Lavender Scare
Lavender Scare
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Lavender Scare - Wikipedia
Repost from eight months ago, because it's happening again.
I saw the article posted on !privacy@lemmy.dbzer0.com just now, if you want to join the conversation.
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Gay men and lesbians were said to be national security risks and communist sympathizers, which led to the call to remove them from state employment. It was thought that due to the stigma around homosexuality, gay people were vulnerable to blackmail, which could lead to a breach in national security.
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For more on this, I highly recommend: The Lavender Scare: The Cold War Persecution of Gays and Lesbians in the Federal Government by David K. Johnson
It's surprisingly interesting, and most of the landmarks are still visible in DC because to this day, nobody formally acknowledges the lavender scare, and the morons in government are so backwards that they don't even know it happened, lol. Anyways, read the book before you travel to DC, sometime. It's a fascinating read.
Spearheaded in part by Roy Cohn who was a gay man himself. He ultimately died of AIDS, but denied his sexuality and HIV status to his death. Roy was also the mentor of Donald Trump. I wish this was just a shameful chapter of American history rather than one that is still being written.
Seeing him suffer in Angels in America is cathartic.
We can only hope that someday Peter Thiel gets to watch his reputation collapse around him while he suffers painfully in a hospital bed and is tormented by the ghosts of those he hurt.
He was an ugly man, but honestly his story just makes me sad. I’m sad he lived in a world where his sexuality was unacceptable. I’m sad he lived such a duplicitous and ruthless life. I’m sad he perpetuated his backwards thinking onto the sitting president, and I’m sad that he died of AIDS like so many others. His patch on the AIDS quilt is a fitting epitaph.