Park Police initiated in the city a 'Sex Perversion Elimination Program,' targeting gay men for arrest and intimidation. Certainly this was true in Washington, DC. In this context, greater public awareness of homosexuality coincided with growing unease and, in many parts of the country, an increase in official repression. Also, the country was in the midst of a more general sex-crime panic, stirred up by a few highly publicized cases. This publicity did not, however, make homosexuality more acceptable, in part because virtually no gay people were open about their sexuality.

Alfred Kinsey's Sexual Behavior in the Human Male, published in 1948, became a bestseller and drew attention for its claim that same-sex experiences were relatively common. After the war, young people poured into cities, where density and anonymity made pursuit of same-sex relationships more possible than ever.īy the late 1940s, even the general public was becoming more aware of homosexuality. During World War II, many men and women left behind the restrictions of rural or small-town life for the first time. The purge followed an era in which gay people were increasingly finding each other and forming communities in urban America. Dubbed the Lavender Scare, this wave of repression was also bound up with anti-Communism and fueled by the power of congressional investigation. A second scare of the same era has been much slower to make its way into public consciousness, even though it lasted far longer and directly impacted many more lives.īeginning in the late 1940s and continuing through the 1960s, thousands of gay employees were fired or forced to resign from the federal workforce because of their sexuality. 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. 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.

Homo in world war 2 navy