Suit seeks records tied to Ike's anti-gay order
Source: AP
WASHINGTON (AP) A gay rights group sued the Justice Department on Wednesday for failing to produce hundreds of pages of documents related to a 1953 order signed by President Dwight Eisenhower that empowered federal agencies to investigate and fire employees thought to be gay.
The suit in U.S. District Court accuses the government of conducting an inadequate search for the material and of groundlessly withholding some records on the basis of national security.
Executive Order 10450 allowed broad categories of federal workers, including those with criminal records, drug addiction and "sexual perversion," to be singled out for scrutiny and termination as threats to national security. Suspicions of homosexuality led to between 7,000 and 10,000 workers losing their jobs in the 1950s alone, according to one estimate cited in a 2014 report from the U.S. Merit Systems Protection Board.
"We want to know, and history needs to know, how this thing was administered and how it was enforced, and what was the dynamic inside the Justice Department and the FBI driving" it, said Charles Francis, president of the Mattachine Society. The gay rights research and education organization has sought to obtain the records since 2013.
Read more: https://www.yahoo.com/news/apnewsbreak-lawsuit-seeks-records-tied-anti-gay-us-160102056--politics.html?.gg_forward=true&app_id=7QBzCW58&sc=5486131
rpannier
(24,329 posts)That paleolithic asshat was anti-anything from the Renaissance to modern day
nichomachus
(12,754 posts)Ike wasn't the saint that many people think he was. He was in favor of a lot of the shit that was done during his administration. All he wanted was plausible deniability.
pnwmom
(108,978 posts)or somebody like her. He did what he had to do to exist.
Betty Karlson
(7,231 posts)What is the establishment hiding this time?
McCamy Taylor
(19,240 posts)Betty Karlson
(7,231 posts)1939
(1,683 posts)A lot of government files are closed at the end of the year and put in the dead files area. After three years, they are transferred to a "records holding area" warehouse. After twelve years, they are supposedly destroyed.
burrowowl
(17,641 posts)Jack Rabbit
(45,984 posts)Wouldn't the order have to go through J. Edgar Hoover?
Bluenorthwest
(45,319 posts)lost their jobs, that's the whole point of this. God the simmering indifference of some Democrats to the facts of history makes me furious.
Hillary tells everyone Ronald Reagan was an AIDS activist hero and her supporters believe it. This shit has to end.
yellowcanine
(35,699 posts)"Threats to national security" being the key here. Anybody who was "different" was suspect.