Kameny Accepts 75th Birthday Tribute
Remarks by Franklin E. Kameny
GLAA 29th Anniversary ReceptionDoyle Washington Hotel
Thursday, April 27, 2000
I usually center my speeches and public remarks around gay related issues, events, and, more and more, history — I've become a kind of gay movement walking history book — bringing myself in only insofar as I may have played a role in the events being narrated. But this is a special personal occasion, and I will be much more subjective and self-centered than is my usual custom.
The past 75 years have been eventful ones for me, in ways that I could never possibly have predicted — and more interesting, stimulating, exciting, fascinating, full, and just plain fun, resulting in a greater sense of accomplishment than I could ever have imagined. I am a very different person from what I was even as recently as 40 years ago. When I was in high school, we had classes in public speaking in which we had to give three-minute speeches. I used to have three weeks of nightmares before such speeches. Now, as many of you who know me know, three minutes is the first half of a good opening sentence. And so when I was told that this event would run from 7 o'clock to 10 o'clock, my first question was: To 10 PM or 10 AM? Unfortunately, the answer was 10 PM, so I will have to trim my comments severely, and just touch upon a small number of selected items, instead of going on until dawn, as I would have liked. In his introduction to me, Bob Summersgill has touched upon many others.
A question that I have been asked with considerable frequency over the years, is where I got the courage, in those harshly repressive days of yore, to push ahead as I did. My basic answer is that it didn't really take any courage; it would have taken more courage to have lived with myself had I not done so. Basically, although I have been considered as intellectually arrogant by some for this, the fundamental guiding principle for the conduct of my life has been an absolute faith in the validity of the products of my own intellectual processes.
Accordingly, when the world and I — or society and I, or whatever — have disagreed on something, I have been willing to give it a second look and to give society a second chance to make its case. If we still disagree, then I am right and they are wrong, and that is that, as long as they don't get in my way. If they do get in my way, there will be a fight, and I tend not to lose my wars.Accordingly, in those matters on which I have chosen to take a stand — there are too many to fight them all — I have chosen not to adjust myself to society, but, with considerable success, have adjusted society to me. Society is much the better off for the adjustments that I have administered.
As many of you know, I have done a great deal of work as an unaccredited lawyer and self-designated paralegal, getting my on-the-job training from the civil service, security clearance, and military cases which I have handled in great numbers at the administrative level. Way back in the early '60's, a Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense suggested to me that I go to law school. I'm glad that I didn't because I was thus enabled to ignore the canons of legal ethics, since having never been embarred, I couldn't be disbarred, and could drive government attorneys up the wall with tactics forbidden to them as accredited attorneys.
In dealing with recalcitrant and unfriendly government officials, I take absolutely literally the term "public servant," which makes of me, as a member of the public, one of their masters, establishing a hierarchical relationship which prevails at all times, and which I never let them forget. Thus I do not stand up for judges in courtrooms — unless I particularly respect the particular judge — because masters do not stand up for servants. Similarly, I am always annoyed whenever I read in the Blade that some official did not return telephone calls. I do not grant the servants the right not to return my calls, because that puts me in their power rather than, rightfully, the reverse. And so over the years, I have adopted a procedure which has always worked, and which I highly commend to the Blade and to other media. I phone, and ask for the official to whom I wish to speak. If I am not put through, and an appointment is refused, I phone again the next day, in the morning. If I do not get through, then I phone again that afternoon. If I still do not get through, then on the next day, I start phoning non-stop. I inform them that whatever work they may do in their office, none of it is going to get done by telephone, because I am going to be on their phone, non-stop, until I get through. I have two phones, so I can dial all but the last digit of the number on one phone, while speaking on the other. If I am refused, down goes the key on the other phone, and there I am again. On occasion, I have had one secretary on each ear, in the same office. This continues non-stop, until I am put through. No public official has ever withstood this treatment for more than an hour and a half. Are you listening, Lou? [Editor: Kameny is referring to Washington Blade reporter Lou Chibbaro, who was present.]
Shifting gears: The changes which have occurred in our status over the years that I have been involved with gay rights have gone far beyond anything that was even thinkable back 40 or 50 years ago. When I started, homosexuality, in the words of the New York Times, was "news that was not fit to print." Thus I did not learn until 1959 that gay issues were involved in the McCarthy hearings back around 1950. Now, we are in the public eye without cessation.
When I started, we were criminals under the anti-sodomy laws in every state in the Union. Only a minority of states retain anti-sodomy laws now. When I started, to be known as gay meant that you never obtained or retained any job. Now, countless corporations not only have anti-discrimination policies protective of gays, but offer benefits to same-sex couples comparable to those offered to opposite-sex couples. When I started we did not even dream of affirmative laws, protecting us against discrimination. Now some ten states and countless cities and counties have them, and they are before Congress. When I started, we were excluded from civil service employment and from security clearances. Now we have Presidential Executive Orders protecting our right to them. When I started, public officials did not even answer our letters. Now Presidents, Vice Presidents, governors, mayors, judges, members of Congress, City Councilmembers, Police Chiefs and others routinely attend our events — as here this evening — and march with us. When I started, the police were our bitter enemies. Now they are here with us as honored guests and have recruiting booths at our festivals. When I started, being known to be gay was correctly perceived as "the kiss of death" for a political career. Now we have openly and proudly gay politicians and other public officials, appointed and elected in ever growing numbers throughout the country. When I started, we had no political clout at all. Now we are wooed and courted by politicians across the country. When I started, same-sex marriage was not seriously considered by anyone — ANYONE — even among gays. It wasn't even on the screen at all. Now it is one of the two most contentious sociopolitical issues of the day, and we just had Vermont. [Editor: The governor of Vermont had signed the Civil Unions bill into law the day before the GLAA reception.]
And of course, as those who have been observing current events in the religious arena are aware, by standing firmly against the immoral moral assaults of religious bigots and refusing to back off or yield, we are causing Christendom itself to crumble and fragment, and are sowing the seeds of the greatest religious change since Martin Luther's Protestant Reformation some 500 years ago. And similarly with Judaism and Islam.
Who would have thunk it 40 or 50 years ago? Not I back then!
Of course there is unfinished business — the military, for example. And there have been setbacks, and there will be others — you can't win them all — at least not at once — and the nutty fundamentalists, who didn't have their act together at all in the '60's, are now much better organized. But we ARE clearly winning. The tide is with us, and our opposition knows it, which is why they are becoming ever more shrill and strident. It is clear that we are winning, because we are right and they are wrong; we are moral and they are immoral and sinful; we are rational and they are irrational; and, most important of all, we are American and they are un-American and anti-American.
Finally, and in closing, let me say just a few words about GLAA.
Over the years since GLAA was founded — then as GAA — in 1971 from the nucleus of my Congressional Campaign Committee, and within 3 weeks was deeply involved in the famous invasion of the American Psychiatric Association, it has pursued a truly remarkable and outstandingly successful course, which has made it a force to be reckoned with and has made Washington the political success story of the gay movement nationally.
It had its difficult days very early on, including the impeachment of one of its Presidents, and bleak days during which the entire membership could sit on the President's living room couch, but it soon developed its modus operandi. It was blessed with a truly quite incredible, unbroken succession of simply superb presidents, which only rarely descended down to the level of the merely mediocre. Invariably, on the old rationale of a bird in the hand being worth two in the bush, I did my best to try to persuade each incumbent president to run for re-election, only to have him or her succeeded by someone equal or better.
The core group has been smaller than it should be, and in recent times we have had to do a little recycling of officers, but its record of accomplishment is impressive. Also impressive is the current, internet-based mode of operation, of which I have been privileged to be a part. Whenever some issuance is in order — a letter or memorandum to one or more public officials; testimony before the City Council; a news release; or whatever — a draft is circulated among this group of people, it is quickly and efficiently polished and perfected in terms of content, tactics and strategy, and down to grammar, spelling, and punctuation, through the input of the whole remarkably competent and dedicated core group, and the final issuance is consistently one of the highest quality. As a result, over the past few years, I have seen GLAA develop into a highly influential and usually successful political action group, in which I am proud to be a participant. If any of you want to participate in a worthy enterprise, GLAA needs you.
I could go on at much greater length, but I guess I have exhausted the privileges of seniority, and of seniors to ramble, so I'll close. So much for 75; on to 100!
Thank you.
