Turning to “The Lavender Scare” [the documentary, unfortunately not VOD
yet], we meet some of the same figures who are featured in “Before
Stonewall”. Among them is Frank Kameny, who, while probably well-known
to gay activists, deserves much greater recognition from the left in
general. Like Rosa Parks, he was someone who stood up to the ruling
prejudices of the age. In 1955, she refused to move to the back of the
bus. Just three years later, when his superiors at the United States
Army Map Service grilled him on his sexual orientation, he told them it
was none of their damned business.
Kameny had earned a Ph.D. from Harvard University in astronomy and was
well-qualified for the job. In the purge of thousands of employees from
the State Department and other elite agencies, the excuse for their
firing was to protect American security as if getting caught in bed with
someone of the same sex could lead to Soviet kompromat.
After being fired, he fought tooth and nail to get his job back since
his main interest at the outset was in protecting his rights, not
leading a movement. Over time, he understood that “an injury to one is
an injury to all”, as the IWW put it. He began fighting for the right of
all gay people to be employed without respect to what they did in their
bedrooms. His first step was to join the Mattachine Society, whose
timidity was at odds with his increasing militancy. Despite the
temperamental and political disconnect, this was the only way for him to
work with a broader movement at the time.
Even with his lofty academic credentials, he never held a regular job
for the rest of his life and was supported by friends and family. Among
his chief accomplishments was pressuring the American Psychiatric
Association to discontinue treating homosexuality as a mental illness.
Among the people who Kameny defended from being fired was an NSA
employee named Jamie Shoemaker whose linguistic skills were much in
demand. As part of the younger generation of gay men, Shoemaker insisted
on his right to employment. Once his fight was won, the NSA no longer
got involved in witch-hunting gays. (For ultraleftists, it is worth
pointing out that allowing such men and women from a victimizing agency
to be victimized increases the odds of others to suffer the same
fate—speaking dialectically.)
https://www.counterpunch.org/2019/06/07/gay-liberation-gay-cinema/
-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
Groups.io Links: You receive all messages sent to this group.
View/Reply Online (#1075): https://groups.io/g/marxmail/message/1075
Mute This Topic: https://groups.io/mt/76574505/21656
-=-=-
POSTING RULES & NOTES<br />#1 YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a
message.<br />#2 This mail-list, like most, is publicly & permanently archived.<br
/>#3 Subscribe and post under an alias if #2 is a concern.
-=-=-
Group Owner: [email protected]
Unsubscribe: https://groups.io/g/marxmail/leave/8674936/1316126222/xyzzy
[[email protected]]
-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
