--- title: History You Didn't Learn About the Anti-Gay Lavender Scare description: We learn about the Red Scare in school, but not about the Lavender Scare, the policy that discriminated against gay government employees canonical: https://time.com/5922679/lavender-scare-history/ author: Suyin Haynes article:opinion: false article:content_tier: free article:published_time: 2020-12-22T14:11:33.000Z article:modified_time: 2026-10-14T09:08:45.968Z article:section: History og:title: The Anti-Gay 'Lavender Scare' Is Rarely Taught in Schools og:description: Under President Eisenhower, the investigation, interrogation and removal of gay men and lesbians from the federal government became policy og:url: https://time.com/5922679/lavender-scare-history/ og:site_name: TIME og:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt2a07156ea9f4b864/698a1571011682b4cc980265/lavender-scare-white-house-picket.jpg?branch=production&width=1024&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 og:image:width: 1024 og:image:height: 576 og:image:alt: Demonstrators Protesting Treatment of Homosexual in the Military og:type: article twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:title: The Anti-Gay 'Lavender Scare' Is Rarely Taught in Schools twitter:description: Under President Eisenhower, the investigation, interrogation and removal of gay men and lesbians from the federal government became policy twitter:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt2a07156ea9f4b864/698a1571011682b4cc980265/lavender-scare-white-house-picket.jpg?branch=production&width=1024&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 ---  # You've Probably Heard of the Red Scare, but the Lesser-Known, Anti-Gay 'Lavender Scare' Is Rarely Taught in Schools > Sponsored content. 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They are at time.com/newsletters and are separate from a paid subscription. ### Sources * TIME Newsletters: [time.com/newsletters](/c/time-sub-2026q3/newsletters?i=93a508f1-191d-4cdb-8dba-fcb042432d15&cr=time-sub-2026q3-v1) * TIME Subscriptions: [time.com/subscribe-agent](/c/time-sub-2026q3/subscribe?i=93a508f1-191d-4cdb-8dba-fcb042432d15&cr=time-sub-2026q3-v1) ## Video: The History You Didn't Learn: The Lavender Scare [Watch (HLS stream): The History You Didn't Learn: The Lavender Scare](https://cdn.jwplayer.com/manifests/7jWjdOdm.m3u8) (9:50)  _Published 2020-12-22. The History You Didn't Learn is a series that sheds light on past events that may have been omitted, misleading, or just downright wrong in our history education in school._ by [Suyin Haynes](https://time.com/author/suyin-haynes/) and [Video by Arpita Aneja](https://time.com/author/arpita-aneja/) Dec 22, 2020 2:11 PM UTC The History You Didn't Learn is a series that sheds light on past events that may have been omitted, misleading, or just downright wrong in our history education in school. by [Suyin Haynes](https://time.com/author/suyin-haynes/) and [Video by Arpita Aneja](https://time.com/author/arpita-aneja/) Dec 22, 2020 2:11 PM UTC Six years into his career as a linguist at the National Security Agency in 1980, Jamie Shoemaker was called into the office of the Agency’s security apparatus. “They read me my rights,” he recalls, “and they said ‘we understand you’re leading a gay lifestyle.’ And I remember saying, ‘well, I didn’t think I was leading it, but yes, I’m gay.’” It was made clear to Shoemaker that he couldn’t keep his top secret security clearance, and he was taken to a nearby facility where he was separated from his fellow employees. For the next four months, Shoemaker didn’t work while his bosses came to a decision. Eventually, personnel officers told him that he was going to be fired. What happened to Shoemaker in 1980 was the continuation of a policy launched nearly 30 years earlier, in 1953\. Under President Dwight D. Eisenhower’s Executive Order 10450, the investigation, interrogation and systematic removal of gay men and lesbians from the federal government became policy. Known as the “[Lavender Scare](https://www.archives.gov/publications/prologue/2016/summer/lavender.html),” the policy was based on the unfounded fear that gay men and lesbians “posed a threat to national security because they were vulnerable to blackmail and were considered to have weak moral characters,” says historian David K. Johnson. According to him, this aspect of American history has largely been overlooked. Similar to Sen. Joseph McCarthy’s fear-mongering “Red Scare” campaign in the early 1950s, which targeted alleged subversive communists working in the federal government, thousands of government employees were forced out of their jobs as a result of the anti-gay policy. And while American students might learn more about the Red Scare or study McCarthyism in school, Johnson says that without learning about the Lavender Scare, they’re only hearing part of the story. “It’s important to remember that the Cold War was perceived as a kind of moral crusade,” says Johnson, whose 2004 book _The Lavender Scare_ popularized the phrase and is widely regarded as the first major historical examination of the policy and its impact. The political and moral fears about alleged subversives became intertwined with a backlash against homosexuality, as gay and lesbian culture had grown in visibility in the post-war years. The Lavender Scare tied these notions together, conflating gay people with communists and alleging they could not be trusted with government secrets and labelling them as security risks, even though there was no evidence to prove this. “It’s a classic case of scapegoating,” says Johnson. Every government employee was subject to a security investigation, and sometimes the impact could be devastating. Employees were questioned without an attorney, in what many described as an invasive experience where they were asked intimate questions about their private sexual lives. During research for his book, Johnson found many examples of employees who “voluntarily resigned” after they had been interrogated, and others who took their own lives. Johnson estimates that somewhere between 5,000 and 10,000 people lost their jobs as a result of the Lavender Scare, although it is difficult to know the true number of people affected, as the policy acted as a deterrent to any gay man or lesbian woman who would have been prospective candidates for government jobs. According to a [1983 oral history interview](https://oac.cdlib.org/findaid/ark:/13030/kt4779s1bc/entire%5Ftext/) with drag king Rusty Brown, who served in the Navy, the fear went even beyond Washington, permeating the entertainment industry in Hollywood and the bars and nightclubs in New York City, as people were afraid they would be fired if their employers found out they were gay. “The question of how many people were fired doesn’t really even capture the extent to which this affected people’s lives,” says Josh Howard, the filmmaker of the 2017 documentary _The Lavender Scare_, which was based on Johnson’s book. One man, [Frank Kameny](http://content.time.com/time/specials/packages/article/0,28804,2101745%5F2102136%5F2102228,00.html), was fired from his role in the Army Map Service in 1957 because of his sexuality. He decided to fight the decision, framing the discrimination against him as a civil rights issue rather than an alleged national security issue. By 1965, Kameny and other gay men and lesbians were picketing outside the White House and helping other fired employees with their court cases. And although in 1975 the Civil Service Commission announced new rules that meant gay people could no longer be barred or fired from federal employment because of their sexuality, discrimination continued in other agencies where employees had security clearance, like the NSA, where Shoemaker worked. It was Kameny who Shoemaker turned to for advice when he was told he was at risk of losing his job. With the civil rights activist’s help, [Shoemaker became the first gay employee at the NSA](https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/politics/1980/12/30/homosexual-to-keep-high-security-job/b181c531-9bdd-4e2c-801b-628637748850/) to keep their job and their security clearance after such an investigation, under the condition that he told his family he was gay. It was only in 1995 that President Bill Clinton signed an executive order banning discrimination based on sexual orientation in the granting of security clearances, and in 1998 that such discrimination was banned in government employment. And although Pete Buttigieg was recently announced as president-elect Joe Biden’s pick for Transportation Secretary, which would make him the first openly gay Cabinet member, discrimination against members of the LGBTQ community is still present in current U.S. government policy. In 2017, the Trump administration announced a [ban on transgender people serving in the military](https://time.com/5721582/transgender-military-veterans-day/), denying transgender people the ability to enlist in the Armed Services and subjecting any transgender person who is currently serving to discharge for being transgender. For Alonna Lovanh, an active duty U.S. sailor from Des Moines, Iowa, the current ban threw her and other service members into disarray and uncertainty. “I hope that people recognize that being transgender does not make us any different, it just makes us who we are,” she says. “We are who we are, and it will not change what we do or how we act.” For Jennifer L. Levi, the director of Transgender Rights Project at GLBTQ Legal Advocates & Defenders who is representing a number of individuals challenging the ban, there are several similarities between the Lavender Scare and the current military policy. “The goal in both of those was to demonize a community. It was to send a message that it’s not OK to be who you are. And it was effective,” she says, adding that the consequences of the current policy have been devastating and harmful for service members. Like most Americans, Levi didn’t learn about the Lavender Scare as a student. But today**,** she derives inspiration from looking at how civil rights activists organized in response to it, and sees the importance of the history that preceded her. “It really makes me see what’s possible,” she says. “That they could live through what they lived through and come out as the brave and strong activists as they were, gives me courage to do the work that I do.” ## Transcript [00:00] I was flown to Washington for the first time, for interviews, they polygraphed me. They [00:07] asked me if I'd ever had sex with anyone of the same gender. Well, at that time I hadn't. [00:14] And so I replied no. But it caused the needle to go up and down quite a bit. But I danced [00:21] around it and I got hired. And the subject didn't come up again until six years later [00:28] when they essentially arrested me. [00:45] When you learned about the 1950s in history class, you probably covered McCarthyism and [00:51] The Red Scare, when the government rounded up anyone they suspected of being a communist [00:56] and put them on trial. But you might not have learned about The Lavender Scare, when possibly [01:01] thousands of people were fired from government jobs for being gay. [01:05] The Lavender Scare was this fear that really permeated American culture in the 1950s, during [01:11] the Cold War. It was this fear that gay men and Lesbians had infiltrated the federal government. [01:17] And it really gets started by Joseph McCarthy and his rhetoric about subversives in the [01:21] State Department. Communists were not the only people he was concerned about. He was [01:26] concerned about homosexuals there as well. [01:29] It was believed that gay men and lesbians were a threat to national security because [01:34] they were in the closet. Presumably subject to blackmail by foreign agents. [01:42] And once gay people were portrayed as disloyal, the Red Scare morphed into the Lavender Scare. [01:49] There was not a single example of one American citizen who had betrayed government secrets [01:56] under blackmail. And yet there was this government policy that excluded all gay men and lesbians [02:03] from government jobs. [02:08] It really set off this witch hunt within the federal government and then beyond, to track [02:15] down gay men and lesbians and remove them from any positions within the government. [02:22] Every government employee under the Eisenhower Security Program was subject [02:26] to a security investigation. [02:30] if there was anything suspicious in your record, if you were a female employee and you wore [02:36] unusual clothing or you got a lot of calls from women, the security officials would start [02:42] investigating. They would talk to neighbors and coworkers and family members and former [02:46] bosses as part of what they called a full field investigation. [02:51] And if they had reason to believe you were gay, they would call you into their offices. [02:56] They would interrogate you. Usually the first question was, "The Civil Service Commission [03:01] has information that you are a homosexual. What comment do you care to make about this?" [03:08] And people didn't know what to do. [03:12] It's impossible to know how many people were affected by this policy because many people [03:16] were forced to resign voluntarily rather than risk exposure by fighting back. [03:21] And beyond just losing their jobs, some lost their lives [03:26] I found evidence in the National Archives that a guy named Andrew Ference who worked [03:31] in the U.S. Embassy in Paris. It was his dream job. [03:36] He had a partner that he lived with. I'm not sure how they found out, but they interrogated [03:42] him about his relationship with his roommate. Quite intensely. And after one of those interrogations, [03:48] he went home to their apartment in Paris, and he turned on the gas oven and [03:53] asphyxiated himself. [03:57] The effect of the Lavender Scare is that the gay community is really under siege [04:05] This government policy kind of emboldened police forces all over the country. [04:11] They saw it as their duty to help arrest these people, and they would funnel names to the [04:18] Civil Service Commission. [04:20] So the gay community in the '50s is kind of living in fear. [04:25] You didn't know who your friends were. And you had to be very, very careful. [04:32] The hunt for communists led by Joseph McCarthy ended in 1957, but the persecution of gay [04:38] people in government continued for decades after. [04:41] It becomes part of the standard government policy and is there until a few courageous [04:49] gay people and women start fighting it. [04:52] Frank Kameny is fired in 1957. He's this PhD [04:56] from Harvard in astronomy. He gets a government job with the Army Map Service, and they fired [05:00] him, and he's kind of a nerdy scientist. He doesn't understand why the government is interested [05:04] in his sex life. [05:06] And so he fights it, he thinks it’s a mistake. [05:08] He writes all kinds of letters and gets nowhere. He decides to sue the federal government, [05:14] to take them to court. And loses. He tries to take it to the Supreme Court, when he loses. [05:15] But in the process of doing that, he writes his own brief where he explains his point [05:21] of view. And he says, "Well, this is not really about national security. This is not really [05:27] about morality. He says, "This is about civil rights. This is about my civil rights. I'm [05:32] being treated as a second-class citizen.” [05:35] But he perseveres. He forms an organization in Washington, DC. By 1965, they're picketing [05:41] in front of the White House. The first time openly gay men, lesbians all claiming they're [05:47] being treated wrongly by the federal government. [05:50] And by 1969, they're winning cases. The federal courts say to the Civil Service Commission, [05:56] you can't prove a connection between these people's off-duty conduct or their sexual [06:02] orientation and their ability to perform their jobs. And so you have to end this policy. [06:07] The Civil Service Commision changed its policy in 1975, but agencies that required security [06:14] clearances, like the NSA and FBI, continued to discriminate until president Bill Clinton [06:19] signed two executive orders banning discrimination based on sexual orientation in government [06:24] employment and the granting of security clearances. [06:27] So it's not until the '90s that the policy finally ends. And it's because of this [06:33] activism by gays and lesbians. [06:36] It’s also thanks to this activism that Jamie Shoemaker, a former linguist for the national [06:42] security agency was able to get his job back after losing it in 1980. [06:47] They read me my rights and said we understand you're leading a gay lifestyle. [06:52] They removed my badge. And they said they would adjudicate the case, and they would [06:56] discuss it at the upper levels and reach some sort of decision. [07:02] Shoemaker then got in touch with Frank Kameny who took on his case. it took months of fighting [07:06] the decision before shoemaker had a chance of getting his job back with the condition [07:11] that he tell his family he was gay. He accepted. [07:15] All of them responded absolutely positively. They did not know I was gay. But they didn't [07:21] feel that it altered anything. [07:23] And very shortly after, I was sitting back at my desk. [07:29] Even today as the Senate seems poised to confirm a first openly gay cabinet member, there are [07:35] still so many examples of discrimination against lgbtq people. [07:50] There are thousands of transgender people who currently serve, including in combat conditions, [07:55] and so to have the President of the United States announce a ban on transgender people [08:00] serving was devastating, not just to those individuals who are currently serving and [08:05] those who are looking to serve their country, but also to the military itself. [08:10] The decision came so abruptly and it created a mass confusion. And because of that confusion [08:16] I didn’t know what I was going to do. But I persevered to stay in and made sure I was [08:22] doing my part cuz I was never going to be a burden just because of who I am [08:28] Alonna Lavonh joined the Navy as a sailor in 2017, right after the obama administration [08:33] ended the restrictions that prevented transgender people from openly serving. Because she was [08:38] openly serving before the ban, she has so far not been personally affected, but says [08:43] she sees the impact it had on the military as a whole. [08:47] it was very heartbreaking. I feel like it has majorly lessened our forces. [08:53] personally I have heard you know people say oh, because you’re trans and trying to be [08:58] in the military, oh, you know you’ll be gone because of your surgery. [09:00] And yet, I have not seen anybody trans, gay, lesbian, etc, show any [09:09] reasons of why they could not serve. [09:13] I do see parallels between the Lavender Scare and the transgender military ban. The goal [09:19] in both of those was to demonize a community. It was to send a message that it's not okay [09:25] to be who you are. And it was effective. Because we know that there are a lot of people who [09:31] in military service who are transgender, who haven't been able to be open about their lives [09:35] and who risked their futures in government service if they were to be out. 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