Out Spotlight

Today's Spotlight is was "one of the most significant figures" in the American gay rights movement. He brought the first civil rights claim based on sexual orientation before the United States Supreme Court. Advocate and Astronomer, today's Out Spotlight is Frank Kameny.

Franklin Edward Kameny was born to Ashkenazi Jewish parents in New York City on May 21, 1925. He attended Richmond Hill High School and graduated in 1941, at age of 16. Kameny went on to Queens College for physics, he was drafted into the United States Army during college. He served in the Army throughout World War II in Europe.

After leaving the Army, he returned to Queens College continue with his education and graduated with a baccalaureate in physics in 1948. Kameny then enrolled at Harvard University for a Master's Degree. While a teaching fellow at Harvard, he refused to sign a loyalty oath without attaching qualifiers, and exhibited a skepticism against accepted orthodoxies. He graduated with both a masters' degree (1949) and doctorate (1956) in astronomy.

While on a cross-country return trip from Tucson, where he had just completed his research for his Ph.D. thesis, he was arrested in San Francisco by plainclothes police officers after a stranger had approached and groped him at the bus terminal. He was promised that his criminal record would be expunged after serving three years' probation, relieving him from worrying about his employment prospects and any attempt at fighting the charges.

Relocating to Washington, D.C., Kameny taught for a year in the Astronomy Department of Georgetown University and was hired in July 1957 by the United States Army Map Service. However, by the fall, he was in trouble with the Civil Service Commission following a late night run-in with police in Lafayette Park, a traditional cruising area along Pennsylvania Avenue across from the White House. He was arrested. Kameny was questioned by his superiors but he refused to give them information regarding his sexual orientation. Kameny was fired by the Commission soon afterward. In January 1958, he was barred from future employment by the federal government.

Rather than accept a common practice of the times, he fought for his rights. He successfully challenged anti-gay policies of the American Psychiatric Association (APA), the US Department of Defense and the US Civil Service Commission.

Kameny sued the Army Map Service and lost his case. On appeal he lost again, and after the Supreme Court denied his petition to direct the case to be reconsidered, he realized his objectives would require a broader movement.

In 1961, Kameny co-founded the Mattachine Society of Washington, D.C with Gay Pioneer Jack Nichols.

Kameny was the first to bring open activism to the gay rights movement. The D.C. Mattachine Society contacted public officials to attempt to change policy. They published a newsletter, The Gazette, and campaigned to overturn security clearance denials, employment restrictions and dismissals of gay men from the Federal workforce.

In 1963, Kameny began a movement to repeal sodomy laws and challenge the APA's classification of homosexuality as a mental disorder.

On April 17, 1965, Kameny led the first public picket for gay rights at the White House. With support from the Daughters of Bilitis, the Mattachine Society extended its protest to the Pentagon and the Civil Service Commission. He helped launch the first organized gay and lesbian demonstrations for equality. These seminal demonstrations by activists from New York, Philadelphia and Washingon D.C. were held annually each July 4th at Independence Hall from 1965 to 1969 and were called annual reminders. Those protest paved the way for the Stonewall Riots in 1969.

Inspired by Stokely Carmichael's "Black is Beautiful," Kameny dubbed the phrase "Gay is Good" as a slogan for the movement. He led the fight for gay rights into the 1970s and ran for Congress in 1971 on an equal rights platform. The APA removed homosexuality from its list of mental disorders in 1973 and the Civil Service Commission lifted its ban on homosexuality in 1975, an action President Bill Clinton formalized many years later.

In 2000, Equality Forum with WHYY/PBS produced the documentary film "Gay Pioneers" about Kameny and other early activists. In 2006, the Library of Congress incorporated over 70,000 letters, documents and memorabilia from Frank Kameny into its permanent collection.

The Washington, D.C. City Council honored Kameny in 2007, hailing him as a "true freedom fighter."

On June 10, 2010, following a unanimous vote by the Dupont Circle Advisory Neighborhood Commission, Washington, D. C. mayor Adrian Fenty unveiled new street signs designating 17th Street between P and R streets, N.W., as "Frank Kameny Way" in Kameny's honor. At a luncheon on December 10, 2010 in the Caucus room of the Cannon House Office Building, Kameny was honored with the 2010 Cornelius R. “Neil” Alexander Humanitarian Award.

Kameny was seated at the front row of the gathering where President Barack Obama signed the Don't Ask, Don't Tell Repeal Act of 2010. Kameny was a member of Triangle Foundation's Board of Advisors.

Frank Kameny passed away October 11, 2011.

Following Kameny's death, the giant rainbow flag on the tall flagpole at the corner of Market Street and Castro Street in the Castro neighborhood of San Francisco was flown at half-staff for 24 hours beginning on the afternoon of October 12, 2011 at the request of the creator of the rainbow flag, Gilbert Baker.

On November 2, 2011, Kameny's house was listed on the National Register of Historic Places.



"The momentum is there, and that's not going to be stopped. It's moved from hopes of a grass-roots movement, to the actuality of a grass-roots movement. And it's taken 40 years to do it."