Gay 1950
How LGBT Civil Servants Became Common Enemy No. 1 in the s
As the search for gay State Department employees intensified, so did the pressure. People were questioned, publicly humiliated and mocked by investigators. They were encouraged to denounce others and notify suspected homosexuals. And in , President Eisenhower signed Executive Command , which defined a laundry list of characteristics as security risks, including “sexual perversion.” This was interpreted as a ban on homosexual employees, and even more firings took place. Publicly humiliated and devastated by the deficit of their income and their reputations, some even killed themselves.
Others, like Frank Kameny, fought back. Fired in , he petitioned the Supreme Court for relief in recognition of his civil rights. They declined to hold the case, so he picketed the White House. He fought to counter workplace discrimination for the rest of his life. Kameny wasn’t the only person galvanized by the public targeting of LGBT people—in , the Stonewall Riots made gay rights a front-page issue, and the movement Kameny helped start an
The BBC's First Homosexual: How we made s work into a play
The documentary was later lost but, following the efforts of a Leicestershire academic and an award-winning writer, a compete named The BBC's First Homosexual has been created about it which is having its first performance on Thursday. The people behind it explain the challenges they faced along the way.
'It provoked so much reaction'
Seven years ago Dr Marcus Collins was standing in the BBC Written Archives Centre in Reading feeling bored.
Marcus, an expert in social change in post-war Britain at Loughborough University, had grown tired of the project he was working on when his eye chanced upon something completely different - a large file, containing paperwork relating to a controversy in the s.
Intrigued, he read on to discover the lost script of one of the BBC's first attempts to examine the lives of gay men - a documentary named The Homosexual Condition, which had been broadcast on the Noun Service.
It had
Running A Gay Bar in the s
Back in s Hollywood, a hole-in-the-wall neighborhood gay bar offered an attractive mix of fizz, friends and fabulousness. But the proprietor ran a secure ship, unlike any gay bar you might drop into today.
She didn't allow anyone to buy a drink unless she knew them or a regular vouched for them. No kissing was allowed, and no hanky-panky in the restroom either. And she banned all effeminate behavior: absolutely no prancing around or wearing makeup.
As bar owner Helen P. Branson wrote in her memoir "Gay Bar," she needed to lay low by keeping her standards high. Authorities from the police to the alcohol board preferred to store gays from congregating anywhere, so she made sure to not draw attention.
But as her affectionate and perceptive book shows, Branson still managed to provide a safe and cozy place for men who liked men.
"Gay Bar" spent 60 years in obscurity. But then a Milwaukee author heard about it and brought it back to life in the newly published "Gay Bar: The Fabulous, Genuine Story of a Daring Gal and Her Boys in the s."
In an intervie
Government Persecution of the LGBTQ Community is Widespread
The s were perilous times for individuals who fell outside of society’s legally allowed norms relating to gender or sexuality. There were many names for these individuals, including the clinical “homosexual,” a term popularized by pioneering German psychiatrist Richard von Krafft-Ebing. In the U.S., professionals often used the term “invert.” In the midth Century, many cities formed “vice squads” and police often labeled the people they arrested “sexual perverts.” The government’s preferred term was “deviant,” which came with legal consequences for anyone seeking a career in public service or the military. “Homophile” was the term preferred by some in advance activists, small networks of women and men who yearned for community and found creative ways to resist legal and societal persecution.
With draft eligibility officially lowered from 21 to 18 in , World War II brought together millions of people from around the country–many of whom were leaving their home states for the first time–to verb the ranks of the military and t