Why Frank Kameny Belongs at the Smithsonian

[William769]

Frank Kameny left us earlier this week. He died peacefully in his sleep at his home in Washington, D.C. Thankfully, he did not live as he died. He lived loud. He was relentless, argumentative, and articulate. Because he was those things, we are all safer and healthier for it.

The details of Kameny’s life and activism have been written up in obits in The Advocate, The Washington Post, The New York Times, and elsewhere. The factual details assure his place in history, but there is another, less concrete aspect to the importance of his life.

At 86, he was one of the last of that generation of activists who moved gay rights forward by making public spectacles of themselves, in the best sense of the term. They put on business suits and dresses and picketed the White House and gave us a face and identity when the prevalent stereotype of gay people was one of menacing perverts.

Kameny was nearly 50 before being gay was removed from the list of psychiatric disorders. He was largely responsible for that famous “cure with the stroke of a pen” in 1973.

http://www.advocate.com/Politics/Commentary/Oped_Why_Frank_Kameny_Is_Part_of_Our_Smithsonian_Collection/