# Frank Kameny Born May 21, 1925 in Queens, New York; died October 11, 2011 in Washington, D.C. A Harvard-trained astronomer whose **1957 firing from the U.S. Army Map Service** under the [[Lavender Scare]] turned him into one of the most consequential single American LGBTQ-rights organizers of the 20th century. ## The Firing and the Case That Made the Movement Kameny was hired by the Army Map Service in July 1957, fired five months later in December 1957 after a security investigation discovered a 1956 arrest for "lewd conduct" in a public bathroom in San Francisco. He refused to accept the termination and pursued the case through the federal civil service appeals process, then federal court, then the Supreme Court — which declined certiorari in *Kameny v. Brucker* in **March 1961**. The Supreme Court denial was the immediate trigger for what became Kameny's life's work. He became the first American to: - **File a Supreme Court petition** challenging the federal exclusion of gay people from employment (1961) - **Organize public picketing** of the White House, Pentagon, State Department, and Civil Service Commission (1965) - **Run openly as a gay candidate for the U.S. House** (1971, D.C. nonvoting delegate) - **Successfully challenge the American Psychiatric Association's classification of homosexuality as a mental disorder** — Kameny's coalition led the campaign that produced the 1973 APA decision to remove homosexuality from the DSM, arguably the single most consequential single act in destigmatizing American homosexuality ## "Gay Is Good" Kameny coined the slogan **"Gay Is Good"** in 1968 — a deliberate echo of "Black Is Beautiful" — and made it the rallying cry of the late-homophile-into-early-liberation transition. The slogan was adopted at the 1968 conference of the **North American Conference of Homophile Organizations (NACHO)**, which Kameny chaired. ## Federal Apology and Late-Life Recognition In **2009**, the Office of Personnel Management formally apologized to Kameny for his 1957 firing — 52 years after the fact, and as part of the Obama administration's broader review of Lavender Scare-era federal personnel actions. Kameny was invited to attend the signing of the 2010 [[Don't Ask Don't Tell]] repeal at the Department of the Interior. His house in Washington, D.C. is now a National Historic Landmark, and his personal archive of LGBTQ-rights papers is housed at the [[Library of Congress]]. ## Place in the Vault Kameny is the **bridge figure** between the cautious, respectability-focused 1950s [[Mattachine Society]] homophile movement and the radical post-Stonewall [[Gay Liberation Front]] generation. His insistence on direct confrontation with federal employment policy — picketing, lawsuits, public visibility — provided the template that the post-Stonewall movement scaled up. See [[Queer Liberation Timeline]] for the full chronology. --- ## See Also - [[Queer Liberation Ecosystem]] - [[Queer Liberation Timeline]] - [[Lavender Scare]] - [[Mattachine Society]]