GAY IS GOOD

or

WHY SB 48 MATTERS.

Franklin Kameny died on Tuesday. The vast majority of the folks reading that just heard Charlie Brown's teacher, which is not really your fault. Franklin Kameny was " Rosa Parks and George Patton rolled into one"

From Wikipedia : "

Franklin Edward "Frank" Kameny (May 21, 1925 – October 11, 2011) was "one of the most significant figures" in the American gay rights movement. In 1957, Kameny was dismissed from his position as an astronomer in the Army Map Service in Washington, D.C. because of his homosexuality, leading him to begin "a Herculean struggle with the American establishment" that would "spearhead a new period of militancy in the homosexual rights movement of the early 1960s".
Kameny protested his firing by the U.S. Civil Service Commission due to his homosexuality, and argued this case to the United States Supreme Court in 1961. Although the court denied his petition, it is notable as the first civil rights claim based on sexual orientation. ( the rest )

1957 - Frank is trying to get his groove on, was arrested and fired from his job, because it was illegal to be gay and work for the Federal Government. Mr. Kameny did not go gentle into that good night, he kicked and screamed and took it all the way to the US SUPREME COURT.. where he lost. But for the first time, maybe in the history of the world.... we fought back. Yes, June of '69 is more famous.. and maybe rightly so, but which was more important to the African American Civil Rights movement, Mrs. Parks or The March on Washington. They are inseparable.

From todays NYT : ( the whole front page story, full obit tomorrow )
October 12, 2011
Franklin Kameny, Gay Rights Pioneer, Dies at 86
By DAVID W. DUNLAP

Franklin E. Kameny, who transformed his 1957 arrest as a “sex pervert” and his subsequent firing from the Army Map Service into a powerful animating spark of the gay rights movement, died on Tuesday at his home in Washington. He was 86.
Bob Witeck, a longtime friend of Mr. Kameny’s, confirmed his death, saying the cause was a heart attack or heart failure, The Associated Press reported. A half-century ago, Mr. Kameny was either first or foremost — often both — in publicly advocating the propositions that homosexuals were found throughout the population, that they were not mentally ill and that there was neither reason nor justification for the many forms of discrimination against them that were prevalent then. Rather than accept his firing quietly, Mr. Kameny sued the government in federal court. That he lost was almost beside the point. The battle against discrimination now had a face, a name and a Ph.D. from Harvard. Mr. Kameny became a founder of the Mattachine Society of Washington, an early advocacy group. He picketed the White House in 1965, and in 1971 he ran for the delegate seat representing the District of Columbia in the House of Representatives, calling himself a “qualified Washingtonian who happens also, but incidentally, to be a homosexual.”
He also claimed authorship of the phrase “Gay is good” a year before the 1969 Stonewall uprising in New York, which is widely regarded as the first milestone in the gay rights movement. Many of the tributes that began to appear on the Web on Wednesday noted that Mr. Kameny’s death coincided with National Coming Out Day, which was observed Tuesday.Mr. Kameny has been likened both to Rosa Parks and to Gen. George Patton, two historical figures not frequently found in the same sentence. “Frank Kameny was our Rosa Parks, and more,” Richard Socarides, the president of a new advocacy group, Equality Matters, said on Wednesday. It is a measure of how much changed in Mr. Kameny’s lifetime that Mr. Socarides served as the White House special assistant for gay rights in the Clinton administration.
The Patton analogy was made by Dudley Clendinen and Adam Nagourney in their 1999 book “Out for Good: The Struggle to Build a Gay Rights Movement in America.” “Franklin Kameny had the confidence of an intellectual autocrat, the manner of a snapping turtle, a voice like a foghorn, and the habit of expressing himself in thunderous bursts of precise and formal language,” the authors wrote. (Mr. Nagourney is a reporter for The New York Times, and Mr. Clendinen is a former Times reporter.) "He talked in italics and exclamation points,” they added, “and he cultivated the self-righteous arrogance of a visionary who knew his cause was just when no one else did.”
Mr. Kameny recognized early on that a high hurdle facing the gay rights movement was the stigma imposed by the classification of homosexuality as a mental illness, and he was among those who lobbied for its reversal in the early 1970s. He declared himself “ecstatic” in 1974 when members of the American Psychiatric Association upheld their board’s resolution that homosexuality, “by itself, does not necessarily constitute a psychiatric disorder.” Though far less celebrated than the Stonewall uprising five years earlier, the resolution was a development of great consequence. And Mr. Kameny survived long enough to receive an apology from the government for his firing a half century earlier, The A.P. noted. It was tendered in 2009 by John Berry, director of the United States Office of Personnel Management, who is gay.


We were , as a people, invisible. Beaten, outlawed , hunted, scorned.. you name it. 1957, get your head around the courage this man had.
HRC 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 workforce, Dr. Kameny

SB 48 is the new law , just singed into effect in California that puts GLBT history on par with every other history in California. Frank Kameny is to be taught in public schools, right along with Rosa Parks and Cesar Chavez. Naturally this riled up the Christianist, the only good gay is a dead one.. OR an invisible one, BUT it is looking like the repeal of the law is going to fail!
From JMG “The FAIR Education Act (aka SB48 ) will simply ensure that California’s students learn an honest, accurate, and inclusive account of history, but opponents of equality have grossly distorted the intent and the effect of the FAIR Education act in their quest to secure signatures for this referendum. Today's victory shows that their lies cannot stand up to our truth,” said Roland Palencia, Equality California Executive Director and Interim Executive Committee Co-Chair of the coalition to protect the FAIR Education Act. “But we know that opponents of equality won't stop here. We remain vigilant, not only to make sure that people know the facts about the FAIR Education Act, but also to continue preparing for new attacks on the FAIR Education Act at the ballot box, in the legislature and in courts of law.”

President Obama gives Mr Kameny a pen.,
just used to give LGBT Federal Workers
benefits - June 2009

There is a call for the same sort of bill in NEW YORK as well.. see HERE