Pro Wrestler Pat Patterson Was Nearly Deported in 1960s due to 'Lavender Scare,' Professor Stein Explains

WRESTLING INC. -- Previously unreleased documents show the INS’ attempts at booting the wrestler out of the country, as compiled by David Bixenspan in his new feature for MEL Magazine.

“This was at the tail end of the Lavender Scare, a systematic persecution of government employees who were gay or perceived as gay,” Bixenspan wrote. “But as San Francisco State University History Professor Marc Stein explains, ‘The deeper story goes back to the era when the U.S. government first formulated those kinds of immigration restrictions, going all the way back to Chinese exclusion in the 1870s and 1880s.'”