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An Innocent Man: The Surprising Trial of Dale Jennings

The nightmare began as many such nightmares did for gay men in Los Angeles in the 1950s. On March, 21, 1952, Dale Jennings was walking around the neighborhood, thinking about seeing a movie. He passed two theaters, but their offerings didn’t interest him. He set out for a third theater. But then nature called, and he stopped in a public men’s room at Westlake Park (now MacArthur Park). A stranger walked up to Jennings and fondled himself. Jennings wasn’t interested. “Having done nothing that the city architect didn’t have in mind when he designed the place, I left,” Jennings later explained.

The man, however, insisted on striking up a conversation and following Jennings home. Jennings tried to shake him several times, saying goodbye to him at every street corner, but the man persisted. When they arrived at Jennings’s Echo Park apartment, Jennings said good-bye once more and went inside. But the man pushed his way in. Now Jennings worried that the man may be some kind of a thug, perhaps a robber.

When we read about entrapment case involving gay men, we very rarely get a detailed description of what that entrapment looked like. I certainly don’t think I’ve ever read anything so bold as what Jennings later wrote for the inaugural issue of ONE magazine:

Sure now that this big character was a thug, I — as the prosecutor described it –“flitted” wildly from room to room wondering how to get rid of this person sprawled on the divan making sexual gestures and proposals. I was almost relieved when he strolled into the back bedroom because now I could call the police. What I’d have said to them, I don’t know and what he’d have done if he’d heard, was up to luck. Then he called twice, “Come in here!” His voice was loud and commanding. He’d taken his jacket off, was sprawled.on the bed and his shirt was unbuttoned half way down. During the tense conversation there, he asked me what kind of work I did, how much I  made, and what the rent here was. Then he slapped the bed and said, “Sit down.” Now he insisted that I was homosexual and urged me to “let down my hair.” He’d been in the Navy and “all us guys played around.” I told him repeatedly that he had the wrong guy; he got angrier each time I said it. At last he grabbed my hand and tried to force it down the front of his trousers. I jumped up and away. Then there was the badge and he was snapping the handcuffs on with the remark, “Maybe you’ll talk better with my partner outside.” 

Jennings was walked out to the car in handcuffs. Then the real terror began:

I was forced to sit in the rear of a car on a dark street for almost an hour while three officers questioned me. It was a particularly effective type of grilling. They laughed a lot among themselves. Then, in a sudden silence, one would ask, “How long have you been this way?”I sat on my hands and wondered what would happen each time I refused to answer. Yes, I was scared stiff. … At last the driver started the car up. Having expected the usual beating before, now I was positive it was coming — out in the country somewhere. They drove over a mile past the suburb of Lincoln Heights, then slowly doubled back. During this time they repeatedly made jokes about police brutality, and each of the three instructed me to plead guilty and everything would be all right.

The long drive, of course, was deliberate — and  a well known tactic. It was known as the “sweat-out.” Sometimes it involved a beating, sometimes it didn’t. In Jennings’s case, it didn’t, but the slow ride to the station probably lasted about an hour, in addition to the hour they spent parked on the street. The undercover officer first approached Jennings a little past nine. Jennings wasn’t booked until 11:30, and he wasn’t allowed to make a phone call until 3:00 a.m.

He was charged with “lewd and lascivious conduct.” He remained in jail until the following morning, when Harry Hay paid the $50 bail ($450 today). The two of them, along with several others, had founded the Mattachine Society two years earlier, and Jennings’s troubles would become the fledgling organization’s first gay rights victory.

But first, Hay had to convince Jennings to put his name on the line. During the 1950s, gay men absolutely never fought this kind of a trial. Instead, they’d post bail, and forfeited it later rather than show up at court for the misdemeanor charge.

But that morning, as Hay and Jennings sat in the Brown Derby restaurant talking about what happened, Hay said, “Look, we’re going to make an issue of this thing. We’ll say you are a homosexual but neither lewd nor dissolute. And that the cop is lying.”Jennings remembered the conversation later in an unpublished manuscript:

(Hay was) the only tall person I ever met who used it with the imperial self-confidence of the chosen. … From his great height, he laid hear hands on my shoulders, stared intensely down at me in his best S.AG. (Screen Actors Guild) style, and made his great and solemn pitch. … The Great Man pointed out that I, in my miserable way, would be somewhat Chosen, too, if I stood up to the Establishment. I had nothing to lose by my chains. After all, working in a family business, I couldn’t get fired. Being recently divorced, it would not hurt my wife and I could continue at USC as something of a hero if the straights on campus didn’t go to work on me as they did all the fairies. He himself would be honored to do such a thing, but of course, he had too many familial responsibilities. Oh, I was lucky.

At this time, the Mattachine Society was organized like a pyramid, with the Discussion Groups at the bottom, and then the First Order, the Second Order, through the Fifth Order on top. First Order members led the Discussion Groups. Second Order members coordinated between the First Order and the Fifth. (In practice, the Second through Fourth Orders were never established.) The Fifth Order, which had filed paperwork to incorporate as the Mattachine Foundation, was the public face of the Mattachine Society, although the actual leaders remained anonymous. Hay, Jennings, and the other founders were the Fifth Order.

Hay called an emergency meeting of the Fifth Order that night. When he and Jennings presented their plan, there was surprisingly little dissension. But there was still a considerable amount of fear. They felt it was still necessary to protect the Foundationas a secret society. So they did what a lot of secret organizations did. They created a front organization, the Citizens Committee to Outlaw Entrapment

Their first task was to raise money for Jennings’s defense. At first ,they found resistance. For most of the people in the discussion groups, harassment and entrapment was just an ordinary part of their lives. They hadn’t bothered to question it. And besides, the rumor was that he was guilty. For them, the Fifth Order’s response went more or less like this: “You think he’s guilty? So what? The laws aren’t fair, they’re not being fairly enforced, and entrapment, while illegal, is rampant. Aren’t those reason enough to support the case?” The very idea of fighting these charges was daring and new — and exhilarating. Word spread, and suddenly the discussion groups had more people showing up than ever before.

The CCOE organized at least two major fundraising events, including what might possibly be the first public benefit for a gay rights cause. Lester Horton, whose dance company was opening a new season in Los Angeles, offered an eventing’s take. One of his dancers had been entrapped that year, and besides, Horton backed a lot of progressive causes. The May 23 benefit wasn’t advertised as a fundraiser, but most of those attending the nearly sold-out performance knew what it was.

The CCOE also used the Jennings case to raise awareness in the broader gay community. The “Call to Arms” leaflet was just one example. Distributed to gay bars, public restrooms and beaches, it detailed the sad outcomes of those who had meekly acquiesced to the charges, bullying, and blackmail stemming from entrapment. It described

…the man who parted with his valuable art collection … piece by piece … his savings account … when he was wrung dry was turned in anyway; the professional man who paid $3,000 to get a trumped-up charge reduced to “disturbance of the peace”; the West Los Angeles businessmen who pay for protection against false witnessing every week; the dozens of youngsters who are offered rides by “lonely or maudlin” decoys in wolfs clothing and stampeded into milking the family’s savings or turning over the names and addresses of acquaintances who might make likely entrapment candidates.

The group also hired George Shibley, an Arab-American lawyer with a solid reputation for taking on controversial civil rights and union causes in the 1930s and ’40s. On June 23, the case went to trial. Jennings recalled what happend for ONE:

The attorney, engaged by the Mattachine Foundation, made a brilliant opening statement to the jury in which he pointed out that homosexuality and lasciviousness are not identical after stating that his client was admittedly homosexual, that no fine line separates the variations of sexual inclinations and the only true pervert in the courtroom was the arresting officer. He asked, however, that the jury feel no prejudice merely because I’d been arrested: these two officers weren’t necessarily guilty of the charges of beating another prisoner merely because they were so accused; it would take a trial to do that and theirs was coming the next day. The jury deliberated for forty hours and asked to be dismissed when one of their number said he’d hold out for guilty till hell froze over. The rest voted straight acquittal. Later the city moved for dismissal of the case and it was granted.

Jennings was stunned. As he later wrote in his unpublished memoirs:

Walking out of the courtroom free was a liberation that I’d never anticipated. It didn’t happen in our society. You went to jail for that sort of thing. And so I was numb for some time, and it began to dawn on me that we did  have a victory.

Newspapers ignored the story, but the news spread all over gay Los Angeles virtually overnight. Everyone wanted to know who was behind this unprecedented victory. Mattachine capitalized on the news with a “victory” flyer: “You didn’t see it in the papers, but it could — and did — happen in L.A.: In a unique victory, Dale Jennings defended himself against entrapment by the L.A. Police and won.” The flyer urged readers to “give now to help eliminate gangster methods by the police. A contribution now may save you thousands if you become the next target of entrapment.”

Through flyers like these and word of mouth, the Mattachine Foundation experienced dramatic growth. Meetings overflowed and new discussion groups sprouted all over Southern California. By early 1953, discussion  groups had formed in Long Beach, Laguna Beach, San Diego, Fresno, the Bay area, and even as far away as Chicago.

Epilogue:

Organizations ordinarily welcome growth. The Mattachine Foundation certainly did, for good reason. Many of these new members will become important figures in the gay rights movement throughout the next decade. Jim Kepner, a journalist and writer for ONE and, later, the Advocate, was just one of those newcomers. But he and the other future leaders were the exceptions. He later observed:

The exciting Mattachine growth brought on by the Dale Jennings case victory brought an unexpected backlash. Even as the Society drew in hundreds of enthusiastic new participants and set up membership guilds to inspire them with Mattachine ideals, (some of the co-founders) became aware how resistant most of the new people were to those ideals. … Ready to fight for their own rights, they had no desire to change the world, and no philosophy other than their conformist, bourgeois, Christian notions. Hardly rebels, they merely wanted an equal share of apple pie for gays. Above all, they wanted the right of privacy. There was increasing disjunction between Mattachine as the founders variously conceived it and what it was actually coming to be.

Another crack in the Foundation formed with Jennings himself. Conflicted about his martyrdom status, the feisty and opinionated Jennings never shied from expressing his misgivings, even if he saw the court fight as an important win. You can see this in the final paragraphs from his ONE magazine account:

Actually I have had very little to do I with this victory. Yes, I gave my name and publicly declared myself to be a homosexual, but the moment I was arrested my name was no longer “good” and this incident will stand on record for all to see for the rest of my life. In a situation where to be accused is to be guilty, a person’s good name is worthless and meaningless. Further, without the interest of the Citizens’ Committee to Outlaw Entrapment and their support which gathered funds from all over the country, I would have been forced to resort to the mild enthusiasm of the Public Defender. Chances are I’d have been found guilty and now be either still gathering funds to pay the fine or writing this in jail.

Yet I am not abjectly grateful. All of the hundreds, who helped push this case to a successful conclusion, were not interested in me personally. They were being intelligently practical and helping establish a precedent that will perhaps help themselves if the time comes. In this sense, a bond of brotherhood is not mere blind generosity. It is unification for self-protection. Were all homosexuals and bisexuals to unite militantly, unjust laws and corruption would crumble in short order and we, as a nation, could go on to meet the really important problems which face us. Were heterosexuals to realize that these violations of our rights threaten theirs equally, a vast reform might even come within our lifetime. This is no more a dream than trying to win a case after admitting homosexuality.

In the spring of 1953, the leaders of the Mattachine Foundation decided to begin developing its political muscles. They sent a letter explaining the organization, along with a brief questionnaire, to candidates for the Los Angeles City Council, Mayor, and Board of Supervisors to ascertain their positions on police harassment of gay people.

The letter and questionnaire found its way into the hands of Paul Coates, a Los Angeles Daily Mirror columnist. This time, the publicity backfired within Mattachine. Within two months, these newer members forced the collapse of the original Mattachine Foundation and ushered in a much more timid Mattachine Society.

But by then, Jennings had already left to become the first managing editor of ONE magazine, the first nationally distributed publication for a gay audience. His account of his arrest and trial appeared in the magazine’s first issue, which helped to spread the news further. The case didn’t bring an end to police harassment of gay men in Los Angeles. That continued for at least two more decades. But it did signal to the nation’s fearful gay community that false charges could be fought and defeated.

Read More:

David Hughes, Blown Cover: The Arrest of Dale Jennings. Hughes provides a much more detailed account, along with the identities of the two police officers who arrested Jennings.

On the Timeline:

Jun 23: Dale Jennings is cleared of a morals charge despite acknowledging that he is a homosexual.

Periscope:

For June 23, 1952:
President: Harry S. Truman (D)
Vice-President: Alben W. Barkley (D)
House: 231 (D) 200 (R) 1 (Other) 3 (Vacant)
Southern states: 103 (D) 2 (R)
Senate: 50 (D) 46 (R)
Southern states: 22 (D)
GDP growth: 2.2% (Annual)
0.7% (Quarterly)
Inflation: 2.3%
Unemployment: 3.0%
US killed in action, 581 (This month)
Korean conflict: 29,201 (Since Jun 28, 1950)

Headlines: U.N. planes bomb hydroelectric dams on the Yalu River, cutting North Korean electricity by 90%. A nationwide steel strike enters its fourth week with no resolution in sight. Sen. Robert Taft (D-OH) says he has the votes to defeat Gen. Dwight D. Eisenhower for GOP nomination. Eisenhower warns against Taft’s isolationism. Argentina’s First Lady Eva Peron is reported to be dying of leukemia. A study reveals that radioactivity increased tenfold in California since the start of nuclear testing in Nevada in 1951.

In the record stores: Here In My Heart by Al Martino, Delicado by Percy Faith and His Orchestra, Blue Tango by Leroy Anderson, Kiss of Fire by Georgia Gibbs, Auf Wiederseh’n Sweetheart by Vera Lynn, I’m Yours by Eddie Fisher, Kiss of Fire by Tony Martin, Walkin’ My Baby Back Home by Johnnie Ray, I’m Yours by Don Cornell, Guy Is a Guy by Doris Day.

Currently in theaters: Macao.

On the radio:  Lux Radio Theater (CBS), Amos & Andy (CBS), Jack Benny Program (CBS), Edgar Bergen & Charlie McCarthy (CBS), Arthur Godfrey’s Talent Scouts (CBS), People Are Funny (CBS), You Bet Your Life (NBC), Fibber McGee & Molly (NBC), Bob Hawk Show (CBS), Life With Luigi (CBS), Suspense (CBS).

On television: Arthur Godfrey’s Talent Scouts (CBS), Texaco Star Theater, w/Milton Berle (NBC), I Love Lucy (CBS), The Red Skelton Show (NBC), The Colgate Comedy Hour (NBC), Arthur Godfrey and His Friends (CBS), Fireside Theater (NBC), Your Show of Shows, w/Cid Caesar & Imogene Coca (NBC), You Bet Your Life, w/Groucho Marx (NBC).

New York Times best sellers: Fiction: The Caine Mutiny by Herman Wouk, My Cousin Rachel by Daphne du Maurier, The Gown of Glory by Agnes Sligh Turnbull. Non-fiction: Witness by Whittaker Chambers, The Sea Around Us by Rachel Carson, A Man Called Peter by Catherine Marshall.

Sources:

Douglas M. Charles. “From Subversion to Obscenity: The FBI’s Investigations of the Early Homophile Movement in the United States, 1953-1958.” Journal of the History of Sexuality 19, no. 2 (May 2010): 262-287.

David Hughes, “Blown Cover: The Arrest of Dale Jennings.” The Tangent Group website (January 4, 2018, retrieved August 5, 2018).

Dale Jennings. “To be accused is to be guilty.” ONE 1, no. 1 (January 1953): 10-13.

John Loughery. The Other Side of Silence: Men’s Lives and Gay Identities: A Twentieth Century History (New York: Henry Holt & Co., 1998): 223.

James T. Sears. Behind the Mask of the Mattachine: The Hall Call Chronicles and the Early Movement for Homosexual Emancipation (Binghamton, NY: Harrington Park Press, 2006): 152, 162-164.

Stewart Timmons. The Trouble With Harry Hay: Founder of the Modern Gay Rights Movement (Harry Hay Centenary edition, White Crane Books, 2012): 182-187.

C. Todd White. Pre-Gay LA: A Social History of the Movement for Homosexual Rights (Urbana, IL: University of Chicago Press, 2009): 23-27. White quotes from Jennings’s unpublished manuscript.

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“My Mask Never Slipped”: When Invisibility Was Something To Be Proud Of

Gay history, especially before the rise of the women’s movement in the 1960s, tends to be centered on the experiences of gay white men. We can all imagine what it was like to be a gay man fifty-five years ago thanks to the early homophile magazines ONE and The Mattachine Review. The Review dealt almost exclusively with male concerns, while ONE, in its early days, mostly relegated women’s concerns to a segregated column called “The Feminine Viewpoint.” In 1956, the Daughters of Bilitis began publishing The Ladder, to provide women with a voice separate from men. And thanks to The Ladder, we have, preserved like a time capsule, a collection of voices from, well, the feminine viewpoint.

A very brief essay that appeared in the March 1958 issue of The Ladder illustrates the pervasive invisibility of lesbians. Much of that invisibility was cultivated by lesbians themselves. Butch lesbians, like effeminate men, were the visible side of homosexuality, and it represented a specific set of dangers to whose who were not open about their sexuality. Drawing attention, as this very visible group of people did by their modes of dress and behavior, was dangerous to those who weren’t prepared to deal with the consequences. This kind of visibility meant lost jobs, scornful neighbors, and angry landlords.

And drawing attention in a decade that prized conformity meant losing access to that most prized commodity, respectability. Which is why so many lesbians and gay men were obsessed with “fitting in.” They prided themselves on their ability to pass as straight, more or less. “No one would suspect,” they’d tell themselves. Their invisibility made their respectability possible. And respectability represented the  highest achievement they could hope to gain in a society that rewarded conformity to social norms. Without it, they’d just be a bunch of queers.

It’s a sad sort of pride where one is proud of not showing others who they really are. This troubled, contradictory essay perfectly illustrate what this cheerless sort of pride looks like. It’s signed Sandra Price, although the name  is almost certainly a pseudonym, given its message.

Yes, I Am!

I wish it were possible for me to wr1te this on my letterhead, but my “world” would be too shocked if they were to learn their perfectly proper and “normal” appearing friend, business and professional member of their society were any different than she appears. And more shocked to know that she is secretly glad to be a Lesbian.

I’ve never consulted a psychiatrist (but many have with me) as I am not emotionally disturbed nor suffering from a guilt complex. I am perfectly healthy, have no need or use for drugs, cigarettes or alcohol. Although I move in a society that uses them with the rest of their problems, I’m not concerned with their use.

I’ve only had one “friend”. Fifteen years ago we “discovered” one another at a rather boring society tea and instantly we knew there was a tie that bound us. We’ve been true. There is nothing “cheap” about the deep love that we have shared. We are both very prominent women. There has never been the slightest finger of suspicion pointed at us. Our manners in public are such as not to attract any undue attention. We are both attractive, well groomed, fashionably dressed, completely feminine.

If occasionally our hands meet under the table when dining out it is with complete fulfillment and security. We have found what few individuals ever do — that is complete compatibility and understanding, without jealousy or distrust.

I am always secretly amused when some wise person says “I can tell one a mile away”. When my secretary, a clever young woman who has been with me for 10 years, said to me recently when she accidentally saw my copy of THE LADDER: “What do you want with that stuff — you’re no homosexual” I knew my mask had never slipped, and I was secretly proud of the fact. But I long f or the day when I could say “I am a Lesbian” with the same ease I say “I am a Republican”.

My friend and I do not and never have lived together. We have conventional families who never even guess we are  “different”. We manage to have a day a week together. We meet at social affairs and quite often we weekend, or take a vacation somewhere, even Europe.

I would not change my way of life, even if I could. Of course, we all should come out in the open and proclaim our status, but the world is not quite ready for that. While I’m not afraid of men, mice, snakes or storms, I’m just not brave enough — yet — to say “Yes, I am!”

— Sandra Pine

Epilogue

Sandra Pine’s situation may not have been necessarily typical, although certainly was not all that rare. In July, Pine’s contradictory essay boasting of her invisibility elicited a response from Jule Moray, who challenged Pine to consider the price she has paid for her invisibility.

Open Letter to Sandra Pine

I was touched by your article, “Yes, I Am” in the March edition of THE LADDER; touched, and a little terrified.

I see two well dressed women, perfeotly groomed, at whom the finger of suspicion has never pointed; their hats fashionably perched above masks that never slip. Two perfect ladies, completely feminine. Miss Pine, might I ask what are you being feminine for? Whom are you trying to deceive? Yourself, or the well dressed, well groomed, completely masculine men you meet every day? Or your conventional families, who trust you and would never guess? Is it not possible that these normal business and professional friends are as afraid of showing you that they know, as you are afraid of knowing they know? Let us by all means keep our personal lives as private as can be; but if we are lucky enough (and many are not) to have private lives why not let them be as full and satisfying as we can possibly make them? A hand touched beneath the table; one day in seven alone; the occasional week-end; even a trip to Europe in fifteen years — is that the best you can do for your love life, Miss Pine?

Would you lose your job, your mother’s love or your right to vote Republican if you let slip just a couple of small hairpins, took a flat with you friend [sic], and started to make up for all the time you two have lost? Who is going to worry? Not your secretary — you haven’t made a pass at her in ten years — we know that. Not those professional and business gentlemen — you’ve been giving them the red light all along. Who else is there? The ladies at your social gatherings — they’ll be only too thankful you’re not after their men. And at the very worst, if the whole town knows you’ve left home and are sharing with a roommate; is that going to rock anybody?

My friend and I have been together for twenty years; it took us eight years, owing to the war before we were able to live together. We’re not at all smart or well groomed, and I don’t honestly know if you’d say we are feminine or not. Probably in every plaoe we’ve ever lived everyone has known we are Lesbians. We rarely think about it, and we never worry about it. Certainly no one has ever hinted that our relationship is at all strange. Most of our friends are married and no one has ever refused to come to our house. We, in fact, think ourselves liked, sometimes well-liked, very rarely disliked.

Miss Pine, you are not afraid of men, mice, snakes or storms? All right; why don’t you take that flat? A comfortable one, serviced, you can afford it. Let yourselves go a bit over the decor, be bold, but cosy; and, before it’s too late, see to it that there’s only one bedroom with a full size double bed. You won’t, either of you be so well groomed in the future — but it will be worth it.

— Jule Moray

On the Timeline:

March 1958: A lesbian describes her pride in being invisible.

Periscope:

For March 1950:
President: Dwight D. Eisenhower (R)
Vice-President: Richard M. Nixon (R)
House: 233 (D) 197 (R) 0 (Other) 5 (Vacant)
Southern states: 99 (D) 7 (R)
Senate: 49 (D) 47 (R)
Southern states: 22 (D)
Inflation: 3.6%
Unemployment: 6.7%

Headlines: The Army launches a second Explorer satellite, but its final stage fails to ignite and the satellite falls back to earth. President Eisenhower opts against accelerating development of nuclear-powered aircraft. The U.S. Navy mothballs the U.S.S. Wisconsin, leaving the U.S. without a battleship on the seas for the first time since 1895. B-47 bomber accidentally drops an unarmed atom bomb on a farm near Mars Bluff, South Carolina. Cuban President Fulgencio Batista suspends Constitutional freedoms and imposes censorship on domestic and foreign media. The U.S. Navy successfully launches its second satellite, Vanguard 1. Elvis Presley is inducted into the U.S. Army.

On the radio: “Don’t” by Elvis Presley, “Get a Job” by the Silhouettes, “Sweet Little Sixteen” by Chuck Berry, “Short Shorts” by the Royal Teens, “Oh Julie” by the Crescendos, “26 miles (Santa Catalina)” by the Four Preps, “Who’s Sorry Now” by Connie Francis, “The Walk” by Jimmie McCracklin and His Band, “Tequila” by the Champs, “The Stroll” by the Diamonds, “At the Hop” by Danny and the Juniors, ,”Lollipop” by the Chordettes, “Breathless” by Jerry Lee Lewis.

Currently in theaters: Witness for the Prosecution, starring Tyrone Power, Marlene Dietrich and Charles Laughton.

On television: Gunsmoke (CBS), The Danny Thomas Show (CBS), Tales of Wells Fargo (NBC), Have Gun, Will Travel (CBS), I’ve Got a Secret (CBS), The Life and Legend of Wyatt Earp (ABC), General Electric Theater (CBS), The Restless Gun (NBC), December Bride (CBS), You Bet Your Life (NBC).

New York Times best sellers: Fiction: Anatomy of a Murder by Robert Traver, By Love Possessed by James Gould Cozzens, Rally Round the Flag, Boys! by Max Shulman. Non-fiction: Please Don’t Eat the Daisies by Jean Kerr, Kids Say the Darndest Things! by Art Linkletter, Baruch: My Own Story by Bernard Baruch.

Sources:

Sandra Pine. “Yes, I Am!” The Ladder 2, no. 6 (March 1958): 12-13.

Jule Moray. “Open Letter to Sandra Pine.” The Ladder 2, no. 10 (July 1958): 16-17.

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The Hidden Homosexual and the Silent Lesbian on New York TV

It had been about a year and a half since WRCA-TV, NBC’s flagship in New York City, first aired a panel discussion on homosexuality. That program featured a psychologist, a lawyer, and a liberal-for-1956 clergyman, all of them straight. The program was (for 1956) relatively evenhanded and balanced — as balanced as a program like this could be where people were talking about another group of people who weren’t in the room.

But it did ruffle some prominent feathers. New York’s Francis Cardinal Spellman threatened to go to the FCC to have WRCA’s broadcasting license revoked. WRCA reacted by scheduling two more programs in September and January.

In 1958, WABD, the former flagship station of the defunct DuMont network, decided to host a discussion of homosexuality on its half-hour afternoon public affairs program, Showcase. Its producer decided it might be interesting to have a real live homosexual on live television. He contacted Tony Segura, the New York chapter president of the Mattachine Society. Segura agreed to appear, on the condition that his name wasn’t mentioned and he could wear motorcycle goggles while on the air to hide his face. Those precautions were important: homosexuality was a felony in New York, punishable with up to twenty years in prison.

The Showcase panel also included psychiatrist Albert Ellis, a so-called ally of the homophile movement. Ellis was popular among a segment of homosexuals who had fully absorbed society’s blanket condemnations. According to Ellis, homosexuals were mentally ill, but so where heterosexuals who were 100% straight. This made him, for the 1950s, even-handed in a still-condemnatory fashion — even though Ellis saw no particular need to try to cure those heterosexuals he found so neurotically straight.

The program dealt mainly with dispelling some of the stereotypes about gay people, a task that was undoubtedly made more difficult by Segura’s relative invisibility. Ellis’s presence didn’t help much either. He repeated his suggestion that homosexuals adjust themselves to a “heterosexual mode of living.” Segura used his half-hour of near-fame to carefully lay out the Mattachine Society’s purpose and history.

Unlike the previous WRCA program, this program generated little public reaction. Even so, the program proved highly contentious among the higher-ups at WABD. For the next day, Showcase had scheduled a follow-up program program about lesbians, with a member of the New York chapter of the Daughters of Bilitis participating. (I have been unable to discover her name.) But fifteen minutes before airtime, word came down that the topic was cancelled and the guests were to talk about something else — anything else.

The program’s host was Fannie Hurst, a popular novelist, short story writer, feminist, and civil rights activist. With the program about to go live, she scrambled to find a substitute topic that the assembled guests could talk about. As it happened, one of those guests, Helen King, had written a book about handwriting analysis. That would be the safe topic of the day. New York DoB member Lorrie Talbot described this program for The Ladder:

“Having received your letter yesterday morning — there I sat, pencil poised over a fresh white sheet of paper on my coffee table — my eyes glued to the face of the bearded gentleman who apparently introduces the program, SHOWCASE. He was saying in soft, promising tones that we were about to he ar a discus sion of a ‘very interesting’ subject. I lifted my pencil higher…

“Anyhow, poor Miss Fannie Hurst came on and introduced her guests, and with remarkable restraint, advised us viewers that the program which had been promised for today had undergone severe censorship some 15 minutes before show time. Severity in this case meaning that she had been directed to simply drop the topic. I swear, as I was dropping my ready pencil, I truly did see the stenciled letters swim across my eyes — VERBOTEN.

“So that was kind of that — except for some rattier courageous remarks made by Miss Hurst (indirectly) on censorship of valid social questions. She is a writer, you know, and inclined to metaphor, but in this case, well put! She said something to the effect that we (society) have not as yet come out of that ‘strange, dark jungle of fear’. And with marvelous diplomacy, I thought, made it quite clear to all viewers that the responsibility did not lie with her. … She referred to the previous day’s discussion … thusly: ‘After the high plateau reached yesterday’ she regretted that ‘the station feels we are a little premature.'”

And with this, the discussion about handwriting analysis began, although King did manage to squeeze one mention of homosexuality. “To my amusement,” wrote Talbot, “at Miss Hurst’s prodding, Miss King chose an example of her experiences in her work from a matter that had to do with a homosexual personality. Probably innocent, but l imagine it must have made some exeoutive itch a little.”

The half-hour program ended early, with Hurst apologizing again for the censorship imposed on the program. She then signed off with a “hail but not farewell.”

Epilogue:

The following Labor Day weekend, the Mattachine Society held its national convention at the Barbizon-Plaza Hotel in New York City. Fannie Hurst moderated an afternoon panel discussion. Before the panel began, Hurst admitted that until the television programs the previous March, she had never heard of the Mattachine Society and knew almost nothing of homosexuality. The Ladder, the official publication of the Daughters of Bilitis, described her talk as the “emotional highlight of the convention”:

“I represent the man and woman on the street,” Miss Hurst said, referring to her scant knowledge. “I doubt if my mother ever heard the homosexuality, or would have known what it meant. It seems we have come far when we are even disposed to discuss it.”

Miss Hurst pointed out that the discussions at the convention were on a rather intellectual plane, stressing the legal and psychological aspects. “We can never hope,” she said, “until the masses of the people understand. The attitude here is good, but you must reach the people.

“Until the great, great gadgets of modern communication throw this message out to the people, with their slow compassions, their slow thinking, in their own idiom, we won’t get the understanding necessary. Attitudes being [sic] with the people, and they must be told through TV, magazines and the newspapers.”

It was pointed out from the floor that press releases on the convention had been sent to all New York newspapers with the result that one paper had sent a reporter who had written an article later killed by his editor as “not fit for a family newspaper.”

This did not surprise Miss Hurst. “This just shows the size of the job ahead,” she said. “It must be a slow process of erosion.” She pointed out that she fully expects her TV sponsors to present the second program on homosexuality previously cancelled. This through pounding and pounding away by herself and others connected with the program.

Despite Hurst’s best efforts, that second program never came about.

No film or transcript of either program is known to exist.

On the Timeline:

March 10, 1958: New York’s WABD-TV airs a discussion of male homosexuality.

March 11, 1958: New York’s WABD-TV cancels a follow-up program on lesbians.

Periscope:

For March 10-11, 1950:
President: Dwight D. Eisenhower (R)
Vice-President: Richard M. Nixon (R)
House: 233 (D)
232 (D)		 197 (R) 0 (Other) 5 (Vacant)
6 (Vacant)
Southern states: 99 (D) 7 (R)
Senate: 49 (D) 47 (R)
Southern states: 22 (D)
Inflation: 3.6%
Unemployment: 6.7%

Headlines: Rep. John J. Dempsey (D-NM) dies at the age of 78 from a viral infection; he had been hospitalized for two weeks. The unemployment rate reachers 6.7%, surpassing the peak unemployment rate of the 1953-1954 recession. Congressional representatives from both parties call for increasing unemployment insurance and accelerating public works spending to combat rising unemployment in the eight-month-old recession. Vice President Nixon says he favors a tax cut over increased spending if more anti-receission measures are needed. A B-47 bomber accidentally drops an unarmed atomic bomb onto a farm near Florence, South Carolina. Cuban dictator Fulgencio Batista promises to hold fair elections on June 1 amid continuing violence with Fidel Castro’s armed rebels.

On the radio: “Tequila” by the Champs, “Sweet Little Sixteen” by Chuck Berry, “I Don’t” by Elvis Presley, “26 Miles (Santa Catalina)” by the Four Preps, “Oh Julie” by the Crescendos, “Who’s Sorry Now” by Connie Francis, “Get a Job” by the Silhouettes, “The Walk” by Jimmie McCracklin and His Band, “Sugartime” by the McGuire Sisters, “Good Golly, Miss Molly” by Little Richard.

Currently in theaters: Lafayette Escadrille, starring Tab Hunter and Etchika Choureau.

On television: Gunsmoke (CBS), The Danny Thomas Show (CBS), Tales of Wells Fargo (NBC), Have Gun, Will Travel (CBS), I’ve Got a Secret (CBS), The Life and Legend of Wyatt Earp (ABC), General Electric Theater (CBS), The Restless Gun (NBC), December Bride (CBS), You Bet Your Life (NBC).

New York Times best sellers: Fiction: Anatomy of a Murder by Robert Traver, By Love Possessed by James Gould Cozzens, Rally Round the Flag, Boys! by Max Shulman. Non-fiction: Please Don’t Eat the Daisies by Jean Kerr, Kids Say the Darndest Things! by Art Linkletter, Baruch: My Own Story by Bernard Baruch.

Sources:

Magazines (in chronological order):

Philip Jason. “Mattachine Official Participates on New York Television on Homosexual Subject.” The Mattachine Review 4, no 4 (April 1958): 24-25.

Lorrie Talbot. “A Daughter Watches TV.” The Ladder 2, no. 6 (March 1958): 10-11.

“Mattachine Convention: Prognosis Is Hopeful.” The Ladder 3, no. 1 (October 1958): 11-15, 21-25.

Books:

Edward Alwood. Straight News: Gays, Lesbians and the News Media (New York: Columbia University Press, 1996): 34-35.

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Westbrook Pegler agrees: “Homosexualism is worse than communism”

The Angry Man of the Press struck again against his favorite targets: the Roosevelts, the New Deal, and homosexuals. Three weeks earlier, nationally-syndicated columnist Westbrook Pegler had written that if it hadn’t been for those nasty Roosevelts, there would be so many queers in the State Department. “No situation ever existed before the long Roosevelt regime which was even comparable to that which was revealed recently by John E. Peurifoy, a deputy under-secretary of state, who testified that 91 homosexuals had been dismissed from the State Department.” And off he went.

Three weeks later, he returns to his favorite topic and argues that the New Deal and homosexuality are more or less the same thing. He does this by quoting liberally from ACLU co-founder Morris L. Ernst, “a pushful New Deal satellite, (who) will do as one witness to set forth and explain the attitude of the New Deal culture toward the queers.” Ernst had defended James Joyce’s Ulysses and Radclyffe Hall’s The Well of Loneliness against obscenity charges. But what had really drawn Pegler’s ire was that Ernst had served as general counsel for the American Newspaper Guild. Ernst successfully defended the Guild in court under the National Labor Relations Act, which allowed the Guild to become a legitimate labor union, with a closed shop and all. Pegler promptly resigned from the Guild and denounced it as a Communist-run organization.

This time, Pegler was still grumbling about the Guild, but he mainly focused on Ernst’s 1948 praise of the Kinsey Report. Ernst expressed satisfaction that the Report had opened Americans’ eyes to the varieties of sexual expression enjoyed by their neighbors. Ernst also criticized the rigid moral code that placed so many of those neighbors outside of realms of respectability, the law, and the church. Pegler decided that Ernst’s criticisms, “as an authoritative New Dealer,” was just one reason “why abnormality flourished in the State Department.” (The other reason — the main reason, of course — would always be the Roosevelts.)

Pegler also pointed out that Ernst had criticized the German public’s reaction to the Eulenburg affair, the 1907 scandal that outed a prominent member of Kaiser Wilhelm II’s court. Eulenburg presented a favorite example among writers of Pegler’s ilk of every danger posed by homosexuals when they are close to power. Exactly what was so dangerous about the private affairs of Prince Phillip of Eulenburg-Hertefeld would remain unclear. But that was always beside the point. The real danger, one supposes, was the ample ammunition Eulenburg’s presence provided to the Kaiser’s political enemies. Among them was the German journalist Maximilian Harden, who had outed Eulenburg and provoked the scandal.

The affair was similarly useful to Pegler. He turned to a “noted American reporter” who had befriended Harden many years later, and quoted approvingly from this unnamed correspondent: “Homosexualism is worse than Communism. It changes the mentality, blurs morality and the outlook, not only on sex but upon life, ideals, principles and scruples. It is a cancer.”

Fair Enough

By Westbrook Pegler
Westbrook Pegler’s column, as it appeared in the Montana Standard of Butte, Montana, two days later (April 16, 1950, page 4).

The hesitant discussion of sexual depravity in the Roosevelt-Truman bureaucracy, brought to public notice by the dismissal of 91 perverts in the State Department alone, has elicited interesting comments and some references which seem to cast light. Mr. Truman, of course, inherited the corruption. It took root and flourished under Roosevelt.

Morris L. Ernst, a pushful New Deal satellite, will do as one witness to set forth and explain the attitude of the New Deal culture toward the queers. Mr. Ernst has been a busy man in many affairs. He was counsel in the legal complication involving the lamasery on Riverside drive where Henry Wallace made speculative advances toward Oriental deities and his guru, Nicholas Roerich. He was counsel for the Newspaper Guild in the period of its hottest Communist infestation. He was a member of President Truman’s civil rights committee, which promoted the proposition that government should compel employers to hire persons obnoxious to them.

Mr. Ernst nevertheless found time to devote his mind studiously to sex and commit his findings, many of them elusive, to paper. His books include “To the Pure,” “The Sex Life of the Unmarried Adult” and, latest on this preoccupation, “American Sexual Behavior and the Kinsey Report.” In this little work, Ernst remarks angrily that only recently a committee on human reproduction was set up to seek answers “to some of the unknown questions as to how babies are born.” Very soon however, he is expertly discussing sexual practices which, far from propagating people, actually frustrate propagation. The western peoples, he says, have sought to impose their “pattern” or sexual morality, which he calls “customs,” on the rest of the world.

“As if,” he adds, “only one set of sexual customs was either desirable or natural,” from which I earnestly infer that he regards as “desirable” and “natural” some “customs” which are by religion, morals and law abhorrent to western peoples. If he so regards those “customs” then, as an authoritative New Dealer, he has at least established a base. In that case, we know what the New Deal morality really is. In that case, we can understand why abnormality flourished in the State Department, to say nothing of other departments, and why those Americans who are aghast at the revelations are in turn reviled as ignorant hypocrites.

“The Kinsey report shatters some of that complacency,” Mr. Ernst writes. So we were complacent and the word “complacency,” as used here, seems to despise us for a provincial bigotry. In Greece, he says, homosexuality was “an accepted outlet” and, “so far as we can tell, neither the strength of the Greek race nor the standards of its culture suffered.” Except that the race vanished, Mr. Ernst might have something there, but I find more interesting the author’s attitude toward the “outlet.”

“Our habits,” he says, “both of thinking and acting, have been so conditioned by the blind acceptance of standards fitted to another age that we do not know what a practical attitude toward sex behavior should be. What is normal? What is moral? What is pure? How much of the legal code dealing with sex is sensible? What is healthy?” He rejects judges, doctors and clergy as authorities on normality, morality, purity and good sense in law. In particular, he holds in contempt “celibates” who “have been the most dogmatic expounders of the normal and moral.”

Who then, however, would Mr. Ernst prefer — prostitutes, homosexuals and other perverts as arbiters of sexual behavior? Them and Mr. Ernst? The proportion of his writing on sex to the whole of his opera would thrust him into prominence. He is an authority. A New Deal moralist.

Although this book was published in 1948, long before the disclosure of the condition in the State Department, Mr. Ernst, by the merest accident, no doubt, seems to anticipate that explosion and to enter a plea long in advance. Speaking of the historic scandal in Kaiser Wilhelm’s court, he says there is difficulty in deciding whether public outcry is based primarily on the outrage “said to have been done to public opinion” or on a desire for political advantage.

Taking leave of Mr. Ernst, I now refer to a letter from a noted American reporter who has spent many years in Europe, especially Germany. He was a friend of Maximilian Harden, the journalist who exposed the perverts in the Kaiser’s court. Harden’s motive was “political” but in a patriotic sense. “Politics” is the science of government and Harden realized that this condition among the men who manipulated the Kaiser was dangerous to Germany. Had the perverts vanished when they were warned, Harden would have made no scandal.

My correspondent in Germany writes: “You say 91 homosexuals have been dismissed from the State Department in the last three years. What a terrible state of morals in our government. Is it confined only to the State Department? Not likely. Homosexualism is worse than Communism. It changes the mentality, blurs morality and the outlook, not only on sex but upon life, ideals, principles and scruples. It is a cancer. That is why I am so troubled that it has made such inroads in our State Department. Blackmail through threats of exposure is a powerful weapon often used to make a victim do a thing he does not want to do.”

But, see, this is the outmoded superstition or a Victorian bigot. If we consult Mr. Ernst, “such customs” do not “blur morality” and the outlook on sex, life, ideals, principles and scruples. On the contrary, it is the western “pattern” of sexual morality which blurs morality and the outlook. Abandon that “pattern” and the blur is cured and a beautiful, spiritual, intellectual and sexual existence comes into clear focus.

But Mr. Ernst himself seems confused and other-handed, for he follows these remarks with this one: “It Is not suggested that on the basis of these facts we change our standards, our ideals or even our laws.”

Epilogue:

Pegler’s column was distributed by King Features Syndicate to more than a hundred papers across the country. His rants reached more than six million readers until 1962, when he fell out with executives at the syndicate’s owners, the Hearst Corporation. He then found work writing for the John Birch Society’s American Opinion. He lost that job in 1964 because he griped too much about the Jews and Eleanor. He then wrote for the White Christian Council and Billy James Hargis’s segregationist and virulently anti-Semitic Christian Crusade.

Read More:

In 2004, William F. Buckley, Jr., wrote a puzzling paean to Pegler for the New Yorker. Pulitzer Prize-winning author Dianne McWhorter responded with a rundown on Pegler’s work and bigotries.

Jeff Sharlet also wrote a detailed profile of Westbrook Pegler in 1999.

On the Timeline:

Previously:

Feb 20, 1950: McCarthy links homosexuality and Communism.

Feb 27, 1950: Commerce Department official says no homosexuals have been dismissed from the department.

Feb 28, 1950: The State Department reports dismissing 91 homosexuals.

Mar 14, 1950: McCarthy names five “bad security risks,” including one homosexual.

Mar 21, 1950: Columnist George E. Sokolsky says homosexuals are “advantageously stationed” in the State Department.

Mar 23, 1950: Robert C. Ruark’s column warns of homosexuals “traveling in packs.”

Mar 24, 1950: Robert C. Ruark follows up with “a drunk, a homosexual, and a flagrant fool.”

Mar 24, 1950: Westbrook Pegler says homosexuals in government weren’t a problem before FDR.

Mar 31, 1950: Rep. Arthur L. Miller gives “the putrid facts about homosexuality.”

This story:

Apr 14, 1950: Westbrook Pegler agrees that “homosexualism is worse than Communism.”

Next:

Apr 14, 1950: GOP Senator says McCarthy should attack homosexuals instead of Communists.

Apr 18, 1950: GOP Chairman warns of “perverts who have infiltrated our government.”

Periscope:

For April 14, 1950:
President: Harry S Truman (D)
Vice-President: Alben W. Barkley (D)
House: 261 (D) 168 (R) 2 (Other) 4 (Vacant)
Southern states: 101 (D) 2 (R) 2 (Vacant)
Senate: 54 (D) 42 (R)
Southern states: 22 (D)
GDP growth: 10.3% (Annual)
3.9% (Quarterly)
Inflation: -1.3%
Unemployment: 5.8%

Headlines: Pravda suggests that a Navy plane that went missing over the Baltic had received a “proper lesson” when it allegedly flew over Soviet territory. Defense Department announces plans to inter a World War II servicemember at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier next year. Sen. Robert Taft (R-OH) accuses President Truman of libeling Sen. McCarthy. Truman responds, “Do you think that is possible?” South Carolina Gov. Strom Thurmond signs legislation placing literacy and property ownership requirements on registered voters.

In the record stores: “If I Knew You Were Comin’ I’d’ve Baked a Cake” by Eileen Barton, “The Third Man Theme” by Anton Karas, “Music! Music! Music!” by Teresa Brewer, “It Isn’t Fair” by Don Cornell and the Sammy Kaye Orchestra, “The Third Man Theme” by Guy Lombardo and His Orchestra, “Peter Cottontail” by Gene Autry, “Chattanoogie Shoe Shine Boy” by Red Foley, “Sentimental Me” by the Ames Brothers, “Peter Cottontail” by Merv Shiner, “My Foolish Heart” by the  Gordon Jenkins Orchestra.

On the radio: Lux Radio Theater (CBS), Jack Benny Program (CBS), Edgar Bergan & Charlie McCarthy (CBS), Amos & Andy (CBS), Arthur Godfrey’s Talent Scouts (CBS), My Friend Irma (CBS), Walter Winchell’s Journal (ABC), Red Skelton Show (CBS), You Bet Your Life (NBC), Mr. Chameleon (CBS).

Currently in theaters: No Man of Her Own, starring Barbara Stanwyck and John Lund.

On television: The Lone Range (ABC), Toast of the Town/Ed Sullivan (CBS), Studio One (CBS), Captain Video and his Video Rangers (DuMont), Kraft Television Theater (NBC), The Goldbergs (CBS), Arthur Godfrey’s Talent Scouts (CBS), Candid Camera (NBC), Texaco Star Theater/Milton Berle (NBC), Hopalong Cassidy (NBC), Cavalcade of Stars/Jackie Gleason (DuMont), Meet the Press (NBC), Roller Derby (ABC).

New York Times best sellers: Fiction: The Wall by John Hersey, The Cardinal by Henry Morton Robinson, The Egyptian by Mika Waltari. Non-fiction: The Mature Mind by H.A. Overstreet, Chicago Confidential by Jack Lait and Lee Mortimer, Mr. Jones, Meet the Master by Rev. Peter Marshall.

Sources:

Westbrook Pegler. “Fair Enough” column for April, 14, 1950, as it appeared in the (Butte) Montana Standard (April 16, 1950): 4.

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“Sexual perverts have invaded our government”: Republicans test a new campaign issue

On April 18, 1950, Guy Gabrielson, Chairman of the Republican National Committee, threw the party’s full support behind the Lavender Scare. In a letter to about 7,000 party workers under the heading, “This is the News from Washington,” Gabrielson applauded Sen. Joseph McCarthy’s (R-WI) campaign:

As Americans, it is difficult for us to believe that a National Administration would go to such length to cover up and protect subversives, traitors, working against their country in high Governmental places. But it is happening. If there is but one more (Alger) Hiss or (Judith) Coplon still in a key spot, he should be ferreted out. It’s no red herring.

In 1948, when the Republican-controlled House Un-American Activities Committee was investigating the Whittaker Chambers/Alger Hiss affair, Truman famously dismissed the hearings as a “red herring” that the Republican Party had cooked up to distract Americans from more important issues during an election year. Later that year, voters returned both the House and Senate to Democratic control, and, in a big upset, chose Truman over New York. Gov. Thomas E. Dewey.

Frustrated Republicans were looking at nearly two decades of being locked out of power. But the Great Depression and the Second World War were now history and new worries emerged. The Soviets menaced Europe, China had fallen to the Reds, the Russians shocked Americans by detonating an atomic bomb, and a jury convicted Hiss of perjury over his testimony before the HUAC. Americans blamed either incompetence or, worse, conspiracy in the State Department for these failures, and Truman’s “red herring” comment was coming back to haunt him.

Americans were paranoid about Communists, but they were both paranoid and disgusted with homosexuals. In the early stages of what became known as the Red Scare, many Republicans saw the Lavender Scare as a more promising angle of attack. On March 30, the New York Daily News opined, “If we were writing Republican campaign speeches, we’d use the word ‘queer’ at every opportunity.” In April, Sen. Styles Bridges (R-NH) was telling audiences that he thought McCarthy should focus more on “bad security risks.” “When they admit discharging ninety-one homosexuals, it doesn’t look good.” Gabrielson apparently agreed. His April letter devoted more space to “sexual perverts” than to Communists.

Perhaps as dangerous as the actual Communists are the sexual perverts who have infiltrated our Government in recent years. The State Department has confessed that it has had to fire ninety-one of these. It is the talk of Washington and of the Washington correspondents corps.

The country would be more aroused over this tragic angle of the situation if it were not for the difficulties of the newspapers and radio commentators in adequately presenting the facts, while respecting the decency of their American audiences.

Epilogue:

By summer, Truman’s advisers worried that the queer campaign might succeed. One advisor warned in an internal memo that “the charges about homosexuality have struck home with far greater effect, in certain quarters, than the Communist allegations.” The working class and poor, both the bedrock of the Democratic base, worried less about national security and more about morals. “Intolerance of this kind of deviation increases substantially as you go down the income scale,” the memo warned.

Another memo echoed Gabrielson’s observation that the homosexual investigations were the talk of Washington. “Although the matter is frequently discussed in whispers behind hands, a number of responsible persons have advised that … the country is really much more disturbed over the picture which has been presented so far of the government being loaded with homosexuals than it is over the clamor about Communists in the Government.”

On the Timeline:

Previously:

Feb 20, 1950: McCarthy links homosexuality and Communism.

Feb 27, 1950: Commerce Department official says no homosexuals have been dismissed from the department.

Feb 28, 1950: The State Department reports dismissing 91 homosexuals.

Mar 14, 1950: McCarthy names five “bad security risks,” including one homosexual.

Mar 21, 1950: Columnist George E. Sokolsky says homosexuals are “advantageously stationed” in the State Department.

Mar 23, 1950: Robert C. Ruark’s column warns of homosexuals “traveling in packs.”

Mar 24, 1950: Robert C. Ruark follows up with “a drunk, a homosexual, and a flagrant fool.”

Mar 24, 1950: Westbrook Pegler says homosexuals in government weren’t a problem before FDR.

Mar 31, 1950: Rep. Arthur L. Miller gives “the putrid facts about homosexuality.”

Apr 14, 1950: Westbrook Pegler agrees that “homosexualism is worse than Communism.”

Apr 14, 1950: GOP Senator says McCarthy should attack homosexuals instead of Communists.

This story:

Apr 18, 1950: GOP Chairman warns of “perverts who have infiltrated our government.”

Periscope:

For April 18, 1950:
President: Harry S Truman (D)
Vice-President: Alben W. Barkley (D)
House: 261 (D) 168 (R) 2 (Other) 4 (Vacant)
Southern states: 101 (D) 2 (R) 2 (Vacant)
Senate: 54 (D) 42 (R)
Southern states: 22 (D)
GDP growth: 10.3% (Annual)
3.9% (Quarterly)
Inflation: -1.3%
Unemployment: 5.8%

Headlines: The Postmaster General orders residential mail deliveries be cut back from twice a day to once daily. The National Labor Relations Board fires Ruth Weyand, a white lawyer for the general counsel, after she marries an African-American lobbyist for the NAACP.  The U.S. accuses the Soviets of shooting down a Navy patrol plane over the Baltic; the plane has been missing since April 8.

In the record stores: “If I Knew You Were Comin’ I’d’ve Baked a Cake” by Eileen Barton, “The Third Man Theme” by Anton Karas, “Music! Music! Music!” by Teresa Brewer, “It Isn’t Fair” by Don Cornell and the Sammy Kaye Orchestra, “The Third Man Theme” by Guy Lombardo and His Orchestra, “Peter Cottontail” by Gene Autry, “Chattanoogie Shoe Shine Boy” by Red Foley, “Sentimental Me” by the Ames Brothers, “Peter Cottontail” by Merv Shiner, “My Foolish Heart” by the  Gordon Jenkins Orchestra.

Currently in theaters: Sands of Iwo Jima, starring John Wayne, John Agar, Adele Mara and Forrest Tucker.

On the radio: Lux Radio Theater (CBS), Jack Benny Program (CBS), Edgar Bergan & Charlie McCarthy (CBS), Amos & Andy (CBS), Arthur Godfrey’s Talent Scouts (CBS), My Friend Irma (CBS), Walter Winchell’s Journal (ABC), Red Skelton Show (CBS), You Bet Your Life (NBC), Mr. Chameleon (CBS).

On television: The Lone Range (ABC), Toast of the Town/Ed Sullivan (CBS), Studio One (CBS), Captain Video and his Video Rangers (DuMont), Kraft Television Theater (NBC), The Goldbergs (CBS), Arthur Godfrey’s Talent Scouts (CBS), Candid Camera (NBC), Texaco Star Theater/Milton Berle (NBC), Hopalong Cassidy (NBC), Cavalcade of Stars/Jackie Gleason (DuMont), Meet the Press (NBC), Roller Derby (ABC).

New York Times best sellers: Fiction: The Wall, by John Hersey, The Cardinal by Henry Morton Robinson, The Egyptian by Mika Waltari. Non-fiction: The Mature Mind by H.A. Overstreet, Chicago Confidential by Jack Lait and Lee Mortimer, Mr. Jones, Meet the Master by Rev. Peter Marshall.

Sources:

Newspapers and magazines (in chronological order):

Editorial: “Okay — Political it is.” New York Daily News (March 30, 1950): 13.

Edwin R. Bayley. “Bridges says McCarthy was ‘wild at start’.” Milwaukee Journal (April 15, 1950): 1, 2.

“Perverts called government peril.” New York Times (April 19, 1950): 25.

Books:

David K. Johnson. The Lavender Scare: The Cold War Persecution of Gays and Lesbians in the Federal Government. (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2004): 29.

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McCarthy names “a notorious homosexual”

McCarthy speaking before the Tydings Committee, March 14, 1950.

Two months had passed since Sen. Joseph McCarthy (R-WI) began saying that he had a long list of names of Communists, Commie-sympathizers, and homosexuals in the U.S. State Departments. The numbers kept changing every time he spoke: from 205 to 57, to 220, then 81. He kept promising to hand the names over to investigators. But when the time came, McCarthy dribbled them out, a few at a time, always in public, and in ways that ensured maximum publicity — for him.

His venue now was a Senate Foreign Relations Subcommittee, tasked with investigating McCarthy’s charges. McCarthy had been its star witness for the better part of a week when, on March 14, he publicly announced four more names. He accused Gustavo Durán, a former State Department employee now at the U.N., of being a “rabid Communist.” He accused Dr. Harlow Shapely, a Harvard astronomer, of having “a long and interesting record” of membership in Communist-front organizations. He said that Frederick Schuman, an international relations professor at Williams College in Massachusetts, sponsored several “Communist front organizations in America.” And he called Far East expert John Stewart Service a “bad security risk” whose “Communist affiliations are well known.” Durán, Shapely, and Schuman were relatively unaffected by McCarthy’s charges. None of them were State Department employees. But the State Department fired Service. He spent the next eight years trying, and ultimately succeeding, in getting his job back.

McCarthy also gave a few details about a fifth person. “Because of the sordid details of this case,” he began, “I will not make public the name of this man.” (He did provide it privately.) McCarthy prefaced this set of remarks by reminding the subcommittee of State Department Undersecretary John Peurifoy’s remarks of February 28. That’s when Peurifoy told a Senate Appropriations Committee that the State Department had already dismissed 91 homosexuals since 1947. They were dismissed as “security risks” because, the thinking went, they were vulnerable to blackmail. One of them was fired, and the rest were allowed to resign. This bothered several Senators, including McCarthy, who thought they all should have been fired.

McCarthy began this latest revelation by agreeing “with the official position of the State Department; namely, that homosexuals are poor security risks.” He then went on to describe this particular “risk”:

This individual was employed in the Foreign Service and the State Department until 1948 when he resigned for reasons unknown to me. I had received information from several sources that this man was a notorious homosexual. A check of the records of the Metropolitan Police Department indicated that these reports were true. I now hand the Chair, for your executive consideration, a copy of a police report, together with a police photograph and the official biography of this individual as it appeared in the State Department Register of April, 1948.

…You will note from the police records that this man was arrested on September 8, 1943. The charge was sexual perversion and the police report states that he was known to hang out at the men’s room, at Lafayette Park in Washington.

This man is getting about $12,000 a year now (about $130,000 today).

He was charged with disorderly conduct in connection with his perverted activities. I do not have the record of the disposition of this case available, but I am informed that he was required to post collateral of $25 on this charge and forfeited collateral.

As I previously said, this man resigned from the State Department in 1948 and shortly thereafter became employed in one of the most sensitive agencies of our Government where he now holds an important and high-paying position.

On questioning, McCarthy revealed that this man was now at the CIA. McCarthy continued:

In view of this man’s criminal record, which I have just presented to the committee, and other information concerning his lack of moral fitness, I am at a loss to understand why he was allowed to resign from the State Department.

I might say, in connection with that, it seems unusual to me, in that we have so many normal people, so many competent Americans, that we must employ so many very, very unusual men in Washington. It certainly gives the country an odd idea of the type of individuals who are running things down here.

McCarthy said he thought the State Department had allowed these homosexuals to resign “so they could take over some other Government jobs.”
(In fact, Peurifoy had testified that even though those employees had resigned, the reasons they were asked to resign were still entered into their records and forwarded to the Civil Service Commission.) McCarthy continued:

As I said earlier in this statement, I do not know why the individual who is the subject of my present case was allowed to resign; but I think it is the responsibility of this committee to find out the full facts concerning his resignation.

I also believe that the committee should immediately determine how this individual was able to stay in the Department for almost 5 years after he was arrested on a morals charge in Washington, D.C.

I also think the committee should find out how he, after leaving the State Department, was able to get a top-salaried, important position in another sensitive Government agency. It should be of considerable interest to this committee to find out who sponsored this individual or who intervened in his behalf in both the State Department and his present place of employment.

Epilogue:

McCarthy gave this testimony on Tuesday morning., early enough to make the afternoon papers. Left for the following morning’s coverage would be that afternoon’s hearings before the same subcommittee, when former Judge Dorothy Kenyon answered charges that she was a Communist fellow traveler.

Dorothy Kenyon testifying before the Tydings Committee on March 14.

The week before, Kenyon had been the first person McCarthy accused by name. According to McCarthy, Kenyon, a popular women’s and civil rights activist, was a member of twenty-eight Communist front organizations. Kenyon branded McCarthy an “an unmitigated liar” and “a coward to take shelter in the cloak of Congressional immunity.”

She demanded a hearing, and her appointment was set for the afternoon of March 14, right after McCarthy’s testimony. Kenyon’s rebuttal was as meticulous as it was devastating. The audience applauded when she was done, and Sen. Bourke Hickenlooper (R-IA) apologetically said there wasn’t the slightest evidence she was eve disloyal. McCarthy himself, though, missed her performance. He decided he was needed elsewhere and was nowhere in sight. And in the days that followed, he completely lost interest in her.

On the Timeline:

Previously:

Feb 9, 1950: McCarthy tells an audience in Wheeling, WV, that he has a list of 205 Communists in the State Department.

Feb 20, 1950: McCarthy links homosexuality and Communism.

Feb 27, 1950: Commerce Department official says no homosexuals have been dismissed from the department.

Feb 28, 1950: The State Department reports dismissing 91 homosexuals.

This story:

Mar 14, 1950: McCarthy names five “bad security risks,” including one homosexual.

Next:

Mar 21, 1950: Columnist George E. Sokolsky says homosexuals are “advantageously stationed” in the State Department.

Mar 23, 1950: Robert C. Ruark’s column warns of homosexuals “traveling in packs.”

Mar 24, 1950: Robert C. Ruark follows up with “a drunk, a homosexual, and a flagrant fool.”

Mar 24, 1950: Westbrook Pegler says homosexuals in government weren’t a problem before FDR.

Periscope:

For March 14, 1950:
President: Harry S. Truman (D)
Vice-President: Alben W. Barkley (D)
House: 262 (D) 169 (R) 2 (Other) 2 (Vacant)
Southern states: 102 (D) 2 (R) 1 (Vacant)
Senate: 54 (D) 42 (R)
Southern states: 22 (D)
GDP growth: 7.3 % (Annual)
3.0 % (Quarterly)
Fed discount rate: 1½ %
Inflation: -0.8 %
Unemployment: 6.4 %

Headlines: The deadline for filing Federal income tax returns is midnight tonight. McCarthy names four State Department associates as “bad security risks.” Dorothy Kenyon cites extensive record and documents to refute McCarthy’s charges. Witness before House Un-American Activities Committee accuses unions of aiding Communist propaganda. The witness also says that the Reds plan to use, then liquidate, liberals in their plan to take over America. Paul Robeson’s scheduled television appearance is cancelled after callers jam NBC’s switchboards. New York City authorizes $50,000 (about $530,000 today) for an experimental cloud-seeding program to relieve the city’s water shortage.

In the record stores: “Chattanoogie Shoe Shine Boy” by Red Foley, “Music! Music! Music! (Put Another Nickel In)” by Teresa Brewer and the Dixieland All-Stars, There’s No Tomorrow, by Tony Martin, “The Cry of the Wild Goose” by Frankie Lane, “Rag Mop” by the Ames Brothers, “I Said My Pajamas” by Tony Martin and Fran Warren, “It Isn’t Fair” by Don Cornell and the Sammy Kaye Orchestra, “Quicksilver” by Bing Crosby and the Andrew Sisters, “If I Knew You Were Coming I’d’ve Baked a Cake” by Eileen Barton. “Rag Mop” by Ralph Flanagan and his Orchestra.

Currently in theaters: Love Happy, starring the Marx Brothers. Filmed in 1948, the movie includes a small walk-on part for Marylin Monroe.

On the radio: Lux Radio Theater (CBS), Jack Benny Program (CBS), Edgar Bergan & Charlie McCarthy (CBS), Amos & Andy (CBS), Arthur Godfrey’s Talent Scouts (CBS), My Friend Irma (CBS), Walter Winchell’s Journal (ABC), Red Skelton Show (CBS), You Bet Your Life (NBC), Mr. Chameleon (CBS).

On television: The Lone Range (ABC), Toast of the Town/Ed Sullivan (CBS), Studio One (CBS), Captain Video and his Video Rangers (DuMont), Kraft Television Theater (NBC), The Goldbergs (CBS), Arthur Godfrey’s Talent Scouts (CBS), Candid Camera (NBC), Texaco Star Theater/Milton Berle (NBC), Hopalong Cassidy (NBC), Cavalcade of Stars/Jackie Gleason (DuMont), Meet the Press (NBC), Roller Derby (ABC).

New York Times best sellers: Fiction: The Parasites by Daphne du Maurier, The Egyptian by Mika Waltari, The King’s Cavalier by Samual Shellabarger. Non-fiction: The Mature Mind by H.A. Overstreet, This I Remember by Eleanor Roosevelt, Home Sweet Zoo by Clare Barnes.

Source:

State Department Employee Loyalty Investigation. Tuesday, March 14, 1950. Hearings Before a Subcommittee of the Committee on Foreign Relations, U.S. Senate (Tydings Committee), 81st Cong., 2nd sess. part 1:   109-175. Available online here. The “notorious homosexual” appears on pages 128-130.

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A Homosexual’s Desires Are Like Menstrual Cycles: A Congressman Explains It All

Click to download the text of Miller’s May 3 speech as it appears in the Congressional Record (PDF/1.8MB).

Never before had homosexuality been such a hot topic. And never before have so many politicians been so eager to mark themselves as experts on the evils of homosexuality. One of them was Rep. Arthur L. Miller (R-NE), a Congressman of middling renown. The man from Kimball, Nebraska, focused mainly on farm issues. When he ventured beyond the barbed wire fence, the Plains conservative denounced the New Deal, socialism, and school text books he thought were insufficiently harsh on Communism.

He also dabbled in public health issues. The biggest accomplishment to date for the humble Congressman came in 1948, when he proposed and got Congress to pass what became known as the Miller Act. A sex crime panic was sweeping the country at the time, and his measure sought to solve the problem, at least within the District lines of the nation’s capital. In the days before Home Rule, Congress was the city council, and legislators from Bangor to Barstow had exclusive say on local policies and legislation whenever they thought they knew better.

And when it came to sex crimes, Miller thought he knew better. His sexual psychopath bill authorized the U.S. District Attorney to initiate commitment proceedings against anyone who demonstrated a “lack of power to control his sexual impulses.” The person needn’t be found guilty of a crime. He didn’t even have to be charged. But under the Miller Act, he could still find himself involuntarily committed to Washington’s St. Elizabeth’s Hospital until the superintendent determined that the individual is “sufficiently recovered.” These indeterminate commitments, depending on the whim of the hospital’s superintendent, could wind up being far longer than the criminal penalty the person might be subject to if he had been convicted.

The Miller Act wasn’t unique. States across the country were busy enacting similar legislation. Virginia had just enacted one on April 7. These laws supposed to “help” — actually, incarcerate — child molesters, peeping toms, flashers, and the like, sometimes without a trial or an attorney. In practice, they also swept up cross-dressers, transgender people and homosexuals, with no regard as to whether they actually posed a threat to anyone.  By 1950, the Miller Act detained at least two “non-coercive homosexuals and one aggressive sodomist” in the District.

On May 3, Miller was the featured speaker at the annual Nebraska State Medical Association convention at the Cornhusker Hotel in Lincoln. The title of his talk was, “How Safe Is America?” Miller warned that the Democrats were pushing federal aid to medical, dental, and nursing schools, all “definite steps to socialized medicine.” He also criticized McCarthy for saying there were 57 Reds in the State Department. Miller didn’t think that was true. But he implied that where there was smoke, there might be fire. “You can be sure of one thing though,” Miller said, “if there were anything in the loyalty files to prove McCarthy wrong, the administration would show them to the committee.

In his preliminary remarks, he said that he was convinced that “I know more about the practice of medicine and surgery than I know about the practice of being a Congressman.” If that were true, then bless his little heart. Because when he got around to educating his audience about homosexuals, he made an unusually absurd claim: “It is found that the cycle of these individuals’ homosexual desires follow the cycle closely patterned to the menstrual period of women. There may be 3 or 4 days in each month that this homosexual’s instincts break down and drive the individual into abnormal fields of sexual practice.”

When Miller returned to Washington, he had his entire speech placed in the Congressional Record. What follows is the portion of that speech where Miller imparts his vast expertise on homosexuals.

In further exploring the subject of how safe is America, I wish to examine with you the number of subversives and security risks which are now, or have been, employed in the Federal Government. Mr. Peurifoy, the Under Secretary of State, testified before a Senate Committee recently that they found it necessary to fire or let resign 257 employees last year, and that 91 of this group were homosexuals. The Police Department of the District of Columbia estimates that there are about 5,000 homosexuals in the city and 75 percent are employed by government.

I discuss this subject of homosexuality with some timidity. In looking over the literature on this topic, I find that it is seldom approached, even by the psychiatrist, and, being first a surgeon, and second a politician, I find it difficult to explore. I will direct my remarks to their employment in government, plus a brief review of this problem.

Homosexuality can be defined as the attraction for individuals of the same sex to each other. The subject is as old as the human race. It is mentioned in the Bible, was recognized by the ancient Greeks, and is practiced extensively among the Orientals. It is important to note at this point that the Russians and the Orientals still look upon the practice with favor.

Mr. Goering of German fame and General Roehn, who were executed, kept the list of homosexuals for Germany. They also had a list of these individuals in the State, Commerce, and other Departments of our Government. The Russians undoubtedly have similar lists. These espionage agents have found it rather easy to send their homosexuals here and contact their kind in sensitive departments of our Government. Blackmail and many other schemes are used to gather secret information.

The homosexual is often a man of considerable intellect and ability. It is found that the cycle of these individuals’ homosexual desires follow the cycle closely patterned to the menstrual period of women. There may be 3 or 4 days in each month that this homosexual’s instincts break down and drive the individual into abnormal fields of sexual practice. It has been found that if the individual can be given large doses of sedatives and other treatments during this sensitive cycle, that he may escape performing acts of homosexuality.

The problem of sexual maladjustments are most urgent and still far from a solution. In the Army, several thousand men were discharged because of homosexuality. When caught in the act, these men were generally discharged without honor, which means the loss of citizenship and the right to vote, or to belong to any organization of veterans, or to receive many of the rewards which are granted to those who have served honorably. This is most serious. Many of the homosexuals failed to survive the rigors of warfare and the constant intimate association with men. They were painfully aware of their limitations. The majority were unable to conceal their tendencies and were eventually eliminated with disgrace, and a stigma to themselves, their families, and friends.

Jealousy is never encountered in true friendships. Never is the bond which unites two friends such that the acquisition of a new friend by one is regarded angrily by the other; but quite otherwise is the life among homosexuals. Here jealousy reigns supreme. It is similar to the love of a boy for a girl. Male homosexuals will not share their fairy with anybody. His anger is unlimited for anyone who seeks to possess the object of his love.

The sexual attraction exercised by a man on another male may be apparent in many ways. The homosexual will become excited by the mere presence of some man in a public place. They will often approach that man, even though he is a stranger. On streetcars, intimate advances are made. A taxi driver often finds his fare making indiscreet advances. The true homosexual seeks any kind of contact with the male he adores. He has no sensation whatever in the presence of the most beautiful and seductive female. Her amorous advances to him may even be repulsive.

The Bible apprises us of the fact that when the inhabitants of Sodom consorted physically with the angels who descended to the pious Lot, God, in His wrath, entirely destroyed the city. From here comes the origin of the expression “sodomy.” Sodomy is used to designate a certain type of sexual pervert and homosexual.

In the Third Book of Moses (Leviticus), the Lord said to the stranger, “If man lay with mankind as he lieth with a woman, both of them have committed an ·abomination. They shall surely be put to death and their blood shall be upon them.”

Perversion is found at all levels of society. Perhaps more frequently among the higher levels where nervousness, unhappiness, and leisure time leads to vices.

The homosexual takes on many indiscretions. He has a tendency to lie and to lie on all occasions. It is a part of their defense.

Two years ago, as chairman of the Committee on Public Health in the District of Columbia, I sponsored legislation directed at a new legal approach to the sex-pervert problem. There were so many sex crimes in Washington, our parks and loafing places were no longer safe for the citizen. The police blotters of Washington contain the names of many individuals, some prominent, who are repeatedly brought to court for actions of sex perversion. Most of them merely post a $25 collateral and are never brought to trial. Under that law these people may be treated as medical problems, and can receive treatment at the discretion of the court in one of the hospitals of the city. The results are encouraging.

Homosexuals are like birds of a feather — they flock together. Washington has several restaurants and dwelling places in palatial surroundings where these people worship at the flesh pots and cesspools of immoral sex demonstration. Recently the moral squad arrested 40 men in one house, worshiping at the flesh pots of iniquity.

In some respects they are more to be pitied than condemned. Some have a pathologic mind. They might be compared to the kleptomaniac, who must steal, or the pyromaniac, who sets a fire. Seldom a week passes but what Washington and the surrounding territory has several atrocious crimes closely related to sex emotions. It 1s only recently that the press has given some freedom to the open discussion of the topic. The subject is still taboo among family newspapers.

It does seem to me that if we are to keep America safe this type of individual ought not to be permitted to serve in key positions of government. The Congress is writing into several appropriation bills a clause which will permit the secretary of a department to dismiss individuals who might be security risks. It always includes homosexuals.

Read more:

I have extracted the entire speech as it appeared in the Congressional Record and placed it online here (PDF/1.4MB).

On the Timeline:

Previously:

March 31, 1950: Rep. Arthur L. Miller gives “the putrid facts about homosexuality.

This story:

May 3, 1950: Rep. Arthur L. Miller says the homosexual drive is similar to menstrual cycles.

Periscope:

For May 3, 1950:
President: Harry S Truman (D)
Vice-President: Alben W. Barkley (D)
House: 262 (D) 168 (R) 2 (Other) 3 (Vacant)
Southern states: 102 (D) 2 (R) 1 (Vacant)
Senate: 54 (D) 42 (R)
Southern states: 22 (D)
GDP growth: 10.3% (Annual)
3.9% (Quarterly)
Inflation: -0.4%
Unemployment: 5.5%

Headlines: Truman’s political prestige suffers when his ally, Sen. Claude Pepper (D-FL), loses the Florida primary. An argument breaks out in the Senate when McCarthy claims his Wheeling speech mentioned only 57 names instead of witnesses’ accounts of 205. Prof. Owen Lattimore, State Department advisor for China and the Far East, is outraged over Joseph McCarthy’s attacks on his wife. A 100-day strike against Chrysler finally ends.

In the record stores: “The Third Man Theme” by Anton Karas, “If I Knew You Were Coming I’d’ve Baked a Cake” by Eileen Barton, “The Third Man Theme” by Guy Lombardo and his Orchestra, “It Isn’t Fair” by Don Cornell and the Sammy Kaye Orchestra, “Music! Music! Music!” by Teresa Brewer, “My Foolish Heart” by Gordon Jenkins, “Sentimental Me” by the Ames Brothers, “Bewitched” by Bill Snyder and His Orchestra, “Daddy’s Little Girl” by the Mills Brothers, “My Foolish Heart” by Billy Eckstine.

Currently in theaters: The Third Man, starring Joseph Cotton, Alida Valli, Orson Welles, and Trevor Howard

On the radio: Lux Radio Theater (CBS), Jack Benny Program (CBS), Edgar Bergan & Charlie McCarthy (CBS), Amos & Andy (CBS), Arthur Godfrey’s Talent Scouts (CBS), My Friend Irma (CBS), Walter Winchell’s Journal (ABC), Red Skelton Show (CBS), You Bet Your Life (NBC), Mr. Chameleon (CBS).

On television: The Lone Range (ABC), Toast of the Town/Ed Sullivan (CBS), Studio One (CBS), Captain Video and his Video Rangers (DuMont), Kraft Television Theater (NBC), The Goldbergs (CBS), Arthur Godfrey’s Talent Scouts (CBS), Candid Camera (NBC), Texaco Star Theater/Milton Berle (NBC), Hopalong Cassidy (NBC), Cavalcade of Stars/Jackie Gleason (DuMont), Meet the Press (NBC), Roller Derby (ABC).

New York Times best sellers: Fiction: The Cardinal by Henry Morton Robinson, The Wall by John Hersey, The Egyptian by Mika Waltari. Non-fiction: The Mature Mind by H.A. Overstreet, Worlds In Collision by Immanuel Velikovsky, Chicago Confidential by Jack Lait and Lee Mortimer.

Sources:

Bernard A. Cruvant, Milton Meltzer, Francis J. Tartaglino. “An institutional program for committed sex deviants.” American Journal of Psychiatry 107, no. 3 (September 1950): 190-194.

“How safe is America? Extension of remarks of Hon. A.L. Miller of Nebraska in the House of Representatives, Monday, May 15, 1950.” 81st Cong., 2nd sess. Congressional Record 96, pt. 15: A3660-A3662.

“‘McCarthy mistaken,’ Rep. Miller declares.” Lincoln Star (May 3, 1950): 1,2.

“Truman to push socialized medicine in 1952 — Miller.” Lincoln Evening Journal (May 3, 1952): 4.

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Rep. Miller gives “the putrid facts about homosexuality”

Click to download the text of Miller’s floor speech of March 31 and comments made on April 4 (PDF/1.8MB)

Between 1948 and 1951, the Marshall Plan spent an astronomical $13 billion (about $140 billion today) to finance the economic recovery of Europe following World War II. During the 1950 debate for the plan’s reauthorization, Rep. John Vorys (R-OH) offered an amendment requiring that any American employee assigned to the Economic Cooperation Administration (ECA), which administered the Marshal Plan, undergo a background/loyalty check by the FBI. Rep. Arthur L. Miller (R-NE) then offered a further amendment to Vorys’s amendment to prohibit anyone who was homosexual from working in the ECA.

Rep. Miller, a former physician from rural Nebraska, mostly stuck to the issues that interested his humble constituents, and him personally. He hated most of the New Deal except for those parts that benefitted Great Plains farmers — soil conservation, loans and subsidies, rural electrification, and federal programs to eradicate foot and mouth disease and the like. The country doctor also strongly opposed anything that smacked of socialized medicine. He even opposed federal programs designed to support rural hospitals in his own district. He thought local communities could do better without meddlesome bureaucrats.

Rep. Arthur L. Miller (R-NE)

But at a time when the District of Columbia was directly ruled by Congress, the Nebraska doctor thought nothing about a politician form halfway across the country pushing legislation affecting local residents of the city. In 1948, he drafted a sexual psychopath law for the district, known as the Miller Act. Modeled after several other sexual psychopath laws enacted across the country in answer to a national sex crime panic, the Miller Act allowed the U.S. District Attorney to initiate commitment proceedings against anyone who demonstrates a “lack of power to control his sexual impulses.” The person needn’t be found guilty of a crime. He didn’t even have to be charged. But under the Miller Act, he could still find himself committed to Washington’s St. Elizabeth’s Hospital until the superintendent determined that the individual is “sufficiently recovered.” Which could be far longer than if that individual had been tried and convicted of whatever law that may apply.

The Miller Act and other sexual psychopath laws like it were primarily designed to incarcerate child molesters, peeping toms, flashers, and the like. They also swept up cross-dressers, transgender people and homosexuals, with no regard as to whether they actually posed a threat to anyone.  By 1950, the Miller Act detained at least two “non-coercive homosexuals and one aggressive sodomist.”

Rep. Miller was very proud of this handiwork. So after offering his amendment banning homosexuals from working in the ECA, he drew on his Miller Act cred to explain why his amendment was needed:

Mr. Chairman, I realize 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. I cannot expose all the putrid facts as it would off end the sensibilities of some of you. It will be necessary to skirt some of the edges, and I use certain Latin terms to describe some of these individuals. Make no mistake several thousand, according to police records, are now employed by the Federal Government.

I offer this amendment to the Vorys amendment in good faith. Recently the spotlight of publicity has been focused not only upon the State Department but upon the Department of Commerce because of homosexuals being employed in these and other departments of Government. Recently Mr. Peurifoy, of the State Department, said he had allowed 91 individuals in the State Department to resign because they were homosexuals. Now they are like birds of a feather, they flock together. Where did they go? You must know what a homosexual is. It is amazing that in the Capital City of Washington we are plagued with such a large group of those individuals. Washington attracts many lovely folks. The sex crimes in the city are many.

In the Eightieth Congress I was the author of the sex pervert bill that passed this Congress and is now a law in the District of Columbia. It can confine some of these people in St. Elizabeths Hospital for treatment. They are the sex perverts. Some of them are more to be pitied than condemned, because in many it is a pathological condition, very much like the kleptomaniac who must go out and steal, he has that urge; or like the pyromaniac, who goes to bed and wakes up in the middle of the night with an urge to go out and set a fire. He does that. Some of these homosexuals are in that class.

Remember there were 91 of them dismissed in the State Department. That is a small percentage of those employed in Government. We learned 2 years ago that there were around 4,000 homosexuals in the District. The Police Department the other day said there were between five and six thousand in Washington who are active and that 75 percent were in Government employment. There are places in Washington where they gather for the purpose of sex orgies, where they worship at the cesspool and flesh pots of iniquity. There is a restaurant downtown where you will find male prostitutes. They solicit business for other male customers. They are pimps and undesirable characters. You will find odd words in the vocabulary of the homosexual. There are many types such as the necrophalia [sic], fettichism [sic], pygmalionism [sic], fellatios [sic], cunnilinguist, sodomatic [sic], pederasty, saphism, sadism, and masochist. Indeed, there are many methods of practices among the homosexuals. You will find those people using the words as, “He is a fish. He is a bulldicker. He is mamma and he is papa, and punk, and pimp.” Yes; in one of our prominent restaurants rug parties and sex orgies go on.

Some of those people have been in the State Department, and I understand some of them are now in the other departments. The 91 who were permitted to resign have gone some place, and, like birds of a feather, they flock together. Those people like to be known to each other. They have signs used on streetcars and in public places to call attention to others of like mind. Their rug and fairy parties are elaborate.

So I offer this amendment, and when the time comes for voting upon it, I hope that no one will object. I sometimes wonder how many of these homosexuals have had a part in shaping our foreign policy. How many have been in sensitive positions and subject to blackmail. It is a known fact that homosexuality goes back to the Orientals, long before the time of Confucius; that the Russians are strong believers in homosexuality, and that those same people are able to get into the State Department and get somebody in their embrace, and once they are in their embrace, fearing blackmail, will make them go to any extent. Perhaps if all the facts were known these same homosexuals have been used by the Communists.

I realize that there is some physical danger to anyone exposing all of the details and nastiness of homosexuality, because some of these people are dangerous. They will go to any limit. These homosexuals have strong emotions. They are not to be trusted and when blackmail threatens they are a dangerous group. The Army at one time gave these individuals a dishonorable discharge and later changed the type of discharge. They are not knowingly kept in Army service. They should not be employed in Government. I trust both sides of the aisle will support the amendment.

Joy to the Homosexuals

Miller’s proposed amendment failed about an hour later, although the House accepted the Vorys Amendment. Shortly after that, the House passed the entire reauthorization bill, with Miller, of course, voting against it. Four days later, he was still smarting from his amendment’s rejection:

Mr. Speaker, yesterday a taxicab driver told me that the homosexuals had quite a celebration on Saturday and Sunday nights. They were celebrating the green light they thought they received from this House because the House turned down the amendment which would have prohibited them from employment with ECA.

That action was taken by almost a straight party vote. It was a small vote, 77 to 66, I do not blame all of the Democrats here today, some of you were not here to vote. I know you who did vote will rejoice with them in their celebration. You gave them the go ahead signal for Federal employment. You did it by almost a straight Democratic vote. Mr. Peurifoy testified there were only 91 whom he dismissed in the State Department. The police department say there are about 7,000 in Washington and about 75 percent of them on the Federal payroll. Not long ago the police raided a house and got about 60 of them in all kinds of orgies. But I think the Democratic majority in the House who voted on a straight party line would want to know about this celebration, because you like to spread joy and sunshine and by your vote did bring joy to the homosexuals now employed in Government work.

Rep. George Christopher (D-MO) rose to counter Miller’s attack:

Mr. Speaker, a young boy one time called an old lady a hoodlum. She said she did not know what a hoodlum was, but she did not think that boy was paying her a compliment. I am just a little like that old lady. I do not know what homosexuals are but I never saw anybody get as much free advertising in the Congress of the United States in all of my life. I do not see any sense in it.

Clare Hoffman, the eccentric lawyer Republican from Michigan came to Miller’s defense:

Re. Clare Hoffman (R-MI)

Mr. Speaker, the gentleman from Missouri seems to be critical of the fact that certain groups are getting a lot of unfavorable free advertising. Well, may I say to the gentleman you have had these unmentionable individuals in the departments; it is your fault, you have been in control of the executive departments here for 13 or 15 years. For the last 10 years practically everybody in Washington knew about all this disreputable, dirty, nasty bunch on the Federal pay roll which is now, at last, being exposed, getting what the gentleman calls free advertising. Now the gentleman objects to their being exposed. If he wants to take them home and live with them, all right; but you have no right– You have no right, I say, to keep those dirty, nasty people on the Federal pay roll, and use the dollars of decent citizens to pay them. Maybe the gentleman likes them; I do not; neither do my people.

Rep. Christopher challenged Hoffman, “Can you tell me what a homosexual is?”

If Hoffman knew, he wouldn’t say. “The term needs no definition — I will not dirty my mouth by defining it.”

On the Timeline:

Previously:

Feb 20, 1950: McCarthy links homosexuality and Communism.

Feb 27, 1950: Commerce Department official says no homosexuals have been dismissed from the department.

Feb 28, 1950: The State Department reports dismissing 91 homosexuals.

Mar 14, 1950: McCarthy names five “bad security risks,” including one homosexual.

Mar 21, 1950: Columnist George E. Sokolsky says homosexuals are “advantageously stationed” in the State Department.

Mar 23, 1950: Robert C. Ruark’s column warns of homosexuals “traveling in packs.”

Mar 24, 1950: Robert C. Ruark follows up with “a drunk, a homosexual, and a flagrant fool.”

Mar 24, 1950: Westbrook Pegler says homosexuals in government weren’t a problem before FDR.

This story:

Mar 31, 1950: Rep. Arthur L. Miller gives “the putrid facts about homosexuality.

Next:

Apr 14, 1950: Westbrook Pegler agrees that “homosexualism is worse than Communism.”

Apr 14, 1950: GOP Senator says McCarthy should attack homosexuals instead of Communists.

Apr 18, 1950: GOP Chairman warns of “perverts who have infiltrated our government.”

May 3, 1950: Rep. Arthur L. Miller says the homosexual drive is similar to menstrual cycles.

Periscope:

For March 31, 1950:
President: Harry S. Truman (D)
Vice-President: Alben W. Barkley (D)
House: 262 (D) 168 (R) 2 (Other) 3 (Vacant)
Southern states: 102 (D) 2 (R) 1 (Vacant)
Senate: 54 (D) 42 (R)
Southern states: 22 (D)
GDP growth: 7.3 % (Annual)
3.0 % (Quarterly)
Fed discount rate: 1½ %
Inflation: -0.8 %
Unemployment: 6.3 %
Chesterfield: “A milder cigarette that satisfies” — Gregory Peck, star of Twelve O’Clock High.

Headlines: President Truman denounces three Republican Senators (Joseph McCarthy, Kenneth Wherry and Styles Bridges) as saboteurs of American foreign policy over loyalty charges. Secretary of State Dean Acheston says he doesn’t remember meeting Prof. Owen Lattimore, the China policy expert denounced by McCarthy as a Communist. The House strips a clause from the Marshall Plan reauthorization bill denying funds to Britain unless it ends the partition of Ireland. The House approves the Marshall Plan’s $3.1 billion reauthorization through 1951. Residents of Hot Springs, New Mexico, vote to change their town’s name to Truth or Consequences to lure the popular radio program by the same name to air its tenth anniversary program from the town.

In the record stores: “Music! Music! Music!” by Teresa Brewer, “If I Knew You Were Coming I’d’ve Baked a Cake” by Eileen Barton, “Chattanoogie Shoe Shine Boy” by Red Foley, “There’s No Tomorrow” by Tony Martin, “It Isn’t Fair” by Don Cornell and the Sammy Kaye Orchestra, “I Said My Pajamas” by Tony Martin and Fran Warren, “The Third Man Theme” by Anton Karas, “Go To Sleep, Go To Sleep, Go To Sleep” by Mary Martin and Arthur Godfrey, “The Cry of the Wild Goose” by Frankie Lane, “Rag Mop” by the Ames Brothers.

Currently in theaters: Twelve O’Clock High, starring Gregory Peck.

On the radio: Lux Radio Theater (CBS), Jack Benny Program (CBS), Edgar Bergan & Charlie McCarthy (CBS), Amos & Andy (CBS), Arthur Godfrey’s Talent Scouts (CBS), My Friend Irma (CBS), Walter Winchell’s Journal (ABC), Red Skelton Show (CBS), You Bet Your Life (NBC), Mr. Chameleon (CBS).

On television: The Lone Range (ABC), Toast of the Town/Ed Sullivan (CBS), Studio One (CBS), Captain Video and his Video Rangers (DuMont), Kraft Television Theater (NBC), The Goldbergs (CBS), Arthur Godfrey’s Talent Scouts (CBS), Candid Camera (NBC), Texaco Star Theater/Milton Berle (NBC), Hopalong Cassidy (NBC), Cavalcade of Stars/Jackie Gleason (DuMont), Meet the Press (NBC), Roller Derby (ABC).

New York Times best sellers: Fiction: The Wall, by John Hersey, The Egyptian by Mika Waltari, The Parasites by Daphne du Maurier. Non-fiction: The Mature Mind by H.A. Overstreet, This I Remember by Eleanor Roosevelt, I Leap Over the Wall, by Monica Baldwin.

Sources:

Bernard A. Cruvant, Milton Meltzer, Francis J. Tartaglino. “An institutional program for committed sex deviants.” American Journal of Psychiatry 107, no. 3 (September 1950): 190-194.

Remarks by Rep. Miller of Nebraska given on March 31, 1950. 81st Cong., 2nd sess. Congressional Record 96 part 4: 4527-4528. Extracted remarks available online here (PDF/1.8MB).

“Homosexual in Government Employ.” Remarks by Rep. Miller of Nebraska, Rep. Christopher of Missouri, and Rep. Hoffman of Michigan, given on April 4, 1950. 81st Cong., 2nd sess. Congressional Record 96 part 4: 4669-4670. Extracted remarks available online here (PDF/1.8MB).

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Westbrook Pegler writes: Homosexuals in government “never existed before the long Roosevelt regime”

Back in 1932, in his very second column on the front page of the New York World-Telegram, Westbrook Pegler let it be known that “my hates always occupied my mind much more actively than my friendships… the wish to favor a friend is not so active as the instinct to annoy some person or institution I detest.” His hatreds were many: labor unions, powerful businesses, bosses of every stripe, the wealthy, eggheads, Communists, Socialists, Fascists (or so he claimed), foreigners, Jews, the New Deal, and the Roosevelts, especially Eleanor, who he hated with a particularly obsessive passion. It seemed he could barely write a column without excoriating her somewhere along the way.

“The angry man of the press,” as Pegler was known, made hatred a high art, and he didn’t care who he pissed off. Much like the Trumps and the Hannitys and the Brietbarts of today, he pretended to speak for the common man while carrying the water for the same powerful interests he lambasted.

Oh, and he loved McCarthy. Pegler was part publicity agent and part informer for the Senator from Wisconsin. On March 24, as other columnists were having a field day the prospect of homosexuals in the State Department, Pegler decided it was high time he joined the fray and drag his usual obsessions along for the ride. Like Robert C. Ruark’s column of the day before, Pegler hinted at the 1943 resignation of F.D.R.’s close friend and confidant, Sumner Welles, when he questions whether the State Department’s list of ninety-one homosexuals dismissed since 1947 “include an old family friend of the Roosevelts…”

Fair Enough

By Westbrook Pegler

In the history of the United States, no situation ever existed before the long Roosevelt regime which was even comparable to that which was revealed recently by John E. Peurifoy, a deputy under-secretary of state, who testified that 91 homosexuals had been dismissed from the State Department. Homosexual means a person who has relations with another of the same sex. It is common knowledge that such persons have psychic ways of seeking one another. They flock together and are secretive and without honor. They are not beneath shame, however, and this makes them the more dangerous in positions of trust and “delicacy” in a government. Being furtive and ashamed, they are susceptible to blackmail and threats of exposure.

One person in the circle of Alger Hiss and Whittaker Chambers was conceded to be sexually depraved and was dismissed from a government service for that reason. Chambers himself had written erotic poetry which was published in a semi-public “artistic” review in Paris. It is obscure but not meaningless. The case of an unimportant admiral of our small Navy of 40 years ago comes to mind, but he seems to have been an individual specimen, not a member of a group or “camp.” He was tried and dismissed in disgrace.

Mr. Peurifoy did not name any of the 91 who were thrown out of the State Department alone. That was only one department. There is no information as to other departments. No reason occurs why the State Department should have been so heavily contaminated and others should not have been equally corrupt. There is no reason to assume. in the absence fo proof, that the 91 who were eliminated from the State Department were, in the English phrase, “the lot of them.” Others may be there still. In the absence of a list one does not know whether Peurifoy’s homosexuals include an old family friend of the Roosevelts whose reputation, rightly or wrongly, because notorious and who finally left, apparently of his own will and in good order. He was a confidant of the royal family and is shown to have been put to the uses of the communists in one conspicuous case.

In a recent broadcast, shamelessly plugging her paltry potboiler, This I Remember, the Empress said of her late husband: “I think he got — I think a great many people that perhaps he never saw but once made an impression on him. He began to learn about people. He began very often with me to meet different people when he was young and I always had lots of queer friends.”

In October, 1920, when Franklin D. Roosevelt was running for vice president under James M. Cox, John R Rathom, the publisher of the Providence Journal and Evening Bulletin, of Providence, R.I., and two other persons were sued in a libel action by Roosevelt. The complaint is on file in the Supreme Court in New York City. It demanded $500,000 on the ground of charges published by Rathom concerning Roosevelt’s attitude toward sailors convicted of sexual perversion when he was Assistant Secretary of the Navy. The article in question charged that degenerates had been returned to active service.

Shearn [former Justice Clarence J. Shearn of the appellate division] and Hare of New York were Roosevelt’s lawyers. Staunchfield and Levy represented Rathom. An affirmative answer was prepared which is still in existence and is cited respectfully by a few lawyers who were given it to study as a great example of that kind of pleading. It never was filed. F.D. Roosevelt’s failure to press his complaint, allowing it to lapse by default, was tantamount to an admission of the truth of the charge that he had been guilty of felonious conduct. One attorney for the plaintiff lat er said Roosevelt was afraid to prosecute his complaint and that, moreover, it had been just a bluff to impress the voters a short time before the election in which Warren G. Harding was elected.

Roosevelt’s complaint said Rathom and the others published a libel in the form of an open letter to him in part as follows:

“In Portland, Ore., you publicly denied the charge by the Providence Journal that you had destroyed or sequestered Navy records. This charge was true. It would be interesting to every officer in the Bureau of Navigation to learn the truth surrounding the disappearance of other papers in the —– case (name deleted by Westbrook Pegler) especially that portion containing your own handwriting, permitting —– to re-enlist. they were abstracted by your personal order and never returned. They were abstracted during your controversy with Captain J. K. Taussig, U.S. Navy, in connection with the charge that you had returned to active service men who had been convicted of crimes involving moral turpitude, so-called graduates of the Naval prison at Portsmouth. With these documents so abstracted you felt safe to falsify the facts and print what you knew to be a deliberate falsehood.

“In the case of Captain Taussig you accused him of falsehood because he did not happen to agree with you on the miserable stand you had taken of sending degenerates back into the service. Out of your mouth you convict yourself of willful and deliberate falsehood. It was your own personal act over your own signature that returned —– and other criminals guilty of unnatural crimes to the service in 1919.

Briefly, Rathom charged that after he had been taxed with this act of returning depraved bluejackets to duty Roosevelt snatched back documents which he had signed for that purpose. Roosevelt and Rathon had charged him with the commission of a felony. Rathom admitted that he had. But Roosevelt never permitted Rathon to present his proof, quietly subsiding instead.

Epilogue:

Pegler continued writing for King Features Syndicate until 1962, when he fell out with executives at the syndicate’s owners, the Hearst Corporation. He then found work writing for the John Birch Society’s American Opinion. He lost that job in 1964 because he griped too much about the Jews and Eleanor. He then wrote for the White Christian Council and the anti-Semetic Christian Crusade.

Read More:

In 2008, the Providence Journal revisited the Newport scandal of 1919-1920, including details about Journal editor John Rathom and his war of words with Roosevelt.

Beb Brenkert also has a thorough account of the Newport Sex Scandal at the Daily Beast

In 2004, William F. Buckley, Jr., wrote a puzzling paean to Pegler for the New Yorker. Pulitzer Prize-winning author Dianne McWhorter responded with a rundown on Pegler’s work and bigotries.

Jeff Sharlet also wrote a detailed profile of Westbrook Pegler in 1999.

On the Timeline:

Previously:

Feb 20, 1950: McCarthy links homosexuality and Communism.

Feb 27, 1950: Commerce Department official says no homosexuals have been dismissed from the department.

Feb 28, 1950: The State Department reports dismissing 91 homosexuals.

Mar 14, 1950: McCarthy names five “bad security risks,” including one homosexual.

Mar 21, 1950: Columnist George E. Sokolsky says homosexuals are “advantageously stationed” in the State Department.

Mar 23, 1950: Robert C. Ruark’s column warns of homosexuals “traveling in packs.”

Mar 24, 1950: Robert C. Ruark follows up with “a drunk, a homosexual, and a flagrant fool.”

This story:

Mar 24, 1950: Westbrook Pegler says homosexuals in government weren’t a problem before FDR.

Next:

Mar 31, 1950: Rep. Arthur L. Miller gives “the putrid facts about homosexuality.”

Apr 14, 1950: Westbrook Pegler agrees that “homosexualism is worse than Communism.”

Apr 14, 1950: GOP Senator says McCarthy should attack homosexuals instead of Communists.

Apr 18, 1950: GOP Chairman warns of “perverts who have infiltrated our government.”

May 3, 1950: Rep. Arthur L. Miller says the homosexual drive is similar to menstrual cycles.

Periscope:

For March 24, 1950:
President: Harry S. Truman (D)
Vice-President: Alben W. Barkley (D)
House: 262 (D) 168 (R) 2 (Other) 3 (Vacant)
Southern states: 102 (D) 2 (R) 1 (Vacant)
Senate: 54 (D) 42 (R)
Southern states: 22 (D)
GDP growth: 7.3 % (Annual)
3.0 % (Quarterly)
Fed discount rate: 1½ %
Inflation: -0.8 %
Unemployment: 6.3 %
The Admiral 12½” TV/Phono/radio is $299.95 (about $3,200 today). The 12½” table-top model goes for $179.95 (about $1,900) and the 19″ console commands $495 (about $5,250).

Headlines: Gen. Eisenhower, after criticizing military budget cuts, is invited to testify before a Senate Appropriations subcommittee. The FBI allows the Senate Committee investigating allegations of spies in the State Department to view files “in the strictest confidence.” 83 Czechs aboard three transport planes defect to West Germany. Riots continue in southern Belgium in protest against the return of King Leopold III.

In the record stores: “Chattanoogie Shoe Shine Boy” by Red Foley, “Music! Music! Music! (Put Another Nickel In)” by Teresa Brewer and the Dixieland All-Stars, “Rag Mop” by the Ames Brothers, “The Cry of the Wild Goose” by Frankie Lane, “There’s No Tomorrow, by Tony Martin, “Dear Hearts and Gentle People” by Bing Crosby, “I Said My Pajamas” by Tony Martin and Fran Warren, “I Can Dream, Can’t I?” by the Andrew Sisters, “It Isn’t Fair” by Don Cornell and the Sammy Kaye Orchestra, “Chattanoogie Shoe Shine Boy” by Bing Crosby with Vic Schoen & His Orchestra.

Currently in theaters: Conspirator, starring Robert Taylor and Elizabeth Taylor.

On the radio: Lux Radio Theater (CBS), Jack Benny Program (CBS), Edgar Bergan & Charlie McCarthy (CBS), Amos & Andy (CBS), Arthur Godfrey’s Talent Scouts (CBS), My Friend Irma (CBS), Walter Winchell’s Journal (ABC), Red Skelton Show (CBS), You Bet Your Life (NBC), Mr. Chameleon (CBS).

On television: The Lone Range (ABC), Toast of the Town/Ed Sullivan (CBS), Studio One (CBS), Captain Video and his Video Rangers (DuMont), Kraft Television Theater (NBC), The Goldbergs (CBS), Arthur Godfrey’s Talent Scouts (CBS), Candid Camera (NBC), Texaco Star Theater/Milton Berle (NBC), Hopalong Cassidy (NBC), Cavalcade of Stars/Jackie Gleason (DuMont), Meet the Press (NBC), Roller Derby (ABC).

New York Times best sellers: Fiction: The Parasites by Daphne du Maurier, The Egyptian by Mika Waltari, The King’s Cavalier by Samual Shellabarger. Non-fiction: The Mature Mind by H.A. Overstreet, This I Remember by Eleanor Roosevelt, Home Sweet Zoo by Clare Barnes.

Source:

Westbrook Pegler. “Fair enough.” Washington Times-Herald (March 24, 1950). As it appeared in the Wilmington (DE) Morning News (March 24, 1950): 8.

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“A drunk, a homosexual, and a flagrant fool”: Robert C. Ruark on State Department employees abroad

On March 23, 1950, columnist Robert C. Ruark wrote what he knew about “queers” (they “eventually acquire a tendency to hysteria,” for example) and why they shouldn’t be State Department Employees (their behavior leads “ever to blackmail. Always to blackmail.”) And besides that, according to Ruark, “Homosexuals travel in packs,” which means that where you find one homosexual, you’re bound to find ninety-one. He also promised to provide “some case histories tomorrow.”

Ruark styled himself after his idol, Ernest Hemingway. His genuine love of big game hunting in Africa, and his sympathetic views of the African peoples’ struggles against their colonizing masters, helped to cultivate his image as worldly and enlightened without sacrificing his reputation as a swashbuckling adventurist. For his follow-on article, Ruark mined one of his Africa trips for his “case histories.”

I Don’t Like Drunks and Fools Representing Me

Robert C. Ruark

Some time back I got on a boat to go to Africa and found it loaded with various State Department appointees to positions of delicate trust in the Near East — the oil country on which our future rests. The boat was also loaded with the Arabs and Egyptians with whom our people must work. The Arabs and the Egyptians almost died laughing at our people.

One executive was an alcoholic. Another, a military attaché, was so flagrantly homosexual that he regaled strangers at the ship’s bar with teary tales about his inability to write his boy friend every day. Still another was so stupid that he made obvious love to an obvious floozie in the deck chairs — and him with a wife and two children aboard.

This was our delegation — a drunk, a homosexual, and a flagrant fool. All going away to work for Uncle Sam. A drunk is a pushover for any kind of blackmail or extortion. So is the homosexual. And the fool is easiest of all to handle. On any given day he leaves himself open to compromise.

When a drunk is in charge of one set of papers and a homosexual is in charge of another and the fool has reign over still another, you don’t really need spies. Any half-stupid private detective, for ten bucks a day, can catch any or all in compromise, and shake him for whatever you wish. Gimme the plots and plans or I’ll turn you in for what you are.

Later on I visited one legation that was a real beaut. The military attaché was just about charming enough to wear a hostess gown in public. The head man was married to a French woman in a place where the French are despised. Nearly everyone I met seemed to be either drunk or homosexual.

The cultural attaché was married to one of the most pathetic women I ever met. She was a violent alcoholic. She was known to have got drunkenly ill at the table at a state function. She hung around bars and picked up strangers — sailors, soldiers and the local natives. She would take off her clothes in night clubs, and dance — solo — barefooted on no provocation whatever. She wept, fought, and passed out publicly. She was a joke with whatever ship hit port.

This is pitiful. This is pathetic. But she was, to my knowledge, condoned for over two years, although the time came when she was no longer asked to state functions. But her husband hung onto his job as our public representative abroad. For all I know he is still at it, which would make a tenure of nearly four years of unabashed derision by the people we pay him to impress with our dignity.

I do not blame this poor dame, nor censure her husband, nor place any personal fault on the drunk, the fool or the homosexuals. But I sure don’t like the idea of having them represent me abroad. Especially in places that swarm with spies, intrigue, and opportunity for easy corruption. The blame is on the permission of one man to rig a whole hierarchy of misfits in the State Department, and on our failure to recognize the rottenness and cut it out after the big sinner was caught and fired by President Roosevelt. That was a long, long time ago.

A government agency abroad is paid for its clean social fingernails and its ability to reflect honestly and pleasantly on the people back home. That’s why you have diplomats. I think it is foolish, therefore, to allow a man whose daughter has been publicly convicted of prostitution to remain as a United States advertisement abroad, despite his innocence, since a well-publicized tart who lives in the consulate lends little tone to Uncle Sam’s operation.

The State Department is largely a lip-service organization — much front, for advertising — and deeply involved in the welfare of our world. It seems awful dumb to put up with drunks and perverts and the husbands of town characters and the parents of prostitutes and fools and knaves when all espionage and checkmate diplomacy turns automatically on the weak link.

Epilogue:

On the same day this column appeared in the Washington Daily News, Sen. Joseph McCarthy (R-WI) placed the text into the Congressional Record. At about the same time, Rep. Clare Hoffman (R-MI), a far-right populist from southwest Michigan and an early McCarthy ally, rose in the House to demand an investigation into Ruark’s claims:

Re. Clare Hoffman (R-MI)

Mr. Speaker, in one of the local newspapers there appears an article which is shocking and disturbing. It charges that we have in the State Department individuals who may I say are not decent Americans? I have heard a great deal about Communists in the State Department and in one other department of the Government.

My people are just as much concerned about disloyal individuals in Government service as are the people of any other district; but, in addition to that, like practically all Americans they are normal and decent God-fearing people. Some of them tell me, many of them tell me, that inasmuch as these rumors about the immorality of Federal employees in high positions do not seem to have been either investigated or contradicted that they are concerned before they get to the issue of communism or loyalty with this issue of morality and decency.

Let us put it this way: In their own businesses they would not for one moment think of employing a homosexual, not for one moment. Unless I am completely mistaken the people of other districts have the same thought. When giving employment they would never get to the question of loyalty, nor to the question of honesty if this other question arose. They just want none of that other kind. For years, 4 or 5 years anyway, perhaps longer, these stories have been going around Washington. They have been repeated on the floor, not from the well of the House, but from Member to Member, they have been hinted at in newspapers and over the radio at times, yet nothing has been done about it.

Mr. Speaker, we have been spending billions upon billions of dollars to obtain the good will of other peoples and other nations; we have spent billions of dollars in an effort to convince them that our way of life is the right way, the better way, really the only true and good way. Yet we have never, neither the President nor the Congress, nor any of the departments, made any successful public effort to disprove those stories which are circulated and do so much to create a bad impression throughout the world.

I recall when Winchell, in a broadcast after the ’42 election, referred, in effect, to Communists in the House. I tried at that time to have an investigation and have Mr. Winchell called down here and compel him either to admit that he was a liar, or if he had evidence, to show the fact, and if there were such men here, Communists in Congress, then we would expel them forthwith. I could not get action.

Now in view of the fact that this story has been printed in the papers, I think it is time, because we owe it to our people, to either disprove those stories or, if they are true, just get out of the departments; wherever they may be, any individuals who are of that kind or class or nature; and to accomplish that, after I saw that article in the paper, I introduced a resolution to create a committee which would find the facts as to these charges.

How long are we going to sit here and be inactive, when people, for whose actions we are, at least in part, responsible, people who draw their pay because we make the appropriations, are publicly accused of a lack of decency — let us at the moment say nothing about their loyalty — people who, if those stories are true, are nasty, dirty individuals. How long are we to permit them to represent us. Now, how long are we going to take it? That is what I am asking you, my colleagues.

The House did not act on Hoffman’s request.

On the Timeline:

Previously:

Feb 20, 1950: McCarthy links homosexuality and Communism.

Feb 27, 1950: Commerce Department official says no homosexuals have been dismissed from the department.

Feb 28, 1950: The State Department reports dismissing 91 homosexuals.

Mar 14, 1950: McCarthy names five “bad security risks,” including one homosexual.

Mar 21, 1950: Columnist George E. Sokolsky says homosexuals are “advantageously stationed” in the State Department.

Mar 23, 1950: Robert C. Ruark’s column warns of homosexuals “traveling in packs.”

This story:

Mar 24, 1950: Robert C. Ruark follows up with “a drunk, a homosexual, and a flagrant fool.”

Next:

Mar 24, 1950: Westbrook Pegler says homosexuals in government weren’t a problem before FDR.

Mar 31, 1950: Rep. Arthur L. Miller gives “the putrid facts about homosexuality.”

Apr 14, 1950: Westbrook Pegler agrees that “homosexualism is worse than Communism.”

Apr 14, 1950: GOP Senator says McCarthy should attack homosexuals instead of Communists.

Apr 18, 1950: GOP Chairman warns of “perverts who have infiltrated our government.”

Periscope:

For March 24, 1950:
President: Harry S. Truman (D)
Vice-President: Alben W. Barkley (D)
House: 262 (D) 168 (R) 2 (Other) 3 (Vacant)
Southern states: 102 (D) 2 (R) 1 (Vacant)
Senate: 54 (D) 42 (R)
Southern states: 22 (D)
GDP growth: 7.3 % (Annual)
3.0 % (Quarterly)
Fed discount rate: 1½ %
Inflation: -0.8 %
Unemployment: 6.3 %
The 1950 Packard Eight Club Sedan for $2,224 (about $24,000 today.)

Headlines: Gen. Eisenhower, after criticizing military budget cuts, is invited to testify before a Senate Appropriations subcommittee. The FBI allows the Senate Committee investigating allegations of spies in the State Department to view files “in the strictest confidence.” 83 Czechs aboard three transport planes defect to West Germany. Riots continue in southern Belgium in protest against the return of King Leopold III.

In the record stores: “Chattanoogie Shoe Shine Boy” by Red Foley, “Music! Music! Music! (Put Another Nickel In)” by Teresa Brewer and the Dixieland All-Stars, “Rag Mop” by the Ames Brothers, “The Cry of the Wild Goose” by Frankie Lane, “There’s No Tomorrow, by Tony Martin, “Dear Hearts and Gentle People” by Bing Crosby, “I Said My Pajamas” by Tony Martin and Fran Warren, “I Can Dream, Can’t I?” by the Andrew Sisters, “It Isn’t Fair” by Don Cornell and the Sammy Kaye Orchestra, “Chattanoogie Shoe Shine Boy” by Bing Crosby with Vic Schoen & His Orchestra.

Currently in theaters: The Kid from Texas, starring Audie Murphy and Gale Storm.

On the radio: Lux Radio Theater (CBS), Jack Benny Program (CBS), Edgar Bergan & Charlie McCarthy (CBS), Amos & Andy (CBS), Arthur Godfrey’s Talent Scouts (CBS), My Friend Irma (CBS), Walter Winchell’s Journal (ABC), Red Skelton Show (CBS), You Bet Your Life (NBC), Mr. Chameleon (CBS).

On television: The Lone Range (ABC), Toast of the Town/Ed Sullivan (CBS), Studio One (CBS), Captain Video and his Video Rangers (DuMont), Kraft Television Theater (NBC), The Goldbergs (CBS), Arthur Godfrey’s Talent Scouts (CBS), Candid Camera (NBC), Texaco Star Theater/Milton Berle (NBC), Hopalong Cassidy (NBC), Cavalcade of Stars/Jackie Gleason (DuMont), Meet the Press (NBC), Roller Derby (ABC).

New York Times best sellers: Fiction: The Parasites by Daphne du Maurier, The Egyptian by Mika Waltari, The King’s Cavalier by Samual Shellabarger. Non-fiction: The Mature Mind by H.A. Overstreet, This I Remember by Eleanor Roosevelt, Home Sweet Zoo by Clare Barnes.

Sources:

Robert C. Ruark. “I Don’t Like Drunks and Fools Representing Me.” Washington Daily News (March 24, 1950). As reprinted in “Extension of Remarks of Hon. Joseph McCarthy.” March 24, 1950.  81st Cong., 2nd sess. Congressional Record 96 part 14: A2182. Available online here.

“Morality of Certain Government Employees.” Remarks by Rep. Clare E. Hoffman given on March 24, 1950. 81st Cong., 2nd sess. Congressional Record 96 part 3: 4064-4065. Available online here.

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