A Brief History Of Gays In Government

— -- 1778 -- General George Washington approves the court martial of Lt. Gotthold Frederick Enslin for attempted sodomy.

1921 -- U.S. Senate Naval Affairs Committee issues "Report on Alleged Immoral Conditions and Practices at the Naval Training Station, Newport, RI" accusing officers under the command of Franklin D. Roosevelt, former assistant secretary of the US Navy, of ordering enlisted men to engage in 11 immoral practices" in order to entrap "perverts" in the military and obtain evidence against them. The report is also one of the first to document gay male cruising areas, including Riverside Drive in New York City.

1951 -- U.S. Senate Committee on Expenditures in the Executive Department issues report on "The Employment of Homosexuals and Other Sex Perverts in Government." State Department testimony reports that 91 gays have been outed and subsequently fired. Asks one senator: "Have they gone far enough? Newspaper accounts quote Senate testimony indicating there are 400 more in the State Department and 4,000 in Government. Where are they?"

1953 -- President Dwight D. Eisenhower signs Executive Order 10450, which requires that all federal employees determined to be guilty of "sexual perversion" are fired. Hundreds are fired.

1959 -- Political thriller Advise and Consent features fictional Utah Sen. Brigham Anderson driven to suicide when political enemies threaten to expose a gay affair from his youth.

1980 -- FBI charges anti-gay Congressman Bob Bauman, R-Maryland, with soliciting sex from a 16-year-old boy in a D.C., gay bar. He loses reelection, divorces, and becomes a gay rights activist.

1981 -- Capitol Police arrest anti-gay Congressman Jon Hinson, R-Mississippi, for having oral sex with a man in the bathroom of a federal office building. Hinson resigns, becomes a gay activist, and eventually died from AIDS.

1983 -- Congressman Gerry Studds, D-Mass, comes out of the closet. He is later censured by the House for having a gay affair with a congressional page in 1973, though he goes on to win reelection six times after that.