Joe McCarthy revisited: FRC head calls for LGBTQ State Dept employees to be ‘ferreted out’ and fired

by Rob Howard
Associate Editor

In the early 1950s, Sen. Joseph McCarthy charged that the US State Department and other agencies had been infiltrated by Communist agents. Less known to most of the public, but a part of LGBTQ history, is the fact that McCarthy also condemned government agencies for hiring ‘homosexuals’ and said that they posed a threat equally grave as the Communists to national security.

The ‘reason’ McCarthy and Republican allies of his used was that the threat of blackmail and being outed was a grave security risk. And in fact, the State Department did acknowledge that they had fired 91 homosexuals ad “security risks.”

That was 65 years ago. Last Friday, Dec. 16, Family Research Council (FRC) President Tony Perkins “called on the incoming administration to have pro-LGBTQ employees ‘ferreted out’ and ‘replaced by conservatives.’” The FRC has long been identified by the Southern Poverty Law Center as a hate group for its intensely anti-LGBTQ views.

Perkins want people fired for their pro-LGBTQ views, a stance that is McCarthyism at its worst.

Perkins called the Obama administration’s support of LGBTQ rights worldwide under Secretaries of State Hillary Clinton and John Kerry an “extreme agenda.”

He said, “The Obama administration has systematically filled the ranks of State with LGBTQ and abortion activists. Unless the next secretary of state is willing to resist and remove this embedded agenda, the promotion and protection of true human rights, like religious liberty, will continue to languish.”

Why is the FRC so riled up? They are afraid that Trump’s pick to be Secretary of State, ExxonMobil CEO Rex Tillerson, is too soft on LGBTQ issues. Tillerson was President of the Boy Scouts of America when he urged the organization to be open to gay boy scouts. After a great deal of controversy, the Boy Scouts did just that.

Tillerson is no raging LGBTQ activist though. ExxonMobil for years scored low or no points on the Human Rights Campaign’s (HRC) Corporate Equality Index (CEI) for refusing to implement protections for its LGBTQ employees. More recently, the company moved from a score of 40 in 2016 (pretty bad), to 85 in the latest 2017 index (pretty good.)

However, the reason that happened is illusory. ExxonMobil is a big government contractor, and was complying with President Obama’s Executive Order forbidding government contractors from discriminating against LGBTQ people in hiring and business policies.

Beyond his support for gay boy scouts, we don’t know Tillerson’s views on LGBTQ issues, but simply by that action, he appears to be to the left of many of his Cabinet colleagues on those issues.

HRC President Chad Griffin condemned Perkin’s remarks, saying, “Tony Perkins’ proposal to purge pro-LGBTQ employees from the State Department is beyond the pale. Perkins is hatefully suggesting pro-equality, career civil servants be rounded up and sent packing for doing their jobs,” said the organization’s daily new email.

“ Griffin called on the Trump-Pence administration to ‘immediately denounce’ the request, making clear the vital role the State Department plays for LGBTQ people across the world and noting that in ‘countries with hostile anti-LGBTQ regimes -- like Russia, Syria and Egypt -- lives are literally at risk.’”

According to the HRC, “A Trump transition team spokesperson responded to concerns: ‘To think that discrimination of any kind will be condoned or tolerated in a Trump Administration is simply absurd.’ Perkins’ organization is known for virulent rhetoric that has earned them designation as a hate group by the Southern Poverty Law Center.”

If Perkin’s call to fire LGBTQ employees and allies in the State Department isn’t McCarthyism, what is?

Copyright 2016 The Gayly – December 19, 2016 @ 2:50 p.m.