May 21 is the birthday of Dr. Franklin E. Kameny, one of the most prominent LGBTQ+ activists and organizers in American history. Dr. Kameny was a Jewish, US Army World War II veteran and Harvard PhD. 

Following the war Dr. Kameny worked as an astronomer for the US Army Map Service where he became a victim of Senator Joe McCarthy’s infamous persecution of LGBT Americans known as the Lavender Scare. This persecution was featured in the recent film “Fellow Travelers” starring Matt Bomer and Jonathan Bailey.     

In 1957 Kameny sued the US Civil Service Commission after he was fired from his job because of his sexual orientation.

On April 17, 1965, Dr. Kameny picketed the White House, one of the first public LGBTQ demonstrations in US history. In 1971 he became the first openly LGBTQ candidate for US Congress. He successfully advocated for the removal of homosexuality as a mental disease by the American Psychiatric Association. 

He searched for gay US service members to challenge the military’s anti-gay policy, and in 1975 encouraged USAF SSgt Leonard Matlovich to come out in order to challenge the ban.

Kameny helped found some of the nation’s premiere LGBT organizations, including the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force. He fought to change America’s image of LGBTQ people, coining the phrase “Gay is Good” in 1968.

In 2009 he stood beside President Barack Obama in the Oval Office as the president signed an executive order granting benefits to the same-sex partners of federal employees. That same year, Dr. Kameny received a formal apology from the U.S. government for his firing. It was delivered by John Berry the openly gay director of the Office of Personnel Management.

Dr. Kameny lived to see the end of the ban on lesbian, gay, and bisexual people serving openly in the military, an effort for which he had fought for so many years. Frank Kameny died on October 11, 2011 (National Coming Out Day) and is buried in Washington’s Congressional Cemetery.

His home in Washington has been named a National Historic Landmark and a street in DC bears his name, “Frank Kameny Way.” Dr. Frank Kameny is a Life Member of American Veterans for Equal Rights and a recipient of AVER’s highest honor, the Leonard Matlovich Medal.