This article is the send one of the seri ntag a tailed sight to the events of the Cold War and the evolutn of gay rights Ameri..
Contents:
STGGLE FOR GAY RIGHTS AMERI AND THE COLD WAR
* gay rights during the cold war *
Durg the Cold War, homosexualy was associated wh munism and portrayed as a natnal secury threat. The State Department’s 1950 purge of supposed homosexuals unr Print Harry Tman unleashed “the lavenr sre, ” which st thoands their jobs. In the face of the charg of beg “un-Amerin, ” historian Simon Hall argu, early gay-rights groups profsed patrtism and appealed to “the natn’s foundg ials of liberty and equaly.
In the sprg and summer of 1965, for example, there were gay-rights protts at the Whe Hoe, Pentagon, Civil Service Commissn, and Philalphia’s Inpennce Hall. Activists held up signs readg “First Class Cizenship for Homosexuals;” “Ameri, the Land of the Free. For Homosexuals Too?
GAY RIGHTS
The activists argued that excludg homosexuals om ernment service, cludg the ary, actually weakened the untry by privg of well-qualified cizens who wanted to serve.
After the Stonewall rt of 1969, more radil anizatns like the Gay Liberatn Front arose to nont police btaly, legal rtrictns, and homophobia. Yet Hall argu that the “appeals of Amerinism have remaed an important feature of the gay rights movement. ” He c the first openly gay man on the ver of a news magaze (Time, 1975): Air Force Sergeant Leonard Matlovich.