S1 E4“The Lavender Scare”
How and when did homophobia begin in the United States? How did the Government use it against us?
In this standalone episode, we travel back to the origins of homophobia in the United States, and hear how the U.S. Government weaponized it against queer people. Climaxing in the Lavender Scare in which homosexuals and communists were conflated as one in the infamous 1950s Red Scare, we'll meet back up with the Mattachinos as the Government catches up with them, too.
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Original release: January 25, 2018
Bonus episode:
“Executive Order 10450”
How 1953's anti-gay executive order lives on under Trump.
Listen free on Apple Podcasts or wherever you listen to podcasts.
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JANUARY 23, 2018
Thursday.
JANUARY 24, 2018
91. Followed by thousands.
Ep. 4: “The Lavender Scare” tomorrow on iTunes & Stitcher.
JANUARY 25, 2018
We’re going all the way back — before Mattachine.
To better understand how the government uses homophobia against us, we’ll have to see how the government discovered it.
Hear the standalone episode now on iTunes and Stitcher: “The Lavender Scare”
JANUARY 24, 2018
Tomorrow, we answer the big questions in a special standalone episode: “The Lavender Scare”
JANUARY 25, 2018
How did homophobia in the U.S. begin? How did the government weaponize it against us?
And how will they use it against the Mattachine?
Hear the standalone episode now on iTunes and Stitcher: “The Lavender Scare”
JANUARY 27, 2018
#Repost of @voices4_, one of few organizations actively protesting the imprisonment, torture, and murder of queer people in Chechnya. ・・・
#HonorThemWithAction . On International Holocaust Memorial Day we re-commit ourselves to the principle of #NeverAgain. When queer people are rounded up, tortured, imprisoned and murdered by their governments we must act. Photo by @charles.caesar for @officemagazinenyc of the ever brilliant @matthew.riemer who came all the way from D.C. with @jack.m.murphy and @brown.leighton to march in our first action. #internationalholocaustremembranceday #pinktriangle #neveragain #aushwitz
JANUARY 29, 2018
Are we? Find out in episode 4, on iTunes & Stitcher.
December 1955 issue of ONE Magazine on display at ONE Archives. (onearchives.org)
“I bring out the worst in my enemies and that's how I get them to defeat themselves.”
–Roy Cohn
Picture: Roy Cohn (February 20, 1927 – August 2, 1986), New York City, 1986. Photo © Mary Ellen Mark.
Roy Cohn, who was born ninety-one years ago today, was an unscrupulous New York attorney, best-known for his role in Senator Joseph McCarthy’s investigations into alleged Communist activity in the U.S.
Cohn first made a name for himself during the espionage trial of Julius and Ethel Rosenberg, and his work brought him to the attention of FBI director J. Edgar Hoover; Hoover, in turn, recommended Cohn to McCarthy. Cohn, who was homosexual, assisted McCarthy in orchestrating and maintaining the so-called Lavender Scare, during which known and “suspected” homosexuals were identified and fired from government jobs based on a supposed threat to national security.
For the rest of his career, which he spent in private practice in New York City, Cohn cultivated a reputation as a combative, unethical archconservative whose clients—including Donald Trump (who considered Cohn a mentor), John Gotti, Studio 54 owners Steve Rubell and Ian Schrager, and the Roman Catholic Archdiocese—were a mix of the city’s seediest elites and oldest conservatives. “If you need someone to get vicious,” Trump said in 1979, “you get Roy.”
In 1984, Cohn was diagnosed with AIDS, a condition he attempted to keep secret while receiving experimental drug treatment; he insisted until the day he died that he had liver cancer. The attempts at secrecy, however, were unsuccessful, and many—including Trump—severed ties upon learning of Cohn’s illness.
Roy Cohn died of AIDS-related illness on August 2, 1986; he was fifty-nine. Of the tens of thousands of panels that make up the AIDS Memorial Quilt, one square reads: “ROY COHN: BULLY. COWARD. VICTIM.”