U.S. State Department apologizes for decades of anti-LGBT discrimination

On behalf of the U.S. State Department, John Kerry has issued a formal apology for the department's pattern of discrimination against LGBT employees during a period beginning in the 1940s and stretching for decades.

Sen. Ben Cardin, D-Md., had asked the secretary of state for such an apology in late November, calling the historical discrimination "un-American and unacceptable."

The Washington Blade reported on Cardin's request in early December, noting at the time that the State Department said it was preparing a response.

The mass purge of gay staffers during the mid-20th century was known as the "Lavender Scare," which coincided with the "Red Scare."

Author Eric Berkowitz, speaking to Terry Gross on Fresh Air in 2015, said the systematic discrimination against gay people in that era has "gotten short shrift in the popular imagination."

At the same time as the persecution of alleged communists, "there was no less energetic a hunt to root out what were called 'perverts' ... from the federal government," he said.

And it started in the State Department, explains David Johnson, the author of The Lavender Scare. He says that in the '40s, the State Department was already systematically firing gay employees.

Then, in 1950, Joseph McCarthy claimed to have a list of communists in the State Department. In an attempt to defend itself against the charges, the department pointed out that it was working hard to expel "subversives" — by firing gay people. That disclosure kicked off the wider "Lavender Scare."

"The purges begin in the State Department," Johnson says. "And then in the politicized atmosphere of McCarthyism, they doubled down."

In 1953, years after the State Department began firing gay employees, Dwight Eisenhower instituted a nationwide ban on gay men and lesbians working for the federal government. Purges lasted for decades. Careers were destroyed, and some employees committed suicide, Johnson says.

veya_victaous wrote:Joseph McCarthy should really memorialized as the evil piece of shit he was.

what do people think of him in the USA now? is he remembered like Stalin or other evil dictators etc that fought so hard against human rights?

Ben Reilly wrote:

veya_victaous wrote:Joseph McCarthy should really memorialized as the evil piece of shit he was.

what do people think of him in the USA now? is he remembered like Stalin or other evil dictators etc that fought so hard against human rights?

By sane people, yes. There were a few Republicans a few years ago who thought we needed to bring back the days of McCarthy, because of Obama being a Kenyan Muslim and whatnot

Original Quill wrote:

Ben Reilly wrote:

veya_victaous wrote:Joseph McCarthy should really memorialized as the evil piece of shit he was.

what do people think of him in the USA now? is he remembered like Stalin or other evil dictators etc that fought so hard against human rights?

By sane people, yes. There were a few Republicans a few years ago who thought we needed to bring back the days of McCarthy, because of Obama being a Kenyan Muslim and whatnot

There is a very, very splinter group that thinks he was something.  But, McCarthy was an early kind of communist baiter.  Today the whole evil communist thing is gone.  So McCarthy doesn't have any groupies.

In the end, it was like a lot of right wing shit...there was just no there there.  The reason why communism gained a bad reputation was cause of Churchill--he was pathological about the communists.  In the end it was just another kind of socialism...tho Stalin did turn the Soviet Union into a totalitarian state.

veya_victaous wrote:

Original Quill wrote:

There is a very, very splinter group that thinks he was something.  But, McCarthy was an early kind of communist baiter.  Today the whole evil communist thing is gone.  So McCarthy doesn't have any groupies.

In the end, it was like a lot of right wing shit...there was just no there there.  The reason why communism gained a bad reputation was cause of Churchill--he was pathological about the communists.  In the end it was just another kind of socialism...tho Stalin did turn the Soviet Union into a totalitarian state.

even that glosses over the Damage McCarthy did.
he attempted to purge a free society, which of course is an attack of freedom itself, He was much more dangerous and damaging than communism.

it is one of those things that If he were not American/Western, I think he would be more openly acknowledged as a Monster.