GLAA Forum

Star Spangled Banner -- Whitney Houston

In the aftermath of the death of singer Whitney Houston on the eve of the Grammy Awards, her talents have been fittingly celebrated. Her early death, like that of too many other stars, presents a cautionary tale of the pressures of fame. What has annoyed me in the past few days, though, has been the endless series of short clips showing her singing just a few bars of this or that.

Here, then, is the complete video of her glorious rendition of the American National Anthem at the Super Bowl in 1991, in honor of those who served in the first Gulf War. Speaking of the troops, taking care of each other is one of the hallmarks of military training and bonding. The lesson to take from Houston's untimely death is not only to take care of yourself, but to look out for each other. Addiction is not something one can overcome alone.

In watching her performance again, the long-held final note is the most glorious thing of all. She had good teachers, including her mother. This was a young woman who knew the mechanics of singing and put it all together to make the absolute most of her gifts.

The fuss over the Queen's #DiamondJubilee

Our good friend Bob Witeck on Monday posted the above photo on Facebook with this comment:

Today's milestone must be marked as the 60th anniversary of Queen Elizabeth II's remarkable reign, and a moment to recall the young princess who grew into a sovereign.

With all due respect, what in the world is remarkable about it other than her sheer longevity? Her job is purely ceremonial, is entirely out of date, and reinforces romanticism about what was a far more bloody and ruthless empire than many are willing to admit. Look up the Opium War and the Amritsar Massacre. Yes, those events were long ago. The Falklands war wasn't so long ago--a bizarre colonialist adventure. What unthinkable horrors would have befallen England had Betty Windsor publicly criticized Thatcher? Then there is Hong Kong, which was acquired in a disgraceful way. It was only a few years before they had to turn it over to China that the British Crown (as they perpetually refer to themselves) at long last decided to democratize the place. Please.

The fondness for the British royals by many Americans is baffling. We fought a war to be free of them.

Update: Bob Witeck replies:

Rick, two words: Costume flicks. No matter how irrelevant the monarchy in the 21st Century, my own appetite for historical (and even contemporary) films about the royals is still strong. What a crop in recent years with Helen Mirren playing QEI and QEII, Emily Blunt playing Victoria, and flock of English players playing everyone from Richard III to Prince Harry. There are enough narratives, melodramas, murders, misbegotten romances to fill movie theaters till kingdom come.

That I agree with. There is certainly no shortage of drama with that lot.

Ron Paul was deeply involved in production of newsletters, associates say

Surprise, surprise. The congressman is just lying.

Let the People Vote

Newark, New Jersey mayor Cory Booker has announced his opposition to putting marriage equality to a popluar vote.

"I shudder to think what would have happened if the civil rights gains, heroically established by courageous lawmakers in the 1960s, were instead conveniently left up to popular votes in our 50 states," Booker said in a statement.

Voters have regularly held back various civil rights movement.  A New Jersey legislator noted that the last successful referendum in the state was in 1915 when voters repealed a bill allowing women the vote.  And laws forbidding discrimination in housing were revoked by voters in both California and Maryland as well as in many smaller municipalities.  The DC councilmembers disallowed referenda on groups covered by the Human Rights Act were well aware of this.

American democracy doesn't allow that government take away rights even if the majority favors it.  The Bill of Rights was added onto the Constitution to limit the reach of democracy.  Even if an overwhelming majority of citizens want Christianity declared our official religion itthey cannot.  Even if a majority of DC voters want guns outlawed they cannot do that either.  And in instances this has failed, such as when the Supreme Court upheld a law allowing for the imprisonment of Japanese-Americans during World War II, it is held as a stain on our national honor.

Update:  Gov. Chris Christie has brought up the civil rights connectiion himself.  He has said:

"The fact of the matter is, I think people would have been happy to have a referendum on civil rights rather than fighting and dying in the streets in the South."

This has sparked outrage.

(via JoeMyGod)

Ron Paul's blind spot on race

Chauncey DeVega has a smart take on Rep. Ron Paul and race. Here's a small sampling:

Ron Paul's desire to frame the Civil War as a tragedy for the South at the hands of a villainous North, a federal force that only wanted to take away the liberties of white people, is an ideal-typical example of libertarianism's failings on matters of race and justice. Ron Paul does not seem to identify slavery--the owning of black people by white people in perpetuity--as a de facto state of war and tyranny. If libertarians were to find a historic freedom struggle to claim as their own, one would think that abolition, accomplished by any means necessary, would be at the top of their list.

Video: Black & Gay on Martin Luther King Day

Here's an inspiring video from NoMoreDownLow.TV. There's something distracting, though, about reporter Kendell Hogan. I can't quite put my finger on it.

"What did liberals do that was so offensive to the Republican Party?"

(Hat tip: Mauro Montoya)

Did Newt provoke a suicide by threatening to out a gay affair?

Marc Caputo blogs at Miami Herald:

[F]ormer Rep. Bill Paxon, was a top leader in the coup to oust Gingrich in 1997. It failed. Some blame Republican leader Dick Armey, now the leader of tea-party organizer FreedomWorks, for selling out his fellow plotters when he learned that Paxon would be speaker and not him.

Paxon mysteriously soon left his post in Congress. It was never clear why.

"There is a concerted effort to take Bill Paxon out before he becomes a bigger threat to Gingrich than he is," Hill reporter Sandy Hume reported at the time, according to this Arianna Huffington. "Paxon and Armey haven't been on speaking terms since the coup."

Soon after, Hume, son of the Fox commentator, committed suicide.

About the same time, rumors surfaced that Hume and Paxon had been involved in a a gay affair. Some (namely MSNBC's Joe Scarborough) blamed Armey for leaking the information to stop Paxon. Some blamed Gingrich, since he benefitted most. Some blamed them both for the rumor.

A commenter at Gawker says:

Having worked on Capitol Hill when Newt was speaker, I can testify that however cold, vile, spiteful and unpleasant you think he is, you are underestimating it.

Who knows? A journalist friend said that Caputo must have something in order to run that item. I guess time will tell.

Update: It appears from this 2009 story that the claim of a gay affair was a lie spread by Dick Armey. Former Republican congressman Joe Scarborough, one of the participants in the 1997 coup attempt against Gingrich who now hosts "Morning Joe" on MSNBC, wrote in a 2004 book that he (Scarborough) was the source for Sandy Hume's story on the putsch that Armey foiled. All of this Hill plotting was going on in the midst of the Monica Lewinsky scandal. No wonder Bill Clinton won that fight. But the reasons for Paxon's abrupt retirement from politics and Hume's suicide remain a mystery. The story and the rumors are not new. Perhaps the Romney campaign is trying to revive them to knock off Gingrich. No one would shed a tear for Newt even if he is innocent in the matter. What a lovely town this is. Stay tuned.

Danny Evins, Cracker Barrel Founder and Focus of Controversy, Dies at 76

NYT reports:

His tone was considerably harsher when it came to defending a January 1991 directive to all the company’s restaurants to fire employees “whose sexual preferences fail to demonstrate normal heterosexual values.” Mr. Evins’s explanation for the edict was that gay people made customers in rural areas uncomfortable. As many as 16 openly or suspected gay employees were promptly fired. Protests erupted at restaurants in dozens of cities and towns; boycotts were organized; and shareholders complained.

Our friend Bob Witeck comments, "Danny Evins and Cracker Barrel learned the hard way that we all are welcome, or none of us are welcome. And when you fire one of us, you stoke a revolution."

Update: As Craig Howell notes in the comments, the lesson was learned early on and the wrong righted.

Young minister at work

Here's another photo shared by our friend Alan Sharpe, showing Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. at his desk. My first thought upon looking at it was how beautiful he was. The second was how young he was. His public ministry — from the moment he stepped into the pulpit at Holt Street Baptist Church on Dec. 5, 1955 to launch the Montgomery Bus Boycott (four days after the arrest of Rosa Parks), to his death in Memphis on April 4, 1968 — lasted just over twelve years. A marvelous shooting star that made a lasting impact.

"Be true to what you said on paper."

On the eve of what would have been his 83rd birthday, here is part of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.'s final speech, known as the Mountaintop, delivered in Memphis on April 3, 1968. He was thirty-nine years old. He discusses the time he was stabbed at a book signing in New York, and the report that the blade was so close to his aorta that if he had sneezed, he would have died. He mines gold out of a letter he received from a girl in White Plains who wrote, "I'm so happy that you didn't sneeze." He was in Memphis that day to help sanitation workers who were on strike, and spoke of the many threats he had received. We have come a long way in the intervening decades, and he has now been dead longer than he was alive; yet so much of his speech sounds like the day before yesterday. I am reading about the detention facility at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, and imagining what he would have said about that. The work of making America live up to its creed remains very far from finished, but we have his words and example to challenge and inspire us, and to remind us how high a price our forebears paid for our freedom. In light of that, the greatest sin would be to waste that freedom, to sit out the struggle. Happy birthday, Dr. King.

"All you wonderful crackers"

Chef Goes Nanners
Get More: SOUTH
PARKmore...

In honor of the Republican presidential race, here's an excerpt from the South Park flag episode, featuring the late, great Isaac Hayes as Chef.

Francis accepts honor for Kameny from American Astronomical Society

Kameny Papers Project co-founder Charles Francis spoke in Austin, Texas on Tuesday to a gathering of the American Astronomical Society, of which Frank Kameny was once a member. Charles was accepting an award on behalf of the late gay rights pioneer:

On behalf of Dr. Franklin E. Kameny, I am honored to accept this Certificate of Appreciation from the American Astronomical Society....

55 years ago Frank Kameny was one of you.

He was an astronomer for the U.S. Army Map Service....

He had the education. He had the training. He had the experience. And just before him lay our golden age of space exploration.

Then, in 1957, at age 32, Frank Kameny had his "accident": the fatal accident of being "found out gay" in the 1950s. By definition, to be gay was to be an insane deviate -- subject to blackmail and a threat to national security.

Gay British mathematician Alan Turing -- the man who saved Britain by breaking the German Enigma Code -- had committed suicide in the face of government persecution only three years prior. Kameny received his letter from the Corps of Engineers, U.S. Army Map Service. It said, "It is necessary that you return at once to the Army Map Service in connection with certain administrative requirements." Frank was fired. His career in astronomy lay in ruins.

But unlike Alan Turing and so many others, he could see a way forward out of his personal crisis. He decided to fight. And he fought with a sense of confidence honed like a knife by his education and training. The one thing they could not take away from him was his belief in the integrity of his own mind, the logic, the data sets, and the integrity of facts. I don't think his opponents and detractors ever fully appreciated they were dealing with an astronomer -- an astronomer who would spark the LGBT movement for civil equality.

Thanks, Charles.

'The Birds' mystery solved?

Sarah Anne Hughes at WaPo reports on a scientific study that may explain a real-life incident that partly inspired Alfred Hitchcock's 1963 thriller The Birds:

Alfred Hitchcock's “The Birds” has been terrifying audiences for almost 50 years, thanks in part to a real-life event in 1961, when dying seabirds slammed into coastal California homes. (I’m pretty sure no one was actually pecked to near-death by hundreds of deranged gulls, like poor Tippi Hedren.)

The reason for the birds’ erratic behavior has remained a mystery — until now.

Sibel Bargu, one of the authors of a new study published in Nature Geoscience, told USA Today her team believes the birds were poisoned by toxin-producing algae. The researchers looked at the stomach contents of turtles and seabirds gathered in the affected area in 1961 and found toxins that cause nerve damage present in 79 percent of the plankton the creatures had eaten.

The short video below is a droll tribute to Hitchcock by a fan.

25 years ago today: Terry Dolan died

Jim Burroway at BTB writes:

TODAY IN HISTORY:
Closeted Anti-Gay Activist Dies of AIDS: 1986. Terry Dolan, who helped to found the National Conservative Political Action Committee, was pretty well known in elite gay circles. According to Randy Schilts’s And the Band Played On, when playwright Larry Kramer recognized him at a Washington, D.C. cocktail party, he walked up to Dolan and threw a drink is his face. “How dare you come here?” he shouted. “You take the best from our world and then do all those hateful things against us. You should be ashamed.” Among those awful things was sending out fundraising letters for NCPAC, which claimed that “Our nation’s moral fiber is being weakened by the growing homosexual movement and the fanatical E.R.A. pushers (many of whom publicly brag they are lesbians).” Meanwhile, Dolan had, at the time of that 1984 encounter with Kramer, had just ended an affair with a male epidemiologist at the New York City Health Department, and was then enjoying everything the gay social scene had to offer.

Terry Dolan was closeted (he couldn’t have been open without suffering right-wing banishment), but as is often the case, it was an open secret in the gay community. He went to gay bars in DC, including the Eagle, and he cruised me a few times when we passed each other on the sidewalk on 17th Street in the Dupont Circle neighborhood. Perry Deane Young's 1982 book “God’s Bullies” described a gay sexual liaison Dolan had with Richard Anderson, an information specialist at the Library of Congress. But mainstream news organizations, even more than they do now, treated the practice of "outing" as unseemly and avoided covering such efforts.

One small act of decency I remember of Dolan’s was defending Robert Bauman from an effort to remove him from the board of a right-wing organization after Bauman’s gay-hustler scandal ended his congressional career in 1980. I do not remember if the organization in question was NCPAC, YAF, or the American Conservative Union. While both men’s consorting with the anti-gay right was despicable, Dolan appeared to have a pang of conscience and resisted doing the obvious thing in response to Bauman’s scandal, which would have been to throw him overboard. (Note: I said it was a small act of decency. I am not suggesting that it would get Mr. Dolan out of hell. Not that I believe in hell either.)

Update: I meant to type "25 years ago today," but somehow typed 26. I have corrected the headline.

Was Dick Nixon gay?

The Daily Mail reports:

A new biography by Don Fulsom, a veteran Washington reporter who covered the Nixon years, suggests the 37th U.S. President had a serious drink problem, beat his wife and — by the time he was inaugurated in 1969 — had links going back two decades to the Mafia, including with New Orleans godfather Carlos Marcello, then America's most powerful mobster.

Yet the most extraordinary claim is that the homophobic Nixon may have been gay himself. If true, it would provide a fascinating insight into the motivation and behaviour of a notoriously secretive politician.

Fulsom argues that Nixon may have had an affair with his best friend and confidant, a Mafia‑connected Florida wheeler-dealer named Charles 'Bebe' Rebozo who was even more crooked than Nixon.

I suppose that as long as some gay people insist on validating themselves by recruiting various historical figures into the gay pantheon, we shouldn't complain about the prospect of being saddled with a disreputable person like Richard Nixon.

Documentary on Starlite Lounge, Historic NYC Black Gay Bar

STARLITE trailer from sasha wortzel on Vimeo.

Rod 2.0 reports:

It's been almost a year and a half since the July 2010 closing of the Starlite Lounge, the oldest Black-owned LGBT bar in New York City and one of the oldest such bars in the nation. Two filmmakers are producing a documentary about about the now-shuttered historic lounge in Brooklyn, reports the NY Daily News....

For more than 40 years, the location at 1086 Bergen Street in Brooklyn's Crown Heights was home to the Starlite Lounge. The Starlite had been a fixture since the 1960s and became a rite of passage for many black LGBT New Yorkers.

LGBT community invited to march in King Day Parade

The Blade reports:

At the suggestion of gay and Ward 8 community activist Phil Pannell, organizers of D.C.’s Martin Luther King Jr. Holiday parade, set to take place Jan. 16, 2012, are inviting members of the LGBT community to take part in the event.

Lead organizer Denise Rolark Barnes, publisher of the Washington Informer, the city’s African-American community newspaper, said a parade organizing committee has been reaching out to all communities, including the LGBT community, in an effort to boost participation in the parade.

She noted that 2012 will mark the first time in seven years that the King parade will take place on the Martin Luther King Day holiday, which commemorates King’s birthday.

Kameny included in Time "Person of the Year" issue

A tribute to Frank Kameny by Houston Mayor Annise Parker is included in Time Magazine's Person of the Year issue:

Frank Kameny brought the first civil rights claim in a U.S. court relating to sexual orientation (the Supreme Court rejected his petition in 1961) and ran for Congress as an openly gay candidate in 1971. He faced ridicule, assault and arrest. Although his early attempts at gaining equality were unsuccessful, they sparked more activism across the country. Today's vibrant, proud and vigorous LGBT community has leaders in the boardroom and the highest levels of government who follow the example he set. Kameny's fire burned exuberantly. His activism helped change the course of history and many lives. We can only hope more people like him will continue to eradicate injustice.

Thank you, Mayor Parker.

(Photo by Kay Tobin Lahusen / NYPL)

In The Life on Thirty years of AIDS

In The Life Media has been covering HIV since the their inception.  The have produced a video on the story of AIDS 30 years on.  Since I was at some of lthe events chronicled I can wave back at my past self.  At the 2:58 mark a group of people march by holding a Gay Activists Alliance banner  (in 1986 the words 'and Lesbian' were added to the group name).  I definitely was not there and I did not recognize any of the people.  This could be the New York GAA though I thought they folded prior to the AIDS era.

Bryan Fischer blames Barney Frank for AIDS

AFA spokesnut Bryan Fischer explains how Rep. Barney Frank is to blame for AIDS. I am not going to maintain a comprehensive list of the right-wing potshots at our friend Barney in response to his announcement that he'll retire from Congress after sixteen terms. Suffice it to say that if you can judge a man by his enemies, the gentleman from Massachusetts is looking fine.

Golden Hour

(Photo by Robert Dodge)

My column for Thanksgiving uses thoughts on the passing of Frank Kameny as a jumping-off point for a celebration of leadership and carrying on the fight. Here's a portion:

It was the "golden hour" of late afternoon on Nov. 3 during the viewing for gay rights pioneer Frank Kameny when I walked outside the Carnegie Library for some fresh air. I had been greeting people arriving to pay their respects. The sun hung low above the White House to the southwest, bathing the cars on New York Avenue in a golden light. Charles Francis, co-founder of the Kameny Papers Project, sat beside me as I searched for a WiFi signal for my new iPad. The first book I had downloaded was Frank’s 1961 petition to the U.S. Supreme Court, which Charles had published on Kindle. New tools, old struggle.

Two hours later, night had fallen when I walked behind Frank’s flag-draped casket. There at curbside under a half moon stood Congresswoman Eleanor Holmes Norton, Mayor Vincent Gray, several D.C. Council members, and an honor guard of gay servicemembers. They were a testament to how far we’ve come since Frank first fought back. Inside earlier, the Rock Creek Singers of the Gay Men’s Chorus of Washington had sung three selections including a gorgeous a cappella "Star-Spangled Banner."

Speaking at a memorial gathering for Kameny on Capitol Hill on Nov. 15, Rep. Barney Frank (D-MA) praised Kameny’s assertiveness, noting he was no "shrinking violet." He drew laughter when he said he appreciated Kameny for proving that effective activism did not require being a neat dresser.

We are all Kameny’s legacy. That is one of the blessings I count this Thanksgiving.

Read the whole thing here.

Kameny remembered on Capitol Hill

(OPM Director John Berry, Rep, Tammy Baldwin, Prof. William Eskridge Jr., Rep. Barney Frank, and Del. Eleanor Holmes Norton at memorial for Frank Kameny. AP Photo by Pablo Martinez Monsivais)

Members of Congress were joined by scholars, activists, and community members on November 15 at a memorial gathering for Frank Kameny in the Cannon Caucus Room on Capitol Hill. Kameny Papers Project co-founder Charles Francis was emcee of the event, which included remarks by Congresswoman Eleanor Holmes Norton (D-DC), Yale Professor William Eskridge Jr., Congressman Barney Frank (D-MA), Congresswoman Tammy Baldwin (D-WI), and OPM Director John Berry. Stories by Metro Weekly and Associated Press.

(Charles Francis of the Kameny Papers Project speaks at memorial for Frank Kameny. AP Photo by Pablo Martinez Monsivais)

(OPM Director John Berry chats with GLAA's Rick Rosendall and Rep. Barney Frank (D-MA). AP Photo by Pablo Martinez Monsivais)

The Iron Lady

The latest trailer of Meryl Streep's upcoming biopic of Maggie Thatcher. The bombing scene is doubtless the attempted assassination by the IRA at the Tory Party conference in Brighton in 1984, from which Thatcher emerged unscathed.

Kramer vs. Everyone

My column this week looks at gay prophet of doom Larry Kramer, who was interviewed in last week's Metro Weekly by Chris Geidner. Here's a sample of my response to that interview:

Kramer laments the shortage of activists, and asserts that little has been accomplished. But if half a century of struggle has really amounted to so little, why should anyone bother? Of the gains he does acknowledge, he claims "we didn't do much to get there. More of us are here, more of us are out, because that's the nature of life today…."

What planet is Kramer on? When [Frank] Kameny [who took a more optimistic view] started, legal, psychiatric and religious authorities marginalized gay people as criminal, pathological and sinful. It was thanks not to "the nature of life" but to efforts by many brave and persistent people that the sodomy laws were overturned, homosexuality was removed as a mental disorder, and many religious denominations affirmed their gay and lesbian congregants. We have won the right to serve openly in the military, while several states and the District of Columbia have won civil marriage equality.

These are crumbs, according to Kramer, who thinks that until we have total equality, we have nothing. So he notes dismissively that relatively few of us are in the military, and claims that the lack of federal recognition reduces our marriages to a "feel-good … cowardly evasion." On the contrary, same-sex married couples enjoy hundreds of protections at the state and local level. As to our gains in the military being irrelevant, let him say that to the gay servicemembers who bore Kameny's casket last week.

Read the whole thing here.

(Photo of Larry Kramer by David Shankbone)

November 15 - Capitol Hill memorial service for Frank Kameny

This just in from our friend Bob Witeck regarding the upcoming gathering on Capitol Hill in memory of our departed friend and champion, Frank Kameny. We hope to see many of you there.

 

Media Advisory
Wednesday, November 9, 2011

Press Inquiries Only
Bob Witeck 202-997-4055
bwiteck@witeckcombs.com

Frank Kameny Memorial Service
Capitol Hill Observance slated for Tuesday afternoon, November 15, 2011
50th Anniversary of Founding of Mattachine Society of Washington, D.C.

WHAT:

Official Memorial Service in honor of the late Dr. Franklin E. Kameny

Congressional Hosts include:
The Honorable Barney Frank
The Honorable Eleanor Holmes Norton
The Honorable Tammy Baldwin
The Honorable Jared Polis
The Honorable David Cicilline

Speakers will include leaders from Capitol Hill and the Administration, as well as others. [Program and speakers to be announced next week.]

WHO:

Friends and allies of Dr. Kameny, and members of the general public, need no invitation to attend this service on Capitol Hill, capacity permitting. This spacious and historic venue was made available through the generous support from leaders of the Congressional LGBT Equality Caucus, allies in LGBT equality and national service.

Dr. Franklin E. Kameny Memorial Host Committee members also are listed below.

WHEN:

Tuesday, November 15, 2011 beginning at 4:30 pm ET

This historic date - November 15, 2011 - is the half-century anniversary of Dr. Kameny's co-founding of the Mattachine Society in Washington D.C., considered the earliest "homophile" rights organization established in the Nation's Capital and among the earliest in the United States.

Fifty years ago in 1961, Dr. Kameny also filed the first gay civil rights brief before the U.S. Supreme Court. His original brief is now preserved at the Library of Congress.

WHERE:

The Cannon Caucus Room, Room 345 Cannon

The Cannon House Office Building, completed in 1908, is the oldest congressional office building. It occupies a site south of the Capitol bounded by Independence Avenue, First Street, New Jersey Avenue, and C Street S.E.

Kameny Residence in the National Register of Historic Places

 Dr. Franklin E. Kameny Residence in Washington, DC, listed in the National  Register of Historic Places
 
 The National Park Service has recognized the historic significance of gay  rights activist Dr. Franklin E. Kameny, by listing his home in the  National Register of Historic Places.
 
 "Dr. Kameny led a newly militant activism in the fledgling gay civil rights of the 1960s," said NPS Director Jonathan B. Jarvis. "He was a landmark figure in articulating and achieving gay civil rights in federal employment and security clearance cases, and in reversing the medical community's view on homosexuality as a mental disorder."
 
 Kameny's efforts in the civil rights movement, modeled in part on African American civil rights strategies and tactics, significantly altered the rights, perceptions, and role of gays, lesbians, bisexuals, and transgendered people in American society.
 
 Franklin Kameny (1925-2011) was a Harvard trained astronomer and World War II veteran. In 1957, Dr. Kameny was fired from his job with the Army Map Service for refusing to answer questions about his sexual orientation. Based upon an Executive Order issued by President Dwight D. Eisenhower,
 thousands of men and women lost their federal civil service jobs solely due to their sexual orientation, based upon a belief that homosexuality posed a security risk. Dr. Kameny waged a four-year legal fight against the idea that sexual orientation could make one unfit for federal service. Although the U.S. Supreme Court declined to hear his case, it was the first time that an equal-rights claim had been made on the basis of sexual orientation.
 
 In 1961 Kameny co-founded the Mattachine Society of Washington, an organization committed, through activism to achieving equal social and legal rights for homosexuals. Through lobbying of government officials, testifying before congressional committees, bringing court challenges, and picketing the White House, Kameny and his allies pressured the U.S. Civil Service Commission to eventually abandon its policy of denying homosexuals federal employment. Kameny led efforts to remove homosexuality as a basis for denying government security clearances. He was also involved in the first legal challenge to the U.S. military's policy of discharging gay and lesbian service members, including the much-publicized case of gay Air Force Sergeant Leonard Matlovich. Kameny played a leading role in attacking the American Psychiatric Association's (APA) definition of homosexuality as a mental illness. In 1973, the APA voted to remove homosexuality from its Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Psychiatric Disorders. In 1998, President Clinton signed an Executive Order banning discrimination in federal employment based upon sexual orientation.
 
 For years, Dr. Kameny's residence at 5020 Cathedral Avenue, NW, in Washington, DC, served as a meeting place, archives, informal counseling center, headquarters of the Mattachine Society, and a safe haven for visiting gay and lesbian activists. It was here that Dr. Franklin E. Kameny developed the civil rights strategies and tactics that have come to define the modern gay rights movement.

Frank Kameny Memorial Viewing on Thursday, November 3, 2011

Press Inquiries Only
 Bob Witeck 202-997-4055
 bwiteck@witeckcombs.com
 
 Dr. Franklin E. Kameny
 Our Viewing and Last Respects on Thursday, November 3, 2011
 Councilmembers Catania and Graham to join Kameny pallbearers at 2:30 pm ET
 
 WHAT:
 
 Lying-in-State for Dr. Franklin E. Kameny
 
 WHO:
 
 All are welcome to visit and say goodbye to our fellow citizen, neighbor, friend, advocate and civil rights champion, Frank Kameny.
 
 This farewell viewing, to be held on November 3 to allow many friends to visit at their convenience, was made possible through the leadership of our Mayor, the Honorable Vincent Gray, and with the endorsement of Members of the D.C. Council, as well as many friends and allies of the late Dr. Kameny.
 Dr. Franklin E. Kameny Memorial Host Committee members are listed below.
 
 WHEN:
 
 Thursday, November 3, 2011 between 3 pm and 8 pm ET
 
 Note: This will not be a formal program or a funeral service conducted during this viewing period. However, informal remarks by Mayor Vincent Gray and several Members of the DC Council will take place between 6 and 7 pm ET.
 At approximately 2:30 pm, the hearse carrying Dr. Kameny will arrive at the venue and will be met by four designated pall bearers in U.S. military dress, and the remaining two pallbearers will be DC Council members David Catania and Jim Graham.
 
 WHERE:
 
 The first floor atrium of the historic Carnegie Library
 Between 7th and 9th Streets N.W. at Mt. Vernon Square
 Public entrance on K Street N.W.

More details on the second page

Fie upon't! (or, An English rose for Emily)

Ron Charles has a witty piece in WaPo skewering the current Roland Emmerich movie Anonymous, which trots out the well-worn theory, based on class snobbery, that Shakespeare's plays were actually written by the 17th Earl of Oxford (despite the fact that the man died before The Tempest and other of the Bard's late plays were written):

Once you allow that some glovemaker’s son from Stratford with a grade-school education wrote those plays, you’re likely to start imagining that a cloistered old maid in Amherst, Mass., composed the greatest poetry of the 19th century. (But don’t listen to me. I’m nobody. Who are you?)

Bravo, sir.

Kameny in Combat

(Photo by Kay Tobin Lahusen, NYPL Digital Library)

My latest column describes my first experience of Frank Kameny's combative style when I brought him to Villanova University to debate gay rights in 1978:

In response to the charge that gay people flaunted their sexuality, Frank pointed out that when you see a visibly pregnant woman in public, "you know exactly what she's been doing in bed." This was my introduction to Frank's penchant for provocation and for turning the tables on our opponents. He assailed their biased assumptions and disarmed them with reason and wit.

"I fought in front-line combat for my country," Frank thundered. As a citizen and patriot he demanded equality under the law — "no more, but not one whit less." He easily won the vote on our resolution opposing discrimination based on sexual orientation.

For his appearance at Villanova, Frank requested only travel and lodging costs, which were covered by our modest honorarium. The Political Union's officers took him to dinner beforehand at the Conestoga Mill. Frank wore a "Gay Is Good" button, and as we left the restaurant the manager wished Frank good luck. It dawned on me that Frank carried into battle the dreams of untold quieter gay people like that restaurant manager.

Over the next 33 years, I often observed Frank's fearless and iconoclastic way of challenging dogma. He said that anything that has lasted long enough to become a tradition deserves to be questioned. He declared, "The world needs more and better blasphemy." He called celibacy unnatural. He told homophobes who cited Scripture, "Your God may disapprove of homosexuality, but my God considers it a blessing."

After Congress vetoed D.C.'s first attempt to repeal its sodomy law as part of the Sexual Assault Reform Act of 1981, Frank shouted at a community meeting that repeal should be attached to every bill the District passed until we rid ourselves of "this damnable law!"

Read the whole thing here.

Note: Kay Lahusen, who took the photo of Frank used above, is the widow of famed lesbian activist Barbara Gittings. I have enjoyed many conversations with her in recent years, including in the aftermath of Frank's passing.

The Washington Blade remembers Frank Kameny

The current issue of the Blade includes interesting pieces on the life and times of Frank Kameny by Lou Chibbaro and Joey DiGuglielmo, in addition to the lovely piece by Kameny Papers founder Charles Francis to which we linked earlier, and an appreciation of Frank by John Berry, whose swearing in as OPM's first openly gay director in 2009 was a great vindication for Frank, who had been fired by its predecessor organization in 1957.

Thru Jan. 16, 2012 - Kameny artifacts at American History Museum

The National Museum of American History, from now through January 16, 2012, has on display three of Frank Kameny's picket signs from the first gay rights protest outside the White House in 1965. From the museum's website:

Frank Kameny, who died on Oct. 11, was one of those Americans of whom few may have heard but who devoted his life to furthering civil rights, most especially for LGBTQ (lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and queer) people. He instigated or participated in many of the important gay rights actions of the 20th century.

This display shows a selection of the protest posters that Kameny and the Kameny Papers Project donated to the Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History in 2006. Three of the most resonant picket signs are now on display in Flag Hall, just off the entrance from the National Mall and near the Star-Spangled Banner, the flag that inspired the national anthem, and the civil rights-era Woolworth Lunch counter. Another poster is currently on view in The American Presidency exhibition among a number of protest signs. The Kameny collection is part of the Museum’s long-standing commitment to preserve the history of American democracy and the struggles for individual and civil rights in the United States.

Frank Kameny, Best of DC

The Blade will publish its Best of DC issue on October 28. GLAA will run this ad as a tribute to Frank Kameny, who is being mourned across the LGBT rights movement for more than half a century of pioneering activism.

Kameny's storybook ending

Charles Francis, head of the Kameny Papers Project that rescued Frank Kameny's archive for the Library of Congress and posterity, has written a wonderful appreciation of Frank for The Washington Blade. Thanks, Charles.

November 3 - Kameny to lie in state at Carnegie Library

This just in:

Media Advisory
Thursday, October 20, 2011

Press Inquiries Only
Bob Witeck 202-997-4055
bwiteck@witeckcombs.com

Dr. Franklin E. Kameny
1925-2011

“Gay Is Good”
Paying Our Last Respects to an American Civil Rights Hero
Washington, D.C. Thursday, November 3, 2011

Smithsonian National Museum of American History
Also Opens Special Memorial Display of Kameny Picket Signs
Beginning Friday, October 21, 2011 through January 16, 2012

[Please read details below in entirety]

WHAT:

Lying-in-State for Dr. Franklin E. Kameny

WHO:

All are welcome to visit and say goodbye to our fellow citizen, neighbor, friend, advocate and civil rights champion, Frank Kameny.

This farewell viewing, to be held over several hours on November 3 to allow many friends to visit at their convenience, was made possible through our Mayor, the Honorable Vincent Gray, and with the endorsement of Members of the D.C. Council, as well as many friends and allies of the late Dr. Kameny.

Dr. Franklin E. Kameny Host Committee is led by:

The Kameny Papers Project
Gay & Lesbian Activists Alliance (GLAA)
Gertrude Stein Democratic Club of Washington, D.C.
Helping Our Brothers and Sisters
Rainbow History Project
As well as other groups, in formation.

WHEN:

Thursday, November 3, 2011 between 3 pm and 8 pm ET

Note: This will not be a formal program or a funeral service conducted during this viewing period. However, informal remarks by civic leaders and choral presentations may be made during the 5 hours set aside for viewing (details to come).

WHERE:

The first floor atrium of the historic Carnegie Library
Between 7th and 9th Streets N.W. at Mt. Vernon Square
Public entrance on K Street N.W.

The next generation in the fight for equality

On Monday at lunchtime, I guest-lectured a half dozen students at Cesar Chavez Public Charter High School on Capitol Hill. I was invited by their teacher, Ayo Magwood, who had brought me to the school once before to talk to her class (some of whose members testified before the Board of Elections and Ethics in February 2010 against a proposed anti-gay ballot measure). The students I spoke to on Monday had chosen same-sex marriage as their thesis topic, so I talked to them about our successful fight for marriage equality here in D.C.

I described our legislative and political strategy, our broad-based coalition which included strong leadership from allies among local clergy as well as voter canvassing and preparation of couples to deal with the media, and how our careful planning and preparation ensured victory when we were challenged in court. The students were enthusiastic and asked good questions. All of them, incidentally, were African American.

The Chavez students represent the next generation of citizens engaged in questions of justice as it is reflected in public policy. It is increasingly commonplace for American high school students to explore not just gay rights in general but gay marriage in particular. Their embrace of this issue is an indication that we are winning at a basic level. Our long-term prospects are excellent. As Frank Kameny often said, "The tide of history is with us."

Apologies, btw, to my friend Michael Crawford of Freedom to Marry, who objects to the use of phrases like "gay marriage" and "same-sex marriage," because what we are talking about is marriage, period. But we have to start from where we are as a society to get where we want to go, and I am more focused on increasing understanding than on language policing. If you just say "marriage," people won't necessarily understand what you're talking about. It's not where you start that counts, it's where you finish.

Kameny funeral plans coming together

Friends of Frank Kameny, who died on October 11 in his home in the Palisades neighborhood of Washington at the age of 86, are finalizing plans for a wake and a memorial gathering. In the meantime, Lou Chibbaro of the Blade focuses on fundraising efforts to pay for the cost of Frank's final arrangements.

Look, Frank didn't have a regular job for more than fifty years. He paid a high price for his pioneering activism. At this point, his friends, who worked to make his last years more comfortable, are not wringing our hands over the fact that he did not make advance funeral plans — we are just getting it done. Details of his wake and memorial gathering will be announced shortly once arrangements are finalized. Let's keep our focus on celebrating Frank's legacy.

CBS Sunday Morning Show with Charles Osgood on Frank Kameny

CBS Sunday Morning Show with Charles Osgood has a short tribute to gay rights pioneer Dr. Franklin E. Kameny.Dr. Kameny's outrage at his firing by the Federal government fueled a life long commitment for social just for gay people.  And he ended up changing the world.

News Channel 8 on gay rights hero Frank Kameny

News Channel 8 on Thursday morning had a segment on Frank Kameny, featured on NewsTalk with Bruce DePuyt. It featured video footage of Frank, and I was in the studio talking to Bruce. The Kameny segment begins at 25:25 in the above video. (A correction: I am not "the head" of GLAA, but Vice President for Political Affairs. Also, I misspoke when I said that the D.C. Council is considering stronger hate crimes legislation; I meant stronger anti-bullying legislation.)

SB-48 Repeal Effort Fails

Supporters of the effort to repeal California law SB-48 which requires teaching the contributions of minority groups to American society.

This bill would require instruction in social sciences to also include a study of the role and contributions of Native Americans, African Americans, Mexican Americans, Asian Americans, Pacific Islanders, European Americans, lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender Americans, and other ethnic and cultural groups, to the development of California and the United States.

Despite accusations by supporters of the bill that its opponents were lying about what the bill actually included, those seeking a repeal referendum have failed to get enough signatures to get it on the ballot.  In the last week the National Organization for Marriage has been issuing pleas on its blog for volunteers to circulate petitions.  (And what's up with that, NOM?  What does this have to do with marriage?)  Opponents of the bill will shift their focus to defeating the people who voted for the bill.