The Lavender Scare: How America’s Persecution of Homosexuality Marked a Turning Point in Legalized Discrimination?

Cosmo Vanzyl Senior Division Historical Paper Paper Length: 2,498.

Joan Cassidy, former captain in the U.S. Navy Reserve, explained that “[the interrogators] swooped in like death with a scythe, sweeping through the place and. questioning [the women] about their sexual lives and whether they were gay.” Captain Cassidy was one of many gay government employees who lost their livelihoods and dignity due to the drastic rise in American extremism and the anti-communist witch hunts of the Cold War. The visibility of the queer community rose alongside the American norms developed amid the paranoia of Cold War presidential …show more content…
propaganda regarding the ‘ideal American’ would be easily accepted as true by the nationalistic public. During and after World War II, as the community began to shift into the public eye, the increased attention on the LGBTQ+ community solidified their status as a threat to the newly emerging “American Dream.” The post-war economic and social boom created the ‘nuclear family,’ a mother, father, and two kids, due to the pressing wish for stability and normalcy amongst both the chaos abroad and the paranoia that characterized the Red Scare’s fear-mongering anti-communist policies. Psychiatrists, while relying on information about homosexuality that would later prove to be entirely false, recommended screenings, and their subsequent use to reject and remove homosexuals from service came as a result of the moral depravity associated with the community. Gay people were coined as ‘sex psychopaths’ and deviants that could hide in plain sight and maliciously infiltrate American homes and families, breaking apart the carefully cultivated image of breadwinner men and housewife women. Paranoia …show more content…
Furthermore, because the stigma of being gay spread to any of the person’s affiliates, the majority of their friends and family would remove their support, ultimately isolating and disadvantaging the entire community. Growing Anger In the late 1940s, government agencies like the FBI, under the direction of J. Edgar Hoover, used anticommunism and subsequently homophobia to expand their power by developing files on thousands of American citizens, including political dissenters, homosexuals, and other threats to American values, most of whom had no viable connection to communism. While there were most likely communist spies and people working against the American government, the vast majority of those jailed or deprived of their jobs were guilty of nothing more than holding unpopular beliefs or engaging in lawful political activism. The massive wave of terminations that followed in the wake of the Eisenhower’s Executive Order culminated in the loss of 5,000-10,000 gay, or presumed gay, workers. Because the order specifically banned government consultants from being gay and banned re-hiring someone who had been previously found and fired, the queer community, at large, suffered immense financial ruin. Additionally, as the government informed everyone the worker was related to, and had contact with, of the reason for