15 June
‘Mr Chairman, I realise that I am discussing a very delicate subject. I cannot lay the bones bare like I could before medical colleagues. I would like to strip the fetid, stinking flesh off of this skeleton of homosexuality and tell my colleagues of the House some of the facts of nature.’
Congressman Miller of Nebraska, on the floor of the House of Representatives, speaking on homosexuals in government, 1950
Today in 1950, the US Senate authorised an investigation of homosexuals ‘and other moral perverts’ working in national government. Republican senators Kenneth Wherry and Lister Hill formed a subcommittee to look into employment policy concerning homosexuals.
Their report concluded that ‘moral perverts [were] bad national security risks because of their susceptibility to blackmail and threat of exposure’. This eventually led in 1953 to Dwight Eisenhower’s executive order prohibiting the employment of gays and lesbians in federal government.
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