Stream It Or Skip It: ‘The Lavender Scare’ On PBS, A Documentary On The Decades-Long Ban On Gays Working For The Federal Government

Did you know that there was a ban on LGBTQ+ people working for the federal government? And that it lasted for decades, until Bill Clinton signed an executive order to end the ban in 1996? The Lavender Scare is a new documentary that explains the genesis of that ban and the man who started the movement to get the ban overturned. Read on for more…

THE LAVENDER SCARE: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?

The Gist: Most people who have read about the U.S.’s history after World War II knows about the “Red Scare” period of the late-’40s until the late ’50s, where the federal government, spurred on by fears that communists are infiltrating the government and private sector and passing intelligence to the Soviets, blacklisted and persecuted suspected sympathizers. The leader of those investigations was Senator Joseph McCarthy of Wisconsin, and the rhetoric he spewed spurred action at the highest levels.

This included the purging of known homosexuals from all positions in the federal government. Though never proven, the prevailing thought was that “deviants” and “perverts” like gays could easily be influenced by communist operatives. While the “Red Scare” died out by the dawn of the sixties, the “Lavender Scare” continued until the mid-’90s, through both Republican and Democratic administrations.

The Lavender Scare, directed by Josh Howard and based on a book by David K. Johnson, explores this ban, which was instituted by President Eisenhower in 1953. In contemporary interviews that date back about ten years, Howard talks to Johnson, some of the federal investigators that performed complex investigations when they were tipped that a federal employee could be gay, and a few people who were fired after being outed. The stories of people like Joan Cassidy, poised to become the first female admiral, who just couldn’t subject herself to the scrutiny of that job, or Madeleine Tress, who was dragged in for questioning before being fired because she was a “suspected lesbian,” sound like a bad public-service film from the ’50s, but is completely true.

The key figure in this movement, however, is Frank Kamerny, an astronomer who was one of the few who wouldn’t take his firing lying down. Unlike many gays of the time, who felt it safer to keep their true selves under wraps, Kamerny was confident in who he was, and refused to believe that the country he wanted to serve would treat American citizens this way. As we hear in letters read by David Hyde Pierce, he wrote letters to members of Congress, the Department of Defense and other agencies, demanding to be heard. He eventually became the first openly gay person to testify in front of a Congressional committee, where he was told he had low moral standards.

But Kamerny, who was interviewed before his 2011 death, wouldn’t let up. He set up protests that went from a few people in 1965 to thousands within a few years; without him, would the 1969 riots at the Stonewall Inn may have never happened. At the very least, he was one of the first people in the LGBTQ+ community to actively protest instead of work to create a dialogue.

What Movies Will It Remind You Of?: There’s a 1984 documentary called Before Stonewall that discusses how the LGBTQ+ community was marginalized before the 1969 Stonewall riots. Kamerny is interviewed there, as well, as we see in The Lavender Scare. The current movie very much feels like a companion piece/sequel to that film.

Performance Worth Watching: Even in his last years, Kamerny showed how confident he was in himself and his ability to foster change. Even though he wanted to be an astronomer, he knows that the direction he went into as a civil rights activist was the more fulfilling choice.

This is also a good place to mention that the film is narrated by Glenn Close. Zachary Quinto, T.R. Knight and Cynthia Nixon also lend their voices, along with Pierce, to help make some of the documentation the film examines come alive.

Memorable Dialogue: “My feeling always was that I simply wasn’t going to adjust myself to society. With considerable success, I have managed to adjust to society to me, and society is much better off.” That’s Kamerny’s final line in the documentary, and it’s full of bravado, but without that bravado, LGBTQ+ citizens might still be banned from working for the federal government.

Our Take: What’s remarkable about The Lavender Scare is the dedication Howard had in getting the material for it. Kamerny died in 2011; Cassidy in 2014. Without the interviews with the two of them, though, especially Kamerny, the movie becomes more of a historical recitation than something that’s contemporary. Kamerny knows that, despite the advancement of gay rights, they had a long way to go, and this was years before the Trump administration tried to roll back those rights. It was critical to hear from these people, even the assholish federal agents who talked about their immoral investigations with the pride of someone who was trying to track down a serial killer.

Howard does a fine job covering the toll this ban took on some of the affected people, like the man who worked for the Foreign Service but was found with his head in the oven after his dismissal. And it also did a good job of showing how, because of the rise of federal jobs during the Depression, gays found federal employment a source of pride, and a way to contribute to society even if they weren’t open about their orientation. He also explains the roots of the Lavender Scare and that, even at the time, the idea that gays could be influenced into being disloyal, was never proven. Yet, thousands of people were relieved of their jobs and considered a security risk simply because they were gay.

Our Call: STREAM IT. Spend an hour with The Lavender Scare and you’ll learn why the LGBTQ+ community fights so hard for equal rights, and how hard it has been to foster change.

Joel Keller (@joelkeller) writes about food, entertainment, parenting and tech, but he doesn’t kid himself: he’s a TV junkie. His writing has appeared in the New York Times, Slate, Salon, VanityFair.com, Playboy.com, Fast Company’s Co.Create and elsewhere.

Stream The Lavender Scare on PBS