Frank Kameny made my life better. He made countless gay people’s lives better. He showed us the meaning of courage. He showed us the power of standing up for ourselves. He renewed our belief in moral suasion against ignorance and hostility. And he made his country, our country, truer to the better angels of its nature.
I will always feel grateful and fortunate to have lived in his wake. And nothing gives me more joy than knowing that he lived long enough to see himself vindicated and celebrated. The long arc of the universe does indeed bend toward justice.
I can’t think of much more to say than I said in this tribute from a few years back:
He exhibits an unshakable and unmistakably American confidence that all the great and mighty, no matter their number or power, must bow to one weak man who has the Founders’ promise on his side. “We are honorable people who deal with others honorably and in good faith,” he insisted to the Un-American Activities Committee. “We expect to be dealt with in the same fashion – especially by our governmental officials.” There you hear the pipsqueak, indomitable voice of equality.
For Kameny’s papers to join Thurgood Marshall’s and Daniel Patrick Moynihan’s [in the Library of Congress], and for his signs to join Jefferson’s writing desk and Lincoln’s inkwell [in the Smithsonian], seems fitting. All of those men understood that the words of 1776 set in motion a moral engine unlike any the world had ever seen; and all understood that the logic of equality could be delayed but not denied. Kameny, like them, believed that the Declaration of Independence means exactly what it says, and like them he made its promise his purpose.
26 Comments for “Goodbye to a Hero”
posted by bls on
Hear, hear. And here’s to Frank Kameny, and to his courage.
Heartfelt thanks, to a great man….
posted by Jim on
I second that. Mr. Kameny was truly a gay rights pioneer. Him dying on Coming Out Day was a strange coincidence. What I find disheartening is his death hasn’t been mentioned yet over at GayPatriot blog. Nothing. Zip. Nada. I stopped commenting over there about a month ago because someone suggested I do so, so I did. No regrets. It was getting a little too right wing for my taste and smug groupthink was ruling the day. It’s really ND30’s territory. Speaking of which – hey Northy: how about talking to gays and lesbians who are in their late 70s and older? You will discover what real oppression and hatred was like in the 1950s and early 1960s. Might cut down your swagger a bit and learn to appreciate what you have. Frank Kameny had more integrity in his little finger than you have in your whole body.
posted by North Dallas Thirty on
Speaking of which – hey Northy: how about talking to gays and lesbians who are in their late 70s and older? You will discover what real oppression and hatred was like in the 1950s and early 1960s. Might cut down your swagger a bit and learn to appreciate what you have. Frank Kameny had more integrity in his little finger than you have in your whole body.
Which is, of course, why, at the height of the AIDS epidemic in 1983, when no true HIV test existed, and when epidemiologists were pleading for gay men to screen themselves out as blood donors and for blood banks to implement screening questions to protect the blood supply….Frank Kameny said he would “advise fellow gays to lie” and give tainted blood anyway.
I can’t fathom what kind of thoughts would be going through the head of a person who was watching people die around him from a disease that he knew was blood-borne and that had no reliable screening test…..and then advise people to lie and give tainted blood anyway.
But I am sure it is not integrity — and ironically, whatever it was is the key reason that there are so few of Frank Kameny’s generation around.
posted by BobN on
Frank Kameny said he would “advise fellow gays to lie” and give tainted blood anyway
You’re accustomed, of course, to lying about people all the time, but are you really so slimy that you would lie about a man at his memorial? Had it not been for him, you’d be a glory-hole slurper at a rest stop somewhere with an deeply unhappy wife back home.
Kameny never suggested anyone give tainted blood and you, and your files, know it.
posted by North Dallas Thirty on
First, read the link, BobN.
Second, the fact that you would be a glory-hole slurper at a rest stop somewhere with an deeply unhappy wife back home is irrelevant to what other people would be. You’re merely projecting your own disdain for marriage, cowardice, and willingness to lie onto others.
Finally, I was waiting for this:
You’re accustomed, of course, to lying about people all the time, but are you really so slimy that you would lie about a man at his memorial?
Those who show no respect for the dead of others demonstrate only hypocrisy when they demand it for theirs.
posted by BobN on
As usual, you have to point to the “bad behavior” of others to justify your own utter lack of decency. Just inches up there ^ you personally lied. Your defense is that somewhere, sometime, someone other than me did something you don’t like. Wow, I’m blown away by the power of your argument…
ND, you’re a joke.
And I would not have become a glory-hole slurper with an unhappy wife, I’d have most likely just killed myself.
posted by North Dallas Thirty on
As usual, you have to point to the “bad behavior” of others to justify your own utter lack of decency.
Or, more precisely, to demonstrate how your whining about “decency” is so completely and totally hypocritical, given that it certainly didn’t warrant your complaint or upset when your compatriots did far worse.
Just inches up there ^ you personally lied.
Nope. I provided a direct quote, with reference, in which Frank Kameny said he would “advise fellow gays to lie” and give tainted blood anyway.
The measure of a person is all what they do, good and bad, and the lessons of their life come from the honest evaluation of both.
The problem is, BobN, that people like yourself are not interested in that honest evaluation; your only concern is for exploiting the dead. Hence you must make of Falwell all bad and of Kameny all good. Hence your refusal to accept facts and your screaming insistence that I “lied”.
And as for this:
And I would not have become a glory-hole slurper with an unhappy wife, I’d have most likely just killed myself.
Ah yes, the old “Give me what I want or I’ll kill myself” routine.
posted by Newperson on
This site is toxic. I’d advise leaving it for good.
posted by North Dallas Thirty on
And finally, BobN, we all recognize the problem; Obama Party puppets like you exploit peoples’ deaths all the time for political purposes. You don’t give a damn about the person; all you care about is using their death to attack other people you don’t like.
posted by Newperson on
I was there at the time. And activists like Kameny asked gay people to lie only to avoid what they regarded as discrimination. It was an over reaction to decades of extreme bigotry.
They did not want anyone to give tainted blood away.
That is your invention. And it is false.
I’m often startled by the dishonesty of the far right.
FYI: old world upper classes were taught ‘from whom much is given, much is expected.’ That includes social responsibility and basic honesty.
It’s too bad that backwater hicks have destroyed upper class culture.
posted by North Dallas Thirty on
….or so says Wilberforce, hiding under a new name, as he rationalizes and supports telling people to lie in a fashion that guarantees a disease known to be spread by blood contact will end up in the blood supply — at a time where no reliable test, screening method or other means of identifying safe versus untainted blood exists, thus ensuring that the thousands of people who receive blood transfusions or products daily will be exposed to a lethal disease with no palliative or cure.
It’s bad enough that you killed thousands of gay people because you were too dishonest and irresponsible to tell the truth to your sex partners; you had to sicken and kill thousands of hemophiliacs and other people who needed blood in the process.
posted by Newperson on
Thanks for the false accusations. I killed no one. I’ve been negative for thirty years. At the time, I was fighting irresponsible gay leadership tooth and claw to stop hiv. I still am. Have you ever? Ever talked respectfully about strategies to stop the spread? Or would that take too much time away from spitting hatred at the gay community?
It’s a tactic of the far left to use the mistakes people make to demonize them. It works very nicely, because nobody’s perfect. I would have been surprised to see the tactic used here, except that the far right will use any lever to crush others.
posted by Newperson on
I would ask you to read Exodus 20:16, or Matthew, or Plato, or any of the basic works of western culture. But of course, none of that infuences far right rube nut kookery.
posted by Jorge on
Give the guy the benefit of the doubt.
The country has already rejected, at the price of some reputation for the progressive community, the narrative of an intentionally subversive neglect against gays from the highest levels of government during the AIDS epidemic (i.e., “The Reagans”). There is no way to read Kameny’s words in a way that does not make him partially complicit in the epidemic, intentionally or unintentionally–you’ve established that much, but it avails you little. The gay community has already altered and divided in its wake. All prices have been paid, all decisions made.
There is nothing to gain here.
posted by BobN on
I don’t think was anything particularly subversive about the neglect. They were pretty upfront about not giving a damn.
That you would find Kameny “complicit” based on a link from ND, with no real idea of what he thought or meant is obscene.
posted by Throbert McGee on
Can we split the difference between Jorge and BobN and agree that either:
(A) Kameny and the Reagan administration were BOTH “complicit in the AIDS epidemic” among MSMs; or
(B) Neither Kameny nor the Reagan administration were “complicit” in any meaningful sense.
If you want to charge anyone with “complicity”, you need to first deal with the facts that AIDS reached epidemic levels among gay and bi men because our own gay culture ecstatically celebrated promiscuity and anal sex as desirable forms of “gay expression”, and that nothing Reagan could have said would have altered that; that virology and its understanding of retroviruses was at an earlier stage in 1981 than today (so that even if Reagan had immediately announced a multibillion dollar “Manhattan Project” to find a cure for the disease, a large percentage of the early victims would probably still have died before the first anti-viral drugs became available); that the identity of the “syndrome”, and the mechanism by which it was spreading, was mystery to everyone during the first couple years of the epidemic; etc.
posted by BobN on
Throbert, you’re being ridiculous.
You’re suggesting we evaluate Kameny’s position and responsibility based on a “quote” from ND vs. what we know — or at least should know — about the actions and lack thereof of the Reagan administrationS. One semi-phrase from someone with no role in vs. the person and administration charged with protecting the public — ALL of the public.
It’s just silly. Another win for ND in derailing another IGF thread.
AIDS reached epidemic levels because it is more easily transmitted by anal sex, Throbert, not because its victims were all promiscuous sluts. Shame on you.
Had penile/vaginal sex been the most dangerous act, Reagan would have been on TV with a banana and condom demonstrating how to save lives in an instant. Heck, he would have gotten his old pal Bonzo out of retirement to help in the public-service campaign.
posted by Jorge on
I don’t think was anything particularly subversive about the neglect. They were pretty upfront about not giving a damn.
You are nitpicking.
That you would find Kameny “complicit” based on a link from ND, with no real idea of what he thought or meant is obscene.
I think “intentionally or unintentionally” covers all bases. I further think that a citation from “And the Band Played On” carries considerable counterpunch weight so that one can, if only for the sake of the counterargument, safely assume it to be true on its face. You’re only objecting to my irreverent tone here. Sorry, I don’t worship the dead guy, and I’ll use North Dallas Thirty’s ideas howsoever I wish.
Can we split the difference between Jorge and BobN and agree that either:
I’m sorry, Throbert, but that’s not splitting the difference: that IS my position. The difference needs to remain.
posted by Jorge on
Lord have mercy, the only thing more vast than ND30’s alleged library is his memory of its contents. I must respectfully disagree, though.
posted by Jorge on
Still, I shall say nothing.
posted by North Dallas Thirty on
No worries, Jorge. I was planning to say nothing initially as well.
posted by BobN on
Ah, yes, Mr. High Road.
pffff
posted by Throbert McGee on
The “Google Book search” that ND30 linked to isn’t working for me, so I can’t read the full context of what Kameny said. But ND30 has a good point here — in 1983, gay men wouldn’t have known whether their blood was “tainted” or not until they actually began to show symptoms. I was in junior high school at the time, but as far as I can tell from Google and Wikipedia, the antibody tests for HIV didn’t come into general use until 1985.
The only thing that would mitigate the general rottenness of Kameny’s “advice” would be if he had qualified it by saying that gay men should lie and give blood in good conscience IF AND ONLY IF they’d been celibate since, say, the Ford administration, or if their sexual contact with other men was exclusively limited to J/O clubs.
posted by Mark F. on
Kameny’s “advice” was wrong , but I really doubt he wanted anyone to get AIDS. The major blood banks actually resisted any sort of donor screening for a long time. There is plenty of blame to go around for the AIDS epidemic.
posted by Jorge on
……….
No, I think some allowances should be made for a reasonable paranoia and ignorance on Kameny and others’ part. I apply this both ways. I wasn’t there, so it’s hard for me to judge the overall madness and any response to it.
posted by Throbert McGee on
After thinking about it some more, it occurs to me that in 1983, Kameny might possibly have been clinging to the early idea that “AIDS is simply out-of-control syphilis aggravated by massive overuse of poppers”, or something similar to that.
As far as I know, by 1983 medical professionals had abandoned the “too many poppers” hypothesis, and more or less unanimously suspected a viral pathogen, although the exact virus had not been identified yet.
However, for a medical layperson like Kameny (whatever scientific training he had was in astronomy, not biology or medicine), it would not necessarily have been “cranky” or “AIDS-denialist” or conspiracy-minded or otherwise scientifically ignorant to still believe in 1983 that the syndrome was a more or less non-infectious condition caused by huffing too much amyl.
Of course, by 1984 or ’85, denying the infectious nature of the disease became increasingly associated with crackpottery or outright ignorance. But it seems to me possible that an otherwise educated and well-informed gay person could still have disbelieved, in 1983, that there was an transmittable pathogen at the root of AIDS.
Anyway, as Jorge says, some of us here were either children at the time, or not yet born, and none of us can know exactly what Kameny’s reasoning was.