THE VOICE OF CHICAGO'S GAY, LESBIAN, BI, TRANS AND QUEER COMMUNITY SINCE 1985

His book may be called Dying for McCarthy's Sins: The Suicide of Wyoming Senator Lester Hunt, but it's been nothing short of a covert adventure spiraling down over 60 years in an effort to bring the persecution of LGBT individuals to light post-Red Scare. One man stuck his neck out to reveal the truth—and lived to tell the tale.

Windy City Times: In a nutshell, what is the premise of Dying for McCarthy's Sins?

Rodger McDaniel: Well it's a couple of things really—it's a biography of one of the giants in Wyoming political history during the 20th century. The book tells the story of Lester Hunt Sr., who served for 22 years in public office, was the governor of the state during the second World War, and elected to the U.S. Senate in 1948. But in addition to that, it's a history of attitudes toward the gay and lesbian community before and during the Cold War—and in particular the time of McCarthyism.

WCT: Was there a distinction during the time of McCarthyism where the atmosphere in Wyoming went from bad to worse?

Rodger McDaniel: The central event was the arrest of Senator Hunt's son in Lafayette Park in June of 1953. He was arrested for soliciting sex from a male undercover policeman, and as a result of his arrest, Senator Hunt's political opponents tried to use that to blackmail him into resigning from the Senate. The Senate was controlled by the Democratic party by one vote, one seat. And here you had this Democrat named Hunt—from very Republican Wyoming—standing between the Republicans and their control of the Senate. And so this was, they thought, an opportunity to force him out and the Republican governor back in Wyoming would replace him with a Republican and the control of the Senate would shift, so there was a lot at stake.

WCT: Back to gay rights during this era. How did McCarthy manage to turn the U.S. on its head with seemingly meritless allegations?

Rodger McDaniel: Attitudes toward homosexuals changed virtually overnight as a result of Joe McCarthy's tactics from a time in the 40s when there was a general level of acceptance of homosexuals—particularly in large American cities like Washington D.C. where the LGBT community had a vibrant social life. They were not harassed by policemen. They, generally speaking, did not have significant problems with employment discrimination.

But along comes McCarthy and Styles Bridges, the senator from New Hampshire, and people like them—and McCarthy first—make these wild claims that the State Department and the federal government in general is filled with Communists. He's unable to prove that, but in the process he does learn that the State Department has employed homosexuals and so he conflates the two issues with a claim that homosexuals are, per say, security risks.

In fact, [McCarthy] and Bridges made up a story that Adolf Hitler had assembled a list of American homosexuals with the plan to compromise their loyalty during World War II and use them as spies against America and that at the end of the war that list had fallen into the hands of Joseph Stalin when the Russians entered Berlin, and that Stalin was now busily recruiting American homosexuals to spy for the Russians. And all of this came at a time when the Russians had just acquired the atomic bomb secrets from the U.S. through espionage, so Americans were on edge. The relationship between the two countries and possibility of going to war with Russia [was at the forefront].

So when McCarthy and others started making the case that homosexuals were likely to be spies, overnight the attitudes changed. In Washington, as you know, Congress oversees everything about the District of Columbia—especially the budget—and McCarthy and others put pressure on the District of Columbia police force to do more to identify and arrest homosexuals so that they could learn whether or not they were employed by the government and discharge them.

WCT: What was the fallout for identifying homosexuals in their place of employment?

Rodger McDaniel: Thousands of homosexuals lost their jobs, their livelihood and their families during that period of time. In response, the D.C. police force created what they called, "The Pervert Elimination Campaign" and they hired hundreds of undercover police officers to comb the streets, to go into the bars and the nightclubs and the restaurants and the parks in an attempt to identify homosexuals. And it was that dragnet that young Lester Hunt walked into in June of 1953.

WCT: It reads to me that this could potentially be a play or a re-enactment of some sort—a movie. Something that people would need to see to understand the history of what happened. Why has this story not been told before in this way?

Rodger McDaniel: Well, that's a great question. Part of the story is the effort to keep it from being told. There was this unwitting conspiracy between the bad guys—those who perpetrated the blackmail—and the Hunt family, in particular his widow, to make sure that the story did not get told. For obvious reasons, Senator Bridges and Welker and McCarthy did not want the story to be told.

A few days after Hunt's death, columnist Drew Pearson knew the story all along, but didn't write the it because Hunt begged him not to. He wrote the story after the suicide. He didn't know it all, but he knew a great many of the facts. And these Republican senators came down on him with a ton of bricks. They put political pressure on his sponsors to terminate contracts, so he lost his national radio show; there were lawsuits and all kinds of other political threats made. And by and large, the journalism community backed off.

There was a fellow named Allen Drury, who was a United Press International correspondent in those days covering the Senate. Drury knew the story, but instead of writing the non-fiction version of the story, he wrote a fictional account which became a Pulitzer Prize winning novel called Advise and Consent—also turned into a movie. But then on top of that, you had Mrs. Hunt who, from the beginning, developed the family lore that her husband had killed himself because he was deathly ill with cancer.

In 1968, an esteemed Wyoming historian named T.A. Larson wrote a textbook that is still used in colleges and high schools called The History of Wyoming. His original manuscript included the story, mostly based on what Drew Pearson knew. And he sent a copy to Mrs. Hunt before it was published, and said, "I want you to see this and make sure I have my facts correct." Well her response was, "Hire a lawyer." She threatened to sue him if he printed that story in his book. And so he pulled it back. For decades, the only thing that Wyoming history students have read in Doc Larson's book says, "Overcome by personal and political problems, Senator Hunt took his life on June 19, 1954." And that was it. And so over time, not only did the story of his death get covered up, but as a result so did the story of his life.

WCT: Surely someone would uncover the truth at some point. Wyoming is a big state, but it isn't alienated from the rest of the country and outside observation.

Rodger McDaniel: I have a close friend whose aunt worked for Senator Hunt in Washington at the time he killed himself. This fellow was about five or six years old at the time and he put it very well. He said, "You know, I remember a time in our household where we talked about Lester Hunt all the time. But there came a day when we never talked about him again." That was just stunning to me. But it was the stigma of suicide coupled with the stigma about homosexuality and it resulted in the family covering up the story as well as historians really kind of backing off and journalists backing off from telling it.

WCT: Did you feel a social responsibility to make sure this story was told?

Rodger McDaniel: Well it's a couple of things. One is that I had a brother who was gay, who died of a heart attack in 2006. And over the years I watched his struggle—the loss of employment, the loss of friends, the whole psychological impact of going through hiding it and then coming out. As a result I've been deeply interested in civil rights for the LGBT community and have been involved in that politically as well as in my ministry in the church. So when I heard this story, that aspect of it caught my attention. I started looking more into it and, oh gosh, maybe eight years ago, I said, "You know, I'd really like to tell this story." But I was working full time and I thought maybe I would never get around to it.

WCT: What happened to alter the trajectory?

Rodger McDaniel: A couple of years ago I retired from my full-time job. About two weeks later I got a Facebook friend request from Lester Hunt, Jr. So we struck up a conversation and one day I said, "You know, I've thought about writing your father's biography." And he said, "Well if you're serious about doing that, why don't you come out and let's talk?" So I went out to Chicago and spent a week with him and came back and hit the ground running.

WCT: What a diving invitation!

Rodger McDaniel: I'm really grateful that I had the opportunity. It was a wonderful journey, doing all of the research, going through 50 boxes of Sen. Hunt's papers, letters, diaries, speeches—at the end of which I felt like he and I had become close friends—you know, working in the LGBT historical society library in San Francisco and in the presidential libraries going through Styles Bridges' papers. It was a journey back to a time that really is not very well understood. People tend to know of McCarthy and McCarthyism, but they relate it to the Red Scare when, in fact, McCarthy's witch hunts had far more to do with targeting homosexuals.

I'm convinced after spending two years on this project that if it had not been for McCarthy, we'd have resolved the civil rights issues around homosexuality two decades ago, maybe even longer. We wouldn't be fighting this issue over marriage equality yet today. I think he set the movement back for decades by creating the stigma that he did back in the early 50s.

WCT: It's an interesting concept to consider because so often I've wondered, "Why is it taking so long to be considered equal human beings?" It's a human right to be able to keep your job if you're gay.

Rodger McDaniel: It seems like it ought to be easier. I get a little frustrated when people say we've made so much progress. It's been 60 years since Lester Hunt felt that his only way out was to take his own life.

It's not really related to the book, but as a theologian, I especially resent the use of scripture to support the discrimination.

WCT: Will we see the repeal of the federal Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA) in our lifetime?

Rodger McDaniel: It's inevitable. I just hope the Supreme Court has the courage to take care of the problem once and for all.

WCT: What has the response been to the release of Dying for McCarthy's Sins?

Rodger McDaniel: Well, it's interesting. Wyoming, of course, has a significant place in the history of this struggle with Matthew Shepard's death. And a lot of people have related it to that—Wyoming people. Wyoming's a very conservative, Republican state and there have certainly been some who have criticized me for treating McCarthy's history unfairly; some had the sense that he was a great hero that protected the nation from communism.

But we've done a couple of mock trials, where we've put McCarthy and Bridges and Welker on trial in front of a jury, and there have been huge—we had two of them, one had 450 people attend, another 300 and some, so a great deal of interest. And a general sense among those that I talked to that they're glad that this story finally got told. It's an important piece of Wyoming's history, and as you said, it's a piece of general history about the civil rights struggle that has been forgotten. So I've had a really positive response in Wyoming—and gosh, yesterday, the response from being on Chuck Todd's show was overwhelming.

And you're right, it would make a great movie.

WCT: It really would make a great movie.

Plans are underway to put three former members of the U.S. Senate "on trial" in Washington, D.C., for their alleged roles in the 1954 suicide of a colleague. Senators Joseph McCarthy (R-Wisconsin), Styles Bridges (R-New Hampshire) and Herman Welker (R-Idaho), all deceased, are "charged" with blackmailing U.S. Senator Lester Hunt (D-Wyoming). Hunt died of a self-inflicted gunshot wound on June 19, 1954. A mock trial of the three senators will be held on October 23, 2013 in the nation's capitol.

The trial is based on McDaniel's book, Dying for the Sins of Joe McCarthy-The Suicide of Wyoming Senator Lester Hunt. The retired Chief Justice of the Wyoming Supreme Court, Michael Golden, will preside. Former Senator Alan Simpson will be a participant in the mock trial.

Charles Francis, the President of the Washington, DC Mattachine Society, and Bob Witeck of Witeck Communications of Washington, are in charge of arrangements for the mock trial. Details will be released soon.

Rodger McDaniel is currently the pastor at Highlands Presbyterian Church in Cheyenne, Wyo.

Joe McCarthy faces mock trial

Washington, D.C., Sen. Joseph McCarthy (R-Wis.) and two additional former members of the U.S Senate will go "on trial" in Washington, D.C., Oct. 23 for their alleged roles in the 1954 suicide of a colleague, according to a press release.

McCarthy, Styles Bridges (R-N.H.) and Herman Welker (R-Idaho), all deceased, are "charged" with a criminal conspiracy to blackmail Wyoming's U.S. Sen. Lester Hunt. Hunt died of a self-inflicted gunshot wound in his senate office in 1954, a year after his son and namesake was arrested in Lafayette Park for soliciting sex from an undercover policeman.

The "trial" is a readers' theater presentation based on the biography of Hunt. Dying for the Sins of Joe McCarthy-The Suicide of Wyoming Senator Lester Hunt, was written by Rodger McDaniel and published by WordsWorth Publishing Co. The Mattachine Society of Washington, D.C., is sponsoring the event.