Lavender is the New Red: The LGBTQ+ Community in the Crossfire of Anti-Communist
Rhetoric in the Lavender Scare
By: Megumi Oishi
Introduction and Context
In the aftermath of World War II, residual hyper-patriotism from the war caused the United States to vigilantly seek a new target for their national camaraderie, and quickly found it: a rivalry with the Soviet Union and communism. However, tensions began to rise within the U.S. as rumors of communist spies and sympathizers internally infiltrating the American government began to seep into public discourse. The American public then turned their attention to the perfect scapegoat for the communist issue: the LGBTQ+ community. In this paper, I argue that the U.S. government’s labeling and purging of LGBTQ+ federal employees as communist sympathizers during the Lavender Scare reflects both the government and America’s insecurities of fading loyalty to the ‘American identity.’
While dynamic shifts for world power raged outside of the U.S., a multitude of internal cultural tensions in the wake of World War II set the perfect stage for a moral panic to strike. As Americans savored their victory, the post-war era proved to be an “‘age of anxiety.’” Gender roles in labor practices had changed; many women worked as nurses and factory workers during the war and chose to remain in the workforce, while men were expected to uphold the hypermasculine roles that they had served as soldiers. Additionally, the threat of Communism in the Soviet Union prowled overseas; rivalry for world power between the U.S. and the Soviet Union presented a new challenge for the Americans to rally against, calling for a second wave of patriotism and national camaraderie. Nationalistic loyalty was also firmly implemented within federal value sets; in 1947, President Truman issued Executive Order 9385, titled the “Federal Employees Loyalty Program,” requiring all federal government employees to swear loyalty to the U.S. under oath. Truman’s Order states that “complete and unswerving loyalty to the United States” is of “vital importance” and emphasizes the necessity of protection against “disloyal persons” within the government. Truman lionized those faithful to the U.S. government’s agenda; simultaneously, the qualifications for “[disloyalty]” to the government were ambiguous, allowing for flawed interpretations of the term. By assembling the American people to combat communism, the government focused first on internal disloyalty to the American government, turning the public’s attention toward identifying and castigating deviant persons from the U.S.’s social and political infrastructure.
Anxieties of Loyalty to the ‘American Identity’ within the Moral Panic Framework
One of the driving anxieties that fueled the Lavender Scare was the insecurity of the loyalty to the ‘American identity’ of being patriotic and anti-communist in the wake of WWII. Bound under an oath of loyalty to the U.S., government employees were expected to be exemplars of the prototypical heterosexual ‘American identity.’ Historian Craig Loftin described that “gender loyalty and national loyalty blurred together” during the Red Scare. Subscribing to the heterosexual ‘American identity’ was a means of proving loyalty to the U.S. government; homosexuals were thus viewed as opposers to the ‘American identity,’ thereby imperiling their credibility as trustworthy individuals loyal to the U.S. Apart from the central anxiety surrounding loyalty to the ‘American identity,’ the Lavender Scare also reflected concerns common to panics concerning the perceived threat homosexuality posed toward sexual purity, the nuclear family, and the middle-class lifestyle. Author Will Hansen argues that the LGBTQ+ community’s public perceptions as degenerative and sexually deviant imperiled comforting structures of American normalcy. The anxieties that Hansen outlines demonstrate that the Lavender Panic is part of a historical paradigm of moral panics that spurred from perceived threats to familial, financial, and individual conformity.
The Lavender Scare is a prime example of an extensive organized movement to police a misinformed issue and ostracize a social group, thus qualifying it as a moral panic. Furthermore, the Lavender Scare can be conceptualized as a moral issue; the panic pertained to the livelihoods and identities of homosexual individuals and deemed their very human existence a threat to the sanctity of heteronormative society. Sociologist Stanley Cohen frames the progression of a moral panic as the arising of the threat, media proliferation, the provocation of social outrage and mass anxiety, legislative responses by moral entrepreneurs, and a final dissipation of the panic as it is integrated into national culture. By considering the Lavender Scare to be a moral panic rather than an arbitrary bout of rampant homophobia, the panic’s progressive stages can be identified and analyzed.
The identification of the threat and its media proliferation reflect the national anxiety surrounding the preservation of American male heterosexuality and masculinity. The threat was first introduced by sexologist Alfred Kinsey in 1948 when he published his best-selling work Sexual Behavior in the Human Male, in which he reported on the substantial number of homosexual males residing in the United States. While Kinsey’s work deconstructed the notion that homosexuality was uncommon in the U.S., it simultaneously sparked people’s anxieties of the vast amount of homosexuals in the country. Concerned with the apparent excess of LGBTQ+ individuals within the U.S. social infrastructure, Republican senator Kenneth Wherry and Democratic senator Lister Hill began to conduct investigations of gay individuals within the government. While news of the investigations alone sparked media attention, much of the media chaos came from the testimony of Lieutenant Roy Blick, the head of the DC Metropolitan Police Department. Blick claimed that five-thousand homosexuals lived in DC, and that many were federal employees. While the numbers were arbitrary, the statistics were widely reported within the media, propounding the false notion of a disproportionate amount of LGBTQ+ persons within the American population. The central anxiety in the first two stages of the moral panic, then, was the perceived decline of the heterosexual American male and a rapid proliferation of homosexual males. Such a panic, deeply entrenched in the fear of the loss of the hypermasculine American male, was amplified by the notion that such ‘weak’ men would be at the forefront of the U.S. national government.
Social outrage and the subsequent response by moral entrepreneurs reflected the driving anxiety’s shift from a focus on the destruction of the prototypical American heterosexual male to scrutiny of those deviating from such norms. While fear of the LGBTQ+ community’s agenda rose within public discourse, homophobic rhetoric within the government itself increased. In 1952, a member of the House of Representatives argued that homosexuals, by the nature of their mannerisms, belonged to a “‘sinister, mysterious, and efficient international…the communist International.’” Such mannerisms were identified as effeminate and non-masculine conforming behaviors. Additionally, the association of LGBTQ+ individuals with communism implied that homosexuals working in federal spaces were nefarious and duplicitous, as well as disloyal and a threat to the American government.
The response by prominent and high-ranking government authorities only perpetuated malice towards the LGBTQ+ community both within governmental and societal discourse. In 1953, President Dwight Eisenhower issued Executive Order 10450, which listed “sexual perversion” as sufficient grounds for dismissal from federal employment. Analogous to Truman’s Executive Order, Eisenhower’s equivocal use of the label of “sexual perversion” allowed for manipulation of the term to include homosexuals to ostracize them. Historian Andrea Friedman describes that, alongside Eisenhower, Republican senator Joseph McCarthy was a powerful and outspoken government figure during the Lavender Scare. Friedman argues that, because McCarthy rose from humble beginnings as a chicken farmer to becoming a powerful senator and advertised himself as a hypermasculine and proud American “Commie-fighter,” he embodied the prototypical heterosexual ‘American identity’ that the Americans sought to preserve. Amplified by McCarthy’s outspoken anti-Communist and subsequent anti-LGBTQ+ rhetoric, the national anxiety had shifted from the identification of the ‘un-American’ homosexual identity to labeling it as an ‘anti-American’ political identity.
Though the panic dissipated with the ceasing of the Cold War, the weaving of homophobia into societal rhetoric demonstrated the continuation of equating gender conformity to national loyalty. After the Lavender Scare died down along with the Red Scare and the Cold War, construal sodomy was legalized in 1962; until then, the act had been policed as a felony. Although the ‘American identity’ seems to have expanded its boundaries in recent years, the LGBTQ+ community still faces punitive measures targeting their ‘deviant’ identities, especially within federal government spaces. The infamous Don’t Ask Don’t Tell (DADT) policy was implemented into law in 1993, which stipulated that homosexuals were only allowed in the military if they concealed their sexualities and were dismissed from their duties if they were to be discovered. Lawyer and former United States Air Force officer Shalanda Baker details how her lesbian identity imperiled her status in the military when she was forced to submit a “‘statement of homosexuality’” to her supervisor. She was then accused of weaponizing her sexuality to be relieved of her military duties. The DADT policy — which was deeply entrenched within the military and widely known in the public zeitgeist — became a dangerously normalized policy that tied homophobic rhetoric to pro-American and patriotic sentiments.
The DADT policy stands as a sobering reminder that non-normative identities are still seen as dangerous within U.S. governmental discourse. Its strict enforcement within the military and its normalization within national discourse indicate its persistence as a heteronormative standard of the ‘American identity’ that is used as a metric of safety to the nation’s well-being.
Policing and the ‘War on Identity’
The policing of gay individuals during the Lavender Scare caused one of the most detrimental observable consequences of a moral panic in U.S. history. Historian Douglas Charles gives an example of the government’s punitive responses to the Lavender Scare by describing a “police entrapment scheme,” in which a government worker was followed home by another man, sexually assaulted, and arrested on account of “lewd vagrancy.” This ‘war on identity’ sparked outing, framing, and reporting within both corporate and public spaces. An estimated 12,600,000 workers faced loyalty security investigations, which entailed the harsh scrutinization of one’s loyalty to the U.S. government based on an individual’s sexual orientation. As a result, thousands of homosexuals across the country lost their jobs due to the FBI’s conclusions from their investigations. Furthermore, the policing of homosexuals during the Lavender Scare often involved dog-whistling rhetoric, as punitive measures often were disguised as investigations or justifiable arrests. Ascribing degenerative labels such as “lewd vagrancy” to homosexuals thus allowed moral entrepreneurs to construct criminal identities based on their deviancy from the idealized American identity.
Harsh punitive measures often originated from labeling homosexuals as untrustworthy felons whose identities naturally predisposed them to be ‘anti-American.’ Author Naoko Shibusawa presents the fact that homosexual identities were associated with inherently anti-American characteristics to illustrate them as enemies to American values. Shibusawa argues that homosexuals were historically viewed as anti-capitalist and therefore communist, often being orientalized and juxtaposed with harsh binaries of “perverse/normal, conspirator/law-abiding, and communist/capitalist.” Similarly, Hansen describes how the general public often assumed that, because effeminate gay men often “[play] ‘the role of the opposite sex,’” this behavior displays that “they also enjoy ‘any jobs which gives him the chance of playing the double role,’ as that of the communist conspirator. The works of Shibusawa and Hansen argue that by equating homosexual identities with communist tendencies, government authorities effectively framed the LGBTQ+ community’s very human existence as deviant and threatening. The constraint of sexuality within binaries of morally good versus evil and normal versus deviant during the Lavender Scare indicates not only a disdain against homosexual identities, but a violent purge of non-normative identities.
The civil ‘war on identity’ during the Lavender Scare created divisions not only within the general population, but within affinity groups as well. As many LGBTQ+ people lost their jobs within the government, many homosexual men began to distance their identities from gay men that presented themselves as effeminate; thus, they rejected clothing styles, mannerisms, and methods of speech and instead presented themselves as stereotypically masculine. As disdain towards effeminate gays proliferated, anti-gay phrases such as “‘fairies’” and “‘pansies’” became common within the LGBTQ+ community. Identity detachment, distrust, and even disdain had developed within the LGBTQ+ community in response to the government purging. Animosity from within the LGBTQ+ community, then, acted much as a proliferation of a social disease, poisoning affinity groups from the inside out. Internalized hatred towards ‘effeminate’ gay men originating in external criticism further weakened the strength of the LGBTQ+ community to rally for support and social reform. Although contemporary studies of the Lavender Scare identify influential moral entrepreneurs such as Eisenhower and McCarthy as the main catalysts for the anti-gay movement, modern discourse often fails to analyze anti-gay rhetoric within the LGBTQ+ community. The ‘war on identity’ within the homosexual community during the Lavender Scare is a testament to the detrimental ability offor moral panics to destroy identity and affinity; those ostracized often reject their authentic identities and instead assimilate to the normative identity to escape detection.
Conclusion: What the Lavender Scare Can Teach Us
While the panic dissipated as the Cold War ended, the misinformed association between non-normative identities to disloyalty to the ‘American identity’ was left unaddressed. Though homosexuals did not embody the idealized heterosexual American identity, they often demonstrated loyalty to the U.S. government that paralleled that of heterosexual American citizens. An unnamed pro-LGBTQ+ author during the Lavender Scare wrote in defense of LGBTQ+ individuals’ commitment to patriotism:
“Our tears do not flow less freely tha[n] yours at the loss of husbands, sons and brothers in warfare with Communism because we are homosexual. Our hearts are not less full of pride and honor at the sight of massed American flags because we are homosexual. We do not work less hard for America, or love her less, or support the Republican administration and policies less whole-heartedly because we are homosexual.”
In their impassioned statement, the author argues that homosexuals share common grief, pride, and commitment to the American law consistent with their heterosexual peers. Debunking the notion that homosexual identities inherently oppose and imperil the ‘American identity’ is crucial in analyzing the dangerous implication the outcome of the Lavender Scare portends: who is included in the ‘American identity,’ and what punitive measures are brought upon those whose identities are labeled as threatening to it?
Considering the Lavender Scare as an example of egregious prejudice within the federal government allows for scrutiny of legal labels and their role in enabling moral panics. Anthropologist Roger Lancaster examines how the “amorphous” nature of the legal term “‘sex crime’” had once allowed the inclusion of consensual sodomy to be categorized within its definition. Drastic criminal labels such as ‘sex criminal’ may incorrectly identify felons and result in the unwarranted destruction of innocent individuals’ life trajectories. Namely, presidents Truman and Eisenhower’s respective executive orders and their ambiguously defined terms of national disloyalty and sexual perversion allowed for the gratuitous firings of unwanted individuals to occur. Extending upon Lancaster’s argument, heteronormative moral entrepreneurs enacting laws controlling homosexual peoples reflected a fundamental lack of empathy and understanding for the peoples whom the unforgiving laws controlled. Within such an issue lies a core legal problem: if lawmakers and powerful moral entrepreneurs are left to create laws without any consideration or empathy for the peoples such policies would constrain, mistrust and lack of communication between the controllers and the controlled are inevitably amplified. Though modern lawmakers cautiously define legal and political rhetoric, often to a pedantic extent, semantic precautions are absolutely necessary to avoid allowing moral entrepreneurs’ interpretations of such laws to be weaponized as forms of manipulation and control over marginalized peoples.
In addition, within the U.S.’s current sociopolitical climate, it becomes increasingly imperative to recognize the formation of moral panics within social discourse, both to protect the personhood of marginalized individuals and to maintain national unity. There are many issues that currently plague the LGBTQ+ community in national discourse; for example, a current issue of fervent contention within the LGBTQ+ community is the inclusion of transgender athletes within collegiate and professional sports. Transgender peoples, who have historically been marginalized even within the LGBQ+ community, currently face national and federal pressures to conform to heteronormative standards of identity at the expense of their own personal identification. It becomes increasingly important, then, for LGBQ+ peoples to grant support and protection to transgender individuals to protect them from national scrutiny. To mirror the internalized hatred within the LGBTQ+ community that occurred during the Lavender Scare in contemporary times would be to return to an abhorrent chapter within the history book of the U.S..
Overall, the Lavender Scare was a moral panic that concerned multiple wars: WWII, the Cold War, and the ‘war on identity.’ By analyzing the Lavender Scare through the moral panic framework and contemporary sociological lenses, the metrics of inclusion and exclusion of groups from the ‘American identity’ reveal American values of enforcing conformity and rewarding privilege. The value of reflecting on the Lavender Scare, then, is acknowledging the importance of deconstructing the rigidity of the ‘American identity’ and instead recognizing its malleability. As the American population grows exponentially in diversity, it becomes imperative to recognize the inevitable expansion of the label of the ‘American identity’ and consider non-normative identities not as ‘un-American’ or ‘anti-American,’ but simply as ‘American.’
Bibliography
Adkins, Judith. “The Lavender Scare: Civil Rights Violations of Federal Workers, 1940s-1960s,” Brewminate: A Bold Blend of News and Ideas, March 14, 2021, https://brewminate.com/the-lavender-scare-civil-rights-violations-of-federal-workers-1940s-1960s/.
Baker, Shalanda H. “Telling: Living with ‘Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell.’” Journal of Legal Education 57, no. 2 (2007): 187–94. http://www.jstor.org/stable/42894019.
Charles, Douglas M. “From Subversion to Obscenity: The FBI’s Investigations of the Early Homophile Movement in the United States, 1953-1958.” Journal of the History of Sexuality 19, no. 2 (2010): 262–87. http://www.jstor.org/stable/40663409.
Cohen, Stanley. Folk Devils and Moral Panics: The Creation of Mods and Rockers (New York: Routledge, 2002).
Friedman, Andrea. “The Smearing of Joe McCarthy: The Lavender Scare, Gossip, and Cold War Politics.” American Quarterly 57, no. 4 (2005): 1105–29. http://www.jstor.org/stable/40068331.
Hansen, Will. “The Cold War and the Homophile, 1953–1963.” Australasian Journal of American Studies 38, no. 1 (2019): 79–96. https://www.jstor.org/stable/26926689.
Lancaster, Roger N. Sex Panic and the Punitive State, 2011. https://doi.org/10.1525/california/9780520255654.001.0001.
Loftin, Craig M. “Unacceptable Mannerisms: Gender Anxieties, Homosexual Activism, and Swish in the United States, 1945-1965.” Journal of Social History 40, no. 3 (2007): 577–96. http://www.jstor.org/stable/4491939.
National Archives. “Executive Orders,” August 15, 2016. https://www.archives.gov/federal-register/codification/executive-order/10450.html.
Shibusawa, Naoko. “The Lavender Scare and Empire: Rethinking Cold War Antigay Politics.” Diplomatic History 36, no. 4 (2012): 723–52. http://www.jstor.org/stable/44376170.
Truman, Harry. Executive Order 9835. 1947. National Archives. https://www.archives.gov/publications/prologue/2006/fall/agloso.html.