Wow! ( )

A stubborn cis white gay man, fired from his defense job because he was gay, waged a decades-long war against anti-homosexual discrimination starting in the 1950s and was a major figure in the homophile movement/Mattachine Society. Early on he developed the position that being homosexual was a positive good, which he insisted on while suffering the jeers of those who pointed to the Bible, the positive law, the official position of psychiatry, and the consensus of polite society. He filed legal briefs (pro se) making this argument along with, or sometimes instead of, legal ones. He persisted long past the point of diminishing returns, couldn’t pay his bills, annoyed people around him including his allies, insisted on a politics of respectability that eventually became very outdated, and lived long enough to see himself vindicated and his security clearance retroactively reinstated. ( )

This is the total story o the quest for equality for America's Gay/lesbian population. The book centers on Frank Kameny who in the 1950's lost his job with the Dept. of Defense for the sole reason that he was seen doing an "obscene" act. He will eventually found the first organization to protest and agitate for Gay rights. The book broadens out to include many other activists and groups over the years. The progress is painstakingly slow as he personally loses several jobs over the years but ultimately has a meeting with Barack Obama in the Oval office. A really informative and well written book even for a straight man like myself. ( )

Surprisingly engaging history of the early formation of the modern gay rights movement, told through the biography of one of its most influential founders, Frank Kameny. I'd heard the name before, mostly in connection with the pickets in front of the White House, but had not known how deeply his influence reached to both motivate others to stand up proudly for themselves (Kameny created the "Gay is Good" slogan), and create the organizational structures to push that cause through the administrative and legal channels of the federal government.

Cervini's biography is the result of ten years of consistent labor (one wonders what he'll be able to do as a sophomore effort). While the book rightly admires its subject, it does not gloss over his less attractive personality quirks. The result is a fully human portrait of this complex, but greatly important personality.

Eye-opening and saddening are accounts of the resistance Kameny encountered from other homophile organizations who felt the proper focus of their energies should be the schooling and education of the homosexual, rather than the correction of straight society's discriminations and prejudices.

Perhaps the single most interesting tidbit is story behind the formal creation of gay pride celebrations, which resulted from a motion by Ellen Broidy, an NYU student attending the 1970 ERCHO conference. It proposed moving Kameny's July 4 "Reminder pickets" to the last Saturday in June. And the rest, as they say, is history.

If this book has an annoying weakness, it is the lack of a bibliography. The endnotes are plentiful, but the citations therein are sketchy, and in any event it is not possible to scan the list of references consulted for the text, which might have proved a useful reading list. ( )