1: interest of public safety. The executive Order had sent a

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Speaker 1: clear message that it wasn't okay to be gay, and

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Speaker 1: as a result, the public disclosure of one's sexual identity

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Speaker 1: became dangerous, whether you worked for the government or not.

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Speaker 1: By the late nineteen sixties, as many as ten thousand

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Speaker 1: gay and lesbian federal employees had lost their jobs. One

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Speaker 1: of them was astronomer turned activist Frank Cammany, who had

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Speaker 1: been fired from the Army Map Service in nineteen fifty seven.

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Speaker 1: Rather than accept the unjust loss of his career, Cammany

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Speaker 1: made the rare choice to fight back. He formally appealed

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Speaker 1: his termination both to the U. S. Civil Service Commission

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Speaker 1: and to the courts. His efforts were unsuccessful, but Cammany

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Speaker 1: continued to fight for gay rights from then on. In

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Speaker 1: the early nineteen sixties, he and colleague Jack Nichols organized

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Speaker 1: some of the earliest public protests by gays, including a

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Speaker 1: picket line in front of the White House in nineteen

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Speaker 1: sixty five, Cammany was right there, front and center with

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Speaker 1: a sign that demanded first class citizenship for gays. The

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Speaker 1: Stonewall Uprising of nineteen sixty nine is often considered the

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Speaker 1: starting point of the modern gay rights movement, but the

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Speaker 1: truth is that Eisenhower's Lavender Scare sparked action much ear

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Speaker 1: than that. Cammeny's activism helped to reframe the discrimination against

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Speaker 1: gays as a civil rights issue rather than the national

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Speaker 1: security issue it had been sold as to the public.

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Speaker 1: As a result, support for the federal ban began to

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Speaker 1: wane in the nineteen sixties and seventies, causing the government

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Speaker 1: to pump the brakes on its persecution. In nineteen seventy five,

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Speaker 1: for instance, the Civil Service Commission announced new rules that

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Speaker 1: prevented federal employees from firing someone due to their sexual orientation. However,

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Speaker 1: discrimination carried on as usual at agencies that required security clearance,

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Speaker 1: and openly gay people continued to be allowed employment only

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Speaker 1: on a case by case basis. The wheels of progress

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Speaker 1: continued to turn slowly from there. In nineteen ninety four,

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Speaker 1: the US military began allowing gays to serve under its

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Speaker 1: don't ask, don't tell policy. Then one year later, President

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Speaker 1: Bill Clinton shipped away at Eisenhower's executive order by overturning

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Speaker 1: the u S automatic denial of security clearances. In twenty ten,

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Speaker 1: Congress and President Barack Obama repealed Don't Ask, Don't Tell entirely,

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Speaker 1: allowing members of the LGBTQ community to openly serve in

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Speaker 1: the military for the first time. Then, in twenty seventeen,

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Speaker 1: on his final day in office, Obama signed the complete

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Speaker 1: repeal of Executive Order one zero four five zero. After

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Speaker 1: more than six decades, it was finally no longer legal

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Speaker 1: for the federal government or its contractors to bar or

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Speaker 1: fire employees simply for being who they are. That said,

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Speaker 1: it's important to note that those protections only extend to

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Speaker 1: federal hiring. As of twenty twenty three, there are still

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Speaker 1: twenty seven states that have no state level non discrimination

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Speaker 1: protections for LGBTQ Americans. In those places, private employers are

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Speaker 1: still allowed to deny employment based on sexual orientation. That

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Speaker 1: means the lavender scare is still ongoing, although its shape

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Speaker 1: may change to better suit the times. For anyone who

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Speaker 1: opposes that unfounded fear, I suggest looking to pass victories

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Speaker 1: for inspiration because what propelled Frank Cammany to the picket

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Speaker 1: line in the nineteen sixties is the same courage and

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Speaker 1: sense of fairness that can still enact change today. Many

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Speaker 1: of the details shared in today's show come from the

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Speaker 1: research of David K. Johnson, a history professor at the

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Speaker 1: University of South Florida and the author of The Lavender Scare,

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Speaker 1: the Cold War persecution of gays and lesbians in the

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Speaker 1: federal government. If you'd like to learn more about this topic,

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Speaker 1: his book would be a perfect place to start. I'm

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Speaker 1: Gabe Lucier and hopefully you now know a little more

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Speaker 1: about history today than you did yesterday. If you have

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Speaker 1: a second and you're so inclined, consider keeping up with

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Speaker 1: the show on Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram. You can find

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Speaker 1: us at TDI HC. Show can also rate and review

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Speaker 1: the show on Apple Podcasts, or you can send your

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Speaker 1: feedback directly by writing to This Day at iHeartMedia dot com.

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Speaker 1: Thanks to Chandler Mays and Ben Hackett for producing the show,

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Speaker 1: and thank you for listening. I'll see you back here

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Speaker 1: again tomorrow for another day in History Class