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GLAA nominates Kameny as speaker at Millennium March
To: Millennium March on Washington
(via email to MMOW2000@aol.com)
Date: Thursday, January 13, 2000
Subject: Nomination for Speaker at the MMOW
Thank you for the opportunity to nominate Dr. Franklin E. Kameny to speak at the Millennium March on Washington for Equality.
Frank Kameny is a gifted orator able rouse a crowd and excite people to action. I started to attend meetings of the Gay and Lesbian Activists Alliance of Washington, DC just to hear Frank talk and expound on the issues. Frank was asked to be the final speaker at the Equality Begins at Home - DC rally last April because he was the most inspiring of all the speakers we could find and perfect to rally the crowd into action.
Dr. Kameny, a WWII combat veteran and Harvard educated astronomer, was fired by the Army Map Service in 1957 because he is openly gay. He was outraged that such a thing could happen. He sued the government, and although lost at every step, appealed his case to the US Supreme Court. They did not hear the case.
Frank led the early homophile movement into a political movement, insisting that they not defer to doctors or other researchers but insist that they were the experts on themselves. He made sure that the early movement was self confident and unapologetic. He coined the phrase "Gay is Good."
He founded the Washington, DC Mattachine Society. He organized the first protests at the White House and the Pentagon. Unable to work as an astronomer he became a paralegal representing people losing their security clearances and being forced out of the Government and the Military for being gay. He was a one-man SLDN for many years.
Frank ran for Congress in 1971 and made a very strong showing, coming in fourth in a crowded field. From that campaign, he organized the Gay and Lesbian Activists Alliance of Washington, DC. Later he co-founded the Gertrude Stein Democratic Club, the National Gay Task Force (now NGLTF) and started the push to get the American Psychological Association to drop homosexuality as a mental illness. He was appointed to the first Human Rights Commission in DC, making him one of the first openly gay appointees in the country, and the first in DC.
That is just the tip of the iceberg of Frank's accomplishments and only runs up to 1974 or so. Since then he has been the central figure behind every significant political advance in DC, and has received numerous honors including a lifetime achievement award last year from NGLTF. Frank Kameny gave our movement its intellectual underpinnings and political direction and self-confidence.
On April 27, 2000 we will be celebrating Frank's 75th birthday at the Doyle Washington Hotel on Dupont Circle.
I strongly recommend Dr. Frank Kameny for the Millennium March on Washington.
Sincerely,
Bob Summersgill, President
Gay and Lesbian Activists Alliance of Washington, DC