Early Street Courage! Women's Day March, Minneapolis, MN, 1975
Carrying a Lesbian Banner in a 1975 Woman's Day March, publicly, was brave. The Lesbian Resource Center, founder in 1972, was a meeting place for lesbians, and women who were questioning their feelings for other women. It had a couple of pool tables. It was a place were some women came to interview lesbians for college papers on abnormal psychology, then came back to make friends. One woman stumbled into to the center drunk and said she did not know where she was. We invited her to come to the Town House bar with us and introduced her to all our friends. It was a difficult time to come out. There were many risks involved and you could lose your job, your career, and be exposed as a pervert. For safety, women rarely used their legal names.
Executive order 10450 on April 27, 1953 signed by Dwight Eisenhower, banned lesbian and gay federal workers. "Any criminal, infamous, dishonest, immoral, or notoriously disgraceful conduct, habitual use of intoxicants to excess, drug addiction, or sexual perversion." It came as a part of the US "Lavender Scare" witch hunts which contributed to and complemented the McCarthy era Red Scare.
Wikipedia
Note: Roy Cohn was McCarthy's lead attorney, a closeted gay man and Donald Trump personal lawyer.
Carrying a Lesbian Banner in a 1975 Woman's Day March, publicly, was brave. The Lesbian Resource Center, founder in 1972, was a meeting place for lesbians, and women who were questioning their feelings for other women. It had a couple of pool tables. It was a place were some women came to interview lesbians for college papers on abnormal psychology, then came back to make friends. One woman stumbled into to the center drunk and said she did not know where she was. We invited her to come to the Town House bar with us and introduced her to all our friends. It was a difficult time to come out. There were many risks involved and you could lose your job, your career, and be exposed as a pervert. For safety, women rarely used their legal names.
Executive order 10450 on April 27, 1953 signed by Dwight Eisenhower, banned lesbian and gay federal workers. "Any criminal, infamous, dishonest, immoral, or notoriously disgraceful conduct, habitual use of intoxicants to excess, drug addiction, or sexual perversion." It came as a part of the US "Lavender Scare" witch hunts which contributed to and complemented the McCarthy era Red Scare.
Wikipedia
Note: Roy Cohn was McCarthy's lead attorney, a closeted gay man and Donald Trump personal lawyer.
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