05/06/2021
The life Franklin E Kameny, one of the trailblazers of the early homosexual rights movements of the nineteen fifties and sixties, is celebrated this week by a Google “Doodle” on the web search's masthead. Kameny, who died in 2011, would have been 96 this week. He was radicalised after being dismissed by the US military for his sexual orientation and soon joined the Mattachine Society, an early and moderate pre-Stonewall activist group. Forming an alliance with the lesbian group Daughters of Bilitis, Kameny helped devise one of the earliest demonstrations held by self-identified gay people, on April 17th 1965. This became the Annual Reminder for Gay Rights, but was eventually swept away by the new militant activism of the post-Stonewall gay movement. Kameny's activism did not stop though, as he worked with other groups to engage the American Psychiatric Association in a series of evidence finding sessions that eventually led to the declassification of sexual identity as grounds for a mental health diagnosis. And Mr Kameny was present with activists from the Gay Task Force when in March 1977, they were the first all gay delegation to brief White House staff officially on the state of gay rights. Kameny remains an international gay hero and it is great that his birthdate is remembered by Google.
