Something that pops into my head a lot (besides the Mentos jingle) is the phrase, “It was a kinder, gentler time.” It’s what my grandparents said when I interviewed them for an undergrad history class project. They were talking about the 1950s.
My grandparents, both of whom are no longer living, were white and upper-middle class. They were the kind of people for whom the 1950s were ideal. As much as I loved them, to think of the ‘50s as kind and gentle takes a lot of willful ignorance when it comes to the suffering of people not like you.
It makes sense, then, that so many straight, cisgender white people yearn for a return to the 1950s while the idea scares the hell out of just about everyone else.
That racial discrimination was rampant in the ‘50s is widely known, but the discrimination against queer people is not. But what’s happening now — a crackdown on LGBTQ+ people from the highest reaches of power — is history repeating itself.
“Under President Dwight D. Eisenhower’s Executive Order 10450 [in 1953], the investigation, interrogation and systematic removal of gay men and lesbians from the federal government became policy,” reports Time. This was known as the “Lavender Scare.”
The belief was that queer people “posed a threat to national security because they were vulnerable to blackmail and were considered to have weak moral characters,” historian David K. Johnson told Time.
This is essentially the same argument the Trump Administration is making to justify kicking transgender servicemembers out of the military. In 2025.
On Jan. 27, Trump issued an executive order titled “Prioritizing Military Excellence and Readiness.”
“[A]doption of a gender identity inconsistent with an individual’s sex conflicts with a soldier’s commitment to an honorable, truthful and disciplined lifestyle,” it reads. “A man’s assertion that he is a woman, and his requirement that others honor this falsehood, is not consistent with the humility and selflessness required of a service member.”
These words were deeply hurtful and offensive to transgender service members, as they were intended to be.
On May 6, the Supreme Court ruled that the trans military ban could go into effect. No one seems to have thought this through.
“The most immediate impact is that transgender people serve in every theater of the world,” Commander Emily Shilling, a transgender woman, told Erin in the Morning. “If it were a fairly fast-moving ban, you would be pulling these individuals out of their units, leaving critical gaps in skill sets, experience and leadership positions that you’re just not going to be able to fill with equivalent people anytime soon, especially given the shortfalls in recruiting.”
I’m not a military scholar, but that seems bad, especially since the whole world is basically an on-fire hellscape right now.
“Transgender troops who do not voluntarily come forward could be outed by commanders or others aware of their medical status,” reports the Associated Press. “Military commanders will be told to identify troops in their units who are transgender or have gender dysphoria, then send them to get medical checks in order to force them out of the service.”
This is worse than “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell.” Remember that? President Bill Clinton’s so-called compromise on the issue of LGBTQ+ service members in 1993? It mandated that troops had to stay in the closet. It was repealed in 2011, and in 2016, transgender service members were allowed to serve openly for the first time under President Obama.
Anyway, I mention Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell to point out that what is happening now can be traced right back to the centrist bullshit that created DADT in the first place. Clinton did not fight for LGBTQ+ people even though he’d said he would. He even signed the Defense of Marriage Act in 1996, FFS. Centrism is an awful strategy because it isn’t based on doing what is right; it’s based on doing what is expedient. With all due respect, fuck that.
To every Democrat who is saying, “We must treat transgender people as inhuman if we want to win elections,” instead of “The attack on transgender people is abhorrent and must stop,” I hope you are primaried and I hope that you lose.
We are in the middle of a trans scare where a trans person serving this country is the worst thing losers like Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth can imagine. “No more dudes in dresses,” Hegseth had the audacity to say. “We’re done with that shit.”
Hegseth is an unqualified clown and Trump dodged the draft repeatedly. They might hate trans service members, but at least trans service members actually give a shit about protecting the country.
