D.C. Dispatch December 5, 2006

Once in a blue moon a reporter meets a man who changes the world by the sheer force of will, character, and vision. Frank Kamney is such a man.

by Jonathan Rauch

A Pariah's Triumph—and America's

from National Journal

Article Tools

email E-mail Article
print Printer Format

The memo is dated June 28, 1962. Reading it, one can scarcely believe that it was written as recently as 44 years ago.

From: Director of Personnel, Library of Congress.

To: Nevin R. Feather, a library employee.

Subject: "Interrogatory."

The library, it begins, "has 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." Enjoyed embracing! "Is this report true?"

At the bottom of the page, appended as a hurried note, is a plea for help. "I must admit I am quite shook-up over this matter," Nevin Feather wrote to Franklin Kameny. "Please advise me."

The disposition of Nevin Feather's case is lost to history, but the memo is not. In one of those cosmic japes that make fools of us all, the Library of Congress's sinister interrogation of its gay employee now reposes as a historical document in, yes, the Library of Congress. There it joins company with the diaries of George Washington and Theodore Roosevelt, the papers of Thurgood Marshall and Daniel Patrick Moynihan, and 16,000 other document collections spanning 60 million pages.

Accompanying Feather's interrogatory are about 70,000 other of Kameny's papers, which were formally donated to the library in October. "His papers document the evolution of the gay-rights movement from its marginal beginning to broader acceptance in the political and social arena," says John Haynes, a historian with the library's manuscript division. Meanwhile, the Smithsonian Institution's National Museum of American History acquired the picket signs carried in the nation's first gay civil-rights demonstration, which Kameny organized and led in 1965.

The bestower of these documents and mementos is alive and well at 81 and, naturally, pleasantly surprised. "We would never have imagined," he said in a recent interview. "If anyone had told us, when we were scrambling around on our hands and knees on somebody's living room floor with poster board making signs, that those very signs would end up in the Smithsonian with Thomas Jefferson's desk and Abraham Lincoln's inkwell, we would have thought they were nuts."

I am no impartial observer. In fact, I donated some money to help finance the gift of Kameny's papers. Still, I believe my judgment is reliable when I say that once in a blue moon a reporter meets a man who changes the world by sheer force of will, character, and vision, and that Frank Kameny qualifies. Consider the record.

In 1957, the U.S. Army Mapping Service fired Kameny over allegations of homosexual activity. That he held a Harvard Ph.D. in astronomy and was a front-line combat veteran of World War II mattered not at all. As the chairman of the U.S. Civil Service Commission would later put it in correspondence to him, "If an individual ... were to publicly proclaim that he engages in homosexual conduct, that he prefers such relationships, that he is not sick or emotionally disturbed, and that he simply has different sexual preferences ... the commission would be required to find such an individual unsuitable for federal employment."

Disgraced, Kameny was unable to find another job in his field. For a time, he found himself living on 20 cents of food a day. Instead of slinking away, however, he appealed his firing up through the executive branch and then to the congressional Civil Service committees. Failing, he sued the government. He lost. And then? Here is what he did.

  • In 1961, he organized the Mattachine Society of Washington, a pioneering gay-rights group. Under its auspices, he bombarded the government with letters, receiving replies like "Please do not contaminate my mail with such filthy trash" (from a member of Congress), and "Your letter of August 28 has been received, and in reply may I state unequivocally that in all my six years of service in the United States Congress I have not received such a revolting communication."
  • Beginning in the early 1960s, he represented dozens of civil servants attempting to save their jobs or to obtain security clearances. Partly as a result, in 1975 the civil service lifted its ban on employing homosexuals. Bans on security clearances lasted longer but also fell.
  • Pages: 1 2 next>

    Jonathan Rauch is an opinion columnist for National Journal. His most recent book is Gay Marriage: Why It Is Good for Gays, Good for Straights, and Good for America. This column appears in National Journal, a weekly magazine covering politics and government published in Washington, D.C.

    Article Tools

    email E-mail Article
    Printer Format
    Share

    More from National Journal

    Subscribe to our e-mail newsletter.

     

    Recent Commentary from National Journal

    August 7, 2007

    Innocents in Prison

    Many thousands of wrongly convicted people are rotting in prisons and jails around the country.

    August 7, 2007

    The Candidates' Four Detention Camps

    Deciding what to do with jihadist operatives is the country's most urgent legal question. But there's little sign that the presidential candidates have given it much thought.

    August 7, 2007

    Crowd Control

    Everybody's buzzing about citizen journalism. But the "journalism" could use some editing.

    August 7, 2007

    Democratic Slugfest

    An exchange of blows between Hillary Rodham Clinton and Barack Obama was bound to happen.

    July 31, 2007

    Shortsighted on Judges

    Senate Democrats are playing a dangerous political game in opposing confirmation of Leslie Southwick, a wellqualified judicial nominee from Mississippi.

    July 31, 2007

    Beyond Trade Adjustment Assistance

    Workers who lose their jobs because of trade are no more deserving than workers whose jobs disappear for other reasons.

    July 31, 2007

    The Poverty Candidates

    John Edwards made poverty an issue in his 2004 campaign for the White House. This time around, he has company: Barack Obama is also working to put poverty back on the political agenda.

    July 24, 2007

    Are the Democrats Serious?

    Both sides deserve to lose the brewing battle between the White House and Congress over executive privilege.

    July 24, 2007

    Of Church and State

    Religion now looms larger than economic class as a source of political division.

    July 17, 2007

    Flying Blind in a Red-Tape Blizzard

    Based on spending, President Bush appears to be the biggest regulator since the Nixon-Ford years.


    Name

    Address 1

    Address 2

    City

    State Zip

    Email