I was really disappointed recently when I learned that Ike was just as big of a bigot as Archie Bunker. He declared war on gays.
Shortly after swearing the oath of office, Eisenhower began weeding “subversives” out of the federal government. Elected amid the Red Scare, Ike had won the presidency partly because of a sense that the long-reigning Democrats were soft on communism, which in the public mind had become linked with homosexuality. A whisper campaign, abetted by FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover, tarred the recently divorced Democratic nominee, Adlai Stevenson, as a homosexual; Republican Sen. Everett Dirksen (Ill.) associated Stevenson with “the lavender lads of the State Department.” Ike’s campaign slogan, “Let’s Clean House,” alluded not only to corruption but sedition and sexual impropriety.