Panic on the Potomac

Abstract

Republicans in Congress warned of the threat posed to national security by homosexuals in the State Department as early as 1947, at the very start of the Cold War, prompting the DOS to establish a loyalty-security program that quickly found and fired ninety-one homosexual employees. At the time, few beyond Capitol Hill thought to worry about homosexuals on the federal payroll, but Senator Joseph McCarthy's February 1950 tirade against Communists and other “security risks” in government drew public attention to homosexuals in Washington and paved the way for policies that required the purging of gays from employment throughout the federal government. Indeed, the typical firing for “security risks” in the Cold War state involved a homosexual, rather than someone accused of Communist sympathies. No evidence of a link between homosexuality and violations of security was ever brought to light. Nonetheless, the government's antigay policies and purges continued for decades, damaging the careers and lives of thousands. Eventually, the purges also provoked resistance among gays, who declared in the 1960s that the time had come to claim their rights as “homosexual citizens.” Through their actions, the government's blanket prohibition against gay employees was abandoned in the mid 1970s.