How did Joseph McCarthy’s anticommunist rhetoric impact the LGBTQ+ community?  

External Websites

Joseph McCarthy framed the Cold War ideological struggle in terms of Christian morality and immoral “communistic atheism.” Throughout the early 1950s, his crusade against communist immorality was accompanied by a government-mandated purge of federal employees deemed national security threats on account of their “perverted” sexual orientation. The effects would linger long after the McCarthy era.