ABSTRACT
It was on March 1, 1950, that several of America’s leading newspapers first gave prominent coverage to the topic of homosexuality. The event that prompted the stories was a public hearing conducted by a subcommittee of the U.S. Senate. During that session, a government official mentioned that ninety-one State Department employees had been fired because they were “in the shady category.” When one of the senators asked the witness to clarify exactly what he meant by that phrase, the bureaucrat fidgeted nervously for a moment-he was highly uncomfortable talking publicly about such an unseemly topic-and then stated, almost in a whisper:
“They were homosexuals.”1
