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Chicago Tribune
27-06-2025
- Politics
- Chicago Tribune
Madelyn Harrington: What a forgotten civil rights advocate can teach us about studying LBGTQ+ history
Bruce Scott's only obituary was published in the Tribune on Dec. 30, 2001. A meager recounting of his family, friends and neighborhood, the final sentence bluntly tells readers, 'No services will be held.' It's a sparse account for the plaintiff in one of the first successful cases in U.S. history defending gay Americans from discrimination. Four years before the Stonewall uprising, Scott's case created critical protections for gay federal employees and helped end the Lavender Scare, the Cold War campaign to remove gay workers from the federal government. Despite his contributions to gay history, searching for Scott's name online returns but a scant trace. So where did Scott go? Bruce Chardon Scott was born in 1912 and raised on Chicago's South Side. After graduating from college and serving in the Army, he built a career with the Department of Labor in Washington, D.C. For years, he navigated a quiet dual life: a dedicated civil servant and a gay man whose community was Washington's queer nightlife. In February 1956, Scott's careful balance was upturned when his boss came to him with a warning to resign. A security clearance check had found a 1947 arrest for loitering in D.C.'s Lafayette Square, then a known cruising ground for gay men and, as Scott had learned, a site for police entrapment schemes. Though he had not propositioned the undercover officer, he was nonetheless booked. Nine years later, it outed him. Scott became one of thousands of victims of the Lavender Scare. Barred from working for the government or federal contractors, Scott was ineligible for almost any local work. He was plunged into poverty, with years of underpaying jobs, each of which fired him when his arrest came to light. Sometimes, Scott lived on just 50 cents a day. The Virginia home he was building became a leaky, half-finished monument to a life he was no longer allowed to live. But Scott resolved to fight — by suing the U.S. government. In 1961, he wrote to Frank Kameny, a government astronomer who had unsuccessfully fought his termination to the U.S. Supreme Court. Soon, Scott became a founding member of Kameny's Mattachine Society of Washington, a historic organization that popularized gay pride. Scott, under a pseudonym, helped frame its constitution. Scott began to lay the groundwork for his lawsuit. He reapplied to the Department of Labor and made connections at the nascent American Civil Liberties Union of D.C. As expected, the government rejected him over being gay. In 1962, Scott filed suit with ACLU representation against John Macy, chairman of the U.S. Civil Service Commission, which was implementing the Lavender Scare. The filing of Scott v. Macy brought Scott immediate publicity. In an interview with the Washington Evening Star, Scott said he 'realized that his suit would place him in the spotlight' and proclaimed that he hoped to win and become a symbol for gay advancement in America. The case moved slowly, and in the first ruling, a U.S. District Court judge ruled against Scott. He immediately appealed. In late 1963, Scott left D.C. for Chicago. Hundreds of miles removed from the site of his arrest, Scott was finally able to find employment — though even here, being outed to his workplace would mean termination. The preceding years had cost Scott heavily. Before finding work in Chicago, he lost his house and car to debt collection. So, when Scott discovered that his story was to be featured in Life magazine, he knew the national publicity would mean unemployment and yet worse poverty. Where he once welcomed the spotlight, now he wrote to Life to ask for his name to be removed from his story. In June 1964, the story was published. Scott's name was nowhere to be found. The following year, a U.S. Appeals Court delivered a stunning verdict: 2-to-1 for Scott. It found the government could not disqualify an applicant based on a vague charge of homosexual 'immoral conduct,' without specifying the conduct. For the first time, a court had ruled against the federal government's ability to discriminate against gay workers. Congratulations from gay circles poured in from across the country. Thousands of gay federal employees suddenly had a beachhead against discrimination, but Scott's win could not get him his own job back. Rather than appeal to the Supreme Court and risk a ruling there, the government allowed Scott the legal win, while having the Civil Service Commission immediately reopen a new denial of his employment. Scott was devastated, writing that he was right back to where he started. The ACLU filed a further suit on Scott's behalf, winning on a technicality in 1968, but Scott was tired, wryly noting that the commission was 'free to try a third time to bar me.' They never did, and in an odd sort of truce, Scott never reapplied to the federal government either. Scott's case would eventually help end the Lavender Scare. Other cases built on his victory, including Norton v. Macy in 1969, which alongside Scott established a two-case 'homosexual bill of rights.' But Scott continued to protect his professional life. He performed quiet activism in private gay societies but never again sought the spotlight. Scott's story is a case study in how LGBTQ+ minorities can be lost to history. Scott's obscurity was the price he paid to survive. In an era when queer history is once again a political battleground, remembering Scott is not just an act of history, but also a reminder of the cost of fighting for a better world.
Time Magazine
20-06-2025
- Politics
- Time Magazine
The Lavender Scare and the History of LGBTQ Exclusion
This month, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth announced the Navy would rename the USNS Harvey Milk, named after the assassinated gay-rights icon, Navy Veteran, and San Francisco politician. The decision is the latest in a series of actions by the Trump Administration during its second term that reflect a broader rollback of LGBTQ rights. Since January, the administration has reinstated a ban on transgender military service members, which the Supreme Court has allowed the administration to implement while legal challenges wind through the court system; has ordered the federal government only to recognize two sexes; and has sought to bar transgender athletes from participating in women's sports. According to Gallup, since 2022, Republican support for same-sex marriage has dropped from 55% to 41%. The rollback of LGBTQ rights and inclusion echoes an often overlooked, but deeply consequential, chapter of American history: the Lavender Scare. During the Cold War, U.S. officials branded gay and lesbian Americans as national security threats, fueling a moral panic that reshaped American society and stigmatized countless individuals. The legacy of the Lavender Scare era continues to influence America's culture and political landscape. The Lavender Scare emerged in the early 1950s alongside the Red Scare. But while Red Scare proponents like Senator Joseph McCarthy and others linked homosexuality to communism, the campaign against LGBTQ Americans operated on distinct ideological grounds. A 1950 State Department memo, titled 'Problem of Homosexuals and Sex Perverts in the Department of State,' linked tolerance of 'homosexuality with the accompanying decline of the Egyptian, Greek and Roman Empires' and argued that the United States, as the modern global power, had to purge gay and lesbian individuals to survive the Cold War. The State Department took heed of such harmful, and ahistorical, rhetoric. Read More: The Military's Unexpected Role in Building San Francisco's LBGTQ+ Community That same year, Deputy Undersecretary of State John Peurifoy testified before a Senate subcommittee that while no communists were employed at the State Department, the department had ousted various individuals considered security risks, including 91 people the department deemed homosexuals. Rather than calming fears, Peurifoy's testimony intensified public anxiety. White House Cabinet meetings followed up on the supposed security threats of homosexuality. Newspapers ran stories highlighting the imagined security risks posed by gay and lesbian government workers. Politicians brought the issue to House and Senate floors and committees. On the House floor, Rep. Arthur L. Miller, a Republican from Nebraska warned that while there were 91 of them dismissed in the State Department, there were 'several thousand" more LGBTQ workers employed by the Federal Government. 'I sometimes wonder how many of these homosexuals have….been in sensitive positions and subject to blackmail,' he asked, asserting that "the Russians are strong believers in homosexuality, and that those same people are able to get into the State Department and get somebody in their embrace.' Miller argued that Russian agents could seduce gay and lesbian federal workers in order to blackmail them, exploiting their fear of being outed to force them to betray the United States. 'These people are dangerous. They will go to any limit," summarized Miller. "They are not to be trusted and when blackmail threatens they are a dangerous group.' Officials across the government and journalists repeated the suggestion that Soviet agents could threaten to out, or blackmail, gay and lesbian government workers if they refused to collaborate. Yet, no evidence ever surfaced that any gay or lesbian government worker had betrayed the U.S. under duress. Nonetheless, in 1953, President Dwight D. Eisenhower signed Executive Order 10450, declaring 'sexual perversion,' a euphemism for homosexuality, a national security risk. The order authorized invasive investigations, surveillance, and dismissals across federal agencies and the military. By the end of the decade, an estimated 7,000 to 10,000 individuals accused of being homosexual had been fired or forced to resign, often ruining the lives of dedicated civil servants. But the Lavender Scare spread far beyond the federal government. With discrimination being not only encouraged but legal, businesses increasingly refused to hire queer people, stripping them of dignity and opportunity without any legal recourse. Municipal governments and postal authorities cracked down on queer literature. Newspapers, magazines, and tabloids often tied homosexuality to criminality and even equated queer people to pedophiles and murderers. Some newspapers even published the names and addresses of those arrested for consensual same-sex acts, leading to job loss, public shaming, and, in some tragic cases, suicide. Read More: The Miami Museum Showcasing LGBTQ Histories The anti-LGBTQ campaign also reshaped the cultural norms of minority communities. Many working-class Black neighborhoods before the 1950s had a culture of queer acceptance. Harlem's drag ball culture, for example, thrived from the 1920s through the early 1950s. Transgender people, drag queens, and drag kings participated openly in public life. Black newspapers and magazines promoted drag balls as community events in Harlem and other places such as Chicago, Washington D.C., and Baltimore. As the Civil Rights Movement gained momentum, however, many Black leaders embraced white, middle-class norms—including heteronormativity—as a strategy for advancing desegregation and civil rights for the larger Black community. Bayard Rustin, an openly gay Civil Rights leader and the organizer of the 1963 March on Washington, was often sidelined from playing a more prominent role in the Civil Rights Movement because of his sexuality, despite his political talents. Even Martin Luther King, Jr., while hiring Rustin as a close advisor and collaborator, began to publicly distance himself from queer people because, as Rustin observed, it became 'a problem for the movement.' Rustin noted King's other advisors 'felt I was a burden.' To insulate King from critique, Rustin chose to resign from the Southern Christian Leadership Conference although he remained a close collaborator of MLK. The influence of the Lavender Scare on Black leaders' public perception of queer people is evident in an advice column King wrote for Ebony. In 1958, an advice seeker reached out the magazine, writing: 'I am a boy, but I feel about boys the way I ought to feel about girls….Is there any place where I can go for help?' With generally sympathetic words, at least for a national leader during the Lavender Scare era, King responded, 'Your problem is not at all an uncommon one….The type of feeling that you have toward boys is probably not an innate tendency, but something that has been culturally acquired.' King went on, 'I would suggest that you see a good psychiatrist who can assist you.' He assured the writer, 'You are already on the right road toward a solution, since you honestly recognize the problem and have a desire to solve it.' By the mid-1950s, publications like Ebony, as evident with King's advice column, shifted from covering and celebrating Black queer culture to emphasizing Black nuclear families, military service, and economic mobility. During the late 1960s the narratives surrounding the Lavender Scare began to unravel under queer liberation movements. Black and Latino activists played a central role in increasing the visibility of LGBTQ communities, bolstered by advocacy from organizations like the Civil Liberties Union. In 1973, the Supreme Court ruled that homosexuality could not justify terminating federal employment. Two years later, in 1975, the Senate disbanded its investigative committee targeting LGBTQ federal workers. While LGBTQ rights saw little advancement during the Reagan and George H.W. Bush administrations, this changed in 1994 when President Bill Clinton Administration's 'Don't Ask, Don't Tell' policy ended the outright ban on LGBTQ military service, even if enforcing silence. The next year, Clinton issued an executive order ending the Lavender Scare-era practice of denying security clearances based on sexual orientation. By 2011, queer people were allowed to openly serve in the military. Finally, in 2017, President Barack Obama entirely nullified Eisenhower's 1953 Executive Order 10450 with his own executive order during his last days in office. The Lavender Scare devastated the lives of queer people and for decades redefined American ideas of citizenship and belonging along narrower parameters. Today's political efforts to purge queer people and curtail their rights are not new—they are part of a longer history of exclusion and marginalization. Understanding that history is essential to confronting the present. Joel Zapata is an Assistant Professor of History and Cairns K. Smith Faculty Scholar at Oregon State University. Made by History takes readers beyond the headlines with articles written and edited by professional historians. Learn more about Made by History at TIME here. Opinions expressed do not necessarily reflect the views of TIME editors.
Reuters
06-06-2025
- Politics
- Reuters
Overview of Federal Actions on LGBTQIA+ Rights Practical Law The Journal
The current Trump administration has enacted policies that significantly lower federal protections for LGBTQIA+ individuals, particularly transgender people. The administration has relied heavily on executive orders and agency directives to affect the rights of LGBTQIA+ individuals as they relate to military service, health care, education, and civil rights enforcement (see, for example, Executive Order 14183, titled 'Prioritizing Military Excellence and Readiness,' and Executive Order 14173, titled 'Ending Illegal Discrimination and Restoring Merit-Based Opportunity'). For most of US history, LGBTQIA+ individuals faced negative treatment in various settings. For example, during World War II, the federal government dishonorably discharged gay individuals from the military. Additionally, from the late 1940s through the 1960s, a time known as the Lavender Scare, the US government either fired or forced gay individuals to resign from government service. (See Nat'l Park Serv.: LGB Military History and Libr. of Cong.: LGBTQIA+ Studies: A Resource Guide.) The modern LGBTQIA+ rights movement is commonly believed to have begun in 1969, when a police raid on the Stonewall Inn in New York City instigated a spontaneous uprising by LGBTQIA+ patrons. The following year, in 1970, the first Pride marches took place in New York, Los Angeles, and Chicago. (Libr. of Cong.: The History of Pride.) Over the course of the movement that continues today, the federal government has taken steps to either expand or contract the rights of LGBTQIA+ individuals. Several times, restrictions imposed by one administration on these rights have been reversed by later administrations, reflecting changing political and social priorities. Major federal milestones in recent history include: Lawrence v. Texas. In 2003, the US Supreme Court struck down sodomy laws nationwide and decriminalized same-sex sexual conduct. In so holding, the Court overturned its 1986 holding in Bowers v. Hardwick (478 U.S. 186 (1986)). It held that an adult's consensual sexual intimacy at home is a vital interest in liberty and privacy that is protected by the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. (539 U.S. 558 (2003).) The repeal of 'Don't Ask, Don't Tell.' In 2010, the Obama administration repealed 'Don't Ask, Don't Tell,' allowing gay, lesbian, and bisexual individuals to serve openly in the US military. The policy had previously been enacted in 1993 and required service members to hide their sexual orientation or face discharge. (US Dep't of Def.: Don't Ask, Don't Tell Resources.) United States v. Windsor. In 2013, the Supreme Court struck down Section 3 of the Defense of Marriage Act (passed by Congress in 1996) that banned federal recognition of same-sex marriages. The Court found that the law violated the Fifth Amendment's guarantee of equal protection. (570 U.S. 744 (2013).) Obergefell v. Hodges. In 2015, the Supreme Court ruled that same-sex marriage is a constitutional right nationwide. It held that the Due Process Clause and the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment guarantee same-sex couples the right to marry. (576 U.S. 644 (2015).) Bostock v. Clayton County. In 2020, the Supreme Court held that Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 shields employees from workplace discrimination based on their sexual orientation or gender identity. The decision extended federal workplace protections for these employees and made it illegal for employers to fire or discriminate against someone for being gay or transgender. (590 U.S. 1731 (2020); for more information, see Sex Discrimination Under Title VII and the EPA and Sexual Orientation and Gender Identity Discrimination Under Title VII on Practical Law.) 303 Creative LLC v. Elenis. In 2023, the Supreme Court ruled that under the First Amendment, the state could not compel a website designer to create work that violated her values. The decision highlighted the tension between free expression and anti-discrimination laws. (600 U.S. 570 (2023).) The Trump administration has rolled back various LGBTQIA+ protections that were enacted by the preceding Biden administration. Additionally, state and local governments continue to pass legislation impacting LGBTQIA+ rights (for more information, see Sexual Orientation and Gender Identity and Expression Discrimination State and Local Laws Chart: Overview on Practical Law). Counsel should stay informed on evolving policies and court rulings under the current administration to effectively advise on LGBTQIA+ rights in areas such as employment, health care, education, and public accommodations. (For resources for counsel to assist employers in addressing sexual orientation and gender identity in the workplace, see Workplace Diversity and Inclusion Toolkit
Yahoo
17-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
Velshi Banned Book Club: ‘Last Night at the Telegraph Club' by Malinda Lo
Written in vivid detail with nuanced characters and artistic restraint characteristic of Lo, the hugely celebrated and widely acclaimed 'Last Night at the Telegraph Club' is a poignant story of self-discovery and first love. Under the heavy shroud of McCarthyism and persecution of LGBTQ+ Americans - known now as the Lavender Scare - Lily bears the weight of her family, her Chinese-American community, her friends, her first love, and her identity. Though the novel tells a very specific story,
Washington Post
07-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Washington Post
Why artists should perform at Trump's Kennedy Center
A number of artists have chosen to pull previously planned acts from the Kennedy Center lineup. Two prominent examples are the tour of Lin-Manuel Miranda's 'Hamilton' and Washington National Opera's production of Gregory Spears and Greg Pierce's 'Fellow Travelers,' an opera about a gay couple trying to find their way during the McCarthy era's Lavender Scare (supported by WNO but withdrawn by members of the creative team). Likewise, some audience members have chosen to shun the venue, regardless of the nature of the performance.
