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I just finished reading The Deviant’s War by Eric Cervini and I would highly recommend it for anyone wanting to learn more about the political aspects of the LGBT civil rights movement in the 60s and 70s.
It focuses on Frank Kameny and the Mattachine Society of Washington DC. Kameny was a government astronomer who was fired and lost his security clearance for being gay. He believed that America needed to see that gay people were proper, respectful Americans who looked and behaved just like everyone else outside of the bedroom. He organized the first pickets and insisted that everyone wore business formal clothes, picketed quietly, with pre-approved signs, and displayed no signs of affection to their partners during the picket if they were present.
And then the patrons of a mob-owned bar in New York decided to handle things a bit differently, much to his chagrin. Even more to his chagrin, they turned out to be extremely effective.
I wouldn’t downplay the achievements of the Mattachine Society of DC. They engaged with the government over and over in court and challenged the belief that gay men were open to blackmail and therefore unsafe to employ in government. Kameny created the Gay is Good slogan and argued that government workers who were open about their sexuality had no risk of blackmail, and were only at risk of unfair prejudice from the government itself.
Kameny was far from perfect, but there’s a reason he was standing over Obama’s shoulder when Don’t Ask Don’t Tell was repealed.
I wasn’t trying to make the point that he or the Mattachine Society didn’t matter. I merely find it very amusing that after a long and meticulously crafted campaign to make gay people as inoffensive and nonthreatening as possible, the thing that accelerated gay acceptance was when the exact opposite happened and people started showing that they didn’t have to be nonthreatening.
The combination of a quiet composed voice and a loud angry one was more effective than either would’ve been on their own.
Women got the right to vote when they started making bombs.
I think this is the most effective way to do it. The upstanding, professional, clean way first and then…
I was wondering what the Mattachine sign that guy on the right was holding was about.
So they didn’t murder police officers and threaten senators?
