In 1961, following the Lavender Scare, Frank Kameny and Jack Nichols founded the Washington chapter of the Mattachine Society, adapting tactics learned from the civil rights movement and organizing pickets at the White House, Pentagon, and State Department. vice squad lieutenant Roy Blick asserted to the Senate without evidence that there were 5,000 homosexual government employees. Starting in 1950, in parallel to McCarthyism, the ' Lavender Scare' resulted in the firing of thousands of government employees and contractors who were believed to be gay or lesbian, on the grounds of a tenuous perceived connection between homosexuality and espionage. 77.4% of these households were male couples. In 2017, 2.9% of all households were same-sex couple households. in 2018, of which 61% were same-sex spouses. Census Bureau reported that there were 6,935 same-sex households in Washington, D.C.
There are an estimated 209,000 LGBT people living in the broader Washington Metropolitan Area, making up 4.5% of the population.
