By Jerome Pohlen
In May 1961, Frank Kameny received notice from the United States Supreme Court. It was rejecting his legal petition challenging the federal government's anti-gay employment policies. Kameny had been fired from his job with the U.S. Army Map Service more than three years earlier, and this was his final appeal. A Harvard-educated astronomer, he had struggled in poverty during the protracted fight, at times surviving on 20 cents of food a day. He lost at his first trial and every appeal thereafter. When his lawyer abandoned him, he was forced to write the petition to the Supreme Court himself. And now it was over.
But Frank Kameny never accepted defeat. Later he recalled his thoughts on being turned away by the high court: "I am right and they are wrong, and if they won't change, I will have to make them." He was, they were and he did.
Today the Wednesday-morning quarterbacks are questioning who "botched" the campaign to save the Houston's Equal Right Ordinance (HERO), energy that would be better focused elsewhere. The opponents of HERO built their campaign on distortions and fear, neither of which will support their efforts forever. It is a bitter loss for the LGBTQ community and its allies, but if history is any guide, this story will have a happy ending. HERO will return to Houston, and activists will bring it to other cities and states as well.
Historically speaking, almost all of the LGBTQ community's greatest advances have come in direct response to sucker punches like the defeat of the HERO ordinance. People who are otherwise uninvolved in politics, people who assumed that such ridiculous and cruel arguments as "no men in women's bathrooms" would never fly with voters, have learned a hard lesson. And by resorting to such unacceptable methods, the opponents have painted a clear, bright target on their bigotry. A target at which LGBTQ activists can take careful aim.
This pattern has repeated itself over and over since the 1950s. ONE, a puny gay magazine published in Los Angeles, secured the right for all LGBTQ publications to be sent through the U.S. mail, but only after the postal service impounded its October 1954 issue as "obscene, lewd, lascivious and filthy." (It wasn't.) The Supreme Court sided with ONE, and national news reports did wonders for circulation.
The San Francisco Police Department was forced to establish a liaison officer for the transgender community — the first such officer anywhere — after it assaulted trans customers at Compton's Cafeteria in August 1966.
The Metropolitan Community Church, the world's largest LGBTQ Christian denomination, was founded by Rev. Troy Perry after his date, Tony Valdez, was arrested for same-sex dancing in a police raid at The Patch bar in Los Angeles in August 1968. God doesn't care about gay people, Valdez told Perry, and Perry decided to prove him wrong. The police who raided the Stonewall Inn in June 1969 never expected to be challenged by the people they routinely harassed. Furious, abused patrons chased the squad back into the bar they raided, and today police in cities across the U.S., some of whom are openly LGBT, escort and protect Pride Parade marchers who commemorate the uprising.
What about Parents, Families and Friends of Lesbians and Gays, better known as PFLAG? It grew from the efforts of Jeanne and Jules Manford after they witnessed their son Morty being assaulted by the president of the New York firefighters union while the press stood idly by.
And one of the biggest "victories" for antigay forces, the Supreme Court's 1986 Bowers v. Hardwick decision, was anything but. The 5-4 decision affirmed that the government could outlaw sexual acts between consenting adults, even in the privacy of their own homes. A defeat for gays and lesbians, right? But the LGBTQ community erupted in well-justified rage, which ultimately led to the first massive protest for same-sex marriage, the founding of ACT UP, and National Coming Out Day.
Still not convinced? Following the first serious challenge to state bans on same-sex marriage in the early 1990s, a case out of Hawaii, state Legislatures, the federal government and voters enacted law after law to prevent a practice that was already illegal. These statutes were unjustified and redundant … and just what the LGBTQ community needed to mount its challenges. Queer citizens who might have sat back thinking, "Not for me," on marriage were suddenly engaged in the issue. By the early 2000s, the wave of legal challenges began to swell until a tsunami of pro-gay rulings washed away every last state statute and constitutional amendment giving special privileges to heterosexual couples. Thank you, DOMA defenders!
Frank Kameny, along with the equally tenacious activist Barbara Gittings and others, would march in picket lines outside the White House, Pentagon and Independence Hall four years before Stonewall. They would force the American Psychiatric Association to remove homosexuality from the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders. And when President Obama signed the Don't Ask, Don't Tell Repeal Act of 2010, Kameny sat in the front row smiling. A year later, he passed away in his sleep on National Coming Out Day.
So, to the LGBTQ community and its allies in Houston and everywhere else, dry your tears, but stay angry. Remember Frank Kameny. You are right. You opponents are wrong. And since they won't change, you will have to make them.
