i was flown to washington for the first
time
for interviews they polygraphed me
they asked me if i had ever had sex with
anyone
of the same gender well at that time i
hadn't
and so i replied no but it caused the
needle to go up and down
quite a bit i danced around it and i got
hired
and the subject didn't come up again
until
six years later when they essentially
arrested me
[Music]
when you learned about the 1950s in
history class
you probably covered mccarthyism and the
red scare
when the government rounded up anyone
they suspected of being a communist
and put them on trial but you might not
have learned about the lavender scare
when possibly thousands of people were
fired from government jobs for being gay
the lavender scare was this fear that
really permeated
american culture in the 1950s during the
cold war
that gay men and lesbians had
infiltrated the federal government
it really gets started by joseph
mccarthy and his rhetoric about the
subversives in the state department
communists were not the only people he
was concerned about he was concerned
about homosexuals there as well
it was believed that gay men and
lesbians were a threat to national
security because
they were in the closet presumably
subject to blackmail by foreign agents
and once gay people were portrayed as
disloyal the red scare kind of morphed
then into
the lavender scare there was not a
single example of
one american citizen who had betrayed
government secrets
under threat of black men and yet there
was this government policy
that excluded all gay men and lesbians
from
government jobs
it really set off this witch hunt within
the
federal government and then beyond to
track down
gay men and lesbians and remove them
from any
positions within the government
every government employee under the
eisenhower security program
was subject to a security investigation
if there was anything suspicious in your
record
if you're a female employee and you wore
unusual
clothing or you got a lot of calls from
women
the security officials would start
investigating they would talk to
neighbors and co-workers and family
members and former bosses
as part of what they called a full-field
investigation
and if they had reason to believe you
were gay they would call you in
to their offices they would interrogate
you usually the first question was
the civil service commission has
information that you are a homosexual
what comment do you care to make about
this
and people didn't know what to do
it's impossible to know how many people
were affected by this policy because
many people were forced to resign
voluntarily
rather than risk exposure by fighting
back
and beyond just losing their jobs some
lost their lives
i found evidence in the national
archives that a guy named andrew ferenz
he worked in the u.s embassy in paris
it was his dream job he spoke many
languages he'd gotten into the foreign
service
he had a partner that he lived with i'm
not sure how they found out but they
interrogated him about his relationship
with his roommate quite intensely
and after one of those interrogations he
went home to their
apartment in paris and he turned on the
gas oven
and affixiated himself
the effect of the lavender scare is that
the gay community
is really under siege
this government policy emboldened police
forces
all over the country
they saw it as their duty to help arrest
these people and they would funnel names
to the civil service commission
so the gay community in the 50s is kind
of living in fear
you didn't know who your friends were
and you had to be very very
careful
the hunt for communists led by joseph
mccarthy ended in 1957
but the persecution of gay people in
government continued for decades after
it becomes part of the standard
government policy
and is there until a few courageous gay
men
and women start fighting it frank kameny
is fired in 1957 he's this
phd from harvard in astronomy with the
army map service
and they fire him and he's kind of a
nerdy scientist he doesn't understand
why the government is interested in his
sex life
and so he fights it he thinks it's kind
of a mistake she writes all kinds of
letters and
gets nowhere he decides to sue the
federal government and take them to
court
but in the process of doing that he
writes his own brief
where he explains his point of view and
he says
well this is not really about national
security this is not
really about morality this is about
my civil rights i'm being treated as a
second-class citizen
but he perseveres he forms an
organization in washington dc
by 1965 they're picketing in front of
the white house
the first time these are openly gay men
and lesbians
all claiming they're being treated
wrongly by the federal government
and by 1969 they're winning
federal courts say to the civil service
commission you can't prove a connection
between these people's off-duty
conduct and their ability to perform
their jobs
and so you have to end this policy the
civil service commission changed its
policy in 1975
but agencies that required security
clearances like the nsa and fbi
continued to discriminate until
president bill clinton signed two
executive orders banning discrimination
based on sexual orientation in
government employment
and the granting of security clearance
so it's not until the 90s
that the policy finally finally ends and
it's because of this
activism by gays and lesbians
it's also thanks to this activism that
jamie shoemaker
a former linguist for the national
security agency was able to get his job
back
after losing it in 1980 they read me my
rights
and they said we understand you're
leading a gay lifestyle
they've removed my badge and they said
they would adjudicate the case they
would discuss it at the
upper levels and reach some sort of
decision
shoemaker then got in touch with frank
cameney who took on his case
it took months of fighting the decision
before shoemaker had a chance of getting
his job back
with the condition that he tell his
family he was gay
he accepted all of them responded
absolutely positively they did not know
i was gay
but they didn't feel that it altered
anything
and very shortly after
i was sitting back at my desk
even today as the senate seems poised to
confirm a first openly gay cabinet
member
there are still so many examples of
discrimination against lgbtq people
today the president made a big
announcement affecting the lgbtq
community
the president has made the decision to
ban all
transgender people from serving in the
military there are
thousands of transgender people who
currently serve including in combat
conditions
and so to have the president of the
united states announce
a ban on transgender people serving was
devastating not just to those
individuals who are currently serving
and those who are
looking to serve their country but also
to the military itself
the decision came so abruptly and it
created a mass confusion and because of
that confusion i didn't know what i was
going to do
but i persevered to stay in and made
sure i was doing my part
because i was never going to be a burden
just because of who i am
alana lavon joined the navy as a sailor
in 2017
right after the obama administration
ended the restrictions that prevented
transgender people from openly serving
because she was serving before the ban
she has so far not been personally
affected
but says she sees the impact it had on
the military as a whole
it was very heartbreaking i feel like it
has
majorly lessened our forces personally i
have heard
you know people say oh because you're
trans
and trying to be in the military oh you
know you'll be gone because of your
surgeries
and yet i have not seen anybody
trans gay lesbian etc
show any reasons of why they could not
serve
i do see parallels between the lavender
scare and the
transgender military band the goal in
both of those was to demonize
a community it was to send a message
that it's not okay to be who you are
and it was effective because we know
that there are a lot of people
in military service who haven't been
able to be open about their lives and
who risked
their futures in government service if
they were to be out and
it's also true that people's lives were
destroyed because of both
you