U.S. Government Versus Homosexuals:1950-1955

A sampling of news stories from the years 1950 to 1955 conveys the mood created by the antihomosexual, anti-Communist witch-hunts occurring during that period and continuing for some time after. In the early 1950s, the fledgling homosexual emancipation organization, the Mattachine Society, was just getting started in los Angeles, with a number of left-wing homosexuals prominent in the leadership. To understand the earliest years of the Mattachine movement it is essential to know about the simultaneous witch-hunting of "perverts" and "subversives" then taking place. On March 1, 1950, the New York Times reports that John E. Peurifoy, in charge of the State Department security program, was asked by a Senate committee how many department employees had resigned while under investigation as security risks since the beginning of 1947. "Ninety-one persons in the shady category," replied Mr. Peurifoy. "Most of these were homosexuals."97

On March 9, the Times reports a Senate subcommittee inquiry into Senator Joseph McCarthy's charges that the United States government employed "red sympathizers." McCarthy was the first witness, and homosexuality as well as Communism was an issue.

McCarthy had earlier declared in the Senate that a "flagrantly homosexual" State Department employee, discharged as a security risk in 1946, had had his job restored under "pressure" from a "high State Department official." McCarthy refused demands by Democrats th,at he state the name of the official. Later, the Times reports, McCarthy told reporters he did not know the name of the official, but asserted it was in the files and could be found by the subcommittee.98

On March 15, the Times reports McCarthy's testimony about another government employee:

A former State Department official, whose name he withheld, was reported in the Washington police files to be homosexual and had been allowed to resign from the State Department in 1948 only to find employment in a "most sensitive" place, the Central Intelligence Agency. Mr. McCarthy gave his name privately to the subcommittee. It was an "important" case, he asserted, because perverts were officially considered to be security risks because they were "subject to blackmail."99

On March 20 the Times reports that Representative John J. Rooney, Democrat of New York, had