|
from Political News
'Gay Liberation Movement' Founder Frank Kameny's Papers Archived By Library Of Congress
October 9, 2006 -
Frank Kameny, a pioneer of "gay liberation" in the 1970s, was honored at a ceremony on October 6 in Washington, DC, where his collected papers are being transferred to the Library of Congress.
On October 7, Kameny and Barbara Gittings traveled to New York City where they became the first recipients of the American Psychiatric Association's John M. Fryer, M.D., Award recognizing their contributions to fighting against "homophobia." Kameny, 81, is retired but still active in the Gay and Lesbian Activists Alliance in Washington, DC.
Kameny was interviewed in the October 5, 2006 issue of MetroWeekly, DC-based online newspaper. In the interview, Kameny describes how he was fired from the Army Map Service in 1957 for being gay. He contacted the ACLU and filed a lawsuit against the Army for his firing but lost at the lower court level.
Kameny says he decided to file a legal brief on behalf of gays before the Supreme Court and used The Kinsey Report as a primary resource. Using Kinsey, says Kameny, "I created the 10 percent figure for that brief ... It was filed near the end of January 1961. The Supreme Court turned it down at the end of March '61." Kameny later founded a New York branch of the Mattachine Society.
Kameny says he has not been intimidated by opponents of gay rights. "Because I'm right and they're wrong - that's been my underlying premise my whole life. Over the years and the issues I've taken on, I have not sought to adjust myself to society. I have adjusted society to me and society is much better off for the adjustments I've administered."
Kameny still tries to keep active and well-informed. "I ... keep up with what I call the 'nutty fundamentalists.' I monitor them. ... I'm referring to them now - as the term 'Islamofascist' was coined recently - as the 'Christianofascists.' They're trying to create a theocracy here. If they thought they could get away with executing gays the way they do in the Middle East, they would do it as soon as they could. Just as they used to burn heretics at the stake in the Middle Ages."
When asked if he ever had a long-term romantic partner, he responded: "No. That's not been part of my own structure. I've always approached these things on the basis that 'variety is the spice of life,' in sexual matters as much as in food. I wouldn't eat from the same menu, three meals a day, seven days a week, 365 days a year. And I'm not about to do that with a relationship."
Dr. Jeffrey Satinover's paper, "The Trojan Couch" describes Kameny's historic role in lobbying the American Psychiatric Association to remove homosexuality as a mental disorder from the DSM in the 1970s. Dr. Satinover writes:
Progressive psychiatrists, gay psychiatrists, and outside activists planned a disruption and sought the services of leftwing activist Frank Kameny, who turned for help to the New Left and non-accommodationist Gay Liberation Front. Kameny's cadre, with forged credentials provided by allies on the inside (some at the very top) [of the APA], broke into a special lifetime service award meeting. They grabbed the microphone, and Kamney declared "Psychiatry is the enemy incarnate. Psychiatry has waged a relentless war of extermination against us. ... We're rejecting you as our owners. You may take this as our declaration of war."
Additional Reading: Thought Reform And The Psychology of Homosexual Advocacy.
Updated: 8 February 2008
|
