For many of us, Memorial Day weekend is about cookouts, sales, watching fireworks, fellowshipping with family and friends, though this year, like last year, is a bit different because of the pandemic. However, this weekend is supposed to be about honoring those who made the ultimate sacrifice. They gave their lives serving in one of the branches of the U.S. Armed Forces.

As a military historian and working at a military college, I am very much aware of the sacrifices made every day by military personnel. Historically, LGBTQ+ soldiers have sacrificed even more. For most of the history of the U.S. military, LGBTQ+ soldiers had to be closeted because being “out” wasn’t acceptable. Being outed could have cost them their military career. Many LGBTQ+ soldiers kept their mouths shut and their business to themselves to protect themselves from harm and protect the nation.

In 1982, the U.S. military enacted a policy explicitly banning gay men and lesbians from their ranks. Before that, however, same-sex relations were criminalized and cause for discharge. And in the early 1940s, it was classified as a mental illness, disqualifying gay men and lesbians from service. In 1993, the “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy (DADT) went into effect, allowing closeted LGBTQ+ soldiers to serve in the military. Under the policy, service members would not be asked about their sexual orientation but would be discharged for disclosing it.

Many LGBTQ+ soldiers were outed as gay or lesbian by fellow soldiers and not allowed to serve. Some soldiers were killed by their fellow comrades while on active duty. If you saw the 2003 film Soldier’s Girl, you are aware of U.S. Army infantry soldier PFC Barry Winchell who was murdered on July 6, 1999, by a fellow soldier for dating a transgender woman, Calpernia Addams. The murder became a point of reference in the ongoing DADT debate. Eighteen years after DADT was enacted, Congress repealed the policy, allowing openly gay, lesbian, and bisexual people to serve in the military.

Another barrier was lifted in 2013 when spousal and family benefits were extended to same-sex married partners in the military. After ending temporarily in 2016, the ban on transgender individuals was again rescinded in 2021, allowing transgender individuals to enlist and serve in the armed forces. It’s been a long journey, but LGBTQ+ soldiers have always been part of the American military. In an era before gay marriage or open pride, military men fell in love, formed passionate friendships, and had same-sex encounters. Due to social and official discrimination, most of the stories of these LGBTQ+ soldiers have gone untold. One famous example was Baron Friedrich von Steuben, a Prussian military man hired by George Washington to whip the Continental Army into shape during the darkest days of the Revolutionary War. He was known for his bravery and the discipline and grit he brought to the American troops. Historians also believe he was gay—and served as an openly gay man in the military when sex between men was punished as a crime.

So, if you have never considered the LGBTQ+ service members who lost their lives to serve a country that didn’t respect them, you should. We shouldn’t take our freedom for granted. It comes with a price tag, and we all need to remember this. As we celebrate another Memorial Day weekend, please note this isn’t just another time to party. Today is a day set aside to remember those who have sacrificed their lives so that we may live and be free, fight against discrimination, and love who we want. These brave, unsung heroes sacrificed the truth of themselves. Let us never forget them.

Be safe, be conscious, be proud, and remember our fallen LGBTQ+ service members who died in times when being “out” wasn’t allowed. Thankfully, things seemed to have changed drastically in the U.S. military. LGBTQ+ service members are able to serve openly and without harassment. While acceptance of LGBTQ+ service members is a relatively new development in the military’s long history, the Department of Defense is committed to maintaining a strong force that reflects the nation’s diversity.

April Fools’ Day was once a time to pull a prank on both friends and enemies but has now turned into a day for corporations to try to fool customers with predictable internet hoaxes. Today, April 1, we can all count on an announcement about a fake new show, feature, or some other outrageous piece of news. In the town where I used to teach high school, guys would climb to the top of the water tower and paint a message (usually vulgar), or the seniors at the school I taught at would fill the school’s halls with balloons or some other crazy prank. But there have been many outrageous pranks throughout history.

Satirist Jonathan Swift (Gulliver’s Travels) decided to play an elaborate All Fools’ Day prank on John Partridge, a famous astrologer who sold bogus predictions to the public in almanacs. After Partridge predicted in his 1708 almanac that a fever would sweep London in early April, Swift published an almanac under a fake name predicting that on March 29 at 11 p.m., Partridge would die “of a raging fever.” The public was intrigued, but Partridge was irate, and he published a rebuttal to Swift’s almanac calling its author a fraud. Then, on the night of March 29, Swift published an elegy (again, under a fake name) announcing that Partridge—a “cobbler, Starmonger and Quack”—had died and admitted on his deathbed that he was a fraud. News of Partridge’s death spread over the next couple of days so that when Partridge walked down the street on April 1, people stared at him in surprise and confusion. Partridge angrily published a pamphlet saying he was alive. Swift again publicly asserted that Partridge was dead and claimed someone else wrote Partridge’s pamphlet. The whole escapade helped to discredit Partridge, who eventually stopped publishing almanacs.

Another prank also occurred in the 18th century.  In January of 1749, London newspapers advertised that in an upcoming show, a man would squeeze his entire body into a wine bottle and then sing while inside of it. The ad promised that “during his stay in the bottle, any Person may handle it, and see plainly that it does not exceed a common Tavern Bottle.” The ad promised the show would feature other tricks as well, including communicating with the dead. Legend has it that the ad was the result of a bet between the Duke of Portland and the Earl of Chesterfield. Reportedly, the duke bet that he could advertise something impossible and still “find fools enough in London to fill a playhouse and pay handsomely for the privilege of being there.” And apparently, he was right. The night of the show, spectators filled every seat in the house, but no performer ever showed up. Realizing they had been duped, the audience rioted. With all the Republicans who believed Trump was the most Christian president in U.S. history, it just goes to show that people have been gullible for centuries.

The next prank comes from the early 20th century. Decades before the Bond villain Goldfinger plotted to nuke all of the United States’ gold at Fort Knox, a prankster dreamed up another heist that was just as ridiculous. On April 1, 1905, a German newspaper called the Berliner Tageblatt announced that thieves had dug a tunnel underneath the U.S. Federal Treasury in Washington, D.C., and stolen America’s silver and gold (this was before the U.S. built its Bullion Depository in Fort Knox, Kentucky). The Berliner Tageblatt said the heist was organized by American robber barons, whose burglars dug the tunnel over three years and made away with over $268 million; and that U.S. authorities were trying to hunt down the thieves while publicly covering up the fact that the country had been robbed. The story spread quickly through European newspapers before people realized that it was an April Fools’ Day prank by Louis Viereck, a New York correspondent for the Berliner Tageblatt who published the joke article under a fake name.

Sometimes the line between what’s a prank and what’s not isn’t always clear-cut. If an unlikely candidate runs for public office as a kind of protest prank but ends up winning, is it still a prank? Here’s one example: in 1959, students in São Paulo, Brazil, who were tired of the city’s overflowing sewers and inflated prices launched a campaign to elect a rhinoceros to the city council—and won. (Animals are routinely elected mayor in towns across Vermont.) The rhino’s name was Cacareco (Portuguese for “rubbish”), and she was already a popular figure in São Paulo when the students launched her campaign. The four-year-old had moved to the city from Rio de Janeiro when São Paulo’s zoo opened and was scheduled to return to Rio soon. When the students looked at the 540 candidates vying for São Paulo’s 45 city council seats and feared that none of them would address the city’s problems, they decided to make a point by asking people to vote for the famous rhino instead. Cacareco won a city council seat with a whopping 100,000 votes, far more than any other candidate (the closest runner-up only got about 10,000 votes). Of course, she didn’t end up serving on the city council because the election board disqualified her. Still, she remains one of the most famous protest votes in Brazilian history.

One of the most famous April Fools’ Day pranks is the BBC’s famous “spaghetti harvest” segment. On April 1, 1957, a news broadcaster told his British audience that Ticino, a Swiss region near the Italian border, had “an exceptionally heavy spaghetti crop” that year. The camera cut to footage of people picking spaghetti off of trees and bushes, then sitting down at a table to eat some of their “real, home-grown spaghetti.” At the time, spaghetti wasn’t necessarily a dish that British people would’ve known about. That doesn’t mean that no one realized the segment was a prank—some viewers were upset the BBC had aired a fictional segment during a serious news program. However, other viewers reportedly asked about how they could grow their own spaghetti at home.

Caltech has a long history of pranking other schools. One of its most famous pranks happened during the 1961 Rose Bowl football game in Pasadena, the location of Caltech. The game was between the University of Washington’s Huskies and the University of Minnesota’s Golden Gophers. During the game, Washington cheerleaders handed out colored cards to the Huskies’ side and told them that if they held the cards up at halftime, the cards would spell “Huskies.” But when halftime came and the fans held the cards up, they ended up spelling “Caltech.” It was so weird and unexpected (Caltech wasn’t even playing in the game!) that the band on the field stopped mid-song. It was later revealed that fourteen Caltech students had orchestrated the prank by breaking into the cheerleaders’ hotel rooms and switching the instruction sheets for the card stunt.

One of the best-selling erotic books in American history was actually written as a joke. No, it’s not Fifty Shades of Grey(though that did famously start as Twilight fan fiction)—it’s a 1969 parody called Naked Came the Stranger. The book’s author was listed as “Penelope Ashe,” but the real authors were a group of journalists at Newsday, a Long Island newspaper. The project’s ringleader was Mike McGrady, a Newsday journalist frustrated with the popular romance and erotic novelists he’d interviewed. “I saw the writing that was being accepted, and it seemed absurd,” he told the Associated Press. So McGrady rounded up about 25 journalists and asked each to contribute a ridiculous, over-the-top chapter to an erotic parody novel. He and columnist Harvey Aronson then patched these chapters together into a story about a Long Island housewife who suspects her husband is unfaithful and starts cheating on him. The hardcover sales earned it a number four spot on  The New York Times’ bestseller list. Because it was exposed as a parody soon after publication, readers were likely in on the joke and bought it for the laughs (after one intimate encounter, a character says, “I’d forgotten there was more to life than mowing a lawn”). The following year, McGrady published a book about the experience called Stranger Than Naked, or How to Write Dirty Books for Fun & Profit.

Stranger Than Naked wasn’t the only prank journalists played in 1969. That year, Rolling Stone music critic Greil Marcus published a piece spoofing the trend of big-name rock stars forming “supergroups.” One of the most popular supergroups in the ’60s was Cream: its guitarist Eric Clapton was already famous for playing with the Yardbirds. At the same time, drummer Ginger Baker and bassist Jack Bruce were already known for playing in the Graham Bond Organisation. Marcus penned a gushing review to a nonexistent bootleg album by the “Masked Marauders,” a secret supergroup he said was made up of Bob Dylan, Mick Jagger, John Lennon, Paul McCartney, and George Harrison. The fake review garnered genuine interest in the album, and Marcus ended up writing and recording the songs he’d made up; then Warner Brothers bought the songs and released the album. “It was just an attempt to say, ‘This is stupid, and let’s make it even stupider,'” Marcus told MSNBC years later. But it was also a little prophetic. Two decades after the “Masked Marauders” review, Bob Dylan and George Harrison did join a supergroup with Tom Petty called the Traveling Wilburys.

Finally, Richard Branson, the billionaire founder of the Virgin Group, has a well-documented love of April Fools’ Day. But in 1989, his annual prank came a day early, on March 31. That evening, residents outside of London spotted a flying saucer that appeared to land in a nearby field in Surrey. Police officers went to the field to investigate the supposed UFO and were probably surprised when they actually found one. As they approached the flying saucer, a door opened, and a silver-clad figure walked out. The cops promptly ran away. Little did they know, Branson was hiding out in the UFO behind his silver-clad companion, whose name was Don Cameron. The two of them had taken off in the flying saucer—which was a hot-air balloon—and planned to land in Hyde Park on April 1 as a prank. However, changing winds forced them to land a little earlier in Surrey.

I hope those historic pranks gave you a laugh. While it is April Fools’ Day, each of these stories is true.

The United States appeared to be changing, and it looked like equal rights and protections were in the future for Generations Y and Z. However, it would not be easy. In 1993, the Department of Defense issued a directive prohibiting the U.S. Military from barring applicants from service based on their sexual orientation. “Applicants… shall not be asked or required to reveal whether they are homosexual,” stated the new policy. But it still forbade applicants from engaging in homosexual acts or making a statement that he or she was homosexual. This policy was known as “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell.” Then in 1996, Clinton signed the Defense of Marriage Act into law. The law defined marriage as a legal union between one man and one woman and said no state was required to recognize a same-sex marriage from out of state. On November 4, 2008, California voters approved Proposition 8, making same-sex marriage in California illegal. The passing of the ballot garnered national attention from gay-rights supporters across the U.S. Prop 8 inspired the NOH8 campaign, a photo project using celebrities to promote marriage equality.

As these setbacks eventually have been overturned, Generations Y and Z have grown up in a time of immense change mainly for the better. In December 2010, the U.S. Senate voted to repeal the “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” policy, allowing gays and lesbians to serve openly in the U.S. Military. On June 26, 2015, in a 5-4 decision of Obergefell v. Hodges, the U.S. Supreme Court declared same-sex marriage legal in all 50 states. These new freedoms and equality brought new challenges for the youngest members of the LGBTQ+ community. The “Alphabet Mafia,” so named for all the letters to support the sexual spectrum (LGBTQIA, etc.), has given rise to a backlash from religious conservatives. While more states every year work to pass laws to protect LGBTQ+ people, lesbians, gays, and bisexuals largely have been protected by rulings only from the U.S. Supreme Court. Those rulings are now in jeopardy with the make-up of the current court. The Equality Act passed by the House of Representatives is unlikely to pass the Senate unless changes are made to the filibuster or the filibuster is abolished. Plus, there are bills advancing through state legislatures that target transgender people, limit local protections, and allow the use of religion to discriminate.

The current anti-transgender bills target transgender and nonbinary people for discrimination by barring or criminalizing healthcare for transgender youth, stopping access to the use of appropriate facilities like restrooms, restricting transgender students’ ability to fully participate in school and sports, allowing religiously-motivated discrimination against trans people, or making it more difficult for trans people to get identification documents with their name and gender. Two of these bills, Alabama’s HB-1 and SB-10, companion bills filed by Rep. Wes Allen and Sen. Shay Shelnutt, would criminalize medical professionals who support transgender youths’ identity forcing them to choose between the possibility of government prosecution or adhering to the evidence-based clinical guidelines of their field. These bills would expressly prohibit the use of puberty-blockers and hormone therapies, and require school counselors to report instances of “gender dysphoria.” They also ban gender-affirmation surgeries or sex-reassignment surgeries on children although such procedures are not performed on minors. If passed through the House of Representatives and State Senate, these bills would make Alabama the first U.S. state to enact an official transgender medical ban. The ban is one of eight anti-trans pieces of legislation being considered by state legislatures across the country. Medical experts and transgender advocates warn criminalizing transgender medical care could lead to a spike in suicides and mental health problems among trans youth.

Since the 1970s, when gay rights began to be enacted in some parts of the country, there has been a conservative backlash. It has happened for every minority that has tried to gain equality. The fight is a long way from being over for the LGBTQ+ community just as it continues to be a struggle for racial and ethnic minorities. Until Congress enacts solid protections for LGBTQ+ individuals and the courts back up those protections, conservatives in the U.S. will continue to find new ways to attack our rights. They will continue to use hate and religion to find exemptions even for protections that already have been enacted. In 1988, only 11 percent of Americans supported same-sex marriage. National support for same-sex marriage’s legal recognition rose above 50 percent for the first time in 2011. Today, the percentage of Americans who support gay marriage is slightly above 70 percent. I believe the most significant roadblock to LGBTQ+ rights are, and will continue to be, religious exemptions. I think the current Supreme Court will uphold religious exemptions. Until that changes, we will not have equality. The only way to end religious discrimination is for religious organizations with tax-exempt status to lose that status because of their discriminatory practices.

As I said at the beginning of Wednesday’s post, every LGBTQ+ generation has faced the difficulty of: if my family finds out I am gay, will they reject me? or if I come out, will my family accept me? Sadly, until there is universal acceptance of the diversity of sexuality, this is unlikely to change. In the seven generations since 1900, each generation has faced its own unique problems with some of those being carried over to other generations. It is paramount that the living generations of the LGBTQ+ community have conversations about what is important to younger gay generations versus those who remember the Stonewall riots and lived through the AIDS crisis. Whether perceived or real, differences between generations have existed long before the term “generation gap” became popular in the 1960s. 

Often, each generation has different views on social, political, cultural, and religious issues. LGBTQ+ generations before Millennials were mostly in the closet and afraid of being outed, losing their job and families, possibly their lives. Many of those generations tried to maintain an appearance of “respectability” by being married and having children. In many ways, Generation X was a transition generation between the old and the new. They were the first to experiment with the internet and begin creating a greater LGBTQ+ community. The gay generations since the Millennials can connect no matter where they live. They never knew a time without the internet and have made the most use of technology. They can be more integrated into the mainstream, and they find it easier to be open about their sexuality within society. They have role models and allies that did not exist for older generations. In my opinion, if we recognize our differences, realize what we have in common, understand our past, and embrace our future, we can come together and be a powerful unstoppable force.

This three-part series of posts is not meant to be an exhaustive look at the problems faced by generations of LGBTQ+ individuals. This final installment is focused on the latest generations growing up in a vastly different world from earlier LGBTQ+ generation, and thus the focus is on how much more still needs to be done.

Generation X, my generation, grew up in a world where gay men were gripped by the fear of AIDS. Contracting HIV, the virus that causes AIDS, was a death sentence. When the AIDS epidemic took hold in the U.S., it surged through communities that the straight world preferred not to see. HIV/AIDS has had a disproportionate impact on certain populations, particularly gay and bisexual men, other men who have sex with men, and racial and ethnic minorities. The AIDS epidemic was ignored by the Reagan administration for much of the 1980s even as the spread of the virus grew exponentially. By the fall of 1981, more than 100 AIDS cases had been reported to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). By February 1983, the first 1,000 cases had been reported. The second 1,000 were reported in the next six months, and the third 1,000 before the end of the year. 

By the end of 1984, AIDS had ravaged the United States for at least three years affecting approximately 7,700 people and killing more than 3,500. It is possible AIDS had been present and unseen for years before that. Scientists had identified the cause of HIV/AIDS, and the CDC had identified all its major transmission routes. Yet, US leaders mainly remained silent and unresponsive to the health emergency. It wasn’t until September 1985, four years after the crisis began, that President Reagan first publicly mentioned AIDS. But by then, AIDS was already a full-blown epidemic. By the late 1980s, cases had been reported from every state. It took eight years (until August 1989) for the first 100,000 cases to be reported; the second 100,000 were reported in just two years (by November 1991). The half-million total was passed in October of 1995. The cumulative total of cases through December 2001 was 816,149, of whom 666,026 (81.6%) were men, 141,048 (17.3%) were women, and 9,074 (1.1%) were children under age 13.

The stigma and discrimination associated with AIDS and gay men were overwhelming. Public response was negative in the early years of the epidemic. In 1983, a doctor in New York was threatened with eviction leading to the first AIDS discrimination lawsuit. Bathhouses across the country closed due to high-risk sexual activity. Some schools barred children with HIV from attending. When Congress held its first hearing on AIDS in 1982, only a single reporter showed up. In a House floor speech, Representative Bill Dannemeyer of California read graphic descriptions of homosexual sex acts. The actions and words of the powerful politician had a stifling effect on other Republicans inclined to help deal with the epidemic. Conservative politicians pushed for government registration of AIDS patients. In 1987, the United States placed a travel ban on visitors and immigrants with HIV. President Obama lifted this ban in 2010.

In early 1985, the CDC finally developed the nation’s first AIDS prevention plan spearheaded by epidemiologist, Dr. Donald Francis. Washington leaders ultimately rejected it on February 4, 1985. Dr. Francis later recounted in an article in the Journal of Public Health Policy that Dr. John Bennett, the CDC’s central coordinator for AIDS and the AIDS Task Force chairman, told him: “Don, they rejected the plan. They said, ‘Look pretty and do as little as you can.'” On September 17, 1985, President Reagan finally, publicly mentioned AIDS when responding to a reporter’s question. He called it a “top priority” and defended his administration’s response and research funding. On October 2, Congress allocated nearly $190 million for AIDS research—$70 million more than the administration’s request. That same day, actor Rock Hudson, Reagan’s close personal friend, died from AIDS dragging the disease into the public’s eye. 

In 1986, reports from the Institute of Medicine/National Academy of Science and Reagan’s Surgeon General, C. Everett Koop, advocated for a coordinated response to AIDS. Under pressure, Reagan appointed a commission to investigate the epidemic. Towards the end of 1987, the country began taking steps to raise AIDS awareness by sponsoring AIDS Awareness Month, launching the “America Responds to AIDS” advertising campaign, and mailing the Surgeon General’s findings to every American household. Reagan’s response to AIDS should sound familiar. Our former, twice-impeached president used a similar tactic during the COVID pandemic. Take, for example, the following early response of the Reagan administration. During an October 1982 White House press briefing, Conservative journalist Lester Kinsolving questioned Larry Speakes, President Reagan’s press secretary, about the president’s reaction to AIDS which was then affecting some 600 people. When Kinsolving mentioned the disease was known as the “gay plague,” the press pool erupted in laughter. Rather than providing a substantive answer, Speakes said, “I don’t have it,” sparking more laughter. He then proceeded to question Kinsolving multiple times about whether he had AIDS. 

It became a joke for the Religious Right. When religious people found out you were gay, you often got the response, “I hope you die of AIDS” or “You’ll die of AIDS soon enough.” Families rejected their gay sons, and even more so if they had AIDS. The church of a cousin of mine who was gay and died of AIDS, refused to allow his funeral at the church or to allow him burial in the cemetery. The family never admitted he died of AIDS. But I knew. My aunt (it was her stepson) had told my mother the name of his doctor. He was the only doctor in Montgomery who would see AIDS patients. Being gay was not only the worst thing you could be, but many like me were raised to believe all gay people died of AIDS. It scared me into the closet for years.

Things slowly began to change as antiviral medications advanced, and AIDS was no longer a death sentence. In 1988, the World Health Organization organized the first World AIDS Day to raise awareness of the spreading pandemic. In May 1996, the U.S. Supreme Court decided in Romer v. Evans that Colorado’s 2nd amendment denying gays and lesbians protections against discrimination was unconstitutional. In April 2000, Vermont became the first state in the US to legalize civil unions and registered partnerships between same-sex couples. In 2003, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in Lawrence v. Texas that sodomy laws in the U.S. were unconstitutional. In 2004, Massachusetts became the first state to legalize gay marriage. The state supreme court found the prohibition of gay marriage unconstitutional because it denied the dignity and equality of all individuals. In the following six years, New Hampshire, Vermont, Connecticut, Iowa, and Washington D.C. followed suit. 

This three-part series of posts is not meant to be an exhaustive look at the problems faced by generations of LGBTQ+ individuals. This second part largely focuses on the impact of the AIDS epidemic on Generation X, but the AIDS crisis affected all living generations of LGBTQ+ individuals.

Every generation of gay men has faced the difficulty of: if my family finds out I am gay, will they reject me? or if I come out, will my family accept me? These questions are a near-universal fear even when someone has liberal parents or even gay parents. In the seven generations since 1900, each generation has faced its unique problems. Although some of these problems may be shared by several generations, each generation has its own fundamental issue which it faced. The seven living generations of Americans are usually defined as the following although some disagreement still exists within the dates: 

• The Greatest Generation (born 1901-27)
• The Silent Generation (born 1928-45)
• Baby Boomers (born 1946-64)
• Generation X (born 1965-80)
• Millennials (born 1981-97)
• Generation Z (born 1998-2010) 
• The burgeoning Generation Alpha (born 2011-25)

The Greatest Generation and the Silent Generation, those who fought in World War I, World War II, and Korea, faced what became known as the Lavender Scare. It mainly refers to gay men who worked in the federal government, and meant they were marked for life as a homosexual. 

In 1947, at the beginning of the Cold War, the State Department had begun campaigns to rid the department of communists and gay men. Before the Lavender Scare and post-World War II, gay men from rural towns had begun to congregate in cities where they could keep their anonymity. However, this newfound peace and community were disturbed in 1947 when the United States Park Police created a Sex Perversion Elimination Act primarily targeting these communities in parks. At least five hundred people were arrested, and police charged seventy-six. The fear of communism led to a hysteria attacking all communities which were different.

The fear of communism was first seen from 1917-1920 in the First Red Scare which followed the 1917 Bolshevik Russian Revolution and the subsequent wave of Communist revolutions throughout Europe and beyond. The Second Red Scare (1947-1957) was popularly known as “McCarthyism” after Senator Joseph McCarthy. McCarthyism coincided with an increased fear of communist espionage that resulted from increasing tension in the Cold War. This fear was compounded when several high-ranking U.S. government officials confessed to being spies for the Soviet Union. By the time of this Second Red Scare, interrogations of one’s sexuality had become routine in the 1950s’/1960s’ federal workplace. Questions like “Do you identify as a homosexual or have you ever had same-sex sexual relations?” became commonplace as employers attempted to root out gay employees. The U.S. government feared that gay diplomats or intelligence operatives were particularly susceptible to blackmail by communist agents. This period became known as the Lavender Scare—a period of interrogation and firing of gay civil servants. The prohibition of gays working for the government continued through the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991. 

The Lavender Scare made being publicly gay difficult. Although gay men were largely closeted before the Lavender Scare, being publicly gay during the 1950s was challenging and near impossible without significant consequences. Not only were gay federal employees fired, but many others were also fired for “guilt of association,” knowing someone who was gay. Because of the resulting stigma within the federal government as well as in larger public culture, many of the federal investigations and resulting firings lead to dismissed employees’ suicides—most of which were later covered up by federal interrogators. Several gay people later stepped up to challenge the federal government’s “sexual perversion” components including civil servant Frank Kameny who took his case to the Supreme Court. Although Kameny lost, a few federal courts began ruling in his favor by 1969. More gay rights organizations also developed such as the Mattachine Society (1950), and the Daughters of Bilitis (1955) founded by lesbians. The Lavender Scare’s effects, however, were long-lasting.

The Lavender Scare not only broke up and quieted the cities’ queer communities which were afraid of federal employment discrimination and potential hate crime, but it also resulted in a largely conservative, homogenous culture within the government. While most federal organizations eventually overturned their policies on gay and lesbian discrimination, the FBI, NSA, and the State Department banned gay men and women into the 1990s until President Bill Clinton officially overturned these rules in 1995. Later, as recent as 2015, Secretary of State John Kerry apologized to the LGBT community on behalf of the federal government’s Lavender Scare interrogations, stating: “I apologize to those who were impacted by the practices of the past and reaffirm the department’s steadfast commitment to diversity and inclusion for all our employees, including members of the LGBTI community.”

Baby Boomers continued to face discrimination in the federal workplace, but they appeared to be making some strides. The late 1960s and 1970s saw the beginnings of the gay liberation movement which had its spark in events like the Compton’s Cafeteria Riot (1966), the Stonewall Riots (1969), and the American Psychiatric Association vote to remove homosexuality from its list of mental illnesses (1973). Before these events—that led to Kathy Kozachenko becoming the first openly gay American elected to public office (1974) or Harvey Milk winning a seat on the San Francisco Board of Supervisors (1977)—being gay, or committing sodomy, was criminal in most states. The sexual revolution of the 1960s did not extend to the gay community. Even when things began to change in larger cities, there was a backlash. On June 24, 1973, someone burned down the UpStairs Lounge in New Orleans. Thirty-two people died, and at least 15 were injured as the result of fire or smoke inhalation. Until the 2016 Orlando nightclub shooting, in which 49 people were murdered, the UpStairs Lounge arson attack was the deadliest known attack on a gay club in U.S. history.

In 1977, singer and conservative Southern Baptist Anita Bryant led a successful campaign with the “Save Our Children” crusade to repeal a gay rights ordinance in Dade County, Florida. Bryant faced severe backlash from gay rights supporters across the U.S., but to little avail. The gay rights ordinance would not be reinstated in Dade County until December 1, 1998, more than 20 years later. On November 27, 1978, former city supervisor Dan White assassinated Harvey Milk. White was convicted of voluntary manslaughter and sentenced to only seven years in prison. The late 1960s and 1970s were a period of ups and downs for gay men and women in America. By 1980, there looked like there would be real change as The Democratic Rules Committee stated it would not discriminate against homosexuals. At their National Convention on August 11-14, the Democrats became the first major political party to endorse a homosexual rights platform. Then tragedy struck; the gay men of the Baby Boomer generation saw their world come crashing down. On July 3, 1981, the New York Times printed the first story about a rare pneumonia and skin cancer found in forty-one gay men in New York and California. The CDC initially referred to the disease as GRID, Gay Related Immune Deficiency Disorder. When doctors found the symptoms outside the gay community, Bruce Voeller, a biologist, and the National Gay Task Force founder, successfully lobbied to change the disease’s name to AIDS.

This three-part series of posts is not meant to be an exhaustive look at the problems faced by generations of LGBTQ+ individuals. Furthermore, this first part largely focuses on gay men.