gays in (US) government
http://www.abcnews.go.com/Politics/print?id=2531627
A Brief History Of Gays In Government
By JAKE TAPPER
1778 — General George Washington approves the court martial of Lt.
Gotthold Frederick Enslin for attempted sodomy.
1921 — U.S. Senate Naval Affairs Committee issues “Report on Alleged
Immoral Conditions and Practices at the Naval Training Station,
Newport, RI” accusing officers under the command of Franklin D.
Roosevelt, former assistant secretary of the US Navy, of ordering
enlisted men to engage in 11 immoral practices” in order to entrap
“perverts” in the military and obtain evidence against them. The
report is also one of the first to document gay male cruising areas,
including Riverside Drive in New York City.
1951 — U.S. Senate Committee on Expenditures in the Executive
Department issues report on “The Employment of Homosexuals and Other
Sex Perverts in Government.” State Department testimony reports that
91 gays have been outed and subsequently fired. Asks one senator:
“Have they gone far enough? Newspaper accounts quote Senate testimony
indicating there are 400 more in the State Department and 4,000 in
Government. Where are they?”
1953 — President Dwight D. Eisenhower signs Executive Order 10450,
which requires that all federal employees determined to be guilty of
“sexual perversion” are fired. Hundreds are fired.
1959 — Political thriller Advise and Consent features fictional Utah
Sen. Brigham Anderson driven to suicide when political enemies
threaten to expose a gay affair from his youth.
1980 — FBI charges anti-gay Congressman Bob Bauman, R-Maryland, with
soliciting sex from a 16-year-old boy in a D.C., gay bar. He loses
reelection, divorces, and becomes a gay rights activist.
1981 — Capitol Police arrest anti-gay Congressman Jon Hinson, R-
Mississippi, for having oral sex with a man in the bathroom of a
federal office building. Hinson resigns, becomes a gay activist, and
eventually died from AIDS.
1983 — Congressman Gerry Studds, D-Mass, comes out of the closet. He
is later censured by the House for having a gay affair with a
congressional page in 1973, though he goes on to win reelection six
times after that.
1987 — After reporters disclosed the secret gay life nine-term Rep.
Stewart McKinney, R-Conn., who had just died of AIDS. Congressman
Barney Frank, D-Mass., outs himself to the Boston Globe.
1986 — Complications from AIDS claim lives of two important
Republican strategists, both of whom engaged in gay-baiting and both
of whom were closeted gay men themselves: Terry Dolan, founder of the
National Conservative Political Action Committee, and McCarthy aide
Roy Cohn.
1991 — The gay magazine The Advocate outs Pete Williams, Assistant
Secretary of the Department of Defense, spokesman for the Pentagon.
Then-Secretary of Defense Dick Cheney stands by Williams.
1994 — On the floor of the House, firebrand Rep. Bob Dornan, R-
Calif., outs Congressman Steve Gunderson, R-Wisc., during a debate
over whether any school receiving federal funding could present
homosexuality as an acceptable lifestyle. Gunderson soon retires from
public life.
1996 — Congressman Jim Kolbe, R-Ariz., under the impression two gay
publications were going to out him, holds a press conference in which
he outs himself
2000 — ABC’s Cokie Roberts asks Lynne Cheney, wife of the GOP vice
presidential nominee, about having a daughter, Mary, who has
“declared she’s openly gay.” Even though Mary has been out for years
and worked as gay and lesbian marketing director for Coors, her
mother Lynne Cheney angrily responds, “Mary has never declared such a
thing.”
2004 — New Jersey Governor Jim McGreevey outs himself under threat
of allegations that he made unwanted advances on former state
director of homeland security/alleged boy-toy Golan Cipel.
October 2004 — Asked in a presidential debate if homosexuality is a
choice, Senator John Kerry, D-Mass., says “If you were to talk to
Dick Cheney’s daughter, who is a lesbian, she would tell you that
she’s being who she was, she’s being who she was born as.”
Republicans accuse Kerry of outing Mary. Cheney called himself “a
pretty angry father” and Kerry “a man who will do and say anything to
get elected.” Lynne Cheney, his wife, said Kerry was “not a good man”
and accused him of a “cheap and tawdry political trick.”
2005 — A new book, “The Intimate World of Abraham Lincoln,” raises
hackles for claiming that President Abraham Lincoln was gay.