Frank Kameny (1925-2011)

Franklin Edward Kameny (1925-2011) was one of the most important figures in the American gay rights movement. A Harvard-trained astronomer, he was fired from his U.S. Army Map Service job in 1957 during the Lavender Scare because he was gay. Rather than stay quiet, he fought back. In 1961 his appeal became the first gay civil rights case filed with the U.S. Supreme Court, which declined to hear it. That same year he co-founded the Mattachine Society of Washington, and he helped organize some of the earliest public gay rights pickets at the White House and Pentagon. He coined "Gay is Good" in 1968, echoing "Black is Beautiful," and pushed the American Psychiatric Association to stop classifying homosexuality as a mental illness. His D.C. home is a National Historic Landmark.