..::Nebraska Democratic GLBT Caucus

In these times of great uncertainty, when Americans are under attack abroad and struggling at home to maintain personal freedoms and preserve our public safety, we need great leaders to look up to and take courage from their examples. In Nebraska, a Hall of Fame was established by the state in 1961 with the specific intent of providing positive role models by officially recognizing Nebraskans who have contributed significantly to the state and enriched American life. One of the inductees, Chief Standing Bear, successfully argued to the U.S. government that Native Americans are human beings who should not be driven off their lands and left to die on desolate reservations far from home. Inspiring authors such as John Neihardt and Willa Cather, who have given us a sense of ourselves and our history, have also been remembered in the hall of fame. Indeed, there is no doubt as to the uplifting contributions that many of these honorees have made.

Unfortunately, the process by which nominees are elected into the hall of fame has sadly failed this year. Instead of selecting a nominee who represents an example of hope and inspiration, the gubernatorially appointed Hall of Fame Commission members opted to make an apparently politically motivated decision to induct a man of singular infamy, one who has gone down in the annals of American democracy as an instigator of government witch hunts that were solely designed to terrorize citizens and silence opposition. Nebraska Sen. Kenneth S. Wherry, colleague of Wisconsin Sen. Joseph McCarthy, worked mightily in the Senate right until his death in 1951 conducting a "pervert purge" of U.S. government employees in the name of keeping America safe from Communism.

This thinly veiled effort to blackmail or otherwise cow their opposition worked very well in a world of unnamed enemies for Wherry and McCarthy. The Cold War afforded them the opportunity to capitalize on people's fears and allowed them to advance a "might makes right" philosophy that is anathema to the democratic principles of American government. Wherry commanded a massive inquiry into suspected homosexuals in government employ in 1950. This effort needed no substantiation of facts, operated on innuendo to cause thousands to lose their jobs, respectability, families and sometimes even their lives. Ken Wherry didn't have to prove his claims to remove people from employment. All that had to be done was to label an opponent homosexual and they would be summarily fired. This shameful assault on American civil liberties concluded with the Senate censure of McCarthy in June 1954.

Wherry also bullied along projects that served to disenfranchise other vulnerable groups. He was a driving force on the Pick-Sloan project. This project created the dams on the Missouri River from Garrison in North Dakota to Gavins Point in South Dakota and Nebraska. Wherry, on the Senate Appropriations Committee, ensured that Pick-Sloan overlooked properly compensating Native Americans forced to flee their flooded lands. In fact, the Nebraska Santee Sioux village of White Swan was totally obliterated and residents left to fend for themselves without any federal assistance whatsoever. Finally, in 2000, legislation to address the claims for losses resulting from Pick-Sloan by the Yankton and Santee Sioux Tribes was undertaken by Sen. Tom Daschle, D-S.D., cosponsored by Nebraska Sens. Chuck Hagel and Bob Kerrey.

The fallout from Wherry's activities continues to cause suffering for families touched by his poisonous ideology. Native Americans cry out for justice. Now the Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual, and Transgender (GLBT) community and its allies join its voices to decry the enshrinement of Wherry as a Nebraska hero. Thousands of wrongly accused and ruined Americans deserve better. Wherry drove his hate campaign by setting the American system of jurisprudence on its ear: The accused were judged guilty until proven innocent and deprived of facing their accusers in court The founders of our legal system understood the fundamental value of the concept of presumed innocence. It is clear Wherry chose to employ methods contrary to our laws to further his own ends. Had he lived to see his smear campaign brought to its conclusion with resounding Senate condemnation, Wherry surely would have faced the same fate as his compatriot, McCarthy.

The implications of the Nebraska Hall of Fame Commission's decision to knowingly, deliberately, select a hate-mongering, rabidly partisan senator from a field of six other eminently qualified individuals does not bode well for the people of Nebraska. This country is faced today with challenges as grave as any in the days after World War II. Let us not again send the message that we are not truly interested in the democratic process by targeting those who are different, taking away their voices and denying them due process of law. There must be a reconsideration of Kenneth Wherry to exemplify what is good about Nebraska. This induction signals a call to return to the strident politics of McCarthyism, the ideology that nearly brought our democracy to its knees from the inside. The Philosopher George Santayana said, "Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it." Have we still not learned this lesson?

Lin Quenzer is a member of Citizens for Equal Protection and Parent-Friends of Lesbians and Gays. She lives in Lincoln with her partner of sixteen years and their son.

First published in the Lincoln Journal Star, May 16, 2004.