In This Broadcast

“Loose lips sink ships,” or so they say.

In the 1950s, the government took a perfectly rational idea – that people vulnerable to blackmail shouldn’t hold positions of national security – and used it to smuggle discrimination into public policy. The result was the warping of a reasonable security concern into a purge of queer employees, transforming the Cold War’s Red Scare into a Lavender Scare.

In this episode, Dany and Claire explore Washington DC of the Cold War and the textbook moral panic that led to a purge of tens of thousands of queer federal employees in the name of “national security.” We explore how understandable social fears of a changing world were laundered into targeted and hateful policy using real historical accounts and archival audio.

Finally, we take a look at how the moral “panic playbook” is being used once again to create a new Lavender Scare, this time targeting the transgender community.