During the Cold War in America, about the two worst things you could be accused of was being a communist or a homosexual. In fact, people like FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover routinely conflated the two, asserting that the Soviet Union blackmailed gay diplomats, politicians, and citizens into betraying the United States. Despite no evidence of that, the federal government banned gay and lesbian employees, leading to all sorts of discriminatory and stupid behavior on the part of government officials and private actors.
In the new book Secret City: The Hidden History of Gay Washington, James Kirchick explores how panic and hysteria over gays informed everything from the Alger Hiss trial to Lyndon Johnson's 1964 presidential campaign to Ronald Reagan's first run for governor of California and his two terms in the White House.
