Look around D.C. this time of year, and you’ll see colorful rainbow Pride flags flapping outside federal government buildings.
Not so long ago, that would’ve been inconceivable.
Washington in the 1950s was purging thousands of gay and lesbian civil servants from their jobs on the basis of their sexuality. At the time, the U.S. was fighting the Cold War, and Congress was convinced that these employees had a moral “weakness” that could be exploited by Communist agents to extract national secrets.
Lawmakers, led by Sen. Joseph McCarthy, who claimed to have lists of communist, gay and lesbian employees working for the government, called witnesses from intelligence services and law enforcement to testify on the alleged threat these people posed in a series of investigations. The result was more than 5,000 employees were barred from public service, with many forced out of government jobs merely on suspicions about their sexual orientation or political leanings.
On April 27, 1953, at the height of the hysteria, President Dwight Eisenhower signed Executive Order 10450, banning gay or lesbian individuals from working for the federal government or any of its private contractors.
“Nobody came up with a single example of an American citizen who had betrayed government secrets under the threat of blackmail about their sexual orientation — not a single one,” said David Johnson, a professor at the University of South Florida who has researched this period extensively. “To this day, there hasn’t been a single one, and yet it led to this blanket policy.”
Called the “Lavender Scare,” it’s been a lesser-known period of American history until April, when the Biden administration made headlines for becoming the first to issue a presidential proclamation acknowledging the harms that were caused.
Federal employees today say though society has come a long way toward supporting the LGBTQ+ community, the memory of the Lavender Scare looms in the background of their work.
“History has a way of repeating itself,” said Robert Morris, a federal employee and leader of the Pride in Federal Service working group, which represents 850 members across 72 agencies. “When executive order 10450 was signed by Eisenhower in 1953, that remained in effect for decades, and it was not explicitly repealed until 2017 — 64 years later. To me, it serves as a constant reminder that a single stroke of a pen on an executive order can have devastating impacts for decades.”
Congressional investigations
The federal government had already been discriminating on the basis of sexuality by the time Eisenhower’s order went into effect.
During World War II, “blue discharges” were given out to soldiers who displayed “undesirable traits of character,” which often applied to anyone who was gay, as well as minorities and those with mental health illnesses, according to History.com.
In 1947, President Harry Truman created a “loyalty program” for the civil service that gave officials authority to dismiss individuals based on behaviors or lifestyle choices that they deemed subversive.
Those policies laid the groundwork for investigative committees during the Lavender Scare to question agencies’ about employing gay workers.
“The confidence of our citizenry in their government would be severely taxed if we looked with tolerance upon the employment of such persons,” wrote then-Secretary of Commerce Charles Sawyer in a July 24 letter to the committee, according to the National Archives.
Employees were also interrogated invasively during the period, often without an attorney.
“Employees who were fired under these policies often lost future employment, other opportunities, and even relationships with their own families,” Biden said in his proclamation. “Many endured poverty and public disgrace. Some took their own lives as a result of the trauma they had to bear.”
Changes came in years that followed, when some federal employees took their discrimination to the courts.
In 1969, against the backdrop of the Stonewall Riots in New York and burgeoning LGBTQ activism, a court of appeals held that the Civil Service Commission (now the Office of Personnel Management and the Merit Systems Protection Board) could not fire federal employees solely on the basis of their sexuality.
Still, prejudicial policies lingered well into the Clinton administration, especially for national security employees, said Johnson.
In the 1990s, President Bill Clinton outlawed discrimination in the granting of security clearances, according to Johnson’s research. He also instituted the “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy, which was intended to be a compromise over the ban on gay service members.
Both signaled a willingness by government to reverse longstanding discriminatory policies, though neither fully addressed other aspects of LGBTQ rights or harassment in the military or civilian government.
The 2010s and 2020s saw further developments, including Barack Obama’s repeal of “don’t ask, don’t tell.”
Spousal benefits were extended to same-sex couples. The ban on transgender individuals serving in the military was overturned, and major Supreme Court cases made same-sex marriage legal in all 50 states and codified protections for gay or transgender employees under the Civil Rights Acts of 1964.
Pride in federal service today
Today, roughly 5% of the federal workforce identifies as gay, lesbian or bisexual. Many are represented by an LGBTQ-focused employee resource group that participants said is a powerful tool within government for advocacy.
Mahri Monson, deputy director of the Office of Diversity, Equity, Inclusion and Accessibility at OPM and a transgender, non-binary civil servant, said working with EGRs ensures agency heads are consulting with those directed affected by policy.
Monson said employees’ input has shaped policies at OPM for use of proper pronouns in workplace communications, used names without a legal name change requirement when possible, and gender-affirming care in federal insurance plans.
Levi Teachey, an out transgender man working for the Fish and Wildlife Service as an education technician and Navy veteran, said that for LGBTQ employees who work at remote outposts, in hostile areas or in smaller agency offices with fewer resources, ERGs can be a bridge to mentors and a support network.
Employees with whom Federal Times spoke also said messaging from the top is critical; to hear a senior Biden official declare a “summer of Pride” and for the President to host an event on the White House lawn sends a message to younger Americans and students that there is a place for them in government.
“I think that’s the biggest part of recruiting this younger generation across the board,” Morris said. “You have to be inclusive. If they walk in the door and two years later, they figure out you don’t support the culture that you sold them on, they’ll walk out the door. Deliver on what you say, because if you don’t, they will call you out for it.”
Still, the situation is tenuous, he and others said.
“I think we’re seeing a similar sort of moral panic now over issues of sexual orientation, but particularly gender identity,” said Johnson. “[This community] is under attack. And I think the parallel is that in both cases, the moral panic is led by politicians.”
Carmen Garcia, OPM’s chief human capital officer and one of the founding members of three employee resource groups, said she noticed that in her office, fewer people outwardly and visibly supported Pride month this year.
“I feel a sense of responsibility to check in with our Pride alliance ... and across the federal government to see how we can make sure that this growing sentiment that we’re seeing in many areas ... is not flowing over,” she said.
“We are always one court decision or one executive order away from history repeating,” said another federal employee, Jonathan Lovitz, who is gay. “One of the most important things we can do right now is remember that the Lavender Scare itself is behind us, but its shadow is always going to be with us.”
Molly Weisner is a staff reporter for Federal Times where she covers labor, policy and contracting pertaining to the government workforce. She made previous stops at USA Today and McClatchy as a digital producer, and worked at The New York Times as a copy editor. Molly majored in journalism at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
