Frank Kameny, American Gay Rights Pioneer, Dies at 86
Frank Kameny, a co-founder of the Mattachine Society of Washington and one of the leading activists of the modern gay rights movement, died Tuesday night at home, as a result of natural causes.
Kameny passed away on National Coming Out Day, a fitting exit for the courageous trailblazer. He was found in his bed by Timothy Clark, a roommate, according to the Washington Blade.
A World War II veteran, Kameny — who possessed a Harvard doctorate in astronomy — was discovered to be gay while serving as a civilian astronomer in the Army’s Map Service in 1957. Consequently, he was discharged, but fought back and took his case to the United States Supreme Court. Although the Court declined to hear his case in March 1961, Kameny was the first gay person to advance the cause of gay rights to the nation’s highest court.
Coining the iconic statement “Gay is Good,” Kameny fought to advance gay rights for the next 50 years.
Kameny’s work, fearless and persistent, possessed such audacity in retrospect that his actions can be defined as literally breathtaking. Kameny even inspired to provoke FBI director J. Edgar Hoover, and placed Hoover on the Mattachine Society’s mailing list. Hoover, considered then and now to be one of the most infamous powerful figures in the closet, sent agents to Kameny’s apartment, ordering him to remove Hoover from the mailing list, according to Randy Shilts, who reported Kameny’s audacious actions extensively in Conduct Unbecoming: Gays and Lesbians in the U.S. Military.
Shilts wrote that Kameny had three goals after founding the Washington, D.C. Mattachine Society in 1961 and they were, “to end the federal government’s ban on gay civil servants, to end discrimination against homosexuals seeking security clearances for government work and end the ban on gays serving in the military.”
He would live to witness most of these goals realized, and then some.
Kameny would organize and lead many firsts, paving the way for a new gay America in the post-Stonewall era. Along with Barbara Gittings, a lesbian activist, they organized the first gay rights picket at the White House in 1965. Later, Kameny would also organize the first pickets at the State Department and the Pentagon. These signs, along with more than 70,000 of Kameney’s letters, documents and memorabilia, now belong to the Smithsonian Museum and have been displayed during recent years.
By the early 1970s Kameny would lead the Washington-based Gay Activists Alliance. He was frequently quoted in the media on security clearance, employment and military discrimination practices, which would precipitate phone calls from persons in need of assistance. Air Force Sergeant Leonard Matlovich would make one of those calls to Kameny in March, 1974. Matlovich, the first active duty person to openly declare his homosexuality, with Kameny at his side, would tell his story to the country, achieving the first wave of national media coverage about discrimination against gay service members in American history.
This writer was under investigation for being a homosexual in the U.S. in March 1974, while stationed at Ft. Devens, Massachusetts. Frank Kameny would be the first gay activist I would ever speak to and advised my ACLU attorneys on how to handle the Army’s criminal charges against me. In my personal papers, I have written correspondence between my lawyers and Frank Kameny. Little did I know in 1974, when I thought my entire life was falling apart, that Frank Kameny was not only an adviser on my case, but had been working on these issues for nearly 20 years. I called Frank Kameny and met with him when I traveled to Washington, D.C. in May 1975 when the Army retaliated against me by assigning me to “cook school,” although I was cleared of all gay-related “crimes.”
Accolades for Kameny and his pioneering gay rights work have poured forth in the announcement of his passing.
Joe Solmonese, the president of Human Rights Campaign issued the following statement,
“Frank Kameny led an extraordinary life marked by heroic activism that set a path for the modern LGBT civil rights movement. From his early days fighting institutionalized discrimination in the federal workplace Dr. Kameny taught us that ‘Gay is Good.’ As we say goodbye to this trailblazer on National Coming Out Day, we remember the remarkable power we all have to change the world by living our lives like Frank — openly, honestly and authentically.”
Richard Socarides, the first White House gay and lesbian liaison during the Clinton Administration, said to Metro Weekly, “Frank was such a brave person. To do what he did when he did it. A shining example for us all. An amazing, inspirational figure, who stands out among the giants of our movement.”
Bob Witek, who is managing Kameny’s personal papers told Metro Weekly, “Frank…truly, truly, was a lifelong lesson in being principled. It’s just an amazing gift — an annoying gift. All of us have our doubts; Frank didn’t have a one. If he did, he didn’t tell anyone.”
On June 24, 2009 Kameny received a formal letter of apology from the federal government that called his firing for being gay, “a shameful action.” On June 10th a Washington, D.C. street between R and Q on 17th Street was dedicated as “Frank Kameny Way NW.” Kameny was in attendance at the White House signing of the repeal of Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell (DADT) in December 2010.
Witnek announced that a public memorial for Kameny will likely be held in conjunction with the 50th anniversary of the Washington Mattachine Society on November 15.
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(Image of Frank Kameny courtesy of journalist Rex Wockner.)
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Tanya L. Domi is an Adjunct Assistant Professor of International and Public Affairs at Columbia University who teaches about human rights in Eurasia and is a Harriman Institute affiliated faculty member. Prior to teaching at Columbia, Domi worked internationally for more than a decade on issues related to democratic transitional development, including political and media development, human rights, gender issues, sex trafficking, and media freedom.
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President Donald Trump is reportedly suing Rupert Murdoch and Dow Jones, the parent company of The Wall Street Journal, over the publication of a story alleging he sent a “bawdy” birthday letter in 2003 to Jeffrey Epstein, the now-notorious convicted sex offender who died in 2019.
“Court records show that Trump filed a lawsuit alleging libel against Murdoch, the Journal’s publisher, Dow Jones, and the reporters who wrote the article in federal court for the Southern District of Florida,” CNBC reported late Friday afternoon.
Trump vehemently denied the Journal’s report and publicly threatened to sue after it was published. The Journal had reported in its story that Trump had warned he would take legal action if the story ran.
“The Wall Street Journal printed a FAKE letter, supposedly to Epstein,” Trump wrote on his Truth Social platform Thursday night. “These are not my words, not the way I talk. Also, I don’t draw pictures. I told Rupert Murdoch it was a Scam, that he shouldn’t print this Fake Story. But he did, and now I’m going to sue his a– off, and that of his third rate newspaper. Thank you for your attention to this matter! DJT”
READ MORE: FBI Told to Flag Mentions of Trump in Epstein Files, Dem Says in Scathing Letter to Bondi
Image via Reuters
One thousand employees of the Federal Bureau of Investigation sifting through thousands of pages of the Epstein files were instructed to flag any mentions of President Donald Trump, according to Democratic U.S. Senator Dick Durbin, the Ranking Member of the Judiciary Committee.
“According to information my office received,” Senator Durbin wrote in a letter (below) to U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi on Friday, “you…pressured the FBI to put approximately 1,000 personnel…on 24-hour shifts to review approximately 100,000 Epstein-related records in order to produce more documents that could then be released on an arbitrarily short deadline.”
“My office was told that these personnel were instructed to ‘flag’ any records in which President Trump was mentioned,” Durbin charged.
The files are from the criminal investigation into the notorious Jeffrey Epstein, who was convicted of child sex offenses.
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In his letter, Senator Durbin also posed a series of more than a dozen questions to Bondi. Among them:
“Have you personally reviewed all files in DOJ’s possession related to Jeffrey Epstein?”
“The records DOJ released on February 27 did not include a client list. Why did you
publicly claim on February 21 that the client list was ‘sitting on my desk right now to review’?”
“Why were personnel told to flag records in which President Trump was mentioned?”
“Please list all political appointees and senior DOJ officials involved in the decision to flag records in which President Trump was mentioned.”
“What happened to the records mentioning President Trump once they were flagged?”
CNBC reported that “Durbin asked the Justice Department and FBI to explain what his office called ‘apparent discrepancies’ regarding handling of the Epstein files and findings from a Justice Department memo.”
In his four-page letter, Durbin also wrote, “in 2002, Mr. Trump said of Mr. Epstein, ‘I’ve known Jeff for 15 years. Terrific guy, He’s a lot of fun to be with. It is even said that he likes beautiful women as much as I do, and many of them are on the younger side.’ Just yesterday, it was reported that the Department previously reviewed a ‘leather-bound album’ comprised of dozens of letters from Mr. Epstein’s friends in celebration of his 50th birthday in 2003.”
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“The letters were collected by Mr. Epstein’s partner Ghislaine Maxwell and included one from President Trump that allegedly ‘contains several lines of typewritten text framed by the outline of a naked woman, which appears to be hand-drawn with a heavy marker … and the future president’s signature is a squiggly ‘Donald’ below her waist.'”
“Despite tens of thousands of personnel hours reviewing and re-reviewing these Epstein- related records over the course of two weeks in March, it took DOJ more than three additional months to officially find there is ‘no incriminating ‘client list,’ and the memorandum with this finding includes no mention of the whistleblower or additional documents, the existence of which you publicly claimed on February 27.”
Read a copy of Senator Durbin’s letter below or at this link.
Pam Bondi, Kash Patel, and Dan Bongino have made a mess of the Epstein files.
It’s time to clear it up once and for all for the American people. pic.twitter.com/WQw13gmf1F
— Senate Judiciary Democrats 🇺🇸 (@JudiciaryDems) July 18, 2025
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Image via Reuters
U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio, after cutting 1,300 employees last week, is now ordering diplomats to not comment on foreign elections and internal affairs—limiting official communications to congratulating the declared winner.
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“Diplomatic personnel writing official messages are instead instructed to ask themselves: ‘Would the President say this?'”
The memo, seen by Reuters, says the messages “should be brief, focused on congratulating the winning candidate and, when appropriate, noting shared foreign policy interests.”
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The memo makes clear, based on President Trump’s remarks, that the U.S. will “pursue partnerships with countries wherever our strategic interests align,” regardless of democratic values.
U.S. promotion of human rights, democracy, and press freedoms has traditionally been a “core foreign policy objective,” Reuters reported.
“Under Trump, the administration has increasingly moved away from the promotion of democracy and human rights, largely seeing it as interference in another country’s affairs.”
The Washington Post adds that for “decades, the United States has offered judgments on whether elections were conducted in a free or fair matter [sic], a judgment that can have significant impact in countries.”
“Scholars have accused the United States of democratic backsliding since Trump, who refused to accept the results of the 2020 presidential election, returned to office this year.
President Trump and Vice President JD Vance have defended right-wing and far-right political groups, including Germany’s Alternative for Germany (AfD) party, which reportedly has ties to right-wing extremists.
Secretary Rubio in May ignited a “spat” with Germany’s foreign ministry when it “hit back…after he criticized the decision to classify the Alternative for Germany party as a ‘right-wing extremist’ organization,” the Associated Press reported at the time.
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Image via Reuters
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