THE LAVENDER SCARE

How a national fear of communism led to the American government outing and firing thousands of gay and lesbian workers

-  Poppy-Jay St Palmer

What's the difference between a communist and a homosexual? None, according to the United States government during the time of McCarthyism.

You may have heard of the Second Red Scare, an era of US history shortly after the Second World War that saw the nation gripped by an intense fear of communism.

An onslaught of aggressive propaganda led citizens across the United States to become terrified of the idea of communism, anarchism and other extreme left-wing ideologies. Following the mania of the first Red Scare that took place after the First World War, the second entertained the idea that American and foreign communists were infiltrating the federal government to disrupt the American way of life. But with it came another moral panic that has largely been omitted from history.

Known as the Lavender Scare, the next campaign took aim at America's LGBTQ+ community. Its title was in reference to the phrase 'lavender lads', a synonym for gay men that was repeatedly used by a prominent senator at the height of the scare, and 'lavender menace', used by infamous homophobe Anita Bryant to describe lesbians. Throughout the Lavender Scare, it was widely believed that homosexuals had infiltrated the US government and posed a grave threat to national security.

A widespread panic ensued, and the government began harassing and firing those suspected of being LGBTQ+.

POINTING THE FINGER

The national reaction to the notion that homosexuals had infiltrated the government may seem unbelievable by today's standards, but it was the boiling point of a pot of fear that had been simmering for years. In February 1950, Senator Joseph McCarthy gave a speech that chilled the nation to the bone: he claimed that he had a list of 205 Communist Party members who were working and shaping policies in the State Department.