'The Lavender Scare' Review: PBS Doc Is an Enraging Look at Government-Sanctioned Homophobia
As Pride month is in full swing, Josh Howard’s award-winning documentary “The Lavender Scare” premieres nationwide to address a little-known part of LGBTQ history in America. Narrated by Glenn Close and based on David K. Johnson’s book “The Lavender Scare: The Cold War Persecution of Gays and Lesbians in the Federal Government,” the doc reveals how President Dwight D. Eisenhower and Joe McCarthy carried out a systematic witch hunt to root out and remove gay men and lesbians from government and security positions.
Treated with just as much suspicion and unfounded fear as communists targeted in the Red Scare, more than 10,000 queer people were fired or forced to resign as a result of this Lavender Scare. Beyond losing their livelihoods, this had a much longer-lasting and far-reaching effect. As with the Chinese Exclusion Act or the Japanese internment, the executive order against gay and lesbian people amounted to a government-sanctioned discrimination that was perpetuated for decades and can still be felt in society’s attitudes today. The eye-opening documentary should be required viewing to understand how homophobia and persecution were supported by a government that can and should be challenged.
The Emmy-winning Howard cut his teeth on “60 Minutes” and also produced award-winning docs about American business for CNBC, and therefore he handles Johnson’s research methodically, starting with the post-Great Depression era hiring boom, to Eisenhower’s executive order during the Cold War, and through to the late 1980s. A wealth of documentation is offered – old photographs, legal records, audio recordings, news footage, TV reports, etc. – to provide the necessary weight.
The documentary gives a decent overview of how events unfolded on the government side, but it doesn’t have time to dig into the atmosphere of paranoia or examine why people accepted two widely-held beliefs: that homosexuality is an illness, and that closeted gay people are susceptible to blackmail. In fact, the executive order hinged on the idea that gay people would betray their country to protect their so-called secret shame, even though there’s no evidence that had ever happened.
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This was a WONDERFUL program! If you can, WATCH IT!
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