Lavender Scare

The Lavender Scare refers to the mass firing and forced resignation of gay and lesbian workers from the U.S. federal government from the late 1940s through the 1960s. It ran alongside the anti-Communist Red Scare, and officials framed homosexuality as a moral weakness and a supposed security risk vulnerable to blackmail. A 1950 Senate investigation, the Hoey Report, concluded that homosexual people were unsuitable for federal employment, and in 1953 President Eisenhower's Executive Order 10450 barred them from government jobs. Thousands of careers and lives were destroyed, even though investigators found no case of a gay employee betraying secrets. The term was popularized by historian David K. Johnson. In 2017, the State Department formally apologized for the persecution.