Help us, Big Government. You're our only hope. (2)

It's long been teaching necessary for salvation that the private sector thinks of nothing all day except new ways to discriminate against queer people and that only the government can rescue us. Yet this column in today's New York Times paints a different picture:

But in fact the exclusion of gays and lesbians from the military has been a crucial issue for the gay movement for 65 years — in part because, during the postwar decades, it served as a model for anti-homosexual discrimination throughout the government and private sector.

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Eisenhower’s order also required private companies with government contracts to ferret out and discharge their homosexual employees. Numerous states took the federal government’s cue and prohibited bars and restaurants from serving homosexuals or even allowing them to gather.

Those who want to give the government power to do all good things need to consider how it has used that power.