Franklin Edward Kameny (May 21, 1925 – October 11, 2011) was an American

gay rights Rights affecting lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) people vary greatly by country or jurisdiction—encompassing everything from the legal recognition of same-sex marriage to the death penalty for homosexuality. Notably, , 3 ...

activist. He has been referred to as "one of the most significant figures" in the American gay rights movement. In 1957, Kameny was dismissed from his position as an

astronomer An astronomer is a scientist in the field of astronomy who focuses their studies on a specific question or field outside the scope of Earth. They observe astronomical objects such as stars, planets, natural satellite, moons, comets and galaxy, g ...

in the

U.S. Army The United States Army (USA) is the land service branch of the United States Armed Forces. It is one of the eight U.S. uniformed services, and is designated as the Army of the United States in the U.S. Constitution.Article II, section 2, cla ...

Army Map Service The Army Map Service (AMS) was the military cartographic agency of the United States Department of Defense from 1941 to 1968, subordinated to the United States Army Corps of Engineers. On September 1, 1968, the AMS was redesignated the U.S. Army T ...

Washington, D.C. ) , image_skyline = , image_caption = Clockwise from top left: the Washington Monument and Lincoln Memorial on the National Mall, United States Capitol, Logan Circle, Jefferson Memorial, White House, Adams Morgan, ...

, because of his

homosexuality Homosexuality is romantic attraction, sexual attraction, or sexual behavior between members of the same sex or gender. As a sexual orientation, homosexuality is "an enduring pattern of emotional, romantic, and/or sexual attractions" to peop ...

, leading him to begin "a Herculean struggle with the American establishment" that would "spearhead a new period of militancy in the homosexual rights movement of the early 1960s". Kameny formally appealed his firing by the

U.S. Civil Service Commission The United States Civil Service Commission was a government agency of the federal government of the United States and was created to select employees of federal government on merit rather than relationships. In 1979, it was dissolved as part of t ...

. Although unsuccessful, the proceeding was notable as the first known civil rights claim based on

sexual orientation Sexual orientation is an enduring pattern of romantic or sexual attraction (or a combination of these) to persons of the opposite sex or gender, the same sex or gender, or to both sexes or more than one gender. These attractions are generall ...

pursued in a U.S. court.

Early life and firing

Kameny was born to

Ashkenazi Jewish Ashkenazi Jews ( ; he, יְהוּדֵי אַשְׁכְּנַז, translit=Yehudei Ashkenaz, ; yi, אַשכּנזישע ייִדן, Ashkenazishe Yidn), also known as Ashkenazic Jews or ''Ashkenazim'',, Ashkenazi Hebrew pronunciation: , singu ...

parents in New York City. He attended Richmond Hill High School and graduated in 1941. In 1941, at age 16, Kameny went to

Queens College, City University of New York Queens College (QC) is a public college in the Queens Boroughs of New York City, borough of New York City. It is part of the City University of New York system. Its 80-acre campus is primarily located in Flushing, Queens. It has a student body ...

to learn physics and at age 17 he told his parents that he was an

atheist Atheism, in the broadest sense, is an absence of belief in the existence of deities. Less broadly, atheism is a rejection of the belief that any deities exist. In an even narrower sense, atheism is specifically the position that there no ...

.De Leon, David. Leaders from the 1960s: A Biographical Sourcebook of American Activism. Greenwood Press (June 30, 1994). p. 253. He was drafted into the

United States Army The United States Army (USA) is the land service branch of the United States Armed Forces. It is one of the eight U.S. uniformed services, and is designated as the Army of the United States in the U.S. Constitution.Article II, section 2, cla ...

before completion. He served in the Army throughout World War II in Europe, and later served 20 years on the

Selective Service The Selective Service System (SSS) is an independent agency of the United States government that maintains information on U.S. citizens and other U.S. residents potentially subject to military conscription (i.e., the draft) and carries out contin ...

board. After leaving the Army, he returned to Queens College and graduated with a baccalaureate in physics in 1948. Kameny then enrolled at

Harvard University Harvard University is a private Ivy League research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Founded in 1636 as Harvard College and named for its first benefactor, the Puritan clergyman John Harvard, it is the oldest institution of higher le ...

; while a teaching fellow at Harvard, he refused to sign a

loyalty oath A loyalty oath is a pledge of allegiance to an organization, institution, or state of which an individual is a member. In the United States, such an oath has often indicated that the affiant has not been a member of a particular organization or ...

without attaching qualifiers, and exhibited a skepticism against accepted orthodoxies. He graduated with a master's degree (1949) and

doctorate A doctorate (from Latin ''docere'', "to teach"), doctor's degree (from Latin ''doctor'', "teacher"), or doctoral degree is an academic degree awarded by universities and some other educational institutions, derived from the ancient formalism ''l ...

(1956) in astronomy. His doctoral thesis was titled ''A Photoelectric Study of Some RV Tauri and Yellow Semiregular Variables'' and was written under the supervision of professor

Cecilia Payne-Gaposchkin Cecilia Payne-Gaposchkin (born Cecilia Helena Payne; – ) was a British-born American astronomer and astrophysicist who proposed in her 1925 doctoral thesis that stars were composed primarily of hydrogen and helium. Her groundbreaking conclus ...

. While on a cross-country return trip from Tucson, where he had just completed his PhD thesis research, he was arrested by plainclothes police officers at a San Francisco bus terminal after a stranger had approached and groped him. He was promised that his criminal record would be expunged after serving three years' probation, relieving him from worrying about his employment prospects and any attempt at fighting the charges. Relocating to Washington, D.C., Kameny taught for a year in the Astronomy Department of

Georgetown University Georgetown University is a private university, private research university in the Georgetown (Washington, D.C.), Georgetown neighborhood of Washington, D.C. Founded by Bishop John Carroll (archbishop of Baltimore), John Carroll in 1789 as Georg ...

and was hired in July 1957 by the U.S.

. When they learned of his San Francisco arrest, Kameny's superiors questioned him, but he refused to provide information regarding his sexual orientation. Kameny was fired by the commission soon afterward. In January 1958, he was barred from future employment by the federal government. Author Douglass Shand-Tucci later wrote,

Kameny was the most conventional of men, focused utterly on his work, at Harvard and at Georgetown... He was thus all the more rudely shocked when the same fate befell him as we've seen befall
Prescott Townsend Prescott Townsend (June 24, 1894 – May 23, 1973) was an American cultural leader and gay rights activist, from the 1930s through the early 1970s. Early life He was born in Roxbury, Massachusetts, the fourth child (third son) of Kate Wendell S ...
, class of 1918, decades before... He was arrested. Later he would be fired. And, like Townsend, Kameny was radicalized.

Kameny appealed against his firing through the courts, losing twice before seeking review from the U.S. Supreme Court, which declined to consider the case, turning down his petition for ''

certiorari In law, ''certiorari'' is a court process to seek judicial review of a decision of a lower court or government agency. ''Certiorari'' comes from the name of an English prerogative writ, issued by a superior court to direct that the record of ...

''. After devoting himself to activism, Kameny never held a paid job again and was supported by friends and family for the rest of his life. Despite his outspoken activism, he rarely discussed his personal life and never had any long-term relationships with other men, stating merely that he had no time for them. He stated, "If I disagree with someone, I give them a chance to convince me they are right. And if they fail, then I am right and they are wrong and I will just have to fight them until they change." Kameny eschewed conventional racial designations; throughout his life, he consistently cited his race as "human".

Gay rights activism

In 1961, Kameny and Jack Nichols, fellow co-founder of the Washington, D.C., branch of the

Mattachine Society The Mattachine Society (), founded in 1950, was an early national gay rights organization in the United States, perhaps preceded only by Chicago's Society for Human Rights. Communist and labor activist Harry Hay formed the group with a collection ...

, launched some of the earliest public protests by gays and lesbians with a picket line at the White House on April 17, 1965. In coalition with New York's Mattachine Society and the

Daughters of Bilitis The Daughters of Bilitis , also called the DOB or the Daughters, was the first lesbian civil and political rights organization in the United States. The organization, formed in San Francisco in 1955, was conceived as a social alternative to lesb ...

, the picketing expanded to target the

United Nations The United Nations (UN) is an intergovernmental organization whose stated purposes are to maintain international peace and international security, security, develop friendly relations among nations, achieve international cooperation, and be ...

, the

Pentagon In geometry, a pentagon (from the Greek πέντε ''pente'' meaning ''five'' and γωνία ''gonia'' meaning ''angle'') is any five-sided polygon or 5-gon. The sum of the internal angles in a simple pentagon is 540°. A pentagon may be simpl ...

, the

United States Civil Service Commission The United States Civil Service Commission was a government agency of the federal government of the United States and was created to select employees of federal government on merit rather than relationships. In 1979, it was dissolved as part of t ...

, and Philadelphia's

Independence Hall Independence Hall is a historic civic building in Philadelphia, where both the United States Declaration of Independence and the United States Constitution were debated and adopted by America's Founding Fathers of the United States, Founding Fa ...

for what became known as the

Annual Reminder The Annual Reminders were a series of early pickets organized by gay organizations, held yearly from 1965 through 1969. The Reminder took place each July 4 at Independence Hall in Philadelphia and were among the earliest LGBT demonstrations in the ...

for gay rights. Kameny also wrote to President Kennedy asking him to change the rules on homosexuals being purged from the government. In 1963, Kameny and Mattachine launched a campaign to overturn D.C. sodomy laws; he personally drafted a bill that finally passed in 1993. He also worked to remove the classification of homosexuality as a mental disorder from the

American Psychiatric Association The American Psychiatric Association (APA) is the main professional organization of psychiatrists and trainee psychiatrists in the United States, and the largest psychiatric organization in the world. It has more than 37,000 members are involve ...

Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders The ''Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders'' (DSM; latest edition: DSM-5-TR, published in March 2022) is a publication by the American Psychiatric Association (APA) for the classification of mental disorders using a common langua ...

. In 1964, Kameny argued that homosexuals faced more severe discrimination than blacks because the federal government did not help them and actively discriminated against them. He said that homosexuals would fare worse from the success of the

civil rights movement The civil rights movement was a nonviolent social and political movement and campaign from 1954 to 1968 in the United States to abolish legalized institutional Racial segregation in the United States, racial segregation, Racial discrimination ...

: "Now that it is becoming unfashionable to discriminate against Negroes, discrimination against homosexuals will be on the increase... Homosexuality represents the last major area where prejudice and discrimination are prevalent in this country." Unlike other homosexual activists at the time, Kameny rejected the idea that homosexuality was inferior to heterosexuality: Kameny further argued that homosexuality can be a social good: "I take the stand that not only is homosexuality, whether by inclination or overt act, not immoral, but that homosexual acts engaged in by consenting adults are moral, in a positive and real sense, and are right, good and desirable, both for the individual participants and for the society in which they live." Eventually, he coined the slogan " Gay is Good" after listening to

Stokely Carmichael Kwame Ture (; born Stokely Standiford Churchill Carmichael; June 29, 1941November 15, 1998) was a prominent organizer in the civil rights movement in the United States and the global pan-African movement. Born in Trinidad, he grew up in the Unite ...

chant "

black is beautiful Black is beautiful is a cultural movement that was started in the United States in the 1960s by African Americans. It later spread beyond the United States, most prominently in the writings of the Black Consciousness Movement of Steve Biko in ...

" in 1968.

1970–2000

In 1971, Kameny became the first openly gay candidate for the

United States Congress The United States Congress is the legislature of the federal government of the United States. It is bicameral, composed of a lower body, the House of Representatives, and an upper body, the Senate. It meets in the U.S. Capitol in Washing ...

when he ran in the District of Columbia's first election for a non-voting Congressional delegate. Following his defeat by Democrat

Walter E. Fauntroy Walter Edward Fauntroy (born February 6, 1933) is an American pastor, civil rights activist, and politician who was a delegate to the United States House of Representatives and a candidate for the 1972 and 1976 Democratic presidential nominations ...

, Kameny and his campaign organization created the Gay and Lesbian Alliance of Washington, D.C., an organization which continues to lobby government and press the case for equal rights. In 1972, Kameny and

Barbara Gittings Barbara Gittings (July 31, 1932 – February 18, 2007) was a prominent American activist for LGBT equality. She organized the New York chapter of the Daughters of Bilitis (DOB) from 1958 to 1963, edited the national DOB magazine ''The Ladd ...

convinced the

(APA) to hold a debate, "Psychiatry: Friend or Foe to the Homosexual?; A Dialogue" at their annual meeting in Dallas. It was for this debate that Dr.

John E. Fryer John Ercel Fryer, M.D. (November 7, 1937 – February 21, 2003)Birth certificate in the John E. Fryer archive at the Historical Society of Pennsylvania, Box 38 was an American psychiatrist and gay rights activist best known for his anonymous spee ...

, a gay psychiatrist in disguise as "Dr. Henry Anonymous", testified as to how homosexuality being listed as a mental disease in the APA's ''

'' (DSM) affected the lives of gay psychiatrists and other homosexuals. Kameny had approached numerous gay psychiatrists, but Fryer was the only one who agreed to testify, and even he would only do so in disguise for fear of losing his position at

Temple University Temple University (Temple or TU) is a public state-related research university in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. It was founded in 1884 by the Baptist minister Russell Conwell and his congregation Grace Baptist Church of Philadelphia then called Ba ...

, where he did not have tenure.Scasta, David L. (2003
"John E. Fryer, MD, and the Dr. H. Anonymous Episode"
in Drescher, Jack and Merlino, Joseph P. (eds.) (2012) ''American Psychiatry and Homosexuality: An Oral History'' Routledge. pp. 15–28 ; originally published in the ''Journal of Gay & Lesbian Psychotherapy'' 6(4):73–84. The following year, the APA removed homosexuality from the DSM. Kameny described that day – December 15, 1973 – as the day "we were cured en masse by the psychiatrists." '' Conduct Unbecoming: Gays and Lesbians in the US Military'' author

Randy Shilts Randy Shilts (August 8, 1951February 17, 1994) was an American journalist and author. After studying journalism at the University of Oregon, Shilts began working as a reporter for both '' The Advocate'' and the ''San Francisco Chronicle'', as wel ...

documented Kameny's work in advising several service members in their attempts to receive honorable discharges after being discovered to be gay. For 18-year-old Marine Jeffrey Dunbar:

Kameny lined up gay ex-Marines to testify at the young man's hearing. ''
The Washington Post ''The Washington Post'' (also known as the ''Post'' and, informally, ''WaPo'') is an American daily newspaper published in Washington, D.C. It is the most widely circulated newspaper within the Washington metropolitan area and has a large nati ...
'' ran an editorial supporting an upgraded discharge, noting that Dunbar "was involved in no scandal and had brought no shame on the Marine Corps", and called the undesirable discharge a "strange and, we think, pointless way of pursuing military 'justice'."

In 1975, his search for a gay service member with an impeccable record to initiate a challenge to the military's ban on homosexuals culminated in protégé

Leonard Matlovich Technical Sergeant Leonard Phillip Matlovich (July 6, 1943 – June 22, 1988) was an American Vietnam War veteran, race relations instructor, and recipient of the Purple Heart and the Bronze Star. He was the first gay service member to purposely ...

, a Technical Sergeant in the United States Air Force with 11 years of unblemished service and a Purple Heart and Bronze Star, purposely outing himself to his commanding officer on March 6, 1975. Matlovich had first read about Kameny's goal in an interview in the ''

Air Force Times ''Air Force Times'' is a newspaper published 26 times per year to provide active, reserve and retired United States Air Force and Air National Guard personnel and their families with news, information, analysis, community and lifestyle features, e ...

''. Talking first by telephone, they eventually met and, along with ACLU attorney David Addlestone, planned the legal challenge. Their relationship was strained after Matlovich's interview with the ''New York Times Magazine'', as Kameny felt that Matlovich had portrayed the gay community negatively by saying that he would have preferred to be straight. Discharged in October 1975, Matlovich was ordered reinstated by a federal district court in 1980 in a ruling that, technically, would only have applied to him. Convinced the Air Force would create another excuse to discharge him again, Matlovich accepted a financial settlement instead, and continued his gay activism work until his death from

AIDS Human immunodeficiency virus infection and acquired immunodeficiency syndrome (HIV/AIDS) is a spectrum of conditions caused by infection with the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV), a retrovirus. Following initial infection an individual m ...

complications in June 1988. Kameny was an honorary pallbearer at his funeral and spoke at graveside services in Washington, D.C.'s

Congressional Cemetery The Congressional Cemetery, officially Washington Parish Burial Ground, is a historic and active cemetery located at 1801 E Street, SE, in Washington, D.C., on the west bank of the Anacostia River. It is the only American "cemetery of national m ...

. On March 26, 1977, Kameny and a dozen other members of the gay and lesbian community, under the leadership of the then-

National Gay Task Force The National LGBTQ Task Force is an American social justice advocacy non-profit organizing the grassroots power of the lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer (LGBTQ) community. Also known as The Task Force, the organization supports act ...

, briefed then-Public Liaison

Midge Costanza Margaret "Midge" Costanza (November 28, 1932 – March 23, 2010) was an American Presidential advisor, social and political activist. A lifelong champion of gay and women's rights, she was known for her wit, outspoken manner and commitment to ...

on much-needed changes in federal laws and policies. This was the first time that gay rights were officially discussed at the White House. Kameny was appointed as the first openly gay member of the District of Columbia's Human Rights Commission in the 1970s. Frank Kameny in June 2009

2000–2011

In 2007, Kameny's death was mistakenly reported by ''

The Advocate An advocate is a professional in the field of law. The Advocate, The Advocates or Advocate may also refer to: Magazines * ''The Advocate'' (LGBT magazine), an LGBT magazine based in the United States *''The Harvard Advocate'', a literary magazin ...

'' in its May 22 "Pride issue", alongside a mistaken report that he had HIV. The report was retracted with an apology, and Kameny asked ''The Advocate'', "Did you give a date of death?" In 2007, Kameny wrote a letter to the conservative, anti-gay publication

WorldNetDaily ''WND'' (formerly ''WorldNetDaily'') is an American far-right fake news website. It is known for promoting falsehoods and conspiracy theories, including the false claim that former President Barack Obama was not born in the United States. T ...

in defense of

Idaho Idaho ( ) is a state in the Pacific Northwest region of the Western United States. To the north, it shares a small portion of the Canada–United States border with the province of British Columbia. It borders the states of Montana and Wyom ...

Republican Republican can refer to: Political ideology * An advocate of a republic, a type of government that is not a monarchy or dictatorship, and is usually associated with the rule of law. ** Republicanism, the ideology in support of republics or agains ...

senator A senate is a deliberative assembly, often the upper house or chamber of a bicameral legislature. The name comes from the ancient Roman Senate (Latin: ''Senatus''), so-called as an assembly of the senior (Latin: ''senex'' meaning "the el ...

Larry Craig Lawrence Edwin Craig (born July 20, 1945) is an American retired politician from the state of Idaho. A Republican Party (United States), Republican, he served 18 years in the United States Senate (1991–2009), preceded by 10 years in the U.S. ...

regarding Craig's arrest for solicitation of sex in a Minneapolis airport bathroom; he ended it with the following: "I am no admirer of Larry Craig and hold out no brief for him. He is a self-deluding hypocritical homophobic bigot. But fair is fair. He committed no crime in Minneapolis and should not suffer as if he did." ''

The New York Times ''The New York Times'' (''the Times'', ''NYT'', or the Gray Lady) is a daily newspaper based in New York City with a worldwide readership reported in 2020 to comprise a declining 840,000 paid print subscribers, and a growing 6 million paid ...

'''

Frank Rich Frank Hart Rich Jr. (born 1949) is an American essayist and liberal op-ed columnist, who held various positions within ''The New York Times'' from 1980 to 2011. He has also produced television series and documentaries for HBO. Rich is current ...

joined Kameny in calling for Craig's pardon. In November 2007, Kameny wrote an open letter of protest to NBC journalist

Tom Brokaw Thomas John Brokaw (; born February 6, 1940) is an American retired network television journalist and author. He first served as the co-anchor of ''The Today Show'' from 1976 to 1981 with Jane Pauley, then as the anchor and managing editor of '' ...

(and his publisher

Random House Random House is an American book publisher and the largest general-interest paperback publisher in the world. The company has several independently managed subsidiaries around the world. It is part of Penguin Random House, which is owned by Germ ...

), who wrote ''Boom!: Voices of the Sixties Personal Reflections on the '60s and Today'', over the total lack of mention of gay and lesbian rights activism during the 1960s and upbraiding Brokaw for having "'de-gayed' an entire generation". The letter was co-signed by former ''Washington Post'' editor

Howard Kurtz Howard Alan Kurtz (; born August 1, 1953) is an American journalist and author best known for his coverage of the media. Kurtz is the host of Fox News's ''Media Buzz'' program, the successor to ''Fox News Watch''. He is the former media writer fo ...

, Harry Rubinstein (curator,

National Museum of American History The National Museum of American History: Kenneth E. Behring Center collects, preserves, and displays the heritage of the United States in the areas of social, political, cultural, scientific, and military history. Among the items on display is t ...

John Earl Haynes John Earl Haynes (born 1944) is an American historian who worked as a specialist in 20th-century political history in the Manuscript Division of the Library of Congress. He is known for his books on the subject of the American Communist and anti- ...

, Dudley Clendinen and Stephen Bottum. Brokaw appeared on Kurtz's CNN show '' Reliable Sources'' to defend the exclusion, saying that "the gay rights movement came slightly later. It lifted off during that time and I had to make some choices about what I was going to concentrate on. The big issues were the anti-war movement, the counterculture."

Death

Kameny suffered from heart disease in his last years, but maintained a full schedule of public appearances, his last being a speech to an LGBT group in Washington, D.C. on September 30, 2011. Kameny was found dead in his Washington home on October 11, 2011 (

National Coming Out Day National Coming Out Day (NCOD) is an annual LGBT awareness day observed on October 11, to support lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people ( the LGBT community, sometimes also called the queer community) in "coming out of the closet". First ...

). The medical examiner determined the cause of death to be natural causes due to

arteriosclerotic cardiovascular disease Atherosclerosis is a pattern of the disease arteriosclerosis in which the wall of the artery develops abnormalities, called lesions. These lesions may lead to narrowing due to the buildup of atheromatous plaque. At onset there are usually no sy ...

DC statehood activism

Hector Rodriguez and Frank Kameny at a DC Statehood Rally on July 4, 2011

In 1981, Kameny became an elected delegate to the District of Columbia Statehood Constitutional Convention, which was an initiative towards

DC statehood The District of Columbia statehood movement is a political movement that advocates making the District of Columbia a U.S. state, to provide the residents of the District of Columbia with voting representation in the Congress and complete ...

. He remained an advocate for

through the end of his life. A

resident Resident may refer to: People and functions * Resident minister, a representative of a government in a foreign country * Resident (medicine), a stage of postgraduate medical training * Resident (pharmacy), a stage of postgraduate pharmaceutic ...

of the Palisades, he was a fixture at the neighborhood's annual

July 4 Events Pre-1600 * 362 BC – Battle of Mantinea: The Thebans, led by Epaminondas, defeated the Spartans. * 414 – Emperor Theodosius II, age 13, yields power to his older sister Aelia Pulcheria, who reigned as regent and proclaim ...

parade.

Awards and honors

In 2006, Kameny and

received the first

, MD Award from the American Psychiatric Association. In 2007, the

Smithsonian Institution The Smithsonian Institution ( ), or simply the Smithsonian, is a group of museums and education and research centers, the largest such complex in the world, created by the U.S. government "for the increase and diffusion of knowledge". Founded ...

included Kameny's picket signs carried in front of the

White House The White House is the official residence and workplace of the president of the United States. It is located at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue NW in Washington, D.C., and has been the residence of every U.S. president since John Adams in 1800. ...

in 1965 in the Smithsonian exhibit "Treasures of American History". The Smithsonian now has 12 of the original picket signs carried by gay and lesbian Americans at the first demonstration for gay rights held in front of the White House. The

Library of Congress The Library of Congress (LOC) is the research library that officially serves the United States Congress and is the ''de facto'' national library of the United States. It is the oldest federal cultural institution in the country. The library is ...

acquired Kameny's papers in 2006, documenting his life and leadership. In February 2009, Kameny's home in Washington was designated as a Washington, D.C. historic landmark by the District of Columbia's Historic Preservation Review Board. On June 29, 2009, John Berry (Director of the

Office of Personnel Management An office is a space where an organization's employees perform administrative work in order to support and realize objects and goals of the organization. The word "office" may also denote a position within an organization with specific duti ...

) formally apologized to Kameny on behalf of the United States government. Berry, who is openly gay, presented Kameny with the Theodore Roosevelt Award, the OPM's most prestigious award. On June 10, 2010, following a unanimous vote by the

Dupont Circle Dupont Circle (or DuPont Circle) is a traffic circle, park, neighborhood and historic district in Northwest Washington, D.C. The Dupont Circle neighborhood is bounded approximately by 16th Street NW to the east, 22nd Street NW ...

Advisory Neighborhood Commission Advisory Neighborhood Commissions are bodies of local government in District of Columbia, in the United States. The ANC system was created in 1974 through a District referendum (73 percent voted "yes") in the District of Columbia Home Rule Act. T ...

, Washington, D.C. mayor

Adrian Fenty Adrian Malik Fenty (born December 6, 1970) is an American politician who served as the sixth mayor of the District of Columbia. He served one term, from 2007 to 2011, losing his bid for reelection at the primary level to Democrat Vincent C. Gray ...

unveiled new street signs designating 17th Street between P and R streets, N.W., as "Frank Kameny Way" in Kameny's honor. At a luncheon on December 10, 2010, in the Caucus room of the

Cannon House Office Building The Cannon House Office Building, often called the "Old House Office Building," completed in 1908, is the oldest congressional office building as well as a significant example of the Beaux-Arts style of architecture. It occupies a site south of t ...

, Kameny was honored with the 2010 Cornelius R. "Neil" Alexander Humanitarian Award. Kameny was invited to attend the December 22, 2010, ceremony where President

Barack Obama Barack Hussein Obama II ( ; born August 4, 1961) is an American politician who served as the 44th president of the United States from 2009 to 2017. A member of the Democratic Party, Obama was the first African-American president of the U ...

signed the

Don't Ask, Don't Tell Repeal Act of 2010 The Don't Ask, Don't Tell Repeal Act of 2010 (, ) is a landmark United States federal statute enacted in December 2010 that established a process for ending the "don't ask, don't tell" (DADT) policy (), thus allowing gay, lesbian, and bisexu ...

. Kameny was a member of

Triangle Foundation Equality Michigan is an American civil rights, advocacy and anti-violence organization serving Michigan's lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) community. Equality Michigan serves Michigan's LGBT community through victims services, lobbying ...

's Board of Advisors. Following Kameny's death, the giant

rainbow flag A rainbow flag is a multicolored flag consisting of the colors of the rainbow. The designs differ, but many of the colors are based on the spectral colors of the visible light spectrum. The LGBT flag introduced in 1978 is the most recognized u ...

on the flagpole at the corner of Market Street and Castro Street in the Castro neighborhood of San Francisco was flown at half-staff for 24 hours beginning on the afternoon of October 12, 2011 at the request of the creator of the rainbow flag, Gilbert Baker. On November 2, 2011, Kameny's house was listed on the

National Register of Historic Places The National Register of Historic Places (NRHP) is the United States federal government's official list of districts, sites, buildings, structures and objects deemed worthy of preservation for their historical significance or "great artistic v ...

. (__ pages, with __ figures and __ photos) In January 2012, during its national meeting, the

American Astronomical Society The American Astronomical Society (AAS, sometimes spoken as "double-A-S") is an American society of professional astronomers and other interested individuals, headquartered in Washington, DC. The primary objective of the AAS is to promote the adv ...

held a public ceremony to present a posthumous certificate of appreciation to Kameny, recognizing "his exemplary lifelong commitment to promoting equal rights for homosexual men and women" and how his "activism removed discriminatory barriers that had cut short many careers." The recognition had been planned several months before his death, but Kameny passed before the meeting took place. The award was accepted on behalf of Kameny by his close personal friend Mr. Charles Francis, cofounder of the Kameny Papers Project, and three LGBTQ astronomers at various career stages. On July 3, 2012,

asteroid An asteroid is a minor planet of the inner Solar System. Sizes and shapes of asteroids vary significantly, ranging from 1-meter rocks to a dwarf planet almost 1000 km in diameter; they are rocky, metallic or icy bodies with no atmosphere. ...

(40463) ''Frankkameny'' was named in Kameny's honor by the

International Astronomical Union The International Astronomical Union (IAU; french: link=yes, Union astronomique internationale, UAI) is a nongovernmental organisation with the objective of advancing astronomy in all aspects, including promoting astronomical research, outreac ...

and the

Minor Planet Center The Minor Planet Center (MPC) is the official body for observing and reporting on minor planets under the auspices of the International Astronomical Union (IAU). Founded in 1947, it operates at the Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory. Function ...

. In 2013, Kameny was inducted into the

Legacy Walk The Legacy Walk is an outdoor public display on North Halsted Street in Chicago, Illinois, United States, which celebrates LGBT contributions to world history and culture. According to its website, it is "the world's only outdoor museum walk and y ...

, an outdoor public display in Chicago which celebrates

LGBT ' is an initialism that stands for lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender. In use since the 1990s, the initialism, as well as some of its common variants, functions as an umbrella term for sexuality and gender identity. The LGBT term is a ...

history and people. In 2015, Kameny received a U.S. Veterans Administration memorial headstone, at Washington, D.C.'s

at his memorial site; the headstone was dedicated during a ceremony on the morning of November 11, 2015, on

Veterans Day Veterans Day (originally known as Armistice Day) is a federal holiday in the United States observed annually on November 11, for honoring military veterans of the United States Armed Forces (who were discharged under conditions other than di ...

. In front of the headstone is a marker inscribed with the slogan "Gay is Good". Kameny coined that slogan, and in a 2009 AP interview said about coining it, "If I am remembered for anything I hope it will be that." In June 2019, Kameny was one of the inaugural fifty American "pioneers, trailblazers, and heroes" inducted on the

National LGBTQ Wall of Honor The National LGBTQ Wall of Honor is an American memorial wall in New York City dedicated to LGBTQ "pioneers, trailblazers, and heroes." The wall is located inside of the Stonewall Inn and is a part of the Stonewall National Monument, the first U. ...

within the

Stonewall National Monument Stonewall National Monument is a U.S. national monument in the West Village neighborhood of Greenwich Village in Lower Manhattan, New York City. The designated area includes the Stonewall Inn, the Christopher Park, and nearby streets including ...

(SNM) in

New York City New York, often called New York City or NYC, is the List of United States cities by population, most populous city in the United States. With a 2020 population of 8,804,190 distributed over , New York City is also the L ...

Stonewall Inn The Stonewall Inn, often shortened to Stonewall, is a gay bar and recreational tavern in the Greenwich Village neighborhood of Lower Manhattan, New York City, and the site of the Stonewall riots of 1969, which is widely considered to be the s ...

. The SNM is the first

U.S. national monument In the United States, a national monument is a protected area that can be created from any land owned or controlled by the federal government by proclamation of the President of the United States or an act of Congress. National monuments pr ...

dedicated to

LGBTQ rights Rights affecting lesbian, gay, Bisexuality, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) people vary greatly by country or jurisdiction—encompassing everything from the legal recognition of same-sex marriage to the Capital punishment for homosexualit ...

and

history History (derived ) is the systematic study and the documentation of the human activity. The time period of event before the History of writing#Inventions of writing, invention of writing systems is considered prehistory. "History" is an umbr ...

, and the wall's unveiling was timed to take place during the 50th anniversary of the

Stonewall riots The Stonewall riots (also known as the Stonewall uprising, Stonewall rebellion, or simply Stonewall) were a series of spontaneous protests by members of the gay community in response to a police raid that began in the early morning hours of Ju ...

. The

National LGBTQ+ Bar Association The National LGBTQ+ Bar Association, formerly the National Lesbian and Gay Law Association and the National LGBT Bar Association, is a national association of lawyers, judges and other legal professionals, law students, activists, and affiliated ...

presents the Frank Kameny Award annually in honor of Kameny, the only recipient of the association's Dan Bradley Award who was not a law school graduate, to a member of the LGBTQ+ community who has paved the way for important legal victories without a United States Juris Doctor. On June 2, 2021, Kameny was featured on that day's

Google Doodle A Google Doodle is a special, temporary alteration of the logo on Google's homepages intended to commemorate holidays, events, achievements, and notable historical figures. The first Google Doodle honored the 1998 edition of the long-running an ...

in celebration of

Pride Month LGBT Pride Month is a month, typically in June, dedicated to celebration and commemoration of lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) pride. Pride Month began after the Stonewall riots, a series of gay liberation protests in 1969, and ha ...

References

Citations Bibliography * Bianco, David (1999). ''Gay Essentials: Facts for Your Queer Brain''. Los Angeles: Alyson Books. . * Cervini, Eric (2020). ''The Deviant's War: The Homosexual vs. the United States of America''. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux. * Gambone, Philip (2010) ''Travels in a Gay Nation: Portraits of LGBTQ Americans''. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press. * Kisseloff, Jeff (2007). ''Generation on Fire: Voices of Protest from the 1960s, an Oral History''. Lexington: University Press of Kentucky. * Murdoch, Joyce and Price, Deb (2001). ''Courting Justice: Gay Men and Lesbians v. the Supreme Court''. New York: Basic Books.

External links

Biographical
"Frank Kameny"
in '' GLBTQ, an Encyclopedia of Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual and Queer Culture''
Kameny Papers collection
at the

Biography of Kameny

Frank Kameny papers held by the Library of Congress
Congressional testimony
Amending District of Columbia Charitable Solicitation Act, August 8, 1963, pp. 22–93, 118–19
Interviews
Kameny on Race Questionnaires

The Straight Dope "The Straight Dope" was a question-and-answer newspaper column written under the pseudonym Cecil Adams. Contributions were made by multiple authors, and it was illustrated (also pseudonymously) by Slug Signorino. It was first published in 1973 in ...

, November 22, 1991
Interview by Jack Nichols
April 28, 1997 * An oral history of Kameny is included in the 2006 book '' Generation on Fire: Voices of Protest from the 1960s'' by Jeff Kisseloff
Frank Kameny on ''The 7th Avenue Project''
radio show, July 4, 2010 News

''

The Washington Post ''The Washington Post'' (also known as the ''Post'' and, informally, ''WaPo'') is an American daily newspaper published in Washington, D.C. It is the most widely circulated newspaper within the Washington metropolitan area and has a large nati ...

'', July 23, 2005
"Gay Is Good: How Frank Kameny Changed the Face of America"
''

Metro Weekly ''Metro Weekly'' is a free weekly magazine for the lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) community in Washington, D.C., United States. It was first published on May 5, 1994. ''Metro Weekly'' includes national and local news, interviews w ...

'', October 5, 2006
"A Pariah's Triumphand America's"

Jonathan Rauch Jonathan Charles Rauch (; born April 26, 1960) is an American author, journalist, and activist. After graduating from Yale University, Rauch worked at the ''Winston-Salem Journal'' in North Carolina, for ''National Journal'', and later for ''The ...

, December 7, 2006
"The Man Who Invented Gay Rights"

CNN CNN (Cable News Network) is a multinational cable news channel headquartered in Atlanta, Georgia, U.S. Founded in 1980 by American media proprietor Ted Turner and Reese Schonfeld as a 24-hour cable news channel, and presently owned by the M ...

, December 24, 2010
"Frank Kameny Debates Same-Sex Marriage in 1974 on 'The Advocates (VIDEO)
''

Huffington Post ''HuffPost'' (formerly ''The Huffington Post'' until 2017 and sometimes abbreviated ''HuffPo'') is an American progressive news website, with localized and international editions. The site offers news, satire, blogs, and original content, and ...

'', October 11, 2012
"An Accidental Activist (online title: Frank Kameny's Orderly, Square Gay-Rights Activism"
by Caleb Crain, ''The New Yorker'', June 29, 2020
Subversives: Stories from the Red Scare
Lesson by Ursula Wolfe-Rocca at the Zinn Education Project (Frank Kameny is featured in this lesson). {{DEFAULTSORT:Kameny, Frank 1925 births 2011 deaths American astronomers Jewish American atheists American civil servants Jewish American military personnel American LGBT military personnel Gay military personnel United States Army personnel of World War II Gay politicians Gay scientists Harvard University alumni LGBT Jews American LGBT scientists LGBT people from New York (state) American LGBT politicians LGBT rights activists from the United States Activists from New York City People from Washington, D.C. Scientists from New York (state) Mattachine Society