A Modern Day Witch Hunt The Persecution of a Gay in the Military
They asked him deeply personal and explicit questions, leaving him feeling "uncomfortable and humiliated," Sergeant A told CNN. South Korea's military 'sodomy law' should go.
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The South Korea military and the defense ministry declined multiple requests for an interview and referred CNN to an April statement:. The military penal code bans homosexual activity under Article "to keep the military community sound. The law regards same-sex relations between soldiers as "disgraceful conduct," akin to sexual assault. One man convicted last month was given a six month suspended prison sentence.
In a statement, Amnesty International East Asia director Roseann Rife called for the conviction to be immediately overturned and the group condemned what it described as "an outrageous military gay witch-hunt. Taiwan moves closer to legalizing gay marriage The recent investigation started earlier this year after a video was posted on social media showing two male soldiers having sex.
Same-sex relationships are seen as taboo and are a crime across most of continent, with punishments ranging from imprisonment to death. As a result, the persecution, discrimination and exploitation of Africa's sexual minorities is rife, say campaigners.
They are routinely abused, blackmailed, assaulted by mobs, or raped by police or vigilantes. Many are unable to get jobs due to their sexual identity — forcing them to sell sex through social media sites. Civil society organizations supporting gay people have been shut down and activists have been arrested.
Makonda told a news conference Tuesday that he had already received over 5, messages from the public — with over names of suspected gays. A member committee is also being set up, he said, which would be tasked with identifying gay people on social media sites such as Facebook and Twitter and arresting them. Campaign group Equality Now said it was appalled and alarmed by the crackdown — which also targets sex workers.
Dozens arrested as South Korean military conducts 'gay witch-hunt'
It called on the federal government to condemn Makonda's statement and to enact laws and policies to protect the rights of all. They also called on the United Nations to protect them by providing them with safety in another country. I am scared to death," said year-old sex worker Michael by phone from the northeastern city of Arusha. In , the same year that Senator Joseph McCarthy claimed communists were working in the State Department , Undersecretary of State John Peurifoy said that the State Department had allowed 91 homosexuals to resign.
The homosexuals were considered to be more susceptible to blackmail and thus were labeled as security risks. Edgar Hoover —were responsible for the firing of scores of gay men and women from government employment and strong-armed many opponents into silence using rumors of their homosexuality. McCarthy often used accusations of homosexuality as a smear tactic in his anti-communist crusade, often combining the Second Red Scare with the Lavender Scare.
On one occasion, he went so far as to announce to reporters, "If you want to be against McCarthy, boys, you've got to be either a Communist or a cocksucker. In President Dwight D. Eisenhower signed Executive Order , which set security standards for federal employment and barred homosexuals from working in the federal government. The restrictions set in place were cause for hundreds of gay people to be forcibly outed and fired from the State Department.
The executive order was also the cause for the firing of approximately 5, gay people from federal employment; this included private contractors and military personnel. Not only did the victims lose their jobs, but also they were forced out of the closet and thrust into the public eye as lesbian or gay.
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Executive Order stayed on paper and in effect until when President Bill Clinton rescinded the order and put in place the " Don't ask, don't tell " policy for admittance of gays into the military. Both homosexuals and Communist Party members were seen as subversive elements in American society who all shared the same ideals of antitheism , rejection of bourgeois culture and middle-class morality, lack of conformity; they were scheming and manipulative and, most importantly, would put their own agendas above others in the eyes of the general population.
George Chauncey noted that: Senator Kenneth Wherry similarly attempted to invoke a connection between homosexuality and anti-nationalism. He said in an interview with Max Lerner that: I say, let's get these fellows [closeted gay men in government positions] out of the government.
While the Mattachine Society was founded by Harry Hay , a former member of the Communist Party USA , Hay resigned from the society when the membership condemned his politics as a threat to the organization he had founded. This subcommittee led by Senator Clyde R.
Hoey from — investigated "the employment of homosexuals in the Federal workforce. Navy officials claimed they had no record of studies of homosexuality, but attorneys learned of its existence and obtained it through a Freedom of Information Act request. According to John Loughery, author of a study of gay identity in the 20th century, "few events indicate how psychologically wracked America was becoming in the s The research of Evelyn Hooker , presented in , and the first conducted without a polluted sample gay men who had been treated for mental illness dispelled the illusory correlation between homosexuality and mental illness that prior research, conducted with polluted sampling, had established.
Lavender scare - Wikipedia
Hooker presented a team of three expert evaluators with 60 unmarked psychological profiles from her year of research. She chose to leave the interpretation of her results to others, to avoid potential bias. The evaluators concluded that in terms of adjustment, there were no differences between the members of each group. Her demonstration that it is not an illness led the way to the eventual removal of homosexuality from the American Psychiatric Association 's Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders.
One of the first and most influential members of the gay rights movements, Frank Kameny , was thrust into unemployment because of his sexual orientation in He was working as an astronomer for the United States Army Map Service, but was fired as a result of the Lavender Scare and could never find another job in the United States federal government again. This led to Kameny devoting his life to the gay rights movement , which in some ways he began.