CITY OF THE DEEP CLOSET
We may believe that all American cities are the same, but that’s not the case. Washington D.C., the capital of the United States, was both the best and the worst place for a homosexual. In the capital, the federal government employed over twenty million people and had contracts with millions more who provided everything from toilet paper to tanks. For all of them, there was a clause dating back to the beginning of the century that stated that no criminal, mentally ill, degenerate, indecent, or unstable person could hold a position in the Public Administration or in the Army. If homosexuality was proven, the person would be marked on their criminal record as a criminal. In other words, their life would be ruined, and the best option would be to shoot themselves.
The city, which in the thirties was a southern town like any other, with laws that segregated blacks and even had separate water fountains for each race, experienced a population explosion during the war. In ten years, it went from less than half a million people to over a million. The American Army, which had 200,000 men in 1939, grew to 16 million in 1945. Consequently, the state bureaucracy of the Federal Government grew at the same rate. Washington became an important city with immigrants from all over.