Books: “Secret City@ by James Kirchick

The fact that Pete Buttigieg, a gay man, is even being considered for the presidency someday reflects a remarkable transformation in public opinion. But as James Kirchik points out in “Secret City,” his well-researched, often gossipy book on gays and the government, even a whiff of homosexuality used to doom a politician to political Siberia.

Kirchick traces this attitude back to FDR’s

administration, when Summer Welles, his Undersecretary Secretary of State,  was fired because of his alleged indiscreet behavior with Black Pullman porters. A decade later during the Truman and Eisenhower administrations, homophobia reached new heights, as both Joe McCarthy and Vice President Nixon thundered against the State Department, which they called a hotbed of “perversity” and Communists.

Secure in his masculinity, President Kennedy had no problem accepting gays: his best friend Lem Billings was gay and the two had been close since boarding school. Nor on a personal level did Ronald Reagan ever feel threatened. As an associate once said, “Half of RR’s friends are gay and all of Nancy’s are.”

However, the overwhelming majority of American politicians, including liberal Democrats, felt that being gay was worse than being a Communist. Kirchick sees political hypocrisy as an even graver sin: he decries both left- and right-wing politicians who would denounce the “gay lifestyle” by day then sneak off to leather bars by night.

Kirchik reflects on how much further in life gay and lesbian individuals could have gone if they hadn’t been blackmailed, terminated or driven to suicide. But he also asks us to consider how far LGBT people have come—he uses gay marriage as an example—since the Lavender Scare of the 1950s.

So: are Americans brave enough to vote for Pete Buttigieg someday without caring about who he sleeps with? I’m not so sure. But stay tuned and keep your fingers crossed.