Faced with the stark black-white wealth gap, the terrible treatment of so many people of color by police, momentarily I wondered: “Is he right?” That’s one way I know I have been harmed by American inequality. Grandpa has one of his stories. Reminiscent of Tom Wolfe’s The Bonfire of the Vanities, it is a summation in the form of an epilogue. A few years later, he joined with other activists to take the gay rights movement to the streets. Ordinarily cautious, he made a risky decision. This one is about one of the early pioneers of LGBTQ Rights: astronomer Franklin E. Kameny (1925-2011). He did not prevail, but his activism did not end there. Frank Kameny (center with sign), Smithsonian Archives . Frank Kameny’s name came up and I saw that he had just recently passed away. MARTIN: In 2009, the U.S. Office of Personnel Management officially apologized to Kameny for firing him years earlier. In my case it has led, at one time or another, to depreciation of all who are marginalized, including myself. Snappily, one learns the resolution of the myriad lives populating The Deviant’s War. An early ally is the To convey respectability, Kameny’s marchers were strictly choreographed and costumed. © 2020 Guardian News & Media Limited or its affiliated companies. Friends and activists are mourning the death of Frank Kameny today. His sources included the Kinsey report, the FBI director J Edgar Hoover’s newly declassified “Sex Deviates” computer program, and interviews with activists Is it due to academic rigor that Cervini fails to mention Hoover’s long-rumored intimacy with his deputy, Clyde Tolson? MARTIN: Kameny is believed to have been the first person to sue the federal government to challenge discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation. Happy Pride! Copyright © 2011 NPR.
White supremacy is America’s fatal malady. In 1957, he was fired from his government job, evidently because of his sexual orientation. I went down to the Library of Congress and started thumbing through his daunting number of documents and realized that I was staring at the secret … And so, each day, even while evaluating The Deviant’s War, I am vigilant against hidden unfairness.Square jawed, film star-handsome, Cervini exhibits a facile charm. Kameny then became a vocal gay rights advocate. On August 28, 1956, an astronomer named Frank Kameny was arrested after hidden police officers observed, through a public restroom’s ventilation grille, Kamney make sexual contact with another man while both stood at urinals. Visit our website Eric Cervini’s story of one man’s struggle touches on many others and leaves the reader wanting 500 pages moreIn 1957, following arrest for “lewd conduct” in a San Francisco “tea room”, Kameny lost certification to work for the Department of Defense in Hawaii. FRANK KAMENY: At that point, being gay without more was sufficient to disqualify you. It proves one cannot judge a book by its cover, its outward identity.
(Q&A, Interview) by "The Advocate (The national gay & lesbian newsmagazine)"; News, opinion and commentary Activists Political activists Reformers Social reformers Introduction: Frank Kameny can rightly be considered one of the most important pre-Stonewall homophile activists. All rights reserved.
Frank Kameny sued the government in 1957 for firing him as a government astronomer because he was gay. What was he like in person? That is due partly to Cervini’s admirable use of a wealth of material.
Certainly it was hard to imagine, beforehand, a work that grippingly told of the emergence from turmoil of a more perfect union that is now threatened anew.Cervini’s is a singular accomplishment. Friends and activists are mourning the death of Frank Kameny today. No one had written a book about him. Helping found the Washington branch of the Gays were up against the same societal disdain and hostile legal system faced by blacks and Jews, buttressed by centuries of religious bigotry. In a statement, the head of the Washington based human rights campaign says Kameny, quote, "set a path for the modern LGBT civil rights movement," unquote.
Perhaps he felt most readers would already be aware of such speculations.A more significant issue is the book’s end. He resolved to come out, in order to fight the federal government.With spare prose and linear sequencing that recalls James Baldwin, Cervini chronicles this mission, unsuccessful appeal after unsuccessful appeal.