IGF CultureWatch

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japes that make fools of us all, the Library of Congress's sinister interrogation of its gay employee now reposes as a historical document in, yes, the Library of Congress.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.

¶ In 1971, he ran for the District of Columbia's newly created delegate seat, becoming the first openly gay person to run for Congress (and possibly the second to run for any public office). Announcing his candidacy, he said, "This is OUR country, OUR society, and OUR government - for homosexuals quite as much as for heterosexuals. We are homosexual American citizens." He promised, "You will be hearing much from us in the next 30 days, and long thereafter." Today there are more than 350 openly gay elected officials in America. One of them, Rep. Barney Frank, D-Mass., is about to become chairman of the House Financial Services Committee.

¶ In 1965, Kameny's Washington Mattachine Society issued a path-breaking public declaration that "homosexuality is not a sickness, disturbance, or other pathology in any sense." In 1973, after years of protest and persuasion by Kameny and others, the American Psychiatric Association removed homosexuality from the list of mental disorders, perhaps the largest mass cure ever effected.

¶ Beginning in 1963, Kameny campaigned tirelessly for the revocation of D.C.'s sodomy law. The repeal was signed in 1993. It took, he says, "30 years, one month, four days, and 11 hours."

A delectable, if backhanded, tribute to Kameny's accomplishments comes from Peter LaBarbera, an anti-gay activist. Protesting the Library of Congress's acquisition of Kameny's papers, LaBarbera wrote of Kameny, "He is brilliant but wasted his considerable intellect and talents on homosexual activism, which is a shame." Well, yes. Kameny might have had a brilliant scientific career - if the government hadn't fired him for being homosexual. That was a shame.

Kameny, never a tall man, has shrunk 4 or 5 inches over the years. He used to revel in his vigorous stride but now walks, he says, "with little-old-man steps. I hate myself for it." The gay-rights agenda is dominated by marriage, the one major campaign that passed him by. Unchanged, however, is his voice, which has been compared, unfairly, to a foghorn (unfairly, that is, for the foghorn).

Also unchanged is his moral certitude, which is hard to compare to anything, and which almost transcends courage. "Courage," remarks Barney Frank, who has known Kameny for 26 years, "sometimes comes very close to a complete indifference to the opinions of those whom you hold in contempt. In Frank's case, that's a lot of people." It never seemed to have occurred to Kameny not to do what he did. "I was faced with a major issue," he says. "Something needed to be done, and it wasn't being done adequately."

In person, Kameny's tone remains today as stentorian, and sometimes strident, as in 1971, when he told the American Psychiatric Association's annual convention that psychiatry "has waged a relentless war of extermination against us." The voice in his voluminous correspondence strikes many of the same uncompromising notes. For example, in a 1968 letter he tells the House Un-American Activities Committee, "It is about time that our government called off its war upon us."

More striking in his correspondence, however, is an almost magisterial serenity. 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, and for his signs to join Jefferson's writing desk and Lincoln's inkwell, 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.

My partner, Michael, and I are among the millions who owe some large measure of our happiness to Kameny's pursuits. This Thanksgiving found me grateful that one pariah fought back, never imagining he could fail; even more grateful to live in a country with a conscience; most grateful of all to know that there are generations of Franklin Kamenys yet to be born.

The month of November was one of fault and redemption for the state of Israel, recognizable through the prism of the lives of its gay citizens.

The fault lay in the response by small, yet vocal, segments of the Orthodox Jewish community to the Jerusalem Gay Pride parade, originally scheduled for Nov. 10. Though this was to be the city's fifth annual parade, ultra-religious Orthodox youth took to the streets in the weeks before in violent rioting and some rabbis denounced the event as an abomination on Judaism's holiest city.

This outrage was nothing new for Israel. Last year an Orthodox man stabbed three parade-goers and was sentenced to 12 years in prison. Ultimately, parade organizers reached a compromise with the city's police (who were not opposed to a parade on principle but were fearful at the possibility of violence) and held a rally at a Jerusalem soccer stadium.

In an ironic ecumenical twist, religious fundamentalists from both the Jewish and Muslim communities came together to condemn the parade. It's disappointing that this unusual and erstwhile cooperation was motivated by a common bigotry, rather than, say, a shared realization that terrorism and military occupation is hurting both Israelis and Palestinians. Yet finding peace in the Middle East has always proved more difficult than raining down epithets on the gays, reliable targets for fundamentalists of all confessional stripes.

The Lord, however, does work in mysterious ways. A mere two weeks after the riots, redemption came in the form of a 6-1 decision by the Israeli High Court of Justice ruling that gay couples legally married outside of Israel must receive recognition by the country's marriage registry.

The response from ultra-religious members of the Knesset, the Israeli parliament, was vocal. "We don't have a Jewish state here. We have Sodom and Gomorrah here," one member remarked. Yet Israel will continue to thrive as a Jewish state not in spite of, but because of this decision.

Watching the various reactions to these events, the diversity and contradictions of Israel could not have been made more clear. Two hostile and always-competing values of Israeli society were on display: intolerance and pluralism. Those Jews who burned cars and streetlights in riots leading up to the Gay Pride parade proved themselves to be just as fanatical as the Muslim fundamentalists they often criticize. The court's decision moved Israel away from religiously sanctioned discrimination (de facto law in the Arab world) and in the direction of the progressive West, once again demonstrating that Israel stands alone among Middle Eastern countries as a place where gay people live in dignity.

Having just returned from my first visit to Israel, I was amazed at its vibrancy. Contrary to the image that many anti-Zionists purport, Israel is not some white, colonialist settler state oppressing dark-skinned Palestinians, as comforting as this image might seem to those with stubborn leftist political agendas. A great portion of Israelis claim Middle Eastern and African backgrounds; Israel is not an ethnically pure nation of Ashkenazim (Jews of European origin).

Let it never be said the religiously pious are completely lacking in a sense of humor. One young, observant Jewish man I spoke with delivered a characteristically Jewish response to the events surrounding the canceling of the Gay Pride parade: It was not the abomination of sodomy, necessarily, that the ultra-Orthodox opposed, but rather the threat that the parade might prompt the return of the World Pride festival, (originally scheduled for August of this year but canceled in the wake of the recent Lebanon war).

"We don't want all those foreign gays coming here to take our gays," he laughed. In other words: we want our Jewish boys to find other nice Jewish boys. Apparently the threat of intermarriage - the precursor to the dreaded phenomenon of assimilation - traverses sexual orientation.

Last week's court decision was a step forward not only for the state of Israel, but for Jewish people the world over. As a Jew and a Zionist, I could not have been more proud.

Election Week 2006 marked a turning point in the gay civil rights movement. Our battles are far from ended, but the same midterm correction that reaffirmed the wisdom of our nation's founders has confirmed that the tide of history is with our cause of equality under the law. Several anti-gay politicians were defeated. We won our first statewide marriage initiative. The amendment to write gay families out of the U.S. Constitution is gone with the Republican majority. And marriage equality is reaffirmed in Massachusetts. Let the naysayers grumble all they like. It's time for Thanksgiving.

It is also a time for taking stock. Although we lost 7 of 8 state initiative battles, the fact that the anti-gay vote was held to less than 60 percent in Colorado, South Dakota, Virginia and Wisconsin indicates public opinion is shifting toward us, and we can win given sufficient resources. The improved numbers are partly due to increased professionalism. Arizona Together, which led the successful effort to defeat anti-gay Proposition 107, spent $200,000 on voter research, and ultimately raised $2.1 million for their successful campaign.

Key to the Arizona victory was message discipline, which meant not allowing the anti-gay side to control the framing of the debate. While it is easy to fault leaders on our side for not emphasizing the rights of gay couples, our challenge in these ballot fights is to win votes in a particular electoral context with necessarily brief campaign messages. Educating the public about gay families is a crucial ongoing project for our statewide groups (and for each of us), but initiative campaigns must be carefully geared toward the likely voters here and now. Knowing that most Arizonans oppose same-sex marriage, Arizona Together focused its messages instead on the adverse effect the initiative's provision outlawing domestic partnerships would have on many heterosexual couples.

I myself have been a client of Lake Research Partners, the voter research firm used by Arizona Together, and I learned a lot thanks to the sophistication and experience that went into their polling design. It is expensive to hire first-rate consultants, but such research is indispensable in providing the framework for campaign messaging.

In addition to solid research and messaging, hard work made the difference. A Nov. 8 press release from Arizona Together stated, "With a coalition of more than 18,000 volunteers, outreach and education spanned the spectrum including the placement and distribution of more than 3,000 signs statewide; distribution of more than 100,000 pieces of literature through events and door knocking; tens of thousands of phone calls; one million pieces of mailed literature; and a three-week run on TV."

Several who lost their initiative fights said that their states were better organized as a result of the experience, and they might have won had they been able to reach more voters with their message. The state-by-state fight in the years ahead will take a great deal of coordination and identification of new funding sources. National GLBT and allied groups, working with the Equality Federation of statewide groups, have made a good start with grants, field organizing and training.

Fair Wisconsin stated after the election that their get-out-the-vote efforts helped defeat several anti-gay state legislators. South Dakotans Against Discrimination pointed out that, while they lost, they won 48 percent of the vote compared with the 24 percent to 33 percent shown in polls last January. Colorado's referendum to approve domestic partnerships came agonizingly close, winning 47 percent of the vote.

In the long run, the only people who can defeat us in our drive toward equality are ourselves. Claire Guthrie Gastañaga of Virginia's pro-gay Commonwealth Coalition stated, "One of our biggest obstacles in this campaign was that many thought the outcome was a foregone conclusion and were afraid or unwilling to invest themselves in this effort."

Virginians did provide the finest irony of the election. The Washington Times reported on Nov. 1 that Virginia's anti-gay amendment, designed to help Sen. George Allen's re-election bid by rousing conservative voters, appeared to be backfiring. This was because black voters, while they supported the amendment by more than 60 percent according to polls, overwhelmingly favored Allen's Democratic challenger, Jim Webb. Additionally, the Commonwealth Coalition spent nearly $1 million and gained a million "no" voters, who also broke for Webb. Thus, demonizing gay people arguably cost Republicans the Senate.

Tim Wildmon of the American Family Association crowed after the election that "only one [state] voted against traditional marriage." I wonder if Mr. Wildmon considers the higher divorce rate in the Bible Belt a part of traditional marriage. The endless hectoring by these hypocritical busybodies is like an inveterate slob criticizing someone else's personal hygiene. If the tormented closet cases and parents in denial about their own gay children were purged from the leadership of the anti-gay movement, it would virtually disappear. Our adversaries' poll numbers are declining because their position depends on defamation and self-delusion.

The Arizona victory was no thanks to Sen. John McCain (R-AZ), who taped two television spots for Prop. 107. In Tennessee, Democratic Senate candidate Rep. Harold Ford Jr. joined his Republican opponent, Bob Corker, in supporting that state's anti-gay amendment. Ford also attacked the October 25 New Jersey Supreme Court decision on marriage, and boasted of having voted twice for the anti-gay federal marriage amendment. The Tennessee ballot measure won 81 percent of the vote, but Ford was defeated. How must it feel to sell your soul, only to leave empty-handed?

You could almost feel sorry for U.S. Catholic Bishops. Periodically they gather, issue "Tut tutting" pronouncements, and everyone ignores them. You have to wonder why they even bother.

Assembling in Baltimore in mid-November, the bishops delivered themselves of an amusing piece of badinage titled "Ministry to Persons with a Homosexual Inclination." There they claimed that although a person with a homosexual inclination is not disordered, the inclination is disordered, that such persons should not marry each other, adopt children or disclose their inclination outside a trusted small group.

In other statements the Bishops opposed contraception and said sexually active homosexuals and heterosexuals using birth control should not take communion. As Spokane Bishop William Skylstad asserted, "There is a mocking reduction of sexuality, debasing it from God's beautiful gift of creation to little more than casual chemistry and inconsequential recreation."

Hardly anyone pays much attention to what the Catholic bishops say about sexuality. The bishops have simply lost the argument. Either they should give up or come up with new and better arguments. But their statements do indicate the Catholic hierarchy's inability to talk coherently about homosexuality.

Consider that word "inclination." The bishops avoid the word "orientation." Orientation suggests something much more fundamental and comprehensive, a part of the basic structure of people's psychological constitution. The bishops would not refer to a mere "heterosexual inclination."

It is as if the bishops refuse to acknowledge the fundamental nature of homosexuality. Although they do not say a homosexual inclination can be changed, it is as if they are leaving an opening for some future statement that homosexual feelings are less deeply rooted than heterosexual ones so they can more easily be suppressed or even replaced.

Although the bishops claim they are reaching out to gay Catholics, few gays are likely to be lured by having their deepest emotions labeled "disordered." Is any gay man likely to agree that, "It is disordered that I love John with all my heart" or "I love John deeply with a disordered love"?

No more than a heterosexual man would feel that way about his love for a female partner. Love is pretty much self-validating. The statement is more likely aimed at reinforcing heterosexual disapprobation of gays and promoting shame, anxiety and self-doubt among vulnerable young gays. Certainly that would be its easily predictable effect.

If a person with a disordered inclination is not a disordered person, why should the bishops disapprove of gays disclosing widely that they are homosexual? Fundamentalist Protestants fear that coming out would solidify a "homosexual identity." There is a whiff of that in the bishops' statement.

But more likely the bishops fear that if people know that friends and neighbors who are decent, friendly and helpful are homosexual, they might think well of gays, want them to be treated equally and stop believing that they have a disorder. Apparently the bishops believe that it is better that people believe damaging stereotypes about gays promoted by anti-gay polemicists. And--what could be clearer?--the bishops hope to silence opposition from self-affirming gays.

If gays are not disordered, it is also unaccountable why the bishops oppose gay adoption. If they do not object to a single parent raising his or her children, then why would they object to a gay person's adopting children? Absent any plausible rationale, their actual reason may be that they do not want gays to seem normal, responsible adults with a capacity for love, affection, and family life.

Bishop Skylstad's statement itself demonstrates deep ignorance of sexuality and human psychology And he perpetrates not one but two obvious errors by reducing sex to "the gift of creation" or else "inconsequential recreation." First, "recreational" sex is hardly inconsequential. Like all play, sex can be life-enhancing and promote psychological development.

Second, Skylstad perpetrates a false dichotomy. Sex can be not only for procreation or recreation. It can also be a mode of personal relating and bonding, certifying affection and solidifying and deepening a human relationship. The bishops seem ignorant of this fact.

Whether sexually active gay Catholics should take communion is not my issue. But traditionally for Christianity the informed conscience is authoritative. The Informed conscience takes into account not only traditional doctrine but also the individual's condition and circumstances. If gays are fully convinced that their sexual activity is not sinful, they should feel free to take communion. Most heterosexual Catholic couples using birth control have already made exactly that determination.