Purged In Secret
While the Red Scare grabbed the headlines, the government was quietly firing thousands of workers for being gay — a purge that lasted decades.
Alongside the hunt for Communists ran a second, quieter purge. Thousands of federal employees were investigated, interrogated, and fired for being — or merely being suspected of being — gay. It was called the Lavender Scare.
The Machinery
It was sold to the public as a matter of "security." Investigators trailed employees, dug into their private lives, and pressured them to name others. An executive order formally barred gay people from federal employment.
Their only crime was who they were.
The Silence
Careers ended overnight. Lives were wrecked. Most of those affected never spoke of it publicly. The purge ran for decades and is almost entirely missing from the textbooks.
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It ran for decades, ruined thousands of lives, and almost no one learned its name.
You've Seen the File.
Thousands fired for who they were, under cover of 'security.' A mistake of its time, or a deliberate purge that got buried?
The Lavender Scare — David K. Johnson
The landmark history that uncovered the Cold War purge of gay federal workers.
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