Yes, I was personally caught up in the last vestiges of McCarthyism, when I lost my career in the Air Force in the 1980s because I was gay. That last bit of the Lavender Scare that I was subjected to started with McCarthyism. They didn't call them "pinko commies" for nothing; "pinko" meant gay. McCarthyism was always as homophobic as it was anti-Communist.

To me, the anti-LGBTQ backlash going on in the United States right now has always felt like McCarthyism.