Chatter: The Secrets of Gay Washington with Jamie Kirchick

The Lawfare Podcast

The Lawfare Institute

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4.7 • 6.2K Ratings

🗓️ 5 June 2022

⏱️ 69 minutes

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Summary

This week on Chatter, Shane Harris talks with journalist Jamie Kirchick about his new book Secret City: The Hidden History of Gay Washington. Kirchick’s story unfolds over several decades and reveals the secret history of gays and lesbians in the capital, as well as the history of secrecy in which they played pivotal roles.

The book is a set of personal stories as well as an exploration of the national security bureaucracy at the heart of power and influence in Washington. And Kirchick explores a provocative idea: Were gays and lesbians, already accustomed to living secret lives, well-suited to work as intelligence officers?

Chatter is a production of Lawfare and Goat Rodeo. This episode was produced and edited by Cara Shillenn of Goat Rodeo. Podcast theme by David Priess, featuring music created using Groovepad. Learn more and subscribe to Chatter.

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Transcript

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0:00.0	The following podcast contains advertising to access an ad free version of the LawFair
0:07.2	podcast become a material supporter of LawFair at patreon.com slash LawFair.
0:14.7	That's patreon.com slash LawFair.
0:18.2	Also check out LawFair's other podcast offerings, rational security, chatter, LawFair no
0:25.9	bull and the aftermath.
0:32.9	I'm Katherine Pompilio with an episode of chatter for June 5th, 2022.
0:42.5	For today's episode, the team at LawFair decided to cross post this week's episode of
0:46.4	chatter, a podcast hosted by David Prius and Shane Harris that features in-depth discussions
0:52.0	with fascinating people at the creative edges of national security.
0:56.6	Today's chatter episode is entitled The Secrets of Gay Washington with Jamie Kirchick.
1:02.1	In the episode, Harris had down with Kirchick to discuss the secret history of gays and
1:06.3	lesbians in the capital, as well as the history of secrecy in which they played pivotal roles.
1:11.9	This is chatter.
1:15.9	I'm Shane Harris.
1:24.1	This week, author Jamie Kirchick on the secret history of gay Washington.
1:32.1	We learn a lot about each president through their relationship to this issue of homosexuality.
1:40.0	One of the first executive orders that Eisenhower signs is 10450, which bars gay people from
1:47.5	working for the federal government, but more importantly, in this conversation, is it denies
1:52.0	them security clearances.
1:53.8	It basically makes it very difficult for gay persons to advance at all in this city.
2:00.3	One of the things I learned in this book was that a stereotypical gay male activity was
2:03.8	antique collecting.
	...

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