McCarthy hired Roy Cohen, himself a closeted homosexual, as chief counsel for his Congressional subcommittee. With religious fervor, government alarmists cried: “As dangerous as the actual communists, are the ‘sexual perverts’ who have infiltrated our government in recent years!” Post war paranoids weren’t just looking under their beds for communists they were also checking their closets (and their neighbors) for homosexuals With Senator Joseph McCarthy creating a culture of fear and paranoia with his communist witch hunt, he fanned the flame by claiming that a “homosexual underground” was aiding the “communist conspiracy.”Īmerica was being infiltrated not only by a red menace but a lavender menace as well
While our optimistic young eagle scout was reading the “Boys Life” article extolling our great American system of free choice, Republican senators were setting in motion actions that would severely limit the ability to choose. Vintage Illustration from “Boys Life Magazine” – The Right to Choose Like his father and grandfather, he would choose to work in government, eager for a chance to serve Uncle Sam.
In Springfield, the Adams family had a long history of civil service. Opportunity, Virgil was certain, would come a knocking. “Only under the great American system of free enterprise that not only challenges individual initiative but provides opportunity, could this be achieved!”Īll across America post war prosperity was booming. “In the US all the people have the right to choose in nearly everything that concerns them…that’s what it meant to be an American.” the impressionable honors student proudly read. With a good job, he would achieve the American Dream. “Americans Are Free To Choose the Kinds of Work they Want to Do.” So in 1950 when an article appeared in Virgil’s Boys Life Magazine outlying the promise of the American Dream stating: “the right to choose any career a fellow felt qualified to follow,” it merely confirmed what the earnest 16-year-old Eagle Scout already knew. Like truth and justice, it was the American way. Like most mid-century Americans, Virgil Adams believed hard work paid off. (L) Illustration from Vintage Boy Scout Handbook- A Handbook of Training For Citizenship Through Scouting (R) Free to Choose article from vintage Boys Life Magazine