Here in the editorial department of PGN, the workweek runs from Thursday to Wednesday, when the paper goes to press. Sadly, this past week, which started with the high of the flag-raising ceremony last Thursday, ended with the death of LGBT-rights pioneer Frank Kameny on Tuesday.
The second annual rainbow flag raising at City Hall, complemented by the Occupy Philly protest on the other side of the building, brought together activists, community members, civil servants and politicians — and truly showed how far the LGBT community has come in terms of rights and recognition.
Last weekend also saw the first Trans* March and the third annual LGBTQ Womyn of Color Conference. On Sunday, the community turned out in force for OutFest, the annual street festival in the Gayborhood marking National Coming Out Day. The unseasonably warm weather brought out the community in droves: Organizers estimated that more than 40,000 attended.
At the event, the new historic marker for Giovanni’s Room bookstore was unveiled — the culmination of 18 months of effort by a working group that included the store, nonprofits, quasi-governmental agencies and the city, and comprised this editor. The marker is only the second in the state to commemorate an LGBT-specific site; the other stands outside of Independence Hall, commemorating the Annual Reminder pickets held from 1965-69.
Which brings us back to Kameny, who was one of the organizers and marchers in those first pickets almost 50 years ago.
Kameny was the first person to sue the U.S. government for sexual-orientation discrimination after he was fired from his job as an astronomer from the Army Mapping Service (now the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency) in 1957.
In 1961, he co-founded The Mattachine Society, an activist group pushing for fair and equal treatment of gays and lesbians. Two years later, he worked on a campaign to overturn Washington, D.C.’s sodomy laws. Thirty years later, he wrote the bill that finally repealed them.
In 1965, he was involved in pickets outside the Pentagon, The White House and Independence Hall.
The pickets in Philadelphia helped spur activism here, and incited others to work openly for gay and lesbian civil rights.
Kameny, along with Barbara Gittings, was also instrumental in successfully lobbying the American Psychiatric Association to change the classification of homosexuality as a mental disorder. The declassification began to lessen the demonization of gays and lesbians in society.
In addition to the death of Kameny, this week also marked the 13th anniversary of the murder of Matthew Shepard, the gay college student killed in Laramie, Wyo.
Like Kameny’s activism, Shepard’s death compelled the LGBT community and allies to push for equal rights and protections.