Before Stonewall: How We Got Where We Are

This amazing half-century:  April 17, 1965, was the date of the first gay-rights picket march in front of the White House, a silent protest led by Frank Kameny and Barbara Gittings, which for five years was repeated at intervals in Washington at the White House and the Pentagon, and at Independence Hall in Philadelphia. Below are some of Kameny's original signs carried in the 1965 picket line, as proudly displayed at the Smithsonian Institution.

And this week ABC published an interview, not embeddable, with Paul Kuntzler, 73, another participant in the picket march, which you can see here.

It's hard now to recall, and for the young'uns amongst us, nearly impossible to comprehend, the overwhelming homophobia of society in those days, and the unceasing, sweaty-palmed fear of being found out - or merely suspected - as a homosexual.  Here in the Deep South, at any rate, it was the Worst Thing in the World, worse than being a Communist, even: a traitor not merely to your country, but to God and the entire human race. Seriously - that was how people viewed gayness back then - the unmentionable, unforgiveable sin. Even when I came out at the end of the 1970's, all my good church friends who were "just like family" promptly dropped me like a hot potato, and shunned me ever afterwards.

And it truly boggles your Head Trucker's mind to look around and observe the vast difference in public acceptance that has occurred in just one lifetime - mine. We have lived through a slow-motion revolution these fifty years, with results like gay marriage that were merely daydreams, flights of fantasy, when your Head Trucker came out. It's been quite a journey; I'm glad I have lived to see this day.

Of course many others followed in the footsteps of Kameny and Gittings to lead the onward march for equality, justice, and dignity, and we owe everyone who has lent a hand to the struggle a continuing debt of gratitude for the rights and freedoms we now enjoy - and, we hope, will be enjoyed by many generations of LGBT people in years to come.

Here is Frank Kameny, the loud, proud, grand old man of the gay-rights movement, discussing how he came to be an activist after he was summarily fired from his civil-service job in 1957 for being gay, and took his case all the way to the Supreme Court a few years later:




After Kameny's death in 2011 at the age of 86, CBS's Mark Irvine commemorated his lfie and work with this report, which includes a clip of the White House picket line in 1965:




And here is the full 1984 documentary Before Stonewall, narrated by author and activist Rita Mae Brown, tracing the evolution of gay life and gay activism from the 1920's onward: a fascinating look at our people's recent past, the once-unspeakable history which ought to be required viewing for all the young folks before they get issued their pink cards:




As the film makes clear, where once to be gay and be yourself, it was necessary to be a disreputable denizen of the so-called underworld, now we can be happy, ordinary, boring middle-class folks just like our straight moms and dads and brothers and sisters, or for the politically ambitious, even Senators, Ambassadors, and perhaps one day soon, President - a refreshing and long-overdue change in my view.

The Lavender Scare

Your Head Trucker believes it to be very important that we remember the past and deeply consider where we were just a few years ago, only half a lifetime.  People who don't remember the past are liable to be sucked under the wheels of the ever-turning hate machine that is always, always in the midst of the human race - and always in the human heart - let's not let that happen.

It was a time when a federal agency could send a memo like this to an employee - just before firing him, with no recourse, no appeal:

We have received a report concerning you. It has been reported that you had permitted a man to perform a homosexual act (fellatio) on you. Also, that you related that you find members of the male sex attractive; that you have been in bed with men; and that you have enjoyed embracing them. Is this report true?

New film:



And do take time to listen to the story of our grand old man, Frank Kameny, the first who ever took the government to court over gay rights, and the guy who invented the phrase "Gay is Good" (we should bring that back and use it more often):



You have to remember it was a very different period; kids and adults alike had it drilled into their heads that the homos were an active, terrifying danger to society, as this warning film from 1961 shows:



And so gays and lesbians were spied on, sent to reform school, expelled from college, fired from their jobs, beaten, arrested, imprisoned, confined in mental wards, lobotomized, and hounded to death for being evil queers: go read up on the Boise witch hunt in Idaho or the Johns Committee in Florida. To name but two.

All our gains have been very hard-won.  There are many among us who remember those days; and many an unknown soul, isolated and afraid, who did not survive the hatred and persecution.  Don't forget, is all I'm saying. 

Never forget.

More striking in his correspondence, however, is an almost magisterial serenity. He exhibits an unshakable and unmistakably American confidence that all the great and mighty, no matter their number or power, must bow to one weak man who has the Founders' promise on his side. "We are honorable people who deal with others honorably and in good faith," he insisted to the Un-American Activities Committee. "We expect to be dealt with in the same fashion -- especially by our governmental officials." There you hear the pipsqueak, indomitable voice of equality.

For Kameny's papers to join Thurgood Marshall's and Daniel Patrick Moynihan's, and for his signs to join Jefferson's writing desk and Lincoln's inkwell, seems fitting. All of those men understood that the words of 1776 set in motion a moral engine unlike any the world had ever seen; and all understood that the logic of equality could be delayed but not denied. Kameny, like them, believed that the Declaration of Independence means exactly what it says, and like them he made its promise his purpose.

My partner, Michael, and I are among the millions who owe some large measure of our happiness to Kameny's pursuits. This Thanksgiving found me grateful that one pariah fought back, never imagining he could fail; even more grateful to live in a country with a conscience; most grateful of all to know that there are generations of Franklin Kamenys yet to be born.

--Jonathan Rauch, 2006

Clarifications and Comments on That Memo

The Washington Blade reports:

Gay rights attorney Evan Wolfson, who heads the same-sex marriage advocacy group Freedom To Marry, said congressional passage of the Domestic Partnership Benefits and Obligations Act would take precedent over DOMA in the area of federal employee benefits. Thus approval of that measure would enable the Obama administration to provide full federal personnel benefits to same-sex partners of federal employees without the repeal of DOMA.

"A more recent bill would undo or at least limit the other one," Wolfson said.

Hirsch of Federal GLOBE said White House officials kept his group informed of the administration's efforts to prepare the presidential memorandum during the past several months. He said the plan all along was to issue the memorandum during LGBT Pride Month in June. He said the memorandum's signing shortly after the administration issued its controversial defense of DOMA in federal court, in response to a lawsuit challenging DOMA, was coincidental.

Hirsch and Solmonese of HRC each called the presidential memorandum a small but important first step in the ongoing effort to provide equal rights and treatment of LGBT people who work for the federal government.

According to Hirsch, a presidential memorandum has the same force of law as a presidential executive order, with the memorandum used more often in federal personnel matters. Hirsch and White House officials noted that some news accounts claiming that a presidential memorandum expires at the end of a president's term in office are incorrect. A presidential memorandum remains in effect indefinitely unless another president rescinds it, just as presidents can rescind executive orders issued by their predecessors.

Solmonese pointed to a statement by Berry in a phone conference for reporters, in which the gay OPM director said the president's memorandum would give him greater authority to prohibit workplace discrimination against LGBT employees.

"Although today's actions are only the beginning in what will be a multi-step process towards achieving real and tangible equality for our community, it is no doubt an important first step," Solmonese said. " We commend President Obama and his administration for taking this action to provide some basic benefits for same-sex partners of federal employees and his endorsement of legislation that would provide domestic partner health benefits."

Kameny is the first known gay person to challenge the federal government after he was fired for being gay from his job as a civilian astronomer with the Army the late 1950s, He called Obama's presidential memorandum an important development.

"There's been a great deal of adverse criticism of the president in recent weeks because people got the feeling that things they wanted to see weren't happening," Kameny said. "My feeling is he made clear that he's on the right side, he's with us, things are moving as fast as he can get them to move, and I feel very satisfied."

Leonard Hirsch has posted a personal reflection on his recent life-threatening illness and the President's action here (PDF document).

Related links:

Federal GLOBE - Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual, and Transgender Employees of the Federal Government

GLIFAA - Gays and Lesbians in Foreign Affairs Agencies

Noted in the GLIFAA press release:

President Obama's announcement today follows earlier news reports that Secretary Clinton would soon expand the State Department's definition of "Eligible Family Member" (EFM) to include same-sex and opposite-sex domestic partners and their children. Presently, domestic partners are classified as "Members of Household" (MOHs), a term that denies critical protections to family members, including those separated from their employee partners who have served in Iraq and Afghanistan. The Foreign Service Act of 1980 grants the Secretary of State exclusive authority to define the term EFM, and GLIFAA has pushed for years to update the definition of the term. GLIFAA also thanks Congresswoman Baldwin, Congressman Berman, Congresswoman Ros-Lehtinen, Congressman Ackerman, Senator Feingold, and Senator Wyden, who repeatedly wrote Secretary Rice and Secretary Clinton to remind them of the hardships facing lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) families serving overseas.

As soon as she took office, Secretary Clinton received a letter from over 2,200 current and former employees of the State Department and other foreign affairs agencies asking her to treat all families equally: "We question the logic of leaving same-sex partners to fend for themselves during an emergency evacuation of a high danger post. We are embarrassed when the Department will reimburse a variety of moving expenses, including the cost of transporting a pet, when an employee is assigned overseas, but will not do the same for a same-sex partner... Madam Secretary, we believe that no colleague of ours is a second-class colleague, and no colleague's family is a second-class family." Ninety-two percent (92%) of the letter's signers did not have an MOH family member but signed because, like Secretary Clinton, they know that leaving families vulnerable and without diplomatic protections while in service to the U.S. Government abroad is wrong.

The impact of H1N1 influenza on one GLIFAA family highlighted the second-class status suffered by MOHs. In Mexico, tests confirmed that one Foreign Service Officer's two sons had contracted H1N1. The Health Unit quickly sprang into action and gave Tamiflu to the children and to the employee father. However the Health Unit would not provide Tamiflu to the other father -- even though it was unavailable locally -- because he was an MOH, and not an EFM. It took the personal intervention of the Chargé d'Affaires before the Health Unit took this basic public health measure. Once regulations are revised based on the administrations guidance, no Embassy children will have to watch their parents bear this discrimination again, because all family members will have access to Tamiflu when medically appropriate.

What I Say: You wonder why the doctor or nurse, with hypodermic in hand, didn't just give the other dad the shot and keep quiet about it; lie if necessary. You wonder what kind of fricking tight-ass bureaucrat down in Mexico would sacrifice those kids' dad for the sake of a petty homophobic rule.

You wonder why the God of all Creation, the God who is Love as "the Bible says," would get all huffed up and indignant and rain down fire and brimstone over something like this, like some backwoods shyster multimillionaire TV preacher with a shit-eating grin and a hateful arrogant self-righteous heart as hard as board.

Shove it up your ass, Pat Robertson.

Obama Signs A Memo for the Gays

Well here it is boys, watch and decide for yourself what this signifies.

BTW, the elderly gentleman Obama hands the pen to after signing is Frank Kameny, whose 1958 firing from a federal job prompted him to sue the government in the first gay-rights case ever; he lost the case, but he inspired many others to activism in our cause in the years before Stonewall.

It's hot here, I'm tired and haven't read what the big blogs are saying about all this yet; maybe later after supper.

Update: Full text of the memo is here.

Seems like the big bloggers don't have much to say tonight. Maybe we're all just speechless here at the climax of six days of shock and anger. Like when you have that last conversation, ya know? . . .

I'm sorry, I didn't mean to hurt you, it was just, well - look, it's just not working anymore between us, okay? And it's hurting both of us to go on pretending like this. I wish things were different, but . . . hey, don't be mad, we can still be friends, can't we . . . ?

Hero of Freedom: Frank Kameny

As we look forward to the equal protection of the laws for all queer Americans, gaining ground in state after state, it's important to stop and remember how far we have come in the space of one lifetime. And work and vote to ensure that we keep progressing forward, not backward, as a nation.

Gays under 40 have no collective memory of how utterly terrifying it was in the days before Stonewall--and for a long time thereafter--to let other people even think you might be queer. You would quickly be shunned, fired from your job, maybe sent off to a mental hospital or even prison, and all sorts of other very nasty things; and there was absolutely no recourse at law, no defense, no protection whatsoever.

Your day-to-day survival depended on presenting an absolutely straight face to the world, to all but your gay friends. If you had any.

Yeah, in a very few places like NY and SF, you could be around other queers . . . but out here in redstateland, millions of us baby boomers were well into our 20's or 30's before we ever met an openly gay man. We had to hide our sexuality from everyone, from our classmates, teachers, employers, from our closest friends and family, from sisters and brothers, from Mom and Dad -even from our own selves sometimes.

No one had ever heard that "gay is good"; all we ever heard was the exact opposite: sick, sinful, crazy, criminal. Homo, faggot, fairy, pansy, sissy, pervert. Queer.

Gays were never talked about in movies, TV shows, or newspapers when I was growing up. There was no gay pride; no gay rights; the word gay as we mean it now did not exist in our vocabularies; the only words we had to describe ourselves were the cruel, cutting ones. Think about that, and the effect on a young man's spirit when he first realizes what he is: not a person but a thing - a despised, dreaded, hateful thing.

There were no gays in Mayberry. It simply wasn't allowed.

So it's important to remember and honor the great courage of people like Frank Kameny, speaking here in a short clip from the Human Rights Campaign, who in a time of enormous social repression had the guts to take a stand in public for freedom and civil rights.

Kameny took his case all the way to the Supreme Court in 1961; the court ruled against him, but it's fair to say Kameny is the Rosa Parks of the gay rights movement. He and others who came before us made possible the relative freedom we have today just to be ourselves.

It's a big change. Be glad, be very glad.