Whereas Stonewall was the birthplace of homosexual liberation, the motion for homosexual civic equality had begun a lot earlier. After some fizzling begins in Los Angeles and San Francisco within the early 1950’s, the hassle discovered its footing within the extra staid precincts of Washington, D.C. The leaders of this trigger might not have been “revolting” drag queens, however they have been revolutionaries, of a form.
The central determine was a Harvard-trained astronomer named Franklin E. Kameny. In 1957, Kameny was fired from his job with the Military Map Service on account of his homosexuality. Hundreds of individuals had already been terminated on such grounds, however Kameny was the primary to problem his dismissal, a choice that will, within the phrases of the authorized scholar William Eskridge, finally make him “the Rosa Parks and the Martin Luther King and the Thurgood Marshall of the homosexual rights motion.’” In 1960, Kameny appealed to the Supreme Court docket to revive his job. The petition that he wrote invoked the noblest aspirations of the American founding: life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. To the federal government’s declare that his firing was justified on account of its proper to ban these engaged in “immoral” conduct, Kameny replied with what was, for its time, a radical, even scandalous, retort: “Petitioner asserts, flatly, unequivocally, and completely uncompromisingly, that homosexuality, whether or not by mere inclination or by overt act, will not be solely not immoral, however that, for these selecting voluntarily to interact in gay acts, such acts are ethical in an actual and optimistic sense, and are good, proper, and fascinating, socially and personally.” He continued: “Of their being nothing greater than a mirrored image of historical primitive, archaic, out of date taboos and prejudices, the insurance policies are an incongruous, anachronistic relic of the Stone Age carried over into the House Age—and a dangerous relic!”
Impressed by the African-American civil rights motion, Kameny expressed his outrage at being handled as a “second-rate citizen,” and just like the leaders of that heroic battle he appealed to America’s revolutionary founding doc for redress:
We might begin with the Declaration of Independence, and its affirmation, as an “inalienable proper,” that of “the pursuit of happiness.” Certainly a most basic, unobjectionable, and unexceptionable component in human happiness is the precise to bestow affection upon, and to obtain affection from whom one needs. But, upon ache of extreme penalty, the federal government itself would abridge this proper for the gay.
Kameny’s arguments might have been revolutionary, however his objectives weren’t. He had no want to overturn the American authorities; he simply needed it to reside as much as its self-proclaimed rules. When his enchantment to the Supreme Court docket was denied, Kameny based the primary sustained group in the USA to symbolize the pursuits of “homophiles” (as some gays known as themselves on the time), the Mattachine Society of Washington, D.C., wherein capability he led peaceable protests, wrote letters to each member of Congress, and engaged in public consciousness campaigns. In 1965 — 4 years earlier than Stonewall — Kameny organized the primary picket for homosexual rights exterior the White Home. Males have been required to put on jackets and ties; ladies, blouses and skirts reaching beneath the knee. “Should you’re asking for equal employment rights,” he instructed his 9 comrades, “look employable.” Eight years later, he performed a vital position in lobbying the American Psychiatric Affiliation to take away homosexuality from its register of psychological issues.
To the youthful and extra militant homosexual liberationists of New York and San Francisco, Kameny’s dedication to liberal reform reeked of assimilationism. Lots of them got here to view Kameny with contempt, talking of him in the identical tones with which black nationalists derided Martin Luther King, Jr. Along with his fussy gown codes, his rigorously typewritten letters, and his veneration of the Structure, Kameny was a practitioner of dreaded “respectability politics,” which for radicals (then and now) has been the good scourge of American liberalism. However Kameny was no conformist. In his petition in 1960, he declared:
These whole proceedings, from the Civil Service Fee regulation by means of its administration and the ensuing opposed personnel actions, to respondents’ courtroom arguments, are a traditional, textbook train within the imposition of conformity for the sake of nothing else than conformity, and of the rigorous suppression of dissent, distinction, and non-conformity. There isn’t a extra purpose or want for a citizen’s sexual tastes or habits to evolve to these of the bulk than there’s for his gastronomic ones to take action, and there’s actually no rational foundation for making his employment, whether or not personal or by the federal government, contingent upon such conformity.
In 2015—fifty years after staging his picket exterior the White Home, and 4 years after his demise on the age of eighty-six—Kameny was vindicated when the very Supreme Court docket that had refused to listen to his case of wrongful termination dominated that the Structure acknowledged the precise of same-sex {couples} to marry.
