FoundSF

Historical Essay

by Isaac Valdez, June 2025

Between 1942 and the late 1950s, thousands of U.S. service members suspected of same-sex conduct passed through San Francisco’s separation centers and sailed home carrying “blue tickets”, other-than-honorable discharges that barred them from the G.I. Bill and stigmatized future employment. Many recipients, already processed at Fort McDowell or the Presidio, chose to stay in the Bay rather than return to hometowns where their status would be exposed. Local mutual-aid networks, bar owners, and nascent rights groups such as the American Veterans Committee folded these veterans into a community that transformed North Beach and the Tenderloin in the postwar years. By linking military bureaucracy, urban migration, and the redefinition of citizenship, the piece reframes San Francisco’s emergence as an LGBTQ+ capital as a consequence of federal exile as much as coastal tolerance.

Between World War II and the 1950s, thousands of gay and lesbian service members were discharged from the U.S. military with what were known as “blue tickets.” These were undesirable discharges that weren’t officially dishonorable but still carried major consequences. Veterans with blue tickets were denied G.I. Bill benefits like college tuition, housing loans, and unemployment pay. They were also marked as “unfit,” and employers or schools could reject them based on their discharge papers. Many of these veterans had nowhere to go. Rather than return home and face shame or exposure, a lot of them stayed in the city where they were discharged, San Francisco.

Private Irene Brown – Example “Blue Ticket”.

Photo: Library of Virginia

The Army used blue discharges as a way to get rid of people they saw as “undesirable” this included not only homosexuals but also Black soldiers and other people labeled as troublemakers. In fact in 1946 the government had released estimates that they had given 49,000 to 68,000 of these kinds of discharges. With 10 thousand being Black men and 5 thousand homosexuals (Bérubé, 1990, pp. 232). But homosexuals faced an extra level of discrimination. They were told they were a threat to morale and were a security risk. As historian Allan Bérubé explains in Coming Out Under Fire, the government made sure these discharges were public. Local draft boards and employers could find out someone was gay just by reading their discharge papers (Bérubé, 1990, pp. 228). Many veterans didn’t realize what their discharge meant until they applied for benefits and were denied. The consequences were long-lasting, veterans lost access to housing support, education, and even basic health care through the G.I. Bill.

For some veterans like Marty Klausner, the result was life-ruining. He couldn’t get a hotel job in Pittsburgh, he was denied because the hotel had called the VA and discovered he was “undesirable”. He was denied college benefits, and became depressed and isolated (Bérubé, 1990, pp. 230–231). Other veterans described being rejected by their families or having to lie to everyone they knew. Some even considered suicide. In response, veterans with blue tickets began writing letters to Congress, newspapers, and even Eleanor Roosevelt, calling attention to their treatment (Bérubé, 1990, pp. 235). The idea that they were a minority with rights, just like Black Americans, was starting to form. This movement didn’t stay private. Black newspapers like the Pittsburgh Courier were among the first to campaign against the blue discharge system. They noticed the overlap between anti-Black and anti-gay discrimination and called the discharge a “vicious instrument” (Bérubé, 1990, pp. 233). Congress eventually took notice. In 1946, the House released a report saying that people who were never convicted of a crime were being punished for life. They recommended ending the blue discharge altogether (House Report, “Blue Discharges,” 1946, as cited in Bérubé, 1990, p. 235).

The Pittsburgh Courier, November 24, 1945.

Source: Library of Virginia

San Francisco played an important role in this story. Because the Presidio and Fort McDowell were major separation centers, many gay service members passed through the Bay Area on their way out of the military, either by being outed or self-identifying. Some chose to never leave. According to Bérubé’s later work in My Desire for History, the city became a magnet for gay veterans partly because of its location and infrastructure, but also because they were effectively exiled there (Bérubé, 2011, ch. 5). These veterans found each other in rooming houses, bars, and cheap hotels. They formed informal mutual-aid groups, gave each other tips on job hunting, and figured out how to forge or alter their papers when they needed to. Groups like the Veterans Benevolent Association (VBA) also formed in cities like New York, but San Francisco’s version was more informal, based in networks of bars and social circles, especially in the Tenderloin and North Beach. These areas became safe zones, where gay veterans could start over and get the support they desperately needed. In My Desire for History, Bérubé notes that they even gave themselves nicknames, like “The Three Musketeers” or “The Blue Angels,” showing that what started as a shared trauma turned into community and identity (Bérubé, 2011, 104) (Bérubé, 1990, pp. 241)

Veterans who stayed in San Francisco began to build a world of their own. Many of the bar owners, landlords, and small businesspeople in these areas were veterans themselves or closely connected to people who had received blue discharges. They shared advice about which jobs were safe to apply for, which landlords would look the other way, and which Veterans Affairs officers might quietly help adjust their records (Bérubé, 2011, ch. 5). Some veterans were even able to access G.I. Bill benefits if sympathetic clerks altered or overlooked their discharge status (Bérubé, 2011, ch. 5). Even without official recognition, these informal support systems made it possible to survive. As the years passed, the social networks formed in these queer bars, hotels, and neighborhoods began to take on a new purpose. They became places of organizing and protest. The sense of solidarity built during the 1940s and '50s didn’t go away, it became the foundation for the more visible LGBTQ+ activism of the 1960s and beyond. What began as mutual aid in response to exclusion slowly grew into political identity and public visibility.

Over time, this accidental or forced migration turned San Francisco into one of the first major gay urban centers in the U.S. Veterans used their military experience to build new lives. The government had hoped to erase homosexuals from the military quietly, but instead, they concentrated them in a few key cities and unintentionally helped shape a new public identity. As Bérubé writes, “Their common experience and shared memories as a generation helped determine how they would fit into this new world” (Bérubé, 1990, pp. 257). By linking military bureaucracy, urban migration, and mutual aid, we can see San Francisco’s gay history not just as a product of coastal tolerance, but also as the outcome of federal exclusion. The blue ticket was supposed to punish gay veterans, but in the end, it helped unite them.

Works Cited

Bérubé, A. (1990). Coming Out Under Fire: The History of Gay Men and Women in World War Two. Free Press.

Bérubé, A. (2011). My Desire for History: Essays in Gay, Community, and Labor History. University of North Carolina Press.

Library of Virginia. (2025, February 19). Denied Benefits, Forgotten Heroes: The Hidden Cost of WWII Blue Discharges.