Durg the Cold War, the Stasi thought Berl’s gay subculture posed an telligence threat—so they began recg members as spi.
Contents:
- THE ERA WHEN GAY SPI WERE FEARED
- BERL STORI: GAY ESPNAGE COLD WAR GERMANY
- NAZIS, SEX AND STASI PARANOIA: CISG THROUGH GAY LIFE COLD WAR GERMANY
- YOU'VE PROBABLY HEARD OF THE RED SRE, BUT THE LSER-KNOWN, ANTI-GAY 'LAVENR SRE' IS RARELY TGHT SCHOOLS
- EAST BERL STORI: GAY ESPNAGE COLD WAR BERL
THE ERA WHEN GAY SPI WERE FEARED
MI5 has been named the UK's most LGBT-iendly employer - but isn't long sce beg gay was nsired synonymo wh treachery. * gay spies cold war *
Image source, Getty ImagMI5 has been named the UK's most gay-iendly employer - but isn't long sce same-sex relatnships were nsired a threat to natnal secury.
Below this, for MI5's benef, was a list of supposed signifiers of male homosexualy ("a gay ltle wiggle", "his tie has the latt knot", "an unnaturally strong affectn for his mother") pretext for this unsoliced advice - which now seems clearly offensive - was the se of John Vassall, a gay civil servant who spied for the Soviets unr threat of blackmail.
"Fast forward 53 years and the service tops Stonewall's 2016 list of the 400 bt plac to work for lbian, gay, bisexual and transgenr (LGBT) people.
BERL STORI: GAY ESPNAGE COLD WAR GERMANY
Abstract. Although gay pnage is a well-tablished Cold War trope, this article analyz new evince that telligence agenci divid Berl actively * gay spies cold war *
Acrdg to the Tim, more than 80 of s employe belong to an LGBT staff source, Eveng StandardImage ptn, Brish civil servant and Soviet spy John Vassall shortly after his release om prison 1972And yet a ban on gay men and women servg MI5, MI6 or GCHQ was force as recently as 1991. As well as Vassall, who was ught a honeytrap by the KGB, at least two of the Cambridge Five spy rg, Guy Burgs and Anthony Blunt, were gay, while a third, Donald MacLean, was bisexual. There was also Daily Telegraph Mosw rrponnt Jeremy Wolfenn - son of John Wolfenn, who chaired the missn that remend the legalisatn of male homosexual acts - who was photographed by the KGB havg sex wh a man, and whom MI6 subsequently attempted to e as a double agent.
NAZIS, SEX AND STASI PARANOIA: CISG THROUGH GAY LIFE COLD WAR GERMANY
By the late 1960s, the East German secret police (the Stasi) started to see Germany’s gay subculture as both a threat and an opportuny for telligence work. Wtern pnage servic had long sought to explo this subculture, recg agents and… * gay spies cold war *
He turned to heavy drkg and died 1965 age ptn, Alan Bat played spy Guy Burgs Alan Bent's An Englishman AbroadIn the Uned Stat, Senator Joseph McCarthy's anti-munist mpaign targeted sr of gay officials, explicly lkg homosexualy wh subversn and Soviet sympathi, a procs known as the "lavenr sre".
FBI chief J Edgar Hoover - himself wily believed to have been gay - ed the agency to target dozens of gay ernment was a perd which LGBT people risked losg their reers and their eedom if their sexualy was revealed.
"This associatn between homosexualy and secrecy, furtivens and potential treachery ensured gay characters were a recurrg trope Cold War-era spy fictn. John Le Carre's The Spy Who Came In From The Cold and Tker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy clu gay subtexts - ma even more explic the 2011 movie adaptatn of the latter.
YOU'VE PROBABLY HEARD OF THE RED SRE, BUT THE LSER-KNOWN, ANTI-GAY 'LAVENR SRE' IS RARELY TGHT SCHOOLS
Historian Samuel Clow Huneke Extensively Rearched the Liv of Gay Men Wt and East Germany. 'There Is No Essential Connectn Between Queerns and Any Enomic System,' He Tells Haaretz * gay spies cold war *
Image source, Getty ImagSome have ma the se that the Brish telligence servic appear to have been relatively acceptg of homosexualy, if only pared wh other parts of society that monly persecuted LGBT people. Acrdg to Christopher Andrew's thorised history of MI5, gay men and women were 1951 judged by the service when vettg public servants to be "maladjted to the social environment", potentially "of unstable character" and vulnerable to blackmail.
In 1965 MI5 risted a view om the Treasury that homosexualy should be an absolute bar to any kd of public office that required posive ptn, Jim Broadbent and Ben Whishaw BBC drama London SpyThe legalisatn of male homosexualy 1967 meant the fear of blackmail uld no longer hold.
A memo wrten to the Secretary of State 1950 stated that no evince had been found to support the claim that LGBTQ+ people were any threat to natnal secury, and yet “the tenncy toward character weakns has led to the ncln that the known homosexual is unsued for employment the Department. The Mattache Society's missn was, “to ‘unify homosexuals‘ [and] to erase om our law books the discrimatory and opprsive legislatn…”6 The founrs also regnized that there was an LGBTQ+ culture that should be celebrated.
EAST BERL STORI: GAY ESPNAGE COLD WAR BERL
Stat of Liberatn exam gay persecutn andliberatn both East and Wt Germany durg the Cold War. * gay spies cold war *
Sued and 1958 the Supreme Court extend the right of ee speech to the gay prs, markg the first LGBTQ+ rights victory the Supreme Court. One article listed the pros of picketg as prott, statg: “For three years the CSC (Civil Service Commissn) had been explicly refg to meet wh spokmen for the homosexual muny… After the picketg the CSC agreed to a meetg. On July 3rd 1975 the Civil Service Commissn announced that gay people uld no longer be fired om feral employment bee of their sexualy.
By the late 1960s, the East German secret police (the Stasi) started to see Germany’s gay subculture as both a threat and an opportuny for telligence work. After 20 years of n-s wh gay Wtern agents, Stasi officials began to rec their own gay spi, men who they hoped uld e their sexualy as a means to meet new ntacts, perate Wtern society, and gather telligence.
He will foc on how both Eastern and Wtern telligence agenci sought to rec gay men bee they believed that they were naturally more nspiratorial and would th make better agents. They also me to see the class-crossg gay subcultur of German ci, pecially Berl, as ial s om which to extract rmatn about polics and ary matters. The film, produced by DEFA, the German Democratic Republic’s state-owned productn pany, was the first, and last, film ma about homosexualy unr the munist regime East Germany.
We learn about the Red Sre school, but not about the Lavenr Sre, the policy that discrimated agast gay ernment employe * gay spies cold war *
The difficult road the gay muny had to walk “the workers’ and farmers’ state, ” as East Germany scribed self, until was able to raise public discsn of the muny and have s rights regnized is scribed by the Amerin historian Samuel Clow Huneke his new book “Stat of Liberatn: Gay Men between Dictatorship and Democracy Cold War Germany. 'The book, published by the Universy of Toronto Prs, offers a prehensive and illumatg look at the gay sexual and polil history of a divid Germany durg the era of the Iron Curta, on both sis of the Berl Wall. The thor shows how the Nazi past ntued to st s shadow over the stat of gay men and women both Wt and East Germany the s after World War II, and par the separate stggl by the gay muni each untry.
Then Everythg Changed The Gay, Jewish Scientist Spared by the Nazis How We've Supprsed the Queer History of the Holot This is the first book by Huneke, 33, a profsor of morn European history at Gee Mason Universy Virgia. How did Germany go om beg one of the most homophobic untri history unr the Nazis to beg one of the most LGBTQ-iendly stat on earth today? The Nazis worried that gay men were naturally nspiratorial and th posed a threat to the stabily of the ernment“When I started to rearch, I very quickly realized that this history was still fed by a Cold War mdset that se ‘the Wt’ as sentially good and ‘the East’ as sentially evil.