Frank Kameny life and biography

Frank Kameny, also known as Dr. Franklin Edward Kameny born May 21, 1925 in Queens, New York, United States is an American astronomer and activist.

Dr. Franklin E. "Frank" Kameny is "one of the most significant figures" in the American gay rights movement. In 1957, Kameny was dismissed from his position as an astronomer in the Army Map Service in Washington, D.C. because of his homosexuality, leading him to begin "a Herculean struggle with the American establishment that would transform the homophile movement" and "spearhead a new period of militancy in the homosexual rights movement of the early 1960s".

Frank Kameny's quiet scientific career abruptly ended in the late 1950s when he was fired for being a homosexual. He promptly challenged the federal government's ban on the employment of homosexuals and later took on federal policies on security clearances for homosexuals and the nation's perception of gays as sick people, among other battles. His 1968 slogan "Gay Is Good" helped change the gay movement's self-perception, paving the way for gay pride.

Franklin Edward Kameny was born on 21 May 1925 in Queens, New York. By the age of four, he had taught himself to read, and he aspired to be an astronomer at six years old. As a pre-teen he was aware of homosexual feelings, but he assumed they were temporary.

He entered Queens College at 16, but World War II interrupted his education. In 1945, he served in an armored infantry battalion in Germany, where he survived dangerous combat. After returning to the United States in 1946, he earned his B.S. degree in physics.

Kameny dutifully dated young women throughout high school and college, though his attractions to men never subsided. In 1954, while studying astronomy at the graduate level, Kameny acknowledged his homosexuality. In 1957, a year after earning his Ph.D. from Harvard, he landed a Civil Service job with the Army Map Service in Washington, D.C., where he received superior performance ratings. At the end of that year, however, he was discharged because of homosexuality. This moment, Kameny admits, catalyzed a shy astronomer into a full-time advocate for gay civil rights.

He contested the dismissal through every possible channel. His lawyer abandoned the fight after a few years, but Kameny personally petitioned the United States Supreme Court. By the time the high court refused to hear his case in 1961, his drive and intelligence had rendered him an amateur lawyer. With a few dedicated peers, he started the Mattachine Society of Washington (MSW), the nation's first "civil-liberties, social-action organization dedicated to improving the status of the homosexual citizen through a vigorous program of action," according to an MSW brochure. The group targeted employment discrimination in the government, and Kameny, recognized as the authority on security clearances for gay people, personally worked on hundreds of cases against the Civil Service Commission and the Pentagon during the next three decades.

Kameny also attacked the assumptions that pervaded society and damaged many gays. "We are the experts on our homosexuality," he declared in the early 1960s, refuting countless psychiatrists, ministers and others. This view became more influential after his article for Psychiatric Opinion (February 1971), in which he assailed the unscientific nature of psychiatric "sickness" claims that reinforced society's bigotry. He followed with protests of the American Psychiatric Association, calling for it to strike homosexuality from its list of pathologies (which it finally did in 1973).

Inspired by the "Black Is Beautiful" rallying cry in the late 1960s, Kameny coined the phrase "Gay Is Good," which became the slogan in 1968 for the North American Conference of Homophile Organizations. The phrase helped to augment the confidence that began after the 1969 Stonewall uprising, and thousands joined in fighting military discharges, employment discrimination, and sodomy laws.

In 1971, several friends persuaded Kameny to become the first self-declared gay man to run for congress. He campaigned against five other candidates for the District of Columbia's nonvoting post in the House of Representatives, championing personal freedom and gay rights in every appearance. Though he finished fourth, some of his rhetoric reads like a prophecy: "As homosexuals, we are fed up with a government that wages a relentless war against us and others of its citizens, instead of against the bigotry of our society. This is our country, our society, our government--for homosexuals quite as much as for heterosexuals.... You will be hearing much from us in the next thirty days--and long thereafter!" (The Gay Crusaders, p. 129)

His activist achievements include the reversal of the Civil Service Commission's anti-gay policy on 3 July 1975, and the repeal of D.C.'s sodomy law on 13 September 1993. The latter feat represents a three-decade battle for Kameny, who personally drafted the new law at the request of a city council member.

In a 1995 interview with the Washington Blade before his 70th birthday, Kameny said that he has not had many long-lasting committed relationships. "I'm emotionally independent," he said, "and I'm not looking for the love of my life."

After reflecting on a long career of activism, he told the Blade interviewer: "If I had to choose one particular thing I've done and put it at the pinnacle of all of which I'm proud, it would be 'Gay Is Good.' It encapsulates, in a way that has been taken up by others, everything that I stand for and have worked for."

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