Documentary on 1950s-era ‘war on gays’ premieres

More than 150 people turned out at D.C.’s E Street Cinema Monday night for the premiere showing of the documentary film “Uniquely Nasty: The U.S. Government’s War on Gays.”

The 30-minute film produced by Yahoo News and its chief investigative correspondent Michael Isikoff depicts a little-known 1950s-era campaign by the FBI and other federal government agencies to purge gays from the federal workforce.

Isikoff, a former investigative reporter for ABC News, takes viewers on a dramatic ‘tour’ of some of the thousands of documents unearthed by the recently resurrected gay rights group Mattachine Society of Washington and its leader Charles Francis. The documents, including several written by former FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover, depict homosexuals as “sex perverts” and a dire threat to national security.