In 1953, Eisenhower signed an order banning queer people from working in the government. Agencies
encouraged employees to report colleagues they suspected of being queer based on how they acted, spoke, dressed, or had masculine/feminine characteristics like wide jaws in women or small hands in men
encouraged employees to report colleagues they suspected of being queer based on how they acted, spoke, dressed, or had masculine/feminine characteristics like wide jaws in women or small hands in men
Reposted from
Ida Bae Wells
“One administration employee who received the email urging employees to report their colleagues said it made them feel as though they were being recruited into the Gestapo. Another employee told The Times that the directive to report colleagues made him feel as if he was living in the Soviet Union.”
Comments
The ostensible argument was that we were subject to blackmail threats of “exposure” and therefore a security risk.
The pretzel logic was maddening.
Yet not one member of Congress was brave enough to point it out.
Of course, military intelligence units were FULL of closeted LGBTQIA soldiers.
1/
It was an unofficial “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” years before Clinton passed that abortion of a law.
(I’m sure you know this. I’m sharing with everyone else.)
But one source of hope is that, even without the systems & protections we have now, the LGBTQs of the 50s & 60s formed community and mobilized however they could.
We have that power, too.
And LOL 'small hands in men'!
Jus sayin