Parting Glances: Five Thousand States Of No Return

My favorite coming out story concerns a computer hacker — actually a brilliant graphic designer of science texts — named Dennis. We chanced to meet at Motor City Pride after many, many years. I knew him when he worked for Detroit's legendary Gale Research in the 1970s.
When in his sackcloth-and-ashes 20s, Dennis studied for the Russian Orthodox priesthood. (Doctrinal attitude toward homosexuality same as Roman Catholic Church. Closeted. Ah-men. Wink. Wink.)
As a priesthood candidate Dennis soon found himself emotionally attracted to other men on the same spiritual path. And presumably because Dennis was handsome — still is, in a patriarchal, Charlton Heston way — one or two of his student brothers found in him a possible venue for a "special friendship."
For that reason of frustrating same-sex distraction, Dennis decided a priest's life was really not his cup of oolong tea. With or without a sidecar shot or two of Stoli vodka. (He left his religious studies without letting his right hand know what his left hand wasn't doing — as far as gay sex practicum was concerned.)
If you can't serve the Almighty, reasoned Dennis, do the next best thing. Join the State Department. It helped that Dennis was fluent in Russian and — though not married or possessed of an evenly remotely believable girlfriend — still virginal.
Seemingly a new career door was ajar. That is until Dennis was asked to take a lie detector test as a routine matter of application. "Have you ever had sexual relations with a man?" "No!" said Dennis, telling the gospel truth.
Alas, the recording marker waltzed all over the graph sheet. (In his case, it mazurka'd.) Virgin or not, he was now unwittingly out in both senses of the word.
"What the hell," says Dennis. "I'd never been in bed with a living soul other than myself. And that was a little too regimented. So I decided right then and there that if my sexual orientation was authenticated for me by the State Department, it was high time I got some action. With or without a national security clearance."
The failure of his lie detector test ended his hoped-for State Department career before it got off the ground. As far as rainbow history goes, our national State Department has not been welcoming to us. An understatement.
In 1953, President Dwight D. Eisenhower declared homosexuals a threat to national security as "sexual perverts," vulnerable to blackmail by communist spies, and ordered the immediate firing of every gay man and lesbian working for the U.S. government.
Five thousand government workers, including private contractors, "fellow travelers," were publicly exposed and sent packing. Over decades these numbers climbed to 50,000. (See 2012 film documentary, "Lavender Scare.")
One of those casualties, Frank Kameny — the "grandfather" of the modern gay rights movement — was a Harvard-educated astronomer. During the Eisenhower witch hunt he was working for the Army Map Service on classified missile projects in the hopes of being an astronaut when he was fired.
Four years before the Stonewall riots in New York City, Kameny courageously led the first picket at the White House in 1965 to protest these government firings. He also petitioned the Supreme Court, which refused to hear his case.
Only in 1995 was that order rescinded by President Bill Clinton, who also instituted the controversial military policy, "Don't Ask, Don't Tell." Congress voted to end State Department discrimination in 2011. Kameny died in that same year.