Lavender scare

It's interesting to look at what was happening in the wider world.

During the period between his conviction and his death, Cold War paranoia was starting to take over, and this, in turn, was leading to anti-communist and anti-gay purges, particularly in the United States, which were known as the Red Scare and the Lavender Scare.

from that time came the horrible infamous line from one government report that read the pervert is easy prey to the blackmailer and this became the mantra that was peddled by senior figures including united states senator joe mccarthy and when spies guy burgess and donald mclean defected to moscow in 1951 the fact that burgess was gay was used to reinforce this Turing obviously knew lots of very big state secrets, so he naturally started to feel this paranoia, and this culminated in him believing that his house was being watched.

When a friend visiting from Norway never arrived, he started to believe he was a marked man.

Like, oh shit, I'm

sorry, it's Lavender Scare again.

That's all we

got.

Lavender Scare again? Mom!

There was also an alternative theory that Truett killed Hartwig for the insurance money.

That one didn't have legs.

to be a downer received engaging

Ooh.

If that's the case, why didn't this have its onset during the Lavender Scare?

No, I know.

It's, it's like, I like where his head's at.

Completely destroyed it.

And then over in the US, we have McCarthyism, which is another form of censorship, which you had the Red Scare, which specifically went after communists, and Lavender Scare, which went after...

Because I think people are sort of familiar with the Red Scare and that went through Washington and Hollywood and outing communists for fear of communism.

People might be less familiar with the Lavender Scare, which also came out of McCarthyism.

So the Lavender Scare was a moral panic about homosexual people in the United States government, which led to their mass dismissal from governmental service during the mid-20th century.

And a lot of the reasoning behind that was that these people were easily... manipulated by uh i guess communists or the russian government um because they had a secret and they could they would easily give up information if in in trade to keep that secret um here we go gay men and lesbians were said to be a national security risk and communist sympathizers which led to the call to remove them from state employment It was also thought that due to the stigma around homosexuality, gay people were vulnerable to blackmail, is what I was just saying, which could lead to a breach in national security.

So the movie then trickles into that and sees how queer people were persecuted during the 1950s, McCarthyism.

And it was a morning class and I would always eat overnight oats, specifically like oats with oat milk and chia seeds and almonds and some peanut butter.

This is in the middle of the, you know, the...

Is it the Lavender Scare, or is that lesbian? Am I too

lesbian-brained for this? No, it was called the Lavender Scare.

Killed a lot of people, actually.

It is also kind of funny, because, like, the Lavender Scare, like...

They go through all this blackmail stuff.

One of them is that he's gay, and that is a blackmailable offense in 1954.

But in 1980, that was actually still a blackmailable offense in a lot of US governmental positions.

And then there was this parallel pursuit of anyone who would be perceived to be a national security risk because they were closeted gay, in this case, men.

The lavender scare, I believe, is what it was called.

And you couldn't get a job in the federal government if you were gay.

And then a law was passed saying the Communist Party was illegal.

Spent a lot of energy trying to conceal his sexual orientation.

He was a, had played a huge role in the Lavender Scare, driving people out of the federal government.

Um, he evaded multiple ethics complaints and indictments before being disbarred, uh, just a few months before his death.

And he was a huge influence on Donald Trump.

Yes, I think I heard about this.

Yeah, because during the time that James Webb was the director of NASA was the time of the Lavender Scare.

If you're not aware of that, it's... an adjacent unfortunate thing that happened during the red scare where this was where a lot of you know lgb well what we call now lgbtq plus people were being persecuted and being kind of basically chased out of federal offices because of

All of that BS.

I won't even say it on stream, but yeah, so there was a bit of, you know, pushback.

And I believe that NASA did an internal review and James Webb was the director of NASA during this time.

And according to their internal review, there's no evidence that he either supported or like kind of, I guess one could say like followed through with any of these lavender scare policies, but it was a thing.

And in the last few years, they've actually had a policy that discourages naming future admissions after individuals.

Now, first up is Senator Joseph McCarthy.

Now, you may remember him from our Lavender Scare episodes.

Now, back in the 1950s, Joseph McCarthy convinced the country that homosexuality was a threat to America.

And he believed if you were gay, you were probably also a communist.