<p>In 1948, the United States Congress passed an act &ldquo;for the treatment of sexual psychopaths.&rdquo; That law combined with an executive order from President Eisenhower began a systematic and legal purge of gays and lesbians from government employment.</p> <p>It is events like this that many people have forgotten&mdash;and it is also events like this that have been &ldquo;erased from our history.&rdquo; Preventing that erasure is one of many goals for teachers Deb Fowler and Miriam Morgenstern, the co-founders of History UnErased. ( HUE )...</p>

LOWELL, Mass. (Reuters) For generations, young Americans could go all the way through high school without learning that lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people have long been part of their country's history. Spurred by gay rights victories at the Supreme Court and elsewhere in recent years, a Lowell, Massachusetts-based organization called History Unerased is trying to change that by training teachers to bring that knowledge to U.S. classrooms. "People who we label and understand as LGBTQ today have always existed in every nation, in every belief system, in every ethnicity," said co-founder Debra Fowler, using a version of the acronym that can mean "lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and queer or questioning."