>>Rewriting the end of "Animal Farm" is just one example of the often absurd
>>lengths to which the C.I.A. went, as recounted in a new book, "The Cultural
>>Cold War: The C.I.A. and the World of Arts and Letters" (The New Press) by
>>Frances Stonor Saunders, a British journalist. Published in Britain last
>>summer, the book will appear here next month.
>
>Next month? I have a copy already, and I'm about half way through it.
>Quite a fine book, though slightly marred by the author's occasional
>bouts of anticommunism. The passage on Orwell is pretty damning -
>Orwell's famous jottings about his politically suspect friends and
>colleagues that he handed over to British intelligence also included
>petty comments about their vulgarity, Jewishness, and homosexuality.
>The "homosexual" charge recurs several times, applied to Stephen
>Spender among others. What is it about the Cold Warrior's paranoid
>equivalence of Red and queer? Has that ever been explored in depth?
Yes, it has. See, for instance:
John D'Emilio, "The Homosexual Menace: The Politics of Sexuality in Cold War America," _Passion & Power: Sexuality in History_, eds. Kathy Peiss & Christina Simmons (with Robert Padgug), Philadelphia: Temple UP, 1989. [This essay is also included in John D'Emilio, _Making Trouble: Essays on Gay History, Politics, and the University_, NY: Routledge, 1992.]
John D'Emilio, _Sexual Politics, Sexual Communities: The Making of a Homosexual Minority in the United States, 1940-1970_, Chicago: U. of Chicago P, 1983.
_We Are Everywhere: A Historical Sourcebook of Gay and Lesbian Politics_, eds. Mark Blasius & Shane Phelan, NY: Routledge, 1997. [See Part III "The Homophile Movement 1950-69" of this book, which contains primary documents such as: U.S. Senate, 81st Cong., 2nd Sess., Committee on Expenditure in Executive Departments, _Employment of Homosexuals and Other Sex Perverts in the U.S. Government_ (Washington, D.C.: 1950); the U.K. Parliamentary Committee on Homosexuality and Prostitution, "The Wolfenden Report," _Part Two, Homosexual Offenses_ (1957); ACLU Policy Statement adopted by the Union's Board of Directors, January 7, 1957 (ACLU supported the U.S. government in its persecution of homosexuals); etc. Part III also includes the political responses on the part of the Mattachine Society, One, & Daughters of Bilitis to state homophobia.]
Yoshie