He's also a columnist for Tablet magazine, writer-at-large for Air Mail, and a nonresident senior fellow at the Atlantic Council. James Kirchick, author of Secret City: The Hidden History of Gay Washington. Today, On Point: How careers and lives were lost through decades of bipartisan homophobia. 'There's not a single example of a gay person doing it because they were blackmailed into doing it.' 'The Defense Department did a study in the 1990s where they looked at over 100 cases of espionage, of people giving government secrets to foreign powers,' he adds. he would do it,' Kirchick says.īut history shows these fears were unfounded. the homosexual would go to any lengths to keep his secret a secret, and if that meant betraying his country. 'The belief was that because this was so terrible. It was worse than being a communist,' author James Kirchick says.Īs a result, some high ranking members of government were denied national security clearances. 'Being gay was the worst possible thing you could be in American politics.
Post-World War II, there was something seen as even worse than being a communist in U.S. In 1979, thousands s march down Pennsylvania Avenue to dramatize their plea for equal rights.
