| Book Review | The Journal of American History, 91.4

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| Book Review | The Journal of American History, 91.4 | The History Cooperative

Book Review

The Lavender Scare: The Cold War Persecution of Gays and Lesbians in the Federal Government. By David K. Johnson. (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2004. xii, 277 pp. $30.00, ISBN 0-226-40481-1.)
Historians of same-sex sexuality know that various agencies worked to hound men and women suspected to be gay or lesbian out of government service during the reign of McCarthyism. But even those of us who are aware of this "lavender scare" have probably assumed that it took a back seat to the more devastating purge of those suspected of Communist affiliations. David K. Johnson, in a compellingly written and exhaustively researched account, disabuses us of that notion. Making use of recently declassified documents as well as interviews, he argues persuasively that the attack on those suspected of "sexual perversion" (p. 9 and passim) lasted longer and was pursued more vehemently than the Red Scare.	1
Joseph McCarthy plays at most a minor role in the drama that unfolds in these pages. Much more prominent are John Peurifoy, deputy undersecretary in the State Department, who, in responding to McCarthy's famous charges, defended his unit by revealing that ninety-one homosexuals had been dismissed as "security risks" (p. 1); Kenneth Wherry, the senator whose investigations spread the purges to the rest of the government bureaucracy; and R.W. Scott McLeod, head of security for the State Department in the Eisenhower administration, who "struck fear in the hearts of foreign service officers" (p. 125).	. . .

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