Blogger Geitner Simmons has an interesting post about the ferocity with which some in Congress tried to expel gays from federal employment in the 1950s. Now that the Bush White House has reaffirmed a policy forbidding the firing of federal workers because of their sexual orientation -- after the administration's rightwing appointee to head the Office of Special Counsel tried to reverse course -- it's worth noting how far we've progressed, even with occasional flaps.
Simmons writes of how, under an executive order signed by Harry Truman in 1947, "the federal government could fire known or suspected subversives, habitual drunkards, homosexuals, and others susceptible to blackmail." Under pressure from Nebraska Sen. Kenneth Wherry, "a staunchly conservative Republican first elected in 1942," and like-minded allies, "an estimated seven to ten thousand real or suspected homosexuals -- Democrat and Republican -- lost their jobs during the 1950s."
The posting also cites the real-life Senate blackmail/suicide case on which novelist Allen Drury modeled the characters in his best-selling Advise and Consent.
Despite setbacks here and there, this is no longer the world in
which we live, thankfully.
--Stephen H. Miller