Americanism, Un-Americanism, and the gay rights movement

Abstract

The issue of un-Americanism was present at the creation of the gay rights movement. Indeed the movement emerged, at least in part, as a response to wide-ranging discriminatory policies and practices that were implemented by the federal government during the Cold War. Faced with claims that they constituted an existential threat to the United States, activists in the early gay rights movement worked hard to affirm their patriotism and appealed frequently to the nation's founding ideals of liberty and equality. At times, they also characterized those who discriminated against them as un-American. Fifty years later, debates about Americanism and un-Americanism have been centre stage in the battle to repeal Don't Ask, Don't Tell and to secure gay marriage rights. With conservative politicians, commentators and activists claiming that demands for gay marriage threaten the foundation of American civilization, the gay rights movement and its supporters have responded in kind. The increased willingness of gay rights activists to lay the charge of un-American is, at one level, a logical extension of the appeal to Americanism that has long been central to the movement's rhetorical and symbolic approach. But it also reflects both the greater empowerment of today's LGBT community compared with their McCarthy-era predecessors and the divisiveness of contemporary American political culture. © 2013 Cambridge University Press.