During the Cold War, McCarthy’s reign of terror was often described as the “red scare”. The roots of workplace discrimination against homosexuality began on a grand scale during the same time; this was known as the “Lavender Scare”. Those who were suspected of homosexuality were also targeted by McCarthy, and were punished more frequently than those accused of communistic tendencies. The Lavender Scare began in earnest in 1950. That April, Guy Gabrielson, the Republican National Committee Chairman, went on the record as saying that “…perhaps as dangerous as the actual Communists are the sexual perverts who have infiltrated our Government in recent years”. The irony of this is that the man who lead McCarthy’s attack on homosexuals, Roy Cohn, was himself a closeted gay man. From April to December of 1950, government employees were fired at a rate of sixty people per month for suspected or actual homosexuals. Over the next several years, hundreds of civil employees were fired for homosexuality, all at a time when the nation sorely needed them to deal with the threat posed by the USSR.

From a report made to the Committee on Expenditures in the Executive Departments by its Subcommittee in Investigations, United States Senate, 81st Congress, 2nd Session, Dec. 15 1950:
“Those charged with the responsibility of operating the agencies of Government must insist that Government employees meet acceptable standards of personal conduct. In the opinion of this subcommittee homosexuals and other sex perverts are not proper persons to be employed in Government for two reasons: first, they are generally unsuitable, and second, they constitute security risks.”

It’s ironic – in attempting to stem the tide of THE GAYS, the government was just shooting itself in the foot.
This kind of blind, hateful sentiment so characteristic of the 1950s is represented in the following video, entitled “Boys Beware”: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p4enfUyGWSY