If you're asking yourself, "who is Frank Kameny?" I'm not surprised. After all, gay history was not a subject likely included in your high school civics class. And even if it were, you were probably too distracted by thougths of Ron the football quarterback's hairy pecs to pay attention.
Frank Kameny was one of the first gay rights pioneers, pre-Stonewall, and he remains active to this day, especially in helping push for the end to don't ask-don't tell. Once upon a time the APA viewed homosexuality as a mental disorder. Frank (with others) got them to take a second look and change their minds. Frank founded the DC Chapter of the Mattachine Society and organized one of the first ever gay rights demonstration in front of the White House, in 1965.
Here's what one book says about him:
"Almost single-handedly, he (Kameny) formed and popularized the ideological foundations of the gay rights movement in the 1960's: that homosexuals constituted 10 percent of the population, that they were not mentally ill, that they didn't need to be spoken for by medical experts, and that they had a right not to be discriminated against."
-excerpt from Out for Good, by Dudley Clendinen & Adam Nagourney (Simon & Schuster, 1999), page 114.
So many of pioneers are gone, like this one, a whole generation wiped out. But Kameny endures. So too, should his vast collection of early gay activism. Help preserve it. Visit the Web site and donate.
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