Uniquely Nasty: The US Government's War on Gays

The video above, “Uniquely Nasty: The U.S. Government's War on Gays”, is a documentary about how the federal government persecuted gay people. It talks about some things I’d never heard about before, which makes it a “must see”.

Michael Isikoff of Yahoo News presents the stories of some people who were victimised by their own government, and provides context for those events. It’s divided into three chapters:

• Chapter 1: The Story of Charles Francis
• Chapter 2: The Story of Lester Hunt
• Chapter 3: The Story of Charlie Baker

I hadn’t heard any of their stories before, nor had I seen some of the secret documents the government had created as part of its war on gay people in government. Nor had I heard about how utterly evil some of the allies of infamous Republican US Senator Joe McCarthy were. Of course I knew what a despicable person McCarthy was, but I was unaware of how far his stench had spread in the US Congress, nor how they drove a fellow senator to suicide through their direct actions.

Similarly, I hadn’t heard of heroes like Charlie Baker. I wonder how many people have.

Had I read the right histories, I might have heard some of those stories, but I didn’t. This documentary helps fill in those knowledge gaps that I didn’t even now I had.

One of the biggest promises of the Internet Age is the democratisation of news and information. Neither free-to-air nor even pay-TV news operations are likely to present stories like this, but on the Internet they can be seen—and shared. Yahoo News is also encouraging people to upload their own related documents, which is both in keeping with this democratisation of information ethos, as well as interesting in itself.

Thanks to the Internet, it’s possible to broaden story-telling in news, history, and general information. This documentary helps to fulfil that promise. It also reveals some previously hidden history, which is even better.