The Military and Lesbians during the McCarthy Years

The following documents shed light on a little-known area of women's history: the policy of the U.S. military toward lesbian personnel during the McCarthy Era and its impact on women serving in the armed forces. The first three documents-indoctrination lectures on homosexuality designed for WAVE (Navy) recruits in 1952-both articulate the military's implicit ideology concerning lesbians and demonstrate the means by which the military implemented its policy. The second set of documents-1951 correspondence between the ACLU (American Civil Liberties Union) and lesbians being purged from the WAF (Air Force)records the effects of military policy on individual women in the Air Force. These letters and lectures are evidence of the "homosexual scare" of the 1950s, which was a side effect of Cold War tensions and American fears about national security. Early in 1950, a State Department official testified before the Senate that several dozen employees had been dismissed on charges of homosexuality. The revelation provoked an uproar, and for the remainder of the year Republican leaders exploited the homosexual issue as a means of discrediting the Truman administration's national security policy. A Senate investigation into the employment of "homosexuals and other sex perverts" painted a menacing picture of the infiltration of the federal government by "sexual deviates" whose presence allegedly threatened the moral welfare of the nation.' The popular