Government Witch Hunts and Military Discharges

The increased visibility of the wartime years left gay men and lesbians vulnerable to a postwar reaction. In 1947, as Cold War fears increased, President Truman instituted a "loyalty program" intended to keep Communists and other subversives out of jobs with the government. However, this policy coincided with a growing cultural unease about sexuality and the stability of the nuclear family, and the program soon began targeting gay men and lesbians as subversive and undesirable as federal employees. In 1950, a State Department official testified before Congress that of the people who had lost their jobs due to the new policy, "most were homosexuals."

This testimony ignited a panic over "perverts" and "deviates" in federal employment, and over the next year and a half, more than 60 people a month lost their jobs due to suspected homosexuality.

These figures for the postwar witch hunts do not include men and women purged from the US military. Immediately after the war, the military began discharging gay men and lesbians at higher rates than during the wartime years. Between 1947 and 1950, an average of 1,000 men and women a month were being discharged for alleged homosexuality. In 1953, President Eisenhower revised the Security Loyalty Program to explicitly prohibit the employment of "sexual perverts" by the federal government and many state and local governments soon adopted similar policies.

Sources: Hogan/Hudson, Miller, Berube, D'Emilio