{"id":2748,"date":"2019-06-08T04:41:40","date_gmt":"2019-06-08T10:41:40","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/qualityofmercy.com\/blog\/?p=2748"},"modified":"2025-08-09T21:50:29","modified_gmt":"2025-08-10T03:50:29","slug":"secrets-lies-bidens-gut-reaction","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/qualityofmercy.com\/blog\/2019\/06\/08\/secrets-lies-bidens-gut-reaction\/","title":{"rendered":"Secrets & Lies & Biden\u2019s Gut Reaction"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

This post involves a period of U.S. history that’s been dubbed The Lavender Scare. A new documentary film by that name opened yesterday in New York and Los Angeles. Alas, I’m in Denver\u2026<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n

While I was writing my last post, on Morrissey, and specifically about a line<\/a> from the Smiths’ song “The Queen is Dead,” I reviewed newspaper accounts of how Elizabeth II was visited in her Buckingham Palace bedroom in 1982 by a drunken Michael Fagan, whose wife had just left him. As I wrote in a footnote, “The incident prompted a male sex worker, ‘hoping to capitalize on the publicity,’ to reveal he\u2019d had a years-long affair with the head of royal security.” What I didn’t include was the fact that there was to be a “separate inquiry” into the “grave questions” of these oh-so-dangerous liaisons, such as “how Cmdr. Michael Trestrail [\u2026] was able to carry on a homosexual affair with a male prostitute for a number of years without the knowledge of the authorities, despite background checks.”<\/span>1<\/sup><\/a><\/span> My reply: presumably the same way he would have been able to, had the prostitute been female. And I say this because I researched this general subject of homo-security years ago, about which more below. Nevertheless, Trestrail resigned.<\/p>\n\n\n

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\"Streetlaughter<\/a>
The above post<\/a> by “ukjarry” discusses the resignation of Michael Trestrail as well as offering many cartoons created in the wake of the scandal.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n

Joe Biden’s Gut Reaction<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

The royal security story prompted me to do a new web search on keywords “homosexual security risk.” It returned a curiosity: \u201cJoe Biden Viewed Gays in Government as ‘Security Risks’,” dated April 23, 2019. Reporters digging for dirt in Biden’s past\u2026<\/p>\n\n\n\n

If Donald Trump is viewed as being underinformed about many matters, Biden was too. As a freshman Senator from Delaware (his only other service had been a two-year city council stint) he met with his neighbors in September 1973 at a local elementary school. He had a couple of items on his agenda: public campaign financing and a response to Nixon’s energy program. But it was an attendee at that meeting who raised an issue that caused a reporter for Wilmington’s Morning News<\/em> to promote the topic to the headline\u2014\u201cGay Activist Gets Biden’s ‘Gut Reaction’.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Biden [\u2026] agreed to answer by mail a series of questions on U.S. Civil Service and military job discrimination which Robert Vane, a gay activist, presented him.<\/p>\n\n\n

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\"Joe<\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n

According to the article, Biden was “startled” by Vane’s questions, which “sent at least three persons storming from the room when he identified his cause.” Again, this was 1973. When homosexuality still was understood to be communicable\u2026<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“My gut reaction,” Biden told Vane, “is that they (homosexuals) are security risks but I must admit I haven’t given this much thought\u2026 I’ll be darned!”<\/span>2<\/sup><\/a><\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Even if Biden had<\/em> given it some thought it’s likely he’d have accepted his initial conclusion. It’s only common sense that homosexuals could be blackmailed in the course of their work for the federal government. Right?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Secrets & Lies: Exposure leads to firing<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

As mentioned above I did my own digging into this issue years ago. The notion of a homosexual security threat was investigated by the U.S. Senate in 1950, and neatly summarized in 1953 by journalist Peter Edson whose “Washington Column” was widely syndicated.<\/span>3<\/sup><\/a><\/span> Before Edson launched into his story, pains were taken by his syndicator’s editors: “The facts have been carefully checked with competent authority [\u2026].” After all, the subject of Edson’s column was delicate. Nevertheless as he himself prefaced, regarding the, mm\u2026, meat of the matter:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The danger in this situation, as has been explained many times before, is that a pervert is vulnerable to blackmail. Anyone discovered in those practices<\/em> can be coerced<\/em>\u2014into, say, spying for an enemy country or disclosing U.S. government secret information\u2014under threat of exposure. Exposure, of course, leads to firing. [emphasis mine]<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Again, it’s only common sense, hardly worth mentioning. And so Edson’s recitation of the following statistics would have been reassuring to many of his readers in 1953.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Late in 1950 a senate investigating committee under Sen. Clyde R. Hoey of North Carolina, made a secret hearing investigation of perversion among government employes. It disclosed that from January, 1947, to October, 1950, the U.S. armed services had separated 4380 individuals for homosexuality.<\/p>\n

In the same period, 574 cases were reported in the civilian agencies of government. Of these, 207 were dismissed from government service, 213 resigned, 85 were cleared and 69 cases were pending at the time the report was made.<\/span>4<\/sup><\/a><\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Yikes! It’s not a pinko<\/em> under every bed (or cot), but rather a pervert.<\/p>\n\n\n

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\"Hoey<\/a>
This image of Sen. Hoey’s (declassified) report title page is from an article by Judith Adkins published in the Summer 2016 edition of Prologue Magazine, available<\/a> via the National Archives.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n

No There There<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

Absent from Edson\u2019s column\u2014and eluding his fact-checking editors\u2014is an inconvenient datum: Sen. Hoey\u2019s committee unearthed not a single case of a civil servant who had both 1) engaged in \u201cthose practices\u201d and<\/em> 2) actually had been \u201ccoerced\u201d either to spy for the enemy or to disclose U.S. secrets. The same committee, nevertheless, stated in its 1950 report that all of the government\u2019s intelligence agencies were \u201cin complete agreement that sex perverts in Government constitute security risks.\u201d Three years later\u2014and barely three months after his inauguration as president\u2014Dwight D. Eisenhower issued Executive Order 10450, tasking government department heads with rooting out security risks, using criteria such as “sexual perversion.” But, as Edson points out, such an order hardly had been necessary because the practice had been in place for years.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Lavender Scare: The Movie<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

This subject was covered in 2004 by David K. Johnson, a professor at the University of South Florida, in his book The Lavender Scare<\/em>, the film adaptation of which opened yesterday<\/a>\u00a0in New York and Los Angeles.<\/span>5<\/sup><\/a><\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n

An interview with director Josh Howard follows:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\nhttps:\/\/vimeo.com\/66332687\n<\/div><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Note: The above video, posted on Vimeo<\/a>, was subsequently pulled or protected. As a consolation, I offer this lengthy interview with both director Howard and author Johnson:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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