Lynn GardnerJul 19, 2023
Annalee Newitz 🍜
The U.S. government has long regarded LGBT people not just as morally abhorrent, but as actual enemies of the state. In 1950, the Senate issued a report on "homosexuals and other sex perverts in government." In 1953, President Eisenhower issued an executive order declaring "sexual perversion" (AKA homosexuality) a "national security risk." It's important to remember that anti-trans ideology grows out of this idea that LGBT people are un-American. #trans #history #lgbtq https://www.archives.gov/publications/prologue/2016/summer/lavender.html
“These People Are Frightened to Death”

Congressional Investigations and the Lavender Scare Summer 2016, Vol. 48, No. 2 By Judith Adkins Enlarge On December 15, 1950, the Hoey committee released this report, concluding that homosexuals were "unsuitable for employment in the Federal Government" and constituted "security risks in positions of public trust." (Records of the U.S. Senate, RG 46) The Red Scare, the congressional witch-hunt against Communists during the early years of the Cold War, is a well-known chapter of American history.

National Archives
Jul 19, 2023 at 6:18pmWeb
Show threadJennifer Kayla | Theogrin 🦊Jul 19, 2023

@annaleen

I still swear this can only really derive from a push for utter homogeneity drawn from the same roots as the very Reich the Allies purportedly obliterated. Fall in line! Do what we tell you to do, and nothing else. Being different means you might join up with OTHER different people, and become A True Threat.

In this, for all of the US' push for a separate identity to Great Britain, they were anything but: the similarities between their revulsion at homosexuality and the decision of the British government to chemically castrate Alan Turing for being gay are stark, evocative, and in every way reflective of the Other Side's dehumanization of people who just didn't fit into a narrow pigeonhole.

Show threadBob Blaskiewicz 🇺🇦 🇨🇦 🇬🇱Jul 19, 2023
@annaleen It was a national security risk because the social costs of being outed made someone liable to blackmail. Sadly the govt's response was not to destigmatize homosexuality but criminalize it.
Show threadAnnalee Newitz 🍜Jul 19, 2023
@rjblaskiewicz it was a pure logic circle, because of course it was the government's criminalization of homosexuality that made it into a blackmail risk
Show threadBob Blaskiewicz 🇺🇦 🇨🇦 🇬🇱Jul 19, 2023

@annaleen

That's some catch, that Catch-22.

Show threadZane SelvansJul 19, 2023
@annaleen @rjblaskiewicz Questions about blackmailable sexual orientation were still on NASA's background check forms as recently as 2008 when I had to get a badge for JPL. It seemed totally bonkers.
Show threadAnnalee Newitz 🍜Jul 19, 2023
@ZaneSelvans wow that is wild
Show threadZane SelvansJul 19, 2023

@annaleen It went all the way to the Supreme Court! I just decided to work from campus instead.

https://www.latimes.com/socal/la-canada-valley-sun/news/tn-vsl-xpm-2008-02-07-lnws-jpllawsuit0207.art-story.html

https://www.science.org/content/article/nasa-scientists-lose-supreme-court-case-background-checks

JPL back to court in background check case

On Feb. 15 Jet Propulsion Laboratory employees will be back in district court concerning their lawsuit against NASA.

La Cañada Valley Sun
Show threadLilyoftheRallyJul 19, 2023
@annaleen Also, this is why Alan Turing took his own life - he was caught being gay.
Show threadnovatorine 🏴🏳️‍⚧️Jul 20, 2023
@annaleen the lavender scare!
Show threadKevin LeecasterJul 20, 2023
@annaleen
I wonder if as much of the homophobia in our government and population here was fostered as was a lot of the racist divisions as part of the Soviet Union's efforts to make the USA weaker?
Show threadAnnalee Newitz 🍜Jul 20, 2023
@GreenFire I wouldn't be surprised
Show threadMyOpinionJul 20, 2023
@annaleen You know who are traitors and very unamerican? The GOP/Nazi party.