Who is Frank Kameny?
by David Bianco
Born in 1925, the son of middle-class Jewish New Yorkers, Frank Kameny
entered college to study physics at the tender age of 15. His education was
interrupted by service during World War II, but in 1956, he earned his
Ph.D. from Harvard in astronomy.
After teaching a year at Georgetown University, Kameny moved to a civil
service job with the U.S. Army Map Service in July 1957. But Kameny's gay
identity soon clashed with his professional life. Late one night in
Lafayette
Park, a popular gay cruising area across from the White House, Kameny was
arrested "for investigation" of a morals charge but quickly released.
Nothing came of the incident immediately, but the arrest was eventually
reported to an investigator with the Civil Service Commission. That fall,
after only a few months on the job, Kameny was fired from the Map Service,
and in January 1958, he learned that he was barred from all future
employment with the federal government.
Kameny's experience spurred him to militant activism. "My dismissal amounted
to a declaration of war against me by the government," Kameny later said.
"And I tend not to lose my wars."
Kameny went through a lengthy process of suing the government to get his job
back, but all of his efforts and appeals failed, including an attempt to take
the case to the U.S. Supreme Court. In March 1961, however, the high court
rejected Kameny's petition. "That ended the formal case," he explained,
"but not the battle. The time had come to fight collectively."
Kameny and a friend established the Washington, D.C. branch of the Mattachine
Society, a homophile group that had started 10 years earlier in Los Angeles.
The first meeting of the D.C. chapter, held on November 15, 1961, drew about
12 men and women, who elected Kameny as the new group's president.
Unlike many other gay leaders of the time, Kameny embraced direct action
along the lines of the black civil rights movement. "The [gay] movement of
those days was very unassertive, apologetic, and defensive," Kameny noted.
But he believed that gay people should fight a "down-to-earth,
grass-roots, sometimes tooth-and-nail" battle.
Under Kameny's leadership, the group charged to the forefront of the nascent
gay rights movement. The D.C. chapter focused on trying to reform the
government's exclusionary policies toward homosexuals in federal employment
and successfully lobbied the ACLU to take up the cause. They also organized
the first gay demonstration of the White House in April 1965, in which a
handful of gay men in suits and lesbians in dresses carried placards reading
"First Class Treatment for Homosexuals" and "Civil Service Commission is
Un-American."
A few months later, the U.S Court of Appeals for the first time decided that
the rejection of an application for federal employment on the grounds of
"homosexual conduct" was "too vague." The Civil Service Commission, the
court ruled, failed to state "why that conduct related to occupational
competence
or fitness." Dogged by a long line of similar court cases, the Civil
Service Commission formally amended its anti-gay policy in 1975. After 18 years,
Kameny was vindicated.
Following the Stonewall riots, the D.C. Mattachine was eclipsed by newer gay
groups. Although his leadership waned, Kameny's activism continued. In 1971,
he ran as an out gay man to be D.C.'s non-voting delegate to Congress. He
garnered only 1.6 percent of the vote, but the campaign showed that gay
people would turn out to vote as a bloc. For his pioneering efforts,
Kameny is considered one of the fathers of the gay rights movement.
D'Emilio, John. Sexual Politics, Sexual Communities: The Making of a
Homosexual Minority in the United States, 1940-1970 (University of
Chicago
Press, 1983).
Marcus, Eric. Making History: The Struggle for Gay and Lesbian Equal
Rights,
1945-1990 (HarperCollins, 1992).
Tobin, Kay and Randy Wicker. The Gay Crusaders (Paperback Library,
1972).
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