What the rise of queer Republicans tells us about America

Every Pride Month, the rainbow flags come out, parades march on, and, if it’s an election year, Democratic candidates make their appeal to a growing part of the electorate: LGBTQ voters.

But it’s easy to forget how modern of a development this is. That LGBTQ voters and the Democratic Party would become so closely intertwined was never a given — and as far back as the 1950s, when LGBTQ Americans were first beginning to organize, it wasn’t at all clear which political party was a natural home.

After all, starting in the 1940s and into the 1960s, politicians of both parties enabled and empowered the so-called Lavender Scare — part of a wave of anti-Communist sentiment to drive out LGBTQ people from working in the federal government.