They call it the “Pink Scare.”
At the height of the Red Scare, Sen. Joseph McCarthy’s witch hunt for accused communists in Washington and in Hollywood, the demagogue, along with his chief lieutenants, Roy Cohn and Richard Nixon, also began searching out accused gay men and women. Thus did the Pink Scare begin, ruining the lives of countless patriots over suspicion of their sexuality.
A new biography profiles the life of Robert Cutler, one of the closeted gay men who used the Pink Scare as a means to shield his own sexuality from scrutiny.
Unlike other gay men–namely Cohn and J. Edgar Hoover–who did the same, however, Cutler held a position of enormous power: that of National Security Adviser (the first in history) for President Eisenhower.
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There, Cutler did enormous good in helping Eisenhower develop American foreign policy in the space race, fighting global communism and in development of more advanced nuclear arms.
Related: Queer is the new Jedi, and the Force is with us
The new biography, written by Cutler’s great nephew Peter Shinkle, reveals a man tortured by his secret life. Away from the bustle of Washington, Cutler loved to write poetry and loved to do drag in amateur theatrical productions. He also struggled with drug addiction, and with his relationship with Skip Coons, another closeted gay man on the National Security Council.
Unfortunately, amid all his successes, Cutler also helped in the construction of a 1953 Executive Order that banned gay people from working for the federal government. The order ruined the lives of thousands of LGBTQ people for years to come.
Shinkle portrays Cutler as a man devoted to his nation, and to fighting Communism, even to his own detriment.
Could that possibly make up for his betrayal of other queer Americans? Granted, in 1953 Alfred Kinsey had only just published his first volume of landmark research into human sexuality which revealed homosexuality as a normal, healthy human orientation.
As Shinkle lays out his history of Cutler’s policy achievements and life affairs, he also begs the question of how history should regard Cutler: as a queer, American hero, or as a destructive turncoat.
Time will tell.
Aires the Ram
From the story: “Cutler also helped in the construction of a 1953 Executive Order that banned gay people from working for the federal government. The order ruined the lives of thousands of LGBTQ people for years to come.”
In todays context, given the social/political progress gays & lesbians have made, we might indeed ask the question, or make the accusation, that he betrayed other gay/les. people. But in the historical context of the time, perhaps he chose between gainful employment and poverty. We ALWAYS have to look at things in their historical context, we cannot explain, or rationalize the actions of others in the near or distant past, using todays political/social standards. I’m certainly not defending what he did, but most of you reading this have never lived in a place and/or time where absolutely everyone around you hated queers, attacked queers, fired queers, and worse. We’ve always survived, just as our kind is surviving today in places like the Middle East, Russia, and countless other places where they still hate us and hunt us down. We need not go on a witch hunt for those who did what they had to do to survive, in places and times past. It is a waste of time. It was a certain way “then”, and gays & lesbians did what they thought they needed to do to not just survive, but stay alive.
inbama
Sounds like you majored in ethics at Trump University.
Heywood Jablowme
@inbama: Please tell us in detail what career choices YOU would have made if you were in Robert Cutler’s situation (he was born in 1895). Seriously, I’m genuinely curious what you’d have done.
Scout
We forget that we often judge from today’s standards and not within the context of historical times. Thank you for putting Cutler’s dilemma into the context of the 50’s.
misterjack
Some things never change. The ones pointing fingers are always the most suspect.
johnsonsjohnson
Historian here, I’ve never heard it referred to as the pink scare but as the lavender scare.
jdr11201
Sounds like me cutler was out to serve himself and damn the gay community well I am certain he served his time for his misdeeds