It began in the 1950s, during the communist witch hunt known as the Red Scare: A belief that gay people would be vulnerable to blackmail. 

"Homosexuals must not be handling top-secret material," former U.S Senator Joseph McCarthy said. 

Something that was never proven. 

David Johnson is a historian and author of the book "Lavender Scare" and says the name came from a color associated with LGBTQ people — a mix of the stereotypical blue for boys and pink for girls.  

"Before the Lavender Scare, as far as we know, gays and lesbians didn't have much trouble with the federal government. So there was a kind of openness," Johnson recounted. "The FBI or the Civil Service Investigators would call an employee into their office, make them swear an oath, would not allow them to have an attorney and would start asking questions. And usually the first question was, 'We have information that you are a homosexual. What comment do you care to make?'"

Johnson says thousands of gay and lesbian people were ousted from government jobs. 

"Most of them resigned quietly rather than, you know, face some sort of public humiliation," Johnson continued. "And some of them, we've learned, actually committed suicide after the brutal interrogations."

Then came government astronomer, gay activist, and veteran Frank Kameny.  

"To the best of my knowledge and belief, I was the first person to fight back out of all those large, huge numbers of people that were fired in the ‘50s," he said.  

He fought in the courts and on the streets, saying his civil rights were violated.  

The Lavender Scare ended after 25 years, in 1975, but the purge continued in the national security community. For LGBTQ Intelligence Officers, the discrimination often started with polygraphs.  

Tracey Ballard is a former Intelligence Officer for the CIA.  

"In 1988, during my polygraph, I decided to come out as a lesbian," she said.  

NEWSY'S SASHA INGBER: Wow. How did the polygrapher respond? 

TRACEY BALLARD: The polygrapher was just kind of like, 'Ohhh? Okay,' and we turned off all the recording machines, and we just had a conversation. 'Well, what did I mean, how did that work?,' and so we went through the questions and we reworked them so that I could answer them honestly. 

Ballard contacted every person involved in her investigation to get them to sign off and nearly two years later, she was cleared. Then, she founded and chaired a group for gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender officers at the CIA. 

"We went through the regulations, looked at the language and said, 'This is how this language affects this officer’s ability to move up in their career,'" Ballard continued. 

The game changer was President Bill Clinton signing an executive order that ended a ban on security clearances for gay workers. 

"We always said that we were the best persons to go undercover because we lived it on a regular basis back then. There were instances where we could engage with those in the foreign field, that perhaps were also in the LGBTQ community that others weren't reaching out to. We had the ability to go in, and speak to them in a way that others couldn't — where they could then trust us," Ballard said.  

But working overseas was complicated. Graham Segroves was one of the first intelligence officers to be openly gay during job the application process. He says when he started in 2002, he learned the CIA would not ask host countries if his boyfriend, now husband, could accompany him on foreign posts. 

"Let's be clear. I was talking about, 'Could I go to Europe? Could I go to Australia? Where could I go with my partner?,' and the answer was pretty much nowhere," Segroves said. 

He says he was never harassed or bullied, but the policy compelled him to stay in Washington, D.C. and silently stymied his career.  

"We were willing to spend money to send someone's pet overseas. But we were not willing to send their spouse," he said.  

That officially changed when the Supreme Court legalized same-sex marriage. As the CIA raised the pride flag at its headquarters this month, an openly gay intelligence officer sat down with Newsy to discuss the culture today. We're concealing his identity and calling him "Drew," as he is still active in the CIA.  

DREW: Have I experienced any overt discrimination or people who have been outright rude or unkind to me because I'm gay? No. Have I heard about times when there might be something said that causes offense? Yes.

INGBER: So what is the agency doing, to make sure that the LBGTQ community isn't discriminated against in high stress situations?  

DREW: They have provided a seat at the table for members of the LGBTQ community, to talk about their experience with the senior-most leaders of the agency. My experience has been that those senior leaders have not just listened to what the individuals have to say, but they've acted on it. And they have, and they have picked up the phone and called the appropriate team and said, ‘this is an issue that we are wanting to address right now. What can be done?’ 

He says the CIA is currently working on it system updates so transgender officers can see their preferred names instead of their legal names, providing gender-affirming restrooms and training staff to handle medical issues and travel requests.  

INGBER: Is the agency recruiting in the LGBTQ community? 

DREW: Yeah. We have had a presence at DC pride, for example, and we've also been working with, in some instances, student groups — so that we can have an open conversation about what it looks like to be gay at CIA.  

There is now an Intelligence Community Pride Network, and this officer says all of their work was made possible by the people who bravely faced adversity before them. 

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A drag performer reportedly died while performing at a bar in Pennsylvania.

The owner of Tabu Philadelphia told NBC News that Valencia Prime collapsed on stage Monday.

"Today we mourn the loss of a very bright and rising star in the performance community and a person who was always full of life and positivity," the bar said in a statement online. "We say goodbye to Valencia Prime but we will not forget the light you brought to the stage."

A GoFundMe page to pay for Valencia Prime's funeral expenses has raised over $10,000. It's unclear what caused the 25-year-old's death.

Members of the drag community paid tribute to Valencia Prime online, saying the performer was "a loving presence" who made "the world better."

Tabu Philadelphia posted that it has reached out to Valencia Prime's family to make sure they have their blessing before hosting a show in the drag queen's honor.

More than 8,000 people were victims of bias-motivated incidents in 2021, according to the FBI.

The crimes varied from intimidation and assault to rape and murder.

The FBI says 64.8% of the victims were targeted because of their race or ethnicity and 15.6% were targeted because of sexual orientation. Biases toward religions, gender identity and disability were also contributing factors in smaller percentages, the FBI said.

Most of the incidents, 32%, happened at or near a person's home. Nearly 17% occurred on highways, roads, alleys, streets and sidewalks,

The FBI says most of the suspects, 56.1%, are white. Black or African Americans accounted for 21.3% of the suspects. American Indians or Alaska Natives followed with 1% each.

The FBI's data, however, appears incomplete. For 2021, the data came from 11,834 participating law enforcement agencies. In 2020, the FBI received information from more than 15,000 agencies.

The FBI blames a shift in how data is collected. It says some law enforcement agencies, some large, didn't transition to a new data collection system in time to be represented in the report.

"As more agencies transition to the NIBRS data collection with continued support from the Justice Department, hate crime statistics in coming years will provide a richer and more complete picture of hate crimes nationwide," the FBI stated.

Minor League Baseball player Anderson Comas is the latest professional athlete to come out as gay.

Comas joined the White Sox organization about five years ago. In his post, Anderson wrote about wanting to normalize gay athletes in sports.

"I enjoy my work a lot, being a professional baseball player is the best thing that happened to me so I just wanna say something to those people that says that gay people can not be someone in this life," Comas wrote. "Well look at me I’m Gay and I’m a professional athlete."

Thousands of people commented on Comas' post, noting his courage in revealing something so personal.

Chris Getz, White Sox assistant general manager, said Comas revealed his sexuality to the organization last year.

"I was very pleased that he was comfortable sharing with us in player development," Getz said. "I also was happy at the reaction across the organization, which as you would expect was to support, help and congratulate a teammate."

Comas, who was born in the Dominican Republic, is currently a relief pitcher. The 23-year-old had a 6.35 ERA as a pitcher in 2022.

Being publicly gay in professional sports is a rarity. There are no openly gay players in Major League Baseball. Carl Nassib was the first active player in the NFL to come out in 2021. Michael Sam came out and was drafted St. Louis Rams, but he never played in a regular season game.

LGBTQ representation on television is growing.

Advocacy group GLAAD reports it’s getting a boost mostly from streaming platforms.

GLAAD published its “Where We Are on TV” report this week.

It found that on traditional tv, broadcast during primetime, nearly 12% of characters are LGBTQ.

That’s an increase of 2.8% since 2021, marking a new record high since the group started tracking representation on television.

For the first time in the report’s history, lesbian characters make up the majority of LGBTQ characters on tv.

Racial diversity is also up.

The group added five new streaming services to its report, including Apple TV+, Disney+, HBO Max, Paramount+ and Peacock.

This helped drive up the number of LBGTQ characters on streaming to a total of 358.

However, the group did not see improvement in all areas.

GLAAD reported it only found two tv characters living with HIV and they both appeared on one show – FX’s Pose.

This marks a decrease from 2021.

The report also mentions no network has created a show that features an LGBTQ-majority cast the way some cable programmers have.

MONTPELIER, Vt. — In many states across the country, there is a push to eliminate the so-called "panic defense." It is a legal defense used after committing a crime against someone because of their sexual identity.

It often comes into play when a criminal defendant claims they panicked after learning an intimate partner’s sexual identity or gender at birth.

“We were the first state to actually pass marriage equality and civil unions on a legislative level,” said Vermont state legislator Rep. Taylor Small.

Small is Vermont's first openly transgender state legislator and she was able to unanimously pass a bill that bans the "panic defense."

Vermont became the 13th state to ban the legal maneuver.

According to LGBTQ+ Bar, juries have acquitted dozens of defendants who used the strategy. The most recent acquittal happened in April 2018.

“When I came to work in the statehouse four years ago, one of the first topics we took the state's attorney general was trans or gay panic defense,” said Brenda Churchill who is with the LGBTQ+ Alliance. “We wanted it to go through statute or law, to eliminate the possibility that the criminal defendant could use that as an excuse.”

After Vermont, two more states banned the "panic defense."

Small said that this is something that is pivotal in LGBTQ+ rights.

“I think what it really underscores is the ability to trust our judicial system or just have more trust,” Small said. “So, I would love to see this passed in all the states in our nation, but I would also love to see this protection on a federal level, so it doesn’t have to be this individual state battle. I know that Senator Ed Markey already has a bill introducing banning the "panic defense," but I think what we see on the federal level is that it is slow to move on various bills.”

According to LGBTQ+ Bar, 12 more states have introduced bills banning the "panic defense," and advocates like Keith Goslant said those states can look to places like Vermont for help.

“We have created a bit of a template on how you can approach it,” Goslant said. “We have a template of the people you can invite in, and other model of pieces of legislation we looked at in crafting our bill. These are the components that made it right for us, and this is what we can present to other states and to help on federal level.”

“We don’t see it as a single movement or a single moment,” Small said. “But this is continue work that we need to ever change and ever learn through.”

WORCESTER, Mass. — It isn't easy for 25-year-old Sumaya to talk about the life she left behind in Africa. Three years after leaving her home in Uganda, this refugee is still afraid for her family she doesn't want her real name used.

Sumaya fled to the United States in 2019 after people in her hometown found out she was a lesbian. Being openly gay in Uganda is considered a crime and can be punishable by death.

"When I came here, I totally lost my family. They don't want to communicate with me. Back home I had a girlfriend for 10 years, but we had to hide it," she said.

There are not a lot of statistics kept on LGBTQ asylum seekers like Sumaya. Around the world though, being openly gay is illegal in about 70 countries. The latest data from the US government shows that from 2007 to 2017, at least 4,385 people were identified as seeking asylum because of their LGBTQ status.

"I knew I couldn’t do it anymore. I thought I would try and change, but I couldn’t," Sumaya said about her life in Uganda.

For asylum-seekers like Sumaya though, just fleeing persecution is only the beginning of their journey. Once in the United States, many have a hard time finding housing while they wait for work visas to be approved.

Which is where Pastor Judith Hanlon comes in.

Pastor Hanlon is with the Hadwen Park Church United Church of Christ in Worcester, Massachusetts. Over the past decade, the congregation has worked to create a nonprofit which provides housing opportunities to LGBTQ asylum seekers like Sumaya.

"We have all new appliances, granite countertops!" Pastor Hanlon explained as she showed us around the nonprofit's newest and most expensive endeavor.

Before this year, the LGBT Asylum Task Force was housing people in rented apartments around the city of Worcester. Thanks to years of hard work and donations, they were able to raise more than $500,000 to purchase a three-story home and renovate it for asylum seekers to live in until they're able to secure permanent housing.

It's the only housing program in the country tailored specifically to LGBTQ asylum seekers.

"We were paying $43,000 a month to keep people in these apartments and realized a mortgage would cost one of the rents. So, we made a decision and had a three-year campaign to purchase a home, so we purchased this home I’m in right now," Pastor Hanlon said.

In addition to housing, the task force provides a $500 monthly stipend for immigrants until they can receive work authorization—a process that usually takes around two years.