Thank you, Dr. Kameny

Frank Kameny in World War II and in 2005, Always a Soldier

My friend Jonathan Rauch has an elegant and touching tribute to a man to whom all Americans owe a debt, “A Pariah’s Triumph — And America’s.” It’s about Dr. Frank Kameny, a tireless struggler for the equal rights of gay people.

One of the most striking of Jonathan�s insights about the astronomer with the Ph.D. from Harvard University who was fired by the U.S. Army Mapping Service in 1957 for homosexuality:

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.

(I debated Dr. Kameny once, quite a few years ago, on the issue of whether the law should forbid private discrimination against gay people; we agreed on forbidding the government to discriminate on the basis of sexual orientation.)

Posted by Tom Palmer at December 2, 2006 8:47 PM | TrackBack