Thoughts on Frank Kameny's Role in Stonewall, etc.

Someone wrote an article asking why Frank Kameny is not treated as a “rock star” for the homosexual movement. He has been an activist since th 1960s. Then someone else, who says they were at Stonewall, said he does not deserve any credit at all, especially for Stonewall, as the NY Mattachine types did not support Stonewall.

Actually I should be happy, or gay, to hear this second opinion as it says the same thing I have been saying, not because I like it, but because it is the real world. It says that it was not the Mattachine types who were responsible for Stonewall. In fact, many had to rush back from Fire Island when they heard the news. It was young outsiders from New Jersey, etc., who were not welcome at the other bars. They were no part of a movement, and I would say they had not only never read any book on the subject but had never even discussed the subject of homosexuality in a public forum.

I’m not sure either version/view has to say that those who did or did not support Stonewall were seeking “assimilation,” since that is a separate issue. The issue was having a bar that they could go to, and they probably didn't care if heteros went there too as long as everyone got along.

Where the second view falls apart is the nonsense that the people at Stonewall were more “brave” than Kameny and the other Mattachine activists. Part of this is my opinion, but the kids at 1969 have no way of knowing how brave it was for Frank, Barbara Gittings, Jack Nichols, et al., to picket at Liberty Hall and induction centers in 1965. What did the kids have to lose? Jobs?

I still think I am right. What both Frank did and what the kids at Stonewall did was good. While Frank got a little publicity when he took legal action aganst the federal government and argued with and taunted Congress, the reason the kids got lots of media coverage is because they were sexier and the media had—largely because of the movement—finally discovered the homophile movement and issues (and they covered it much like Fox News discovers or invents an issue and pushes it night and day for ratings and to excite the right-wing base.)

The most important element in any case may be timing. But as the old saying goes: When the time comes, you have to be ready to take advantage of it. We still need to push the lazy media to cover more than the back and forth on gay marriage. And we are long past the time when any coverage of homosexuality is thought to need a comment from the bigots. You don’t need an alternative opinion from someone to argue wether 2 + 2 = 4, or an ignorant religious leader’s opinion on if the earth is more than 6,000 years old.

So welcome to the new year. Now let’s get back to work.

Kameny Takes on Brokaw: His Open Letter to Random House, with Walter Williams's Reply

This letter is worth reprinting, as are Walter Williams's comments, posted as a comment below.


November 26, 2007
 
Mr. Tom Brokaw
c/o Random House Publishing Group
 
Ms. Gina Centrello
Publisher
Random House Publishing Group
 
Ms. Kate Medina
Executive Editorial Director
Random House Publishing Group
1745 Broadway
New York, New York, 10019
 
Dear Mr. Brokaw and Mmes. Centrello and Medina:


As a long-time gay activist, who initiated gay activism and militancy at the very start of “your” Sixties, in 1961; coined the slogan “Gay is Good” in 1968; and is viewed by many as one of the “Founding Fathers” of the Gay Movement, I write with no little indignation at the total absence of any slightest allusion to the gay movement for civil equality in your book Boom! Voices of the Sixties.  Your book simply deletes the momentous events of that decade which led to the vastly altered and improved status of gays in our culture today.  This change would havebeen inconceivable at the start of the sixties and would not have occurred at all without the events of that decade totally and utterly ignored by you.  Mr. Brokaw, you have “de-gayed” the entire decade. “Voices of the Sixties”??? One does not hear even one single gay voice in your book. The silence is complete and deafening.



As a gay combat veteran of World War II, and therefore a member of the “Greatest Generation,” I find myself and my fellow gays as absent from your narration as if we did not and do not exist. We find Boom! Boom!! Boom!!! in your book about all the multitudinous issues and the vast cultural changes of that era. But not a single “Boom,” only dead silence, about gays, homosexuality, and the Gay Movement.



The development of every other possible, conceivable issue and cause which came to the forefront in that period is at least mentioned, and is usually catalogued: race; sex and gender; enthnicity; the environment; and others, on and on and on—except only gays.



In 1965, we commenced bringing gays and our issues ”out of the closet” with our then daring picketing demonstrations at the White House and other government sites, and our annual 4th of July demonstrations at Independence Hall in Philadelphia. The Smithsonian Institution displayed these original pickets last month, in the same exhibition as the desk where Thomas Jefferson drafted The Declaration of Independence. The name of the Smithsonian’s exhibition?  “Treasures of American History.” In your book: No Boom; only silence.



About 1963, a decade-long effort commenced to reverse the psychiatric categorization of gays as mentally or emotionally ill, concluding in 1973 with a mass “cure” of all of us by the American Psychiatric Association. No boom in your book; only your silence.



The most momentous single Gay Movement event occurred at the end of June, 1969, when the “Stonewall Rebellion” in New York, almost overnight (actually it took three days) converted what had been a tiny, struggling gay movement into the vast grass-roots movement which it now is. We had five or six gay organizations in the entire country in 1961; fifty to sixty in 1969; by the time of the first Gay Pride march, in New York one year later in 1970, we had 1500, and 2500 by 1971 when counting stopped. If ever there was Boom, this was it. In your book, no Boom, only your silence.



About 1972, Elaine Noble was elected to the Massachusetts state House of Representatives as the first elected openly gay public official. I had run here in Washington, DC, the previous year for election to Congress as the first openly gay candidate for any federal office. Harvey Milk was elected to the Board of Supervisors in San Francisco. No boom in your book; only your silence.



Mr. Brokaw, you deal with the histories of countless individuals. Where are the gays of that era: Barbara Gittings; Jack Nichols; Harry Hay; Del Martin and Phyllis Lyons; Randolfe Wicker; Harvey Milk; numerous others? No booms in your book; only silence and heterosexuals.



Starting in 1961 a long line of court cases attacked the long-standing U.S. Civil Service Gay Ban (fully as absolute and as virulent as the current Military Gay ban, which actually goes back some 70 years and was also fought in the 60s) with final success in 1975 when the ban on employment of gays by the federal government was rescinded. In your book, no boom; only your silence.



The assault on the anti-sodomy laws, which made at least technical criminals of all gays (and most non-gays for that matter, although never used against them) and which was the excuse for an on-going terror campaign against the gay community through arrests the country over, began in 1961 and proceeded through the ’60s and onward. In your book, 
no boom; only your silence.



In 1972, following up on Stonewall, the first anti-discrimination law protective of gays was enacted in East Lansing, Michigan, followed by the much more comprehensive one in D.C. in 1973, starting a trend which now encompasses some twenty states, countless counties and cities, and has now reached Congress in ENDA. In your book, no boom; only your silence.



The Sixties were a period of unprecedented rapid social and cultural upheaval and change. We gays were very much a part of all that. A reader of your book would never have the slightest notion of any of that. In your book, no boom; only your silence.


At the start of the Sixties gays were completely invisible. By the end, and especially after Stonewall, we were seen everywhere: in entertainment, education, religion, politics, business, elsewhere and everywhere. In BOOM our invisibility remains total.



The only allusions to us, in your entire book are the most shallow, superficial, brief references in connection with sundry heterosexuals. Where are the gay spokespeople? We are certainly there to speak for ourselves. But in your book, only silence.



Mr. Brokaw, I could go on, but this should be sufficient to make my point. The whole thing is deeply insulting. As I said, you have de-gayed an entire generation. For shame, for shame, for shame. You owe an abject public apology to the entire gay community. I demand it; we expect it.



Gay is Good. You are not.




Sincerely,
 
Franklin E. Kameny, Ph.D.


Dr. Franklin Kameny
5020 Cathedral Ave., NW
Washington, D.C.  20016
FEKameny@webtv.net
202.362.2211
 
Kameny Papers Project
www.kamenypapers.org