Much more on the death of Frank Kameny

Metro Weekly:

Kameny's beginnings in advocacy work came after he was fired from his job as an astronomer for the Army Map Service because he was gay in 1957. He challenged the firing, though, and took the case all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court. Although the court declined to hear the case, an activist was born.

Kameny went on to become one of the leading advocates for lesbian and gay equality in the years before — and since — Stonewall. In 1961, he co-founded the Mattachine Society of Washington. In 1965, he and others with the group famously picketed the White House in shirts and ties, sending a letter to the White House explaining their presence.

Along with Barbara Gittings, Kameny successfully worked with experts in the field and others to convince the American Psychiatric Association to remove homosexuality from its list of disorders in 1973. The next year, he and Gittings served as counsel to Otis Fancis Tabler, Jr., successfully keeping the Defense Department employee from having his security clearance revoked due to being gay.

Despite the many victories for equality of which Kameny was a part since, it wasn't until June 24, 2009, that he received a formal apology from the government for his firing. In a letter that called the firing ''a shameful action,'' the director of the Office of Personnel Management wrote to him, ''Please accept our apology for the consequences of the previous policy of the United States government, and please accept the gratitude and appreciation of the United States Office of Personnel Management for the work you have done to fight discrimination and protect the merit-based civil service system.''

Washington Blade:

Kameny is credited with being one of the leading strategists for the early gay rights movement — beginning shortly before the 1969 Stonewall riots in New York’s Greenwich Village and continuing afterward.

Born and raised in New York City, Kameny served in combat as an Army soldier in World War II in Europe. After the war, Kameny obtained a doctorate degree in astronomy from Harvard University.

He went on to work as an astronomer for the U.S. Army map service in the 1950s and was fired after authorities discovered he was gay. He contested the firing and appealed his case to the U.S. Supreme Court, becoming the first known gay person to file a gay-related case before the high court. The Supreme Court upheld the lower court ruling against Kameny and declined to hear the case, but Kameny’s decision to appeal the case through the court system motivated him to become a lifelong advocate on behalf on LGBT equality.