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The Lavender Scare
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The Confusion of Gays and Lesbians
The thinking was that gay and lesbian government workers would be easy targets for Soviet spies because they didn't want to be outed. In 1952, the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, or DSM, listed homosexuality as a mental illness. Because no sane person would be a communist and no sane people would be attracted to members of the same sex, where there's something wrong with these people. That's Joseph McCarthy. He was using this paranoia about communism to constantly fan the flames of a conspiracy theory.
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