Frank Kameny
1925-2011
Frank Kameny was the chief strategist and father of the LGBT civil rights movement. The nonviolence of black civil rights organizers Bayard Rustin and the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. influenced his methods.
A World War II veteran with a Ph.D. from Harvard University, Kameny worked as an astronomer for the Army Map Service. In 1957 he was fired for being gay. By executive order of President Eisenhower in 1953, gays and lesbians were prohibited from serving as federal employees.
Kameny’s termination fueled a lifetime of activism. He fought his dismissal in the federal courts, and in 1961 he filed the first gay rights appeal to the US Supreme Court. The same year, Kameny cofounded the Mattachine Society of Washington, D.C., with Jack Nichols. The Mattachine Societies of New York and Washington became the first gay civil liberties organizations in the United States. Later Kameny helped start organizations that would become the National LGBTQ Task Force and the Human Rights Campaign.
Kameny, along with Craig Rodwell, took the lead in organizing the Annual Reminders—the first public demonstrations for gay equality, held each Fourth of July from 1965 to 1969 in front of Independence Hall. Kameny and fellow Gay Pioneer Barbara Gittings enlisted activists from New York, Washington, D.C., and Philadelphia to participate. At the first Annual Reminder, 40 brave gay and lesbian picketers carried signs demanding equality. By 1969 their numbers had more than tripled. Inspired by Stokely Carmichael’s “Black Is Beautiful,” Kameny
coined the movement’s slogan, “Gay Is Good.” After 1969, the Annual Reminders were suspended to marshal support for a 1970 march commemorating the first anniversary of Stonewall.
Kameny was a leader in many issues, including convincing the American Psychiatric Association to declassify homosexuality as a mental illness and lobbying the U.S. Civil Service commission to lift its ban on gay employees. Kameny was invited to witness the signing of the Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell Repeal Act, and President Obama lauded him for his seminal efforts. As far back as the 1970s, Kameny was chipping away at the ban on gays in the military. He counseled countless potential gay inductees, closeted service members, and gay military facing discharge for their sexual orientation, and assisted scores of gays encountering problems getting or keeping security clearances.