News The Standard Local News
Pride Week sought to explain the LGBT Purge
Author of the article: Kevin McSheffrey
Published Jun 15, 2023
Excerpt from The Standard Local Newspaper
The Elliot Lake Pride committee hosted several events during Pride Week, from May 29 to June 4. Some of the events explained what the LGBTQ2SI community had to deal with at the hands of the federal government.
Michelle Douglas was the guest speaker on June 1, at a presentation at the Elliot Lake Library during Pride Week.
Douglas, a lesbian and executive director of the LGBT Purge Fund, spoke of the LGBT Purge in Canada and how it affected thousands of people. She was joined at the Pride event by Elliot Lake lawyer Douglas Elliott.
Elliott said in the late 1940s and 1950s people believed communist spies were everywhere in North America, which became known as the Red Scare in the United States.
At that time, American senator Clyde Roark Hoey feared that LGBT people and communists set their sights on the United States and were working in government jobs that posed a security risk.
Hoey believed that LGBT people were likely communists or would spy for the Russians because they were susceptible to blackmail due to being gay. At that time, same-sex relations were criminal, and Hoey believed that they were mentally ill, of weak moral character, and unreliable.
To read the entire article please follow this link: PRIDE WEEK