Hoey stood in for McCarthy in investigating gays

“Despite much speculation, no one really knows why longtime bachelor Senator [Joe] McCarthy was significantly uninterested in the problem of homosexuals in the United States government, but the task was left to North Carolina Democratic senator Clyde Hoey and Nebraska Republican senator Kenneth Wherry….

“Senator Hoey’s investigations produced the ‘finding’ that homosexuals threatened national security. A scant seven years later, a Navy Department report concluded that the Hoey report was, well, hooey, but after 1950 the homosexual security threat was a legislative fact. In April 1953, President Eisenhower signed Executive Order 10450 barring ‘sexual perverts’ from federal employment.”

— From “Victory: The Triumphant Gay Revolution” by Linda Hirshman (2012)