Lavender Scare Podcast

The Lavender Scare was a result of McCarthyism, which targeted homosexuals in the US government during the Cold War. McCarthy used one cherry-picked story to justify his argument against homosexuals, but it lacked evidence. McCarthy had a partner, Roy Cohen, who was rumored to be a homosexual himself. The Lavender Scare led to the firing of many LGBTQ+ individuals from federal jobs. Executive orders were passed to establish loyalty programs and ban LGBTQ+ people from federal employment. The public opinion was extreme, connecting homosexuality with communism. Welcome back to an episode of The Clique. This podcast, we're going to be talking about the Lavender Scare, brought to you by Sierra, Havana, and John. This episode of The Clique is, like I mentioned before, about the Lavender Scare, but if we need to give context in a historical sense, we have to talk about the Red Scare that led to it. This is the second wave of the Red Scare that hit America. It happened after World War II, and we know from history that everything has a causation and context, so World War I set up the perfect condition to have World War II, and that's kind of what McCarthyism set up for the Lavender Scare. McCarthyism, by definition, is the political practice of publicizing accusations of disloyalty or subversion with insufficient regards to evidence, or the use of methods of investigation and accusation regarded as unfair in order to suppress opposition. So what this means is McCarthy was a senator, and he went on this witch hunt in the government for communists he believed was infiltrating when we were in the Cold War with the Soviet Union. McCarthyism was on the rise from 1947 to 1954, and that really started bleeding into the Lavender Scare, which started in 1950. This all leads into what our topic is for today, and we want to go into great detail of personal stories, timelines, and different legal junctions that led to the Lavender Scare being continued and ending. But before we get into any of these timelines or personal stories, I think it's really important that we start at the source, and that is with Joseph McCarthy. Specifically, I think it's really important that we go over one of his speeches which he gave to the Republican Women's Club about homosexuals in the State Department in 1952, Senator McCarthy speaking. There's another group about which I hesitate to talk, but I think the picture isn't complete unless we do. Dean Atkinson appeared before the American Society of Newspaper Editors shortly after I had given the evidence to the McCarran, or I beg your pardon, the Tidings Committee. He said the State Department is now staffed with good, loyal, clean-living Americans. Well, I don't quite know what his conception of clean-living Americans happens to be, but since he made that statement, 54 individuals who had this unusual State Department affliction, homosexuals, were allowed to resign. 54 of those good, clean-living Americans. As one of my friends said the other day, he said, McCarthy, why worry about those individuals? You don't claim they're all communists, do you? The answer is obviously no. Some of them are very energetic, very loyal Americans. Some of them have the unusual affliction because of no fault of their own. Most, of course, because they are morally weak. The question is, why worry about getting those individuals out of the State Department? I think the answer was given by a committee headed by Senator Weary, one of our very able senators who died a few weeks ago, and Senator Hill, a Democrat and a Republican, and they explained very well why these individuals must not be handling top-secret material. Let me read it to you. They say, a classic case. No. Starting on page 5 of the report. As been previously discussed in this report, the pervert is the easy prey to the blackmailer. It follows that if blackmailers can extort money from these individuals under the threat of disclosure, espionage agents can use this same type of pressure to extort confidential information or other material that they might be seeking. Listen to this. They say, a classic case. This is the Weary committee. The Weary-Hill committee. A classic case of this type involved one Captain Radel, who became chief of the Austrian Counter Intelligence Service. He succeeded in building up an excellent intelligence net in Russia and had done considerable damage to Russia's intelligence net. However, Russian agents soon discovered that Radel was a homo, and shortly thereafter. Then I won't read this. They discuss how they trapped him. Under the threat of exposure, Radel agreed to furnish, and he did furnish the Russians with Austrian military secrets. He also doctored or destroyed the intelligence reports which his own agents were sending him from Russia, which that resulted in the Austrians, at the outbreak of war, were being completely misinformed as to Russia's mobilization intentions. On the other hand, Russia had obtained from Radel the war plans of the Austrians and part of the German plans. Shortly after the outbreak of the war, Captain Radel's acts were discovered by his own government, and he committed suicide. So just remember that when you hear the complaint by the liberal elements of press, that we should not be disturbed about the people because of their morals. We're not disturbed about Britain because of their morals, but because they are dangerous to this country. As we can see from this abhorrent quote, McCarthy based his entire argument against homosexuals based on one cherry-picked story about a man who was blackmailed for his homosexuality, but this leaves out a lot of important context. That's why context is important when we talk about history. We have to know which narrative are we hearing most, which one's getting pushed out, what the media says about different things, and where do people get their accusations from? McCarthy picked this one thing, and he took his whole campaign on it, and that is just not a good proof argument. Nobody can go back and find a lot of evidence to support him in this, so therefore, the argument isn't a good one. We find this throughout history a lot. But he didn't do it alone. Senator Joseph McCarthy had a partner, Roy Cohen, who is actually the prosecutor on the Julius and Ethel Rosenberg case. One thing that's really interesting about Roy Cohen is that he actually died of AIDS, but rumor has it, or he likes to say that he died of liver disease or liver cancer when in reality it was AIDS. He really tried to get away with it. He's rumored to be a homosexual, but he doesn't agree with that, and he actually has a patch on the AIDS quilt with his name and then bully, coward, and victim right underneath that. So now that we have some context of how these people had power, why it was even successful in oscillating a whole community out of the government with the Red Scare, we can start getting into a timeline of events that actually happened and led to the causation of the Lavender Scare and why it was so powerful and effective in our government. So on May 8th, 1945, World War II ended in Europe, and that really catapulted what we see now as the after war effects between the Soviet Union and the U.S., how they thought that government should be made and formed and who should have power and not. On March 5th, 1946, the Iron Curtain speech was given by the British Prime Minister, Winston Churchill, and this was the real big factor in saying that the communist powers were the enemy and that we as a society needed to actively fight against the spread of them. This really drew a line in the sand when it came to international relations. This is when the Red Scare effectiveness really picked up. They had the power after this because they had a common enemy to go after. Anyone who had the accusation of being communist was effectively removed from any type of power, especially in the U.S., and this is where we saw that McCarthyism we were talking about. Well, when it's effective, people tend to use it a lot. They saw that they could kick out basically anybody they wanted with that communist title because who's going to defend it? If they defend it, they're giving it power, but also it can ruin their reputation. So we get the Lavender Scare. The Lavender Scare was effectively when homosexuals who were in the government were accused of being communists and they would be consequently fired from their jobs. They couldn't refuse it because they were scared of the accusation getting to their friends, their family, ruining their reputation, and in 1947, President Truman passed an executive order establishing a loyalty program for federal employees. This led to many other executive orders that really hurt the LGBTQ community, especially one that we see later. In 1950, in the middle of the communist witch hunt, McCarthyism, in the State Department, the State Department is also handling homosexual resignations, and that just fueled panic because everybody started tying those resignations. They must be communists if they're having to resign. So that just fuels panic and paranoia and fear that if you're homosexual and you're in the government, you're a communist and you obviously are enemy number one. This just spread to the public and let them jump to conclusions that ultimately ties in their brain, if you're homosexual, you're a communist. And this just bleeds into decades and decades of just the public not taking homosexuals' rights seriously. In June of 1950, and this led to the Senate investigations lead to many federal jobs lost, so just based on the allegations, people resigned because they were scared of what their friends and family would think if they had to go to that investigation to prove that they're not homosexual or prove that they're not communist. In April 19, 1950, the representative of the Republican National Chairman quoted, sexual perverts who have infiltrated our government in recent years were perhaps as dangerous as actual communists. This just tells you the public opinion is so extreme towards connecting, they call them sexual perverts just based off of their sexuality, and that just tells you how their outlook is on just people trying to live their lives. In 1953, Eisenhower signed an executive order 10450, banning LGBTQ plus people from federal employment. This is when the witch hunt had cause. This is when anybody with an accusation could be fired immediately. If you got pulled for an interview, you'd resign within 10 minutes because you had cause. The government has given power to these people who are just looking for a reason to fire you. In 1960, investigations into someone's sexuality at workplace became normal, which honestly is just completely unnecessary and not anyone's business, quite frankly. In 1964, Civil Rights Act prohibits discrimination based on color, race, religion, sex, and national origin. And this was really the turning point where we see people starting to get the rights that they deserve, the basic human rights that we see. And last but not least, in 1995, the executive order that Eisenhower previously signed, 10450, was repealed. That's a great point, Sierra. Let me jump on that. So Clinton enacted the policy Don't Ask, Don't Tell, which basically repealed executive order 10450. But ultimately, this was unsatisfactory for many people that were gay rights activists because ultimately what it tried to do was allowing gay people into the military, but at the same time, they weren't allowed to be open about their sexuality. So for a lot of it, it just institutionalized the shame and silence around LGBTQ identities instead of promoting acceptance or equality. And then once again, we're enforcing this kind of secrecy. It continued the idea that openly being gay was not allowed in military service and ultimately led to being titled as un-American, dishonorable. It forced members to enact self-censorship of a fundamental part of their identity and it was failing to address the root of homophobia and discrimination in military culture. And especially many people are wanting to fight in the military. They are going out of their way to do this. But ultimately, they are being told they have to fight for a country that ultimately doesn't accept them. So the Don't Ask, Don't Tell policy was a partial attempt at inclusion and ultimately was another form of systematic oppression. That's actually insane that the people going to fight for their country and serve in the military are seen as un-American just based off of who they love. I think that that just shows that the basic fundamentals of morality and empathy were just not there during this movement. But before we get into the Lavender Stare itself, I think it's really important that we provide some context right before the Lavender Stare, specifically during 1950 when the CUNY committee began to meet and privately discuss the state of homosexuals within the government. But this was before any major announcements to the public or before anybody knew about what was going on. So essentially what this piece is, is it's the government talking with itself deciding what they should do with homosexuals. I'll read a quick section and then I'll analyze it and we can see all the flaws that are within this piece. The subcommittee found that in the past many government officials failed to take a realistic view of the problem of sex perversion in the government. With the result that a number of sex perverts were not discovered or removed from government jobs and still other instances they were quietly eased out of the department and promptly found employment in another agency. One aspect about this which I think is really interesting is the fact that the government officials said they did not take a realistic view towards homosexuality. But what that says to me is that originally these people did not care if they were homosexual. They were not immediately forced out of their jobs and were not ostracized from their communities right away. But instead it was something that the larger government decided was the right decision and that the government's previous ideas of allowing it or silently firing people for the fact of being homosexual rather than publicly doing it was not the right way to go. I think it's weird how when they talk about them as being perverts the definition is a person whose sexual behavior is regarded as abnormal or unacceptable they constantly refer to them as sexual perverts. They're seeing them as unacceptable to society and that just isn't true. They're just trying to be who they are and show their identity in the best way they can and be true to themselves. But yet we're calling them something that they're not. They're not abnormal and they're not unacceptable. But we see that quite often with the material that we have to read for this class, don't you think? Yeah, definitely. Just all over this time period from the 50s, I'd say all the way up into the 70s or 80s and maybe even into the modern era there's constantly this feeling that the government just doesn't understand what homosexual people are, what they care about, how they feel and I think that leads to the blatant discrimination and hatred which has really made a huge stain on this country for a very long time and I think it still has a very huge stain on this country's history today. So as this piece shows, the government felt that the way that the government was currently handling things which was quietly removing people from government jobs and having them ostracized but not completely from the entire United States essentially they determined that that was not enough because these homosexual people would probably go get another job because they were good workers and they had no reason to be fired so they would quickly find jobs within other government offices and the government decided ultimately that they had to do something a lot more drastic being the Lavender Scare. So like we mentioned before, McCarthyism all led to the Lavender Scare and we've used this term a lot and we've kind of talked about it but we haven't quite given a definition. So it was the moral panic and persecution of gay and lesbian people in the US government during the mid-20th century. It was fueled by McCarthyism paranoia and the belief that homosexuals were vulnerable to blackmail and thus a national security risk. We see this in the persecution of spies and different national security things we see and it ended up leading to approximately 7,000 or 10,000 federal employees being fired or resigned based on their sexuality. We've seen multiple documentaries in this class about how they were persecuted and they would just have these two guys take them into a room in their workplace and ask them, have you ever had homosexual relations? And these people would be scared normally because it's just a blindsided question that they would get asked. But how did these people know? Well, they would start with one interview and they would promise that if one person gave up another, they would be safe. They wouldn't be fired. They'd keep their job. They wouldn't tell their family. And that was a lie. They'd end up telling their families anyway. They would end up firing them anyway. And it just kept leading to this cycle of, like I said, 7,000 to 10,000 people ended up getting fired. It was just a constant loop of trying to get more and more names to prosecute and fire them. And I also think it's very interesting that a lot of times they wouldn't have any actual information about that. They wouldn't know for sure if they were really homosexual or if they had any other proof. But simply from these testimonies, they would use that as a basis to fire these employees and essentially ruin their careers, their social lives, and essentially could just ruin their lives in general for something that may or may not be true. But regardless if it's true or not, it should have no impact on their lives as a whole. So we've been talking about the right scare and the wrong and fair scare. But do you know what else is scary? Security risks. The sponsor of today's podcast is nordVPN. Have you ever been scrolling on Netflix and not had enough options to watch? Well, nordVPN changes that. You can change your location to put yourself in a different country, and it changes your Netflix and gives you a lot more options. And make sure you use code hashtaghistory300w to get 30% off. Now, back to the click. Now that we've talked about the background, the history, the details of it all, let's get into some people and what they've actually experienced their first-hand accounts. First up we have Madeline Tress, an economist working for the State Department, specifically the Department of Commerce, in April 1958. She was brought into a room with no air conditioning for an interview. She was wearing a pale blue suit, high heels, and the tape recorder was turned on. Two investigators were from the U.S. Civil Service Commission, and they stated that Ms. Tress was there under a voluntary appearance, stating that she is there to answer questions based on information that the U.S. Civil Service Commission had received. She swore an oath, but when she asked to have an attorney, she was denied. So I don't really get how she's there voluntarily, but then as soon as she asks for an attorney, they say, JK, no. Yeah, that's completely illegal. I mean, it's literally like one of the first rights is that you have a right to an attorney. That's ridiculous. Exactly. So then they start asking her questions like name, address, date of birth Then one investigator stated that they'd received information of her being a homosexual. Then they asked her, what comment do you wish to make regarding this matter? She honestly just froze. Like, how do you respond to this? Because she was a lesbian, but if she's honest, she'd lose her job. If she lied, she'd lose her job. So she's basically, no matter which one she chooses, she's going to lose her job. Then the questions start becoming really invasive like, what do you do in bed? Have you ever been to the Redskins Lounge, a local gay bar in D.C.? Do you know so-and-so? Do you know this person? Name after name was thrown at her. And more questions they fully knew the answers to already. And this just leads back to how they would, like, keep the cycle going. I assume that somebody probably had given her up saying that they saw her at the Redskins Lounge or there was an informant undercover. And, like, this is illegal. Not giving her a lawyer, keeping her in a room. She's at a loss. Like, she has to have proper representation. But, of course, they don't care. And they have so many loopholes to get through it. It's just, like, a worst-case scenario. It's a double-edged sword. She can't win in this. Well, I mean, I think it just shows how corrupt the government was during this time. There really was no way out. The government decided you are a homosexual. you are out Essentially, you are out of the country. You're going to be socially ostracized. You're going to have trouble finding a job. And, essentially, the government could just tell them this, and nobody did anything to try and stop it. No allies or homosexual groups tried to fight back against this right away because everybody was just scared. The government was controlling their lives, essentially. yea and the really funny thing is that you can tell when they go into these interviews. They act dumb. They act like they don't know anything, and the questions they're asking are, like, just out of nowhere. When, in reality, they've done hours and hours of research and talked to multiple people, like specifically in the case of Madeline. They had been collecting a report on her. They'd spoken to friends, classmates, teachers. They described her as an ambitious, honest, and responsible girl. Seems to get along well with people. When she was young, she was often seen wearing blue jeans, which I don't really see the issue. but If you look at the time period, they're mostly wearing skirts and stuff. She was known for hating the segregation in Washington. So I said, yes, my girl. She was seen attending parties. She would drink a beer occasionally. I don't see the issue with that. Like, what is it? Women can only have wine or something. But the keyword that they described her and that followed her was that she was very mannish. She dressed and parted her hair like a man. For about six months, she dressed like a man. She would speak in a low, monotone-based voice, wears tailored suits, and had a short, lesbian-type haircut. And I use air quotes when I use that because I don't really know what that would look like at this time period. She ultimately left the interview shaken and angry and deemed it the most demeaning experience of her life. She actually compared it to what she thought the Holocaust would be like and, like, what Nazis did to the Jews. She made the choice that because she had no other choice, she resigned and did not fight. She ended her career as an economist at the Department of Commerce, and the impact of the investigation followed her for a lifetime. This just brings me back to that one documentary we watched, and I can't remember the name of it. But they had the people who were the interviewers there, or they had something that they had said about how they would scare people into resigning, just like she did. But, like, they didn't care. Like, they knew people would kill themselves afterwards and, like, run away. And, like, they knew the exact state they were putting these people in, and they didn't care because they found it to be effective. They found it to be almost, like, promising. Like, they're doing something in the world. They're ridding the world of these perverts, quote, unquote. And it's, like, that is insane because she was shaken and angry, like you said. And, like, that is a person's life at the end of the day, no matter what you see it as. But these people didn't care. These interviewers go into the interview knowing that they're going to shake them up, and there's a great chance that they're going to kill themselves. Yeah. I mean, like, essentially the Lavender Scare is, like, a self-fulfilling prophecy. I mean, the fact that the government was so concerned that these homosexual people were unfit to hold secret information because of the fact that they were gay, because that wasn't accepted, it doesn't make sense because if they were simply given acceptance, then there would be no worry about blackmail or fear of ostracization or anything that would potentially ruin their career. So if the government accepted these people for who they are and said it doesn't matter if you're a homosexual, you can still work for us, then there would be no problem with them. They would not need to be blackmailed, and essentially it's just a problem that they themselves created. Exactly. And Madeline applied at Fulbright for a fellowship and wins it, but because she lost her job because she was a lesbian, her fly was flagged as lesbian, causing her to lose the job and basically her whole entire career. And she had worked years and years. She was born in Brooklyn, New York, in November of 1932. She went to George Washington University in 1950, went to NYU, spent time at the London School of Economics. So basically all of this time, all of this money she spent basically to completely lose her career. But I do want to give a positive and say that Madeline moved to San Francisco, goes to law school, and then becomes a civil rights attorney. So while she had to give up on her dream, she was still able to make an impact in the community. Yeah, I just kind of want to go back to how they described her looking mannish or in our terms butch. Like when we would say that, we would say butch. Like if a person's mannish, if they look more manly, if they have a short hairstyle, they're wearing jeans. God forbid she's wearing skirts. She's not showing her legs. We want to see her calves. Yes. But, like, why? Why is this important if she's good at her job? She's been at her job for a long time, so she's clearly good at it. And she has a beard. And it's like at what standard are we holding women to that they have to uphold and they can't even wear jeans, they can't cut their hair too short, it looks like a man. But, like, she wore tailored suits, and I said I would pay money to wear tailored suits all the time. I mean, quick, easy, put it on, wham, bam, thank you, ma'am. Like I paid for the tailored suit. I'm going to wear it. Exactly. And she probably looked great in it. I hope she wore it to court when, like, she was a civil rights attorney. Yeah. Because that would have been just perfect. Really? Because, I mean, like all of the things she was doing was completely legal and normal activities. But just because she was a woman, it's suspicious, and she happened to be lesbian. But I'm sure there are countless cases where a woman doing similar things, wearing whatever she wanted to wear, do what she should be able to do, drink beer in public, be with her friends and stuff like that, would be flagging her as a lesbian, even if she wasn't. Yeah, I agree. The next person that I do want to talk about, she's a little more recent. I actually was, like, reading her story, and I was fully invested. It was kind of like a wild ride that this poor woman had to go on. So we have Helen Grace James. She was born in 1927 in Scranton, Pennsylvania, the office, if you know what I'm saying, and was raised on a dairy farm. She was very involved with the family farm. When she was old enough, she would milk the cows. She drove the tractor. She helped with harvest, even delivered orders to the family's butcher shop every Saturday. One very key thing to know about Helen is that she grew up in a military family. Her great-great-grandfather was a Union soldier. Her father in World War I, her uncles in World War II, and her cousins were in the Army and the Navy. So they really covered all the bases, all the wars. Yeah, all the bases. Because they were hitting them all. Exactly. They really were a patriotic family. Exactly. All the wars, all the places. That's America right there. And I like that you say patriotic, because the one thing about Helen is that in this podcast that I listened to, and she was actually speaking herself, she said that the military seemed like a wonderful place to be, to be helping our country as I thought of it. They were there to help fight the wars or be engaged in taking care of us as civilians. Wow. Yeah. So we can already see that she is very much like a patriotic, like I'm going to fight for my country. For her whole life. Yeah. That's just what she's been raised into. Yeah, exactly. And like she said, she's like, I love the story. I love listening to them. So Helen wanted to enlist, but was too young, so she went to college, got a degree in physical education. So then she moved to Florida with some family friends, helped her get a job as a teacher. And I said, my girl, join the club. She taught for three years and then quickly was able to enlist. That year was 1952. She was assigned to basic training in Texas, and then she became a radio operator in the Air Force. She typed code, how to take and type code and send and receive, and she absolutely loved her job. Wow. She spent her time working, watching, and listening during a period of intense suspicion and paranoia in America. But she herself was being watched. Dun, dun, dun. From other airmen on other bases, rumors were received that an investigation was going on, but nobody really knew what was going on or what they were investigating. But ultimately she knows that she was being followed everywhere she went. One example she used was her or her friend had gotten off from work and they decided to go get a sandwich. So they're at the sandwich place and then they realize it's really busy, so they go sit in their car. But what happens is a man just comes up to him, comes up to them and is like, what are you doing? Why are you here? Like immediately interrogating her. Same thing happens at a dance hall where it's women only. They're like, what are you doing here? Why are you here? They're just questioning her constantly. They bug not only her room but the room next to her, so she's being watched constantly, 24-7. She even mentioned that at one point she got up to go to the bathroom at 2 a.m. and washed her hands and they were like, why are you up this late? What are you doing? They would not leave her alone. It was actually so heartbreaking because then she talks about how this constant feeling of being watched led Helen to lose sleep, take a toll on her mental health to the point where she would drink to help her sleep. Yeah. It's horrible. Ultimately Helen and two others were arrested. Arrested? Yes, and they don't even say why at first. They're just like, you're under arrest. Okay. So the men are questioning her and they're immediately threatening to go to her parents, her friends, to tell them that not only was she a threat to security but essentially that she was a bad person, all because she was a lesbian. And they knew that. It put her into such emotional turmoil that she finally said, whatever you want, write it down and I'll sign it. I don't care. So she signs this piece of paper, and before you know it, she has two weeks to clear the base and had two discharges, one as an airman and a second as a lieutenant. After that she just had to lay low. And one thing I wanted to go back to is when we're talking about the questions that they ask, one thing I think is so absolutely disgusting and perverted is that they would ask her, how do you feel about your sister? How do you feel about your mother? All because she was a lesbian. Disgusting. Oh, my God. Isn't that, like, how, like, that's just, I don't, I think I just struggle because I don't understand why they thought the way they thought. It's like that is just a crazy question to ask because you would never go up to, like, a straight person and be like, how do you feel about your brother? Yeah. Weird. Never. Yeah, it's just like, and I understand it was a different time, and it's like I could have all the historical context in the world, but it ultimately would not help me understand why people ask these questions. 100%. No. So ultimately Helen runs away. She does not talk to her family because she's from the East Coast. She has to try and do her best to ignore the problem altogether. She goes to California and she starts working as a physical therapist, growing a practice and making new friends, never speaking to her parents, just trying to bury it and forget it. It wasn't until in 2016 she met a fellow veteran and medic that told Helen, like she told about the story because she kept this loft inside her for years, and she said, you should do something about this. And Helen is 89 at this point. Wow. And so she wrote it all down and she told her story, and at the age of, or no, sorry, Helen was kicked out of the Air Force. After 64 years she applied for honorable discharge and she worked with the Fresno County Veterans Association and they helped her get in touch with a legal aid attorney to help her start this process. So they submit this thing to help her get dishonorable discharge. Is it dishonorable or honorable? Honorable. She had dishonorable and she was honorable at that stage. So the Air Force waited 18 months to get back to Helen, and issue two is Helen needed her personnel file to make sure she was an upstanding airman, but records had apparently been burned in a fire. I don't know about you guys, but it very much reminded me of the Mau Mau Rebellion. Yes. Absolutely. And like how they just threw the files off the boat because they said, the British said, we are not talking about the crimes we did in Africa. Yeah, a little context. We learned about the Mau Mau Rebellion in one of our classes altogether. And we learned about it in Power and Archives and Who Holds Narratives that are told to the world. And basically the British, they were colonizing in Africa, and the Mau Mau Rebellion pushed them out, and they were trying to sell the story to the media. But they had actual records of all the terrible things they did, and they burned them, they threw them off the boat into the ocean. And that's what Dan is talking about, is actual destroying of records on purpose to hide the story. So anytime I hear about archives being destroyed, I immediately say, no, this is a little suspicious. This is sounding like the Mau Mau Rebellion. So ultimately for Helen, it is just hiccup after hiccup, and she finally was able to get with a legal aid attorney team, or her legal aid attorney team teamed up with a D.C. law firm, and a lawsuit was filed. They told the Air Force that they had 14 days to respond, and the Air Force did not respond. So soon the Washington Post took hold of this story, and it absolutely blew up, and it actually was such a big impact that now Helen is talking to her family again. They've read the book report. They know her for who she is. She's getting those relationships back. I think she, at this point, has gotten honorable discharge. And my favorite part is that at the age of 91 in 2018, Helen marched in the Fresno, California Pride Parade. Yeah, Helen. And the podcast I listened to was recorded in 2024. This story was in, I believe, 2018. And they had reached out to her, and they asked her, and she's like, I'm still doing really well. I'm loving my life. I love being who I am. And so even though it was a really rocky start, and it took her forever, and she lost her dream job, it made me feel better to know that she is now able to be who she wants to be. I think it really just shows the resilience of the LGBTQ community. I mean, it shows that no matter how much every single group of people hurts you or discriminates you for something that they don't understand, that they are still strong enough to fight back against that and live their lives to the fullest. Yeah, I agree. I think Helen's story is such a good one. Like, come on. She was pushed to her limits. She had to leave her family and everything she knew, and she still lived an amazing life. She got to end it just as happy as she was in the beginning. Exactly. This reminds me of what you were saying before, how they got discharged out of the military because they were seen as unpatriotic. And her whole family served. That is a definition of a patriot. She loved her country. I said, how is the most patriotic girl that I know, and she's being dishonorable? She's un-American. Yes. She is a bad person. I think the exact word they used was, I think, what was it? Somebody talks like five days. It kind of shows you, like, our government isn't able to say that they're wrong unless they are actively proved that they're wrong and the media catches fire. They called her a threat to security. Like, who is she? What is she threatening, Code? That's remotely caused questions of security. She's been an upstaging in the entire life. And she's just trying to live her life. Exactly. Poor Helen. Poor Helen. Jon, do you have any good stories for us? Definitely. So I want to go ahead and move our current narrative a bit beyond the 1950s and go into a more modern lens. So what years were Madeline and Helen removed from their jobs? Madeline was 1958, and Helen was 1952. Okay. So as you can see, both of those firings were during the beginning of the Lavender Scare. But the person who I want to be discussing is named Jamie Shoemaker, and his career was upended in the 1980s, which shows just how long this Lavender Scare was going on, that people all the way into the 80s were having to deal with discrimination and potential termination for their sexuality. As Jamie recalls about this event, "they read me my rights, and they said, we understand you're leading a gay lifestyle. And I remember saying, well, I didn't think I was leading it, but yes, I'm gay." It was made clear to Shoemaker, but he couldn't keep his security clearance, and for the next four months Shoemaker wasn't able to work as the bosses came to a decision. But eventually personnel officers told him that he was going to be fired. I think that is so ridiculous, that for four months, the man is separated from the rest of his employees, taken away from his security clearance, and essentially just locked in a room every day where he can't get any work done while the government decides how they should get rid of him. I think that's just absolutely disgusting behavior, and I can't believe it was happening all the way up until the 1980s. Was he getting paid? So was he just like sitting in this room like doing nothing all day every day? Yes, nothing, no pay, and then eventually he just completely was fired and ostracized. They didn't pay him? No. I wouldn't show up. Couldn't he just leave? He watched me not show up. I'm not sure why he didn't, but maybe it was— He probably said, I really need this job back. Yeah. That's tragic. I'm guessing he probably really wanted to keep his job. In the 80s, it's crazy too, as you said. Yeah. It's so modern. I mean, like, I have a family member—my brother was born in the 80s, and the fact that he is a homosexual, and if he was born just a bit later, he would have had to deal with this. It just—it's heartbreaking. It's ridiculous. That's actually crazy that, like, in the 80s you're dealing with ACT UP and all of that, and you're still basically dealing with the Lavender Scare and all those kinds of issues. Yeah. I think it really shows how the 80s and 70s is really, like, probably the worst time in American history for queer people. I think this is just a time where everything was really compounding on each other. So you had the AIDS crisis, you had the Lavender Scare, you had everything which is essentially just making it so that homosexual people are not even considered to be the same species as people and that they should be completely ostracized from the world, essentially, and it was horrible. And if it wasn't for people fighting back against it, then it's very likely that this would still be around today. But I think it's really important to talk about one man who changed Shoemaker's life, and that man was Frank Kemeny. So Frank Kemeny was fired from his job in 1957 in the Army Map Service because of his sexuality and decided to fight this decision rather than giving up, moving or running away, as many other homosexual people did who were accused of these crimes. But he managed to frame the discrimination as a civil rights issue rather than a national security issue. Kemeny began to do picketing outside the White House and essentially created a network where other fired employees within the government could work together and try and stop what was going on. And then even though the 1975 Civil Service Commission announced that gay people could no longer be barred or fired from federal employment, discrimination still continued in other agencies, such as like the NSA where Shoemaker worked. And it was Kemeny who Shoemaker turned to advice, and Shoemaker actually became the first gay employee at the NSA, which I think is amazing that Shoemaker was able to fight along with all these other people who had been wronged in the past for their sexuality and were able to come together and help him get a job within the government, and he was the first to do that. The only condition for this is that he had to tell his family he was gay, but considering all the other much harsher punishments that a lot of other homosexual people faced during this time, I think Shoemaker was definitely one of the luckiest people to be able to keep their jobs when most people could never dream of that. Yeah, I think it just really shows you like perspective on how people were treated based off of where they were. So where was he located, you said? I'm pretty sure it was Maryland. That's crazy because we're talking about the 80s, right, and in my head I try and keep track of like time and different movements based off of like important figures, and one important figure that we talk about in this class is Harvey Milk, and we actually just talked about him like a couple weeks ago, and he was assassinated on November 27, 1978. So this just kind of shows you like in some states people were willing to elect an openly gay man into the Board of Supervisors, and that clearly shows like the difference between San Francisco, which is a big supporter of the queer community, and Maryland where they're protesting daily, how the Lavender Scare spread and kind of got contained in these highly political areas like Washington, D.C., Maryland, different places in the U.S., and in other places like San Francisco, they really didn't affect people's opinions as much as in other places. Yeah, and I think it really just kind of shows that during this time in the United States, where you were born could really determine your entire life as a homosexual person. Yeah, so if we're talking about like a political climate and we're trying to get more modern day, so we're just in the 80s, I say we jump to 2020 with a Supreme Court case that I found, Bostick v. Clayton County. So this employee got fired. He was a longtime employee for being homosexual. He was gay, and they fired him for his sexual orientation, which he actively resisted. He sued them because it's unlawful termination. Yeah, and especially in 2020, like in the middle of COVID, you have more things to talk about, but also like we're so progressive, like gay marriage is legal. Why is this an issue now? Exactly, and like how does this interfere with his work ethic, like we were talking about with Helen? Like with Lavender Scare was the excuse of, in quotes, like national security, but there is no reason that he should have been fired for being gay. A hundred percent. So the Supreme Court actually did rule in favor of the employee, Bostick, because they said that it violates Title VII, part of the Civil Rights Act, that gives people the right to not be discriminated against based off their race, color, religion, sex, and national origin. So the big, like I would love your opinion about this, but the big debate up is does sex, in the definition, include sexual orientation? So I took this quote from the opinion that the Supreme Court case came out with. An employer who fires an individual for being homosexual or transgender fires that person for traits or actions it would not have questioned in members of a different sex. Sex plays a necessary and undistinguishable role in the decision, exactly what Title VII forbids. Which I think is really progressive of them. Yeah. So when you ask the question, like, how does sex play into sexual orientation, are you asking, like, who? Like, don't you guys think it's crazy that they're even, like, not putting this in? Like, they're actively, the argument in this case is, does sexual orientation include in the definition of sex in Title VII? So when we're talking about sex, we're talking about gender, right? That's the first thing that comes to mind. Yeah. And the opinion was that does who you love should be separate from your gender? I think that's a really great question, and I think it depends on certain situations. Like, I have recently learned that people that are asexual aren't necessarily attracted in a sexual manner, but they can be attracted in a romance manner. That's what I've learned. Yeah. So I feel like, especially since we're talking about the workplace, I don't know if necessarily sexual orientation should follow under sex. Like, it should be like a branch kind of tree map kind of, like, system. Yeah. I feel like they should just both be, hey, it doesn't matter what gender you are. It doesn't matter who you're attracted to or who you are involved romantically with. None of that should matter. That prejudice should not be there. But I do think that depending on the situation, it can be a different conversation of how does sexual orientation possibly follow under sex. Because what if you're asexual, but then you're also non-binary, and then it kind of is that tricky little situation. Yeah. I think it's kind of like the basis of it is you don't want to discriminate based off of sex. Basically, you don't want to discriminate. We had to put that in there if you're a woman in the workplace. So a straight woman loves a man. Right? And if a man loves a man, what's the difference? That's what they're saying in this opinion. We wouldn't prosecute a woman for being straight, so why would we prosecute a man for being gay? They love the same sex. Right? Yeah. I thought this was really progressive of them, and I love this opinion that it happened this way, because we don't really see things a lot like this in history. No. I think it is a bit shocking that it happened so late into the United States history. I mean, happening in 2020. That was five years ago, when you really think about it. And also, once again, in the middle of COVID, we have more important issues than who you like, who is being with who. Yeah, exactly. But it definitely is a really positive step towards equality. Okay, so now that we've covered what the verdict was, we have the dissenting opinion. Or should It be opinions? We have two of them that we get to discuss. Interesting. Okay, so we have one, Kavanaugh. So Kavanaugh basically said, it's not up to the court to decide. It's not our job to decide, because that's up to Congress. They're the ones who need to change Title VII to include sexual orientation, if they wanted it to be its own subcategory. Which I think is kind of confusing to me, because the opinion says clearly that they see this gender, or sex in this case, and sexual orientation is the same thing, because that's what it ends up as being. If they love the same sex, it's the same as the opposite sex being straight. Yeah. Right? So Kavanaugh just said, it's not up to us. That's why he didn't vote for it. I think that that's kind of avoiding the issue, in a sense. I feel like he's kind of making an excuse so that the government can't get involved with this case, even though they should be able to, as the case ultimately ruled. Yeah, I kind of saw it in both sides. I saw a positive and a negative. I see that it's him kind of being like, it's not up to me. This isn't our job in the checks and balances. It's debating something that is up to Congress to change, not us. But I also see that this is a change that needs to be made. This was discrimination. Yeah, there you go. Discrimination. Yeah. Thank you. And then the other dissenting opinion, which is a lot more specific, is Alito's dissenting opinion. Many have tried adding sexual orientation to Title VII but failed, meaning sex doesn't already include sexual orientation. So they're actively – there's two judges in this opinion. They're actively saying that, like, okay, you've tried to add sexual orientation multiple times, and it hasn't passed into Title VII. So, like, you already see it as included, or not included, because you're trying to add it on there. So you've already told me that it's two separate things, meaning that this does not fall under Title VII because you're trying to add it on there. Yeah. Right? Isn't that kind of crazy? absoutely Well, and I think it comes down to it's also, like, it's always that age-old debate of, like, who can decide this, the federal or the state? Yeah. And I think that can go for a lot of different things, but I feel like, especially in this case, it has to be decided at the federal level. And it should be, like we said, like sexual orientation should be included in Title VII because if we leave it up to the states, we obviously know some states aren't going to include it, and then people are going to lose their jobs, and then some can't afford to move. Like, it just really circles back to it of, like, you've got to leave it up to the federal government. Yeah. It can't always be the states, and I definitely think adding sexual orientation to Title VII is one of those cases. Absolutely, yeah. It's, like, are basic human rights in the Bill of Rights? Yes. Include a bunch of different things. Mm-hmm. And why shouldn't this be included in them? I think that if we even have to argue about it, it should be added. Yes. So that it's clear. Like, this is something that people have the basic human right to love who they love and work wherever they want to work. God forbid they have the career that they want. Or I think I just get frustrated because, like, why do you care what somebody's doing in their free time? Exactly. It's ridiculous. Why do you care who, like, if they're a bad employee, like, that doesn't matter. If they're a good employee, that doesn't matter. Mm-hmm. Like, just let them simply live their life and be happy. Yeah. Like, that's fundamentally, like, the pursuit of happiness. Yeah. ever heard of that. Like, that's one of our life liberties of Americans that we live on. Exactly. Like, Helen was good at her job. Yes. And she got fired for no reason. So was Madeline. Madeline was good at her job. Madeline, yeah. Shoemaker was good at his job. he was. Yes. Like, we're firing people from things they know how to do based off of the people they love. And, like, this, I just really want to bring it up, because, like, 2020 is, we were in high school. Yeah. Yeah. We were in high school. Like, we were about to be able to vote. Yeah. Think about that. And it's just, it's really quite crazy to me that this was so recent and we're still arguing it. Yeah. Yeah, it's still in question. And I think this really can put us into right now, especially with the election of Donald Trump and all of the support that he received against, especially his hatred of transgender people. Mm-hmm. All the way back in 2017 when Trump was in office, he announced the ban on transgender people serving in the military. And now that he's back, it's very likely that he's trying to remove transgender rights altogether. And it's ridiculous that despite having court cases five years ago that show that sexual orientation doesn't matter, presidents and the government is still bringing this argument up and still fighting against it. And it's interesting because you're seeing it, and so it's almost, like, frustrating because he's trying to do it in such subtle ways, but he's not really doing it. Like, he's, like, now it's, like, in government websites, it's LGB. There's no, there's no T. Or, like, you, like, the Stonewall Monument has been messed with. Or, like, and it's funny because one instance I, like, recently heard is how they, with, like, specifically in the case of the Enola Gay, which was the plane that dropped, I can't remember if it was Hiroshima or Nagasaki. I think It was both. It was both, yeah. And how, you can obviously tell they said, command F, let's delete any word of gay, and they deleted that. Very important archive. But what are you going to do? Are you going to take the plane out of the museum? Like, and it's named after a woman. Like, the pilot named it after his mother. It's not he was a homosexual or anything. It was simply just the word gay. Like, it's not that big of a deal. And I think it's just kind of showing you, like, how silly the administration is trying to be with these laws and what they're trying to change because they're ultimately very much backfiring on them. Oh, absolutely it is. Yes, it is. But I think it's horrible that they're able to tiptoe around this at all. the fact that they can hide behind legislation and hide behind archives and pretend that they're not doing anything, when in reality they're trying to destroy gay history. And they're trying to destroy an entire group of people. So as much as they try to hide it and dance around it, it's really, that's what they're doing. And it's disgusting. And the number one thing they say is, like, oh, we are not, history cannot be rewritten. History has to be as it is. But that's very much what they're doing right now. They are rewriting history. It kind of reminds me of, like, 1984 and them destroying all those things. Like, that's kind of what I feel like sometimes that today's climate could be compared to is some 1984 George Orwell. No, absolutely. And then, like, the debate of the 1619 Project versus the 1776 Project, yeah, which is the debate on whether the United States was founded in 1619 on the arrival of the first slave ships to the United States or in 1776 when the Declaration of Independence was signed. And the Donald Trump administration essentially completely ignored the 1619 Project and made their own, which is the 1776 Project, which, again, goes back to the white saviors, the George Washingtons, the Christopher Columbuses, and, once again, challenging history, which has been accepted for decades. Yeah. And I just kind of want to wrap up this podcast as we're finishing out here. And, like, we're all history education majors, and we're going to be teaching in either a middle school or a high school in the next coming years, like, literally in the next two years, which is kind of insane. But we've been thinking about, like, teaching hard history and how we can, like, teach that to our kids and give them real truths but still have them see multiple perspectives. Like, when you're speaking about, like, when did American history start, right, that's a big debate, and that's a hard history thing because we deal with real people every day. And we see this surge of paranoia, which we've been talking about, you know, in the Red Scare and the Lavender Scare. And it's kind of coming back for people. They're scared that the history we're going to teach is incorrect. And, like, we have the power of the kids to, quote, unquote, brainwash them. But, like, as teachers, I know that I just want my kids to be able to look at a history book and know that that's not just the truth. Like, look at facts, look at different documents, look at different perspectives. Because, like, the Mau Mau, if they only saw the British side, they would never know the real truth or at least, like, a different side to it, you know? And, like, when we're teaching things about, like, the Red Scare and the Lavender Scare, if we only teach McCarthyism and we only teach what those investigators are going into the room and doing, the kids would never know those personal sides that you just talked about with Helen and Madeline and the shoemaker. Like, they need to be able to see those things and know that there is more out there. Yeah, and I mean, I didn't even know about the Lavender Scare until my freshman year of college. It was never talked about, I never, I found out about it through a show and then it wasn't until we talked about it in class one day that I, like, actually found out about it. So, I feel like it just kind of shows, like, and I really hate the argument of, like, brainwashing because there's no brainwashing. It's simply just broadening children's horizons to say, hey, don't look at this one single thing, look at multiple perspectives. Because, I mean, we teach that with kids when they're younger. Like, oh, you have to look at both sides. There's two sides to every story.Yeah, And that's the same case. Especially with American history, there's always two sides. It's just the two, the other side is not always told. Yeah. And that's, like, and you see that in textbooks today especially. Yeah. I thought it was really cool that, like, we have the archive here at NAU. And we really get to use that in a lot of our classes. But we're just relating it, like, hard history is hard. That's why it's titled that. Yeah, And, like, our job as we're going in with these new administrations, like, we're going to get a new president every four years, maybe every eight. And, like, it's just going to be this fluctuation of, like, how we teach, what kind of things that policies we have to follow, and it's just going to change. So we kind of have to change with it. Yeah. Definitely. Well, I mean, I think you definitely see that with, I mean, the case happening in 2020 and now the restarting of the fight over transgender rights now in the modern era. And it shows that it's always going to be something which is discussed and it's something that people need to understand if they really want to make an accurate opinion about what's currently going on. It's something that's not biased by media or political views. And it's just the facts. Yeah. I think one question I still always have, and I would like to ask this one day in one of my classes, like, we talk about hard history and how to teach it. Like, how am I supposed to teach that? Like, I truly want someone to be like, this is like an example of, like, how you could possibly go about that. Because sometimes it's just like, like, I would love to teach about the Lavender Scare. I mean, it's simply like, like, it would be a great lesson to do a comparison on the Salem Witch Trials, To McCarthyism to the Lavender Scare and just kind of see those running patterns. But it's like, how do I talk about the Lavender Scare without having parents like attack me and me possibly losing my job? Like, I think it is important children know about this. Yeah. They are all important topics. Like, especially when we get into the nitty gritty of, like, the Great Depression and the New Deal that you're talking about. Like, it didn't impact people all in the same way. Neither did the Lavender Scare. Like, we were saying, it's based off of location of how long it lasted, how severe the treatment was. Like, Helen had to go to Fresno. Yeah, she had to go all the way to California to escape. From Florida. Yeah. So it's like, what coast are you on is how you live. Same with Madeline. She had to go from Washington, D.C. to San Francisco. Exactly. So it's like, how our biggest, like, question on this, and it's just, it's a question that can't be answered, truthfully. It's how can we teach hard history effectively. Because it's always going to change. Yeah. Like I said. And like you guys said, like, we have to be able to go with it. Like, no matter what district we're in, no matter what students we have, we have to be sensitive to it. Exactly. And so we always have to, like, be flexible. Or else we can't, like, work with our classroom. Yeah. And I think what we've all covered today in this podcast and what we've talked about are all really important things and I think would be great things to bring into the classroom from the Lavender Scare to the Timeline, McCarthyism, Don't Ask, Don't Tell, to these firsthand accounts, Roy Cohen. All these things would be perfect to just kind of really encapsulate this era of history. And I mean, I've already learned so much. Like, I can't imagine, like, how much our kids would learn, especially. so much. Yeah. And that has been the Lavender Scare in the Classroom by The Clique.