The Lavender Scare

Your Head Trucker believes it to be very important that we remember the past and deeply consider where we were just a few years ago, only half a lifetime.  People who don't remember the past are liable to be sucked under the wheels of the ever-turning hate machine that is always, always in the midst of the human race - and always in the human heart - let's not let that happen.

It was a time when a federal agency could send a memo like this to an employee - just before firing him, with no recourse, no appeal:

We have received a report concerning you. It has been reported that you had permitted a man to perform a homosexual act (fellatio) on you. Also, that you related that you find members of the male sex attractive; that you have been in bed with men; and that you have enjoyed embracing them. Is this report true?

New film:



And do take time to listen to the story of our grand old man, Frank Kameny, the first who ever took the government to court over gay rights, and the guy who invented the phrase "Gay is Good" (we should bring that back and use it more often):



You have to remember it was a very different period; kids and adults alike had it drilled into their heads that the homos were an active, terrifying danger to society, as this warning film from 1961 shows:



And so gays and lesbians were spied on, sent to reform school, expelled from college, fired from their jobs, beaten, arrested, imprisoned, confined in mental wards, lobotomized, and hounded to death for being evil queers: go read up on the Boise witch hunt in Idaho or the Johns Committee in Florida. To name but two.

All our gains have been very hard-won.  There are many among us who remember those days; and many an unknown soul, isolated and afraid, who did not survive the hatred and persecution.  Don't forget, is all I'm saying. 

Never forget.

More striking in his correspondence, however, is an almost magisterial serenity. He exhibits an unshakable and unmistakably American confidence that all the great and mighty, no matter their number or power, must bow to one weak man who has the Founders' promise on his side. "We are honorable people who deal with others honorably and in good faith," he insisted to the Un-American Activities Committee. "We expect to be dealt with in the same fashion -- especially by our governmental officials." There you hear the pipsqueak, indomitable voice of equality.

For Kameny's papers to join Thurgood Marshall's and Daniel Patrick Moynihan's, and for his signs to join Jefferson's writing desk and Lincoln's inkwell, seems fitting. All of those men understood that the words of 1776 set in motion a moral engine unlike any the world had ever seen; and all understood that the logic of equality could be delayed but not denied. Kameny, like them, believed that the Declaration of Independence means exactly what it says, and like them he made its promise his purpose.

My partner, Michael, and I are among the millions who owe some large measure of our happiness to Kameny's pursuits. This Thanksgiving found me grateful that one pariah fought back, never imagining he could fail; even more grateful to live in a country with a conscience; most grateful of all to know that there are generations of Franklin Kamenys yet to be born.

--Jonathan Rauch, 2006