Lavender Scare Analysis

According to Sullivan (2008), same-sex attraction has not always been considered a deviation. However, post-war societal reaction to prohibition, gay bathhouses and other establishments were adverse and a new war on immorality arose, which was supported by American individuals, religious and governmental institutions. This outlook prevailed throughout the 1950's and led to blatant anti-gay attitudes. The persecution of the gay life style brought on renewed shame and guilt for the homosexual community as gay men were forced to cope with the stigmatization by "passing" as heterosexuals and thus become invisible. This resulted in the development of their own discriminatory social construct, with a hierarchy where males who were able to prove their masculinity through assimilation were held in the highest regards, while those that did not were looked down upon by their own gay communities

The Lavender Scare first started in 1953 during Eisenhower’s presidency when the Red Scare was being put into action by Senator McCarthy. During this time McCarthy accused the LGBT community that worked in government positions of being more of threat to the American government than possible communist spies. Senator McCarthy said that gay males and lesbians could be easily blackmailed and would give away government secrets to protect themselves from their sexuality being exposed. After McCarthy’s accusations president Eisenhower signed Executive Order 10450 which made it “official government policy that gay and lesbian employees were to be hunted down and fired” (9 Things To Know About The Lavender Scare 1).

In the book, Jurassic Park, Ian Malcom does demonstrate the grad at grad, intellectually competent. One of the characteristics of intellectually competent is developing mastery of logic and critical thinking. Ian Malcom demonstrates this characteristic when he says, “Chaos theory throws it out of the window and it says you can never predict certain phenomena at all” (Crichton 178). This quote shows Malcom’s ability to think in a complex manner. Another characteristic of the grad at grad intellectually competent is beginning to understand both rights and responsibility as a citizen of one’s country. Ian Malcom shows that he possess this characteristic when he says, “The graph you actually got is a graph of the breeding population” (215). Ian

The conditions faced by queer people leading up to the stonewall riots were appalling. Laws and Statutes made it legal to discriminate against LGBT+ individuals based on dress and behavior and to limit other basic freedoms as well. In the 50’s and 60’s, 49 of 50 states in the United States had some form of law that stated homosexuality was illegal and was punishable by fines or imprisonment (Staff). Up until 1987, homosexuality was considered a mental illness in the DSM (American Classification of Mental Disorders). In following, it was illegal to serve gay people alcohol in New York City up until 1966, thirty three years after prohibition was repealed (History). Under the statement that the gathering

Many people from the United States hold the belief that being gay is something that has always been considered to be okay. They believe that it is just a given. Despite people’s current beliefs on the subject, for a very long time, it was something that was widely believed to be taboo. In the past, people were imprisoned due to their sexuality. Regardless, throughout the decades, people have pushed for the widespread acceptance of people who are part of the LGBT community. Today, homophobia still exists in some parts of the United States, but we have come a long way since the early 1900s.

Johnson wrote: “In 1950 many politicians, journalists, and citizens thought that homosexuals posed more of a threat to national security than Communists…. By November… the “purge of the perverts” resulted in the dismissal of nearly six hundred federal servants. In the state Department alone, security officials boasted that on average they were firing one homesexual per day, more than double the rate of those suspected of political disloyalty.” (Eaklor 87) tells of how this mentality affected the heteronormative society of a war torn world and how that brought about the genocide of federal, minority employees. As seen in the text above, homosexual individuals were seen as worse than their heterosexual counterparts because they were thought to be destroying the American way of life as well as, traditional values given by the society brought about by conservative, warmonger-esque tendencies. Therefore, they were banned from federal employment which, made it difficult to find other work because of the severity of losing federal work.

The 1960’s was a decade of great change in America, from civil rights for African Americans to equal rights for women, the American people were rising up and discovering that their voice in the political discourse was just as important as those they elected to office. One other such group that awakened and challenged the existing status quo that kept them silent and scared were the lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) communities across the country. From the first large-scale associations of LGBT individuals that formed in San Francisco in the 1950’s to the political and social groups that came to be following the Stonewall Riots of 1969, they would speak out and not allow themselves to be kept down anymore. The aim of this paper is to establish the events and opinions that led up to the uprising at the Stonewall Inn such as perceived and real discrimination by police, medical professionals, and society itself, what actually happened at Stonewall, and how they sparked the modern LGBT movement in the United States over the next half century to the present day.

The military is an essential component of the security of the United States. The military needs men and women at the peak of their performance. Because of this, the military looks to recruit high school students as young as seventeen years old. However, many people do not want recruiters in high schools and the debate of whether high schools should allow military recruiters inside has transpired. Numerous reasons exist explaining why schools should allow recruiters on campuses. High schools should allow military recruiters because, although many say that recruiters don’t tell the whole truth, students usually already know the information. Recruiters inform students of the benefits and opportunities that the military offers and they

In the past decades, the struggle for gay rights in the Unites States has taken many forms. Previously, homosexuality was viewed as immoral. Many people also viewed it as pathologic because the American Psychiatric Association classified it as a psychiatric disorder. As a result, many people remained in ‘the closet’ because they were afraid of losing their jobs or being discriminated against in the society. According to David Allyn, though most gays could pass in the heterosexual world, they tended to live in fear and lies because they could not look towards their families for support. At the same time, openly gay establishments were often shut down to keep openly gay people under close scrutiny (Allyn 146). But since the 1960s, people

In the 1950s, the American Psychiatric Association characterized homosexuality as a “sociopathic personality disorder”(Haggerty, 713), in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM) and it was mentioned as an example of “sexual deviations,” which mean a sexual practice considered morally wrong and legally prohibited. After homosexual were determined as “sociopathic personality disorder” discrimination against them increased. The federal government banned the employment of homosexuals in 1953 by Eisenhower who signed the Executive Order 10450 (Chauncey, George, Nancy), which insisted in the dismissal of all federal employees who were homosexual. Most of the state governments prohibited gay people being served in

The background of homosexuality in the 1940’s and 50’s was harsh, but people started to be opened toward the rights. There were criticisms toward homosexuality in the early days of Milk. Gay men carried the labels of mentally ill or

Life for most homosexuals during the first half of the Twentieth century was one of hiding, being ever so careful to not give away their true feelings and predilections. Although the 1920s saw a brief moment of openness in American society, that was quickly destroyed with the progress of the Cold War, and by default, that of McCarthyism. The homosexuals of the 50s “felt the heavy weight of medical prejudice, police harassment and church condemnation … [and] were not able to challenge these authorities.” They were constantly battered, both physically and emotionally, by the society that surrounded them. The very mention or rumor of one’s homosexuality could lead to the loss of their family, their livelihood and, in some cases, their

On the first day of class when Dr. Lavender explained the concept of a noetic structure, I knew this class wouldn’t just be a Sunday morning sermon. The idea that we all have our own personal unique story and are searching for a second story to guide and shape us makes quite a lot of sense to me. When I was a young child, I went to church with my parents because I had to and not always that I wanted to. Now that I am older, I have the choice to do so and therefore it holds so much more meaning. I am very thankful that this class explains biblical text in an easy to comprehend manner, so I can form my beliefs not just on what others have told me, but what God says and commands. This class will be challenging for me in that there are some areas

Over the next two decades, half the states decriminalized homosexual behavior, and police harassment grew less frequent and obvious to the public. Also in 1975, it became legal for gays to hold federal jobs. However all this headway also made room for more opposition. In 1977, Anita Bryant was so successful at obtaining a repeal of a recent gay ordinance in her home state of Florida that by 1980, a league of anti gay clubs had come together to make a force, led in part by Jesse Helms. The AIDS scare that began in the eighties did not help the gay image either, but more citizens joined their ranks in order to combat the oppression and fund a search for the cure, so in the end it actually made the movement stronger. According to the Columbia Electronic Encyclopedia (2000), by 1999, the anti-sodomy laws of 32 states had been repealed, and in 1996 Vermont granted its gay citizens the right to same sex marriages. Gay rights has come a long way as a social movement, and though it still has a long way to go, it makes a good topic to analyze the process of the social movement.

Edgar Allan Poe was a typical representative of the 19th century literary movement - Dark Romanticism. This essay will look at one of his short stories – The Fall of the House of Usher – in its broad cultural and literary context, its place among other Poe’s works, the story’s stylistic features, and the main themes and characters.