WHEN BATMA
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‘Lavender Scare’ hutches up the Caped Crusader
from page 15
pie on “morals” charges.
Indeed, the sort of intimacy between men
' enjoyed by millions of men in the early ’40s
was increasingly suspect by the end of the
decade. Society moved quickly to restabilize
heterosexuality and stigmatize many of the
types of same-sex intimacy — sexual and
nonsexual alike — that had been common
during the war.
Margot Canaday notes in “Building a
Straight State” that the architects of the 1944
GI Bill designed it intentionally to make ineli
gible for benefits those service members who
had been discharged on morals charges.
The Lavender Scare
As tensions with the Soviet Union
increased, psychologists, politicians and dem
agogues linked communism to homosexuali
ty, arguing that communists and homosexuals
were secretive and opposed to the “democrat
ic” heterosexual family unit.
Even if homosexuals were not communist
themselves, they could be blackmailed and
strong-armed into complicity with communist
schemes. Thus, the “lavender scare” — as his
torian Robert Johnson has called it — preced
ed the “red scare.”
In 1950, a subcommittee chaired by
Maryland Sen. Millard Tydings convened to
investigate Joseph McCarthy’s notorious list of
“205 known communists.” Tydings worked to
discredit McCarthy’s claim, but in the process
the subcommittee at least partially validated
concerns that the State Department was over
run with “sexual perverts.”
During the hearings, Nebraska Sen.
Kenneth Wherry memorably claimed that as
many as 3,000 homosexuals were employed by
the Department. By the end of 1950,600 peo
ple had been dismissed from positions at the
State Department on morals charges.
Butching up Batman
How deeply the cultural climate influenced
the creative forces at DC Comics is difficult to
tell. Regardless, the charges levied by Wertham
against Batman were bad for sales — parents
might steer their children away from the title
toward more “wholesome” comics and some
communities might attempt to censor the
comic book altogether. In an effort to combat
the perception that their product was morally
see Social Changes on 26
16 AUGUST9.2008*Q-NOTES