"He's a very talented diplomat, a friend of the Roosevelt family. Sumner Wells, the Under-Secretary of State. And so it's not until the Roosevelt administration that we see a government official being hounded out of office, a high ranking one, actually. And that therefore, that makes them very susceptible to blackmail. And the fears that gay people or, you know, homosexuals with the term that was used at the time are really sexual deviants or perverts, that they have the worst possible secret imaginable and that they would go to any length to keep it. “And this notion of national security becomes a primary concern in Washington. And the reason is because of secrecy, really, the title of my book, and that the United States needs to build a national security bureaucracy for managing secret information, confidential information. But I think what happens around the World War II or around the late FDR period, is that homosexuality goes from being just a sin or a medical condition to becoming a national security threat. And homosexuality was illegal in all 50 states, and it was considered a medical condition. And you can just go back and read the laws that were imposed by the American colonies. “Homosexuality has been condemned in sort of Western civilization or Judeo-Christian civilization and certainly in America for hundreds of years. On Washington D.C.’s gay history, from FDR to Bill Clinton And it sets a very high amount of tension for them working in Washington.” They're forced to construct these closets that they live in. And so you have lots of gay people hiding. It is also the most anti-gay city in America because the federal government doesn't allow gay people to work in these jobs officially. "So that's why I would say it was often the gayest place in America, the gayest city in America. And so particularly with the New Deal and the rise of the federal bureaucracy, you had lots of gay people moving to Washington, particularly from rural areas, trying to escape perhaps more conservative small town life, and seeking a life in the big city, which really is the story of gay people in 20th century America, leaving small towns and coming to big cities. "You also don't have a family to take care of. These are the sorts of jobs that that gay people, I think were sort of uniquely able to do, because when you're living in the closet, you have to be able to master these sorts of traits. There were very few women in any sort of positions of influence. These are the sorts of things that during this era of the '40s to the '90s, I think that gay people and really gay men in particular, because let's not forget, this was an era when men ruled Washington. and, you know, rush over to the Capitol to attend to whatever he needs.
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Maybe to pick up that phone call at 2 a.m. “The skills or the traits that make you successful in Washington, things like discretion, being able to keep secrets, being able to work long hours for a boss.
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He's also a columnist for Tablet magazine, writer-at-large for Air Mail, and a nonresident senior fellow at the Atlantic Council. James Kirchick, author of Secret City: The Hidden History of Gay Washington. Today, On Point: How careers and lives were lost through decades of bipartisan homophobia. "There's not a single example of a gay person doing it because they were blackmailed into doing it." "The Defense Department did a study in the 1990s where they looked at over 100 cases of espionage, of people giving government secrets to foreign powers," he adds. he would do it," Kirchick says.īut history shows these fears were unfounded. the homosexual would go to any lengths to keep his secret a secret, and if that meant betraying his country.
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"The belief was that because this was so terrible. It was worse than being a communist," author James Kirchick says.Īs a result, some high ranking members of government were denied national security clearances. "Being gay was the worst possible thing you could be in American politics. Post-World War II, there was something seen as even worse than being a communist in U.S. In 1979, thousands s march down Pennsylvania Avenue to dramatize their plea for equal rights.