Purging the gays, McCarthy style

Conservative Republicans are scapegoating gay Americans again. Though their outrage over former congressman Mark Foley is recent, it employs tactics they honed in the dark days of the Cold War during the McCarthy-led “purge of the perverts.”

Only a few days after Foley resigned in disgrace and news spread of a possible high-level congressional cover-up, Gloria Borger of CBS News reported that some Republicans blamed “a network of gay staffers and gay members who protect each other and did the speaker a disservice.” Though Borger initially said it was a story that “rank and file Republicans [would] only talk about privately,” they quickly grew bold.

Before long, Family Research Council president Tony Perkins was asking, “Has the social agenda of the GOP been stalled by homosexual members and/or staffers? When we look over events of this Congress, we have to wonder.”

Even The New York Times ran a front-page article revealing that “the presence of homosexuals, particularly gay men, in crucial staff positions has been an enduring if largely hidden staple of Republican life for decades, and particularly in recent years.” Underscoring their alleged power and influence, the Times noted how gay Republicans “have played decisive roles in passing legislation, running campaigns, and advancing careers.” Members of this “Velvet Mafia,” the Times noted ominously, were “holding their breath” in anticipation of more fallout from the Foley scandal.

The resignation of Kirk Fordham, openly gay former chief of staff to Foley and current chief of staff to New York Republican congressman Thomas Reynolds, seemed only to whet conservatives’ appetites to boot out the gays. Labeling them “operatives” who had managed to “infiltrate and manipulate the party apparatus,” right-wing author Cliff Kincaid demanded that “the secret Capitol Hill homosexual network must be exposed and dismantled.”

Calling them “subversives” thwarting the will of the people, the American Family Association’s Don Wildmon told The Nation, “they ought to fire every one of them.” The Traditional Values Coalition issued an ultimatum to their party: “Republicans need to make a simple choice between the innocent children and radical homosexuals who prey on them.”

Charges of a powerful gay network, a subversive fifth column that has “infiltrated” the party, are nothing new. In 1950 Senator Joseph McCarthy charged that Harry Truman’s State Department had been “infiltrated” by subversives, a category that initially included both communists and gays. However, McCarthy quickly discovered that the charges of homosexual infiltration were more effective at stirring up indignation among voters.

Truman’s advisors warned that “the country is really much more disturbed over the picture which has been presented so far of the government being loaded with homosexuals than it is over the clamor about communists in the government,” and the State Department’s admission that it had fired 91 homosexuals seemed to substantiate McCarthy’s charges. With a midterm election approaching, Republicans attacked the Democrats for “harboring” homosexuals. They followed the advice of New York Daily News editors who wrote, “If we were writing Republican campaign speeches, we’d use the word ‘queer’ at every opportunity.”