FRANKLIN EDWARD KAMENY: FRANKLIN KAMENY, who has died at the age of 86, was a persistent and often brash activist who was one of the leading figures of the US gay rights movement, particularly in the Washington area.
Kameny, a Harvard PhD whose homosexuality reportedly led to his discharge from a federal government job more than half a century ago, lived to see his years of determined advocacy rewarded by the success of many of his campaigns and his ultimate welcome by a political establishment that had rejected him.
His death, apparently on National Coming Out Day (October 11th), came in a year when gay people were accorded the right to serve openly in the armed forces.
In what appeared to be one of the great triumphs of Kameny’s often lonely struggle, the protest signs he once carried in front of the White House were put on display in the Smithsonian Institution four years ago to be viewed along with the museum’s other artifacts relating to US history.
Kameny claimed for himself the creation of the slogan “Gay Is Good”. The words both suggested his rhetorical skills and embodied the beliefs he championed.
Years before the homosexual rights movement existed in any widely recognised form and in an era in which open assertion of homosexuality could invite physical harm, Kameny worked to increase the acceptance of gay people in mainstream American society and to win recognition of their rights.
Rather than shrink from revealing his sexual orientation, Kameny made it plain. He won attention and respect by the vigorous campaign he waged 40 years ago for election as the district’s non-voting delegate to Congress.
In addition to the White House, he picketed at the State Department, and at Independence Hall in Philadelphia. He did not accept his federal dismissal without a fight, appealing through the courts, and writing his own briefs.
Kameny was credited with playing an important part in the achievement of what were regarded as several signal milestones passed by gay people on the road to full inclusion in American society.
With more than a hint of irony, he once described December 15th, 1973, as the date on which “we were cured en masse by the psychiatrists”.
That was the date associated with the decision of the American Psychiatric Association to stop classifying homosexuality as a mental disorder.
Kameny was credited with a major role in the struggle to bring about that change.
Other victories he was associated with included a presidential executive order signed by former president Bill Clinton that permitted gay people to be granted security clearance.
He considered the District of Columbia’s repeal of an anti-sodomy law in early 1990s to be another achievement.
The federal government, which had cast him aside, issued a formal apology in 2009 for letting him go.
The story of his struggle, chronicled in 77,000 pages of papers and memorabilia, was accepted in 2006 by the Library of Congress.
Living for as long as he did, he was able to recognise and revel in the turnaround of American actions and attitudes towards the gay community.
Although he was aware obstacles remained, he told a reporter last year all the change he had witnessed was “like a storybook ending”.
In one interview he told of enlisting in the army at the height of the second World War, a few days before he turned 18.
In discussing how he had been “asked” but “didn’t tell”, he said that “as a healthy, vigorous teenager”, there were indeed “things to tell”. (Although, he said, there were not many.)
However, he said last year: “I have resented for 67 years that I had to lie in order to serve in a war effort that I strongly supported. I did serve and I saw combat in Europe.”
After his army service he received a doctorate in astronomy in 1956. He came to Washington to work for the Army Map Service, and his dismissal from that job came in 1957.
Published accounts say the dismissal was based on his homosexuality. The loss of the job subjected him to deprivation, and he recalled surviving on 20 cents’ worth of food a day in some of the most difficult times. It forced his life into new paths.
On one occasion he permitted himself to speculate on how things might have turned out if he had not been dismissed, just as interest in space exploration was growing. He suggested he might have become an astronaut. “I might have gone to the moon,” he said.
He is survived by a sister.
Franklin Edward Kameny: born May 21st, 1925; died October 11th, 2011