Twelve years before the Stonewall riots blew the gay rights movement open, an unsung hero led the charge.
Franklin Kameny (left), a World War II veteran, was fired from a U.S. Civil Service job in 1957 on suspicion that he was a homosexual. He refused to capitulate and refused to be ashamed of his sexual orientation, taking the case to the courts, suffering loss after loss. He branched out to take on the American Psychiatric Association to have homosexuality removed from its list of disorders, working with the Mattachine Society, the leading gay rights group of the time. He fought for nearly a decade before the APA reversed its position. In 1971 he ran for Washington D.C.’s nonvoting congressional delegate, hoping to be the first openly gay candidate to win public office, and lost, two years before Harvey Milk’s first defeat as a candidate for the San Francisco Board of Supervisors, a position Milk finally won in 1977.
How times have changed since then. Kameny has gone from a peculiar dissident to a celebrated hero of the LGBT rights movement, and his home in Washington has been declared a D.C. historic landmark. He’s being honored this year at the Pride celebration in Washington D.C., at the age of 84, for his work. Most of the institutions Kameny took on have now been reformed in favor of LGBT rights, and the terms and arguments fought during that first push have been enriched with layers upon layers of queer liberation thought.
But it was the first leaders and activists who had to push the hardest, who struggled to maintain dignity against seemingly insurmountable odds. They fought battles they knew they were going to lose, on issues yet unclear if there could ever be a victory.
Fifty years ago, had the Internet existed, websites like this one would have been promptly shut down as obscenity. So it seems fitting to take a moment now to honor Kameny, who took one of our community’s first steps toward freedom.
Solid tribute to a great man. Thanks.
There is no connection between Lesbians/Gays and Bisexuals and especially Transsexuals. Please discontinue the use of the umbrella term LGBT. Maybe you are afraid if you don’t play up the total acceptance angle you might have to deal with the real issues of homophobia. Maybe you like catchy acronyms and think their cache will make you popular. Or you have really never thought about the fact that homosexuals are not the same as these other groups. This is not a case of African Americans winning right for all races. This is a case of a legitimate cause with an unrelated cause riding on their coat-tails. I feel it is fine to be pro-gay and anti Tv/Ts/Bi or even just neutral to their cause. It is not related to the gay cause. You need to recognize the rights of Lesbians and Gays to not care about these other causes.
Honestly, perhaps you need to look a bit deeper. “LGBT” is linked. It is the term that stands for every kind of sexuality that, in the eyes of society, is considered “inappropriate for your gender”.
I will wholeheartedly agree that a homosexual man is nothing like a transsexual one, but that does not mean the causes are disjoint. Instead, they have common ground, and by standing together these relatively small groups of people can form a bigger and more effective front against the things we all stand for.
Because in the end we desire the same: Equal treatment, the right to be who we are and the rights every other citizen of any country has. (If we forget the few who believe they deserve special treatment)
Indeed this is not a case of African Americans winning rights for all races. This is about Gays and Bi-/Transsexual people winning rights for any sexuality. If these are indeed not connected, I am having the greatest of difficulties seeing it.
To “Not Related”
First, gay issues are absolutely, intrinsically linked to trans issues. Homophobia is rooted in gender bias. The accusation is that a man should act like a man (have sex with a woman) and therefore a gay man is something other than male. Deconstruct gender roles (or, more specifically, provide more roles than just “male/husband” and “female/wife”), and you are on the right path to making room for gay men.
Second, gay issues are absolutely, intrinsically linked to trans issues because I’d say that a huge chunk of us gay men’s first hint that we were gay was not some sudden sexual arousal from a man, but rather, we realized we weren’t as sporty or dominant as other guys. To be sure, not all gay men are effeminate; it’s a continuum of many different traits and personalities, which is why we support the use of as inclusive a definition as possible in the first place. But a huge chunk of us did SOMETHING at one point or another that touched off someone’s “gaydar.”
If you want your gay community to be a bunch of rough and tough jock boys who build up their own hegemony, including its own system of discrimination, power and class that finds the queer outcast in effeminate men, in drag queens, in tranvestites, in bisexual men, in gender-bending artists and bohemians, then have fun with that. The clientelle of your gayborhood’s 24hour Fitness might support you. But DO NOT piggyback on the other gay movement, the one we’ve been fighting for 50 years, and steal our energy for your own weak and unspiring cause. Remember that the stonewall riots were led by a bunch of drag queens and transsexuals and they began the gay liberation movement. They started it, they put their necks on the line for us. Then just a couple years later, they were being forced out of gay rights groups as a distraction. It’s shameful.
Honestly, there has been enough hate already.
Okay. Now to get back on topic. This is a fantastic tribute to a powerful, generous statesman of LGBT rights. Recently, Franklin Kameny even advocated for the SE Washington gay strip clubs to existence in their ultimately successful elimination by business leaders to build a stadium in a non-baseball town. He is a treasure because he fought for all of us who love, partner, and pleasure outside of the norms of American heterosexuality. And he looks fantastic in his 80s!
This should be a monthly feature: “Gay heroes” or the like… A bit of a history lesson if you will, definitely something I’d look forward to learning about. =]
Thanks for this post. I live in DC, and had never heard of him. I hope I get the honor of meeting him some day.