IN A SPEECH given to the Ohio County Women’s Club in Wheeling, West Virginia, on February 9, 1950, Senator Joseph McCarthy asserted that the U.S. State Department was crawling with traitors—205 members of the Communist Party, to be exact. Three years earlier, the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC) held widely publicized hearings on the spread of Communism within the motion picture industry, leading to the blacklisting of a number of well-known Hollywood figures. McCarthy’s public comments, which made national headlines, led to Congressional and Executive actions that eventually resulted in a nearly quarter-century ban on gay men and women serving in federal government and upwards of 10,000 men and women losing their jobs. In his 2004 book, historian David K. Johnson refers to this systematic federal persecution of gay men and lesbians as the “Lavender Scare.”
The Lavender Scare is an example of what sociologists refer to as a “moral panic,” which happens when a perceived social threat is singled out and exaggerated until the public comes to regard it as a serious danger to physical safety and to society’s core values. The response to a moral panic typically involves the enactment of laws and policies designed to “root out” the source of the perceived threat. Recent anti-LGBT legislation and policy directives coming from U.S. federal and state governments provide a more recent example of a moral panic, only this time the threat is gender—specifically transgender—identity.
A series of Executive Orders (EO’s) coming from the new Administration target transgender and non-binary people in ways that are sure to threaten their health and well-being. The first EO, issued on Inauguration Day, explains that the federal government recognizes only two sexes, male and female, which are established at birth and “are not changeable.” To comply with the order, federal websites removed all references to transgender people and their unique healthcare needs. After judicial action, some of this information was restored, but with the prominently posted caveat that “This page does not reflect biological reality and therefore the Administration and this Department rejects it.” In a move that can only be described as Orwellian, the National Park Service, in response to the EO, removed all references to transgender people from the Stonewall Inn National Monument website, even though the facts clearly indicate that Marsha Johnson and other gender nonconforming people were actively involved in the uprising.
Then, on January 27th, the White House issued an EO barring transgender men and women from serving in the armed forces, stating that “expressing a false gender identity divergent from an individual’s sex cannot satisfy the rigorous standards necessary for military service.” This was followed, one day later, by an executive order banning federal funds from being used to support gender affirming care for minors. Ignoring scientific evidence showing improved mental health outcomes for children and young adults when their external appearance becomes more congruent with their gender identity, the order callously refers to gender-affirming hormone care as “chemical mutilation.”
Other White House actions, such as the ban on federal funds being used to support awareness of and training for diversity, equity, and inclusion, bespeak antipathy toward understanding and responding to the unique health and social needs of minority populations, including sexual and gender minorities—not to mention communities of color. While many of the actions referred to here have been temporarily blocked by court orders, their intended outcome—and the erosion of tolerance that they portend—cannot be ignored.
Will government continue to discriminate against people whose gender identities do not match their sex at birth? It’s worth remembering that in response to the governmental oppression of the lavender scare, same-sex loving men and women learned how to organize and challenge discrimination, laying the groundwork for the gay liberation movement of the 1970s. One hopes that the current moral panic over gender identity and transgender rights might follow a similar, albeit much more rapid, trajectory.
Ronald Valdiserri, MD, is a professor of epidemiology at the Rollins School of Public Health, Emory University.
