AP reports on controversy over Sally Ride coming out posthumously

An interesting mix of commentary.  I've already weighed in a few times.  You can read the story :) Read the rest of this post...

Why Sally Ride never came out

Via Cosmiclog at MSNBC:

"In her inherent Norwegian reticence — in this and so many aspects of her personal life (wrestling with pancreatic cancer, for example) — she just didn't talk much (see Norwegian comment, and add to that the typical tight-lipped scientist thing)," [Sally's sister] Bear wrote. "If you read interviews from years and years back, you'll see that there was always a major frustration that she didn't comment much on 'how it feels to be the first American woman in space' — she just didn't think that way. She wanted to get the job done. Her personal feelings were just that: personal. Not right or wrong — simply Sally. Everyone who knows her well really got that about her."

Sex has always been a tricky topic for astronauts: In the old days, they worried that if they didn't conform with the "Right Stuff" stereotype, they wouldn't be picked for spaceflights. Issues such as alcohol abuse or marital problems often were swept under the carpet. Is it any surprise, then, that no active or former astronauts have publicly announced that they're gay? Michael Cassutt, the author of "Who's Who in Space," is quoted on Space.com as saying that such an announcement would be a "career-wrecker."

Read the rest of this post...

Washington Post's bigoted column about Sally Ride

Some southern "cultural journalist", Suzi Parker, is vewy vewy upset that Sally Ride is now a gay icon.

In death, Ride has already become politicized. Progressive and gay blogs are lamenting the fact that O’Shaughnessy will not receive Ride’s federal benefits because of the Marriage Act (DOMA) and blaming Republicans.

Ride obviously didn’t want to be a gay icon. If she had, she could have easily sat down with Oprah or Ellen and told the world about her sexuality, her private life and her love for O’Shaughnessy, whom she had known since she was 12.

Instead, Ride lived in a world where we should all live, a place where we celebrate someone for her accomplishments and not her sexual orientation.

Yeah, Suzi, and we should all live in a world where people don't kill us, bully us, and deny us jobs and housing and the right to marry, all based on our sexual orientation.

But we don't.

(Are you a bigot, or just woefully ignorant?)

Please stop writing about topics about which you clearly know very little. The closet, and people like you who reinforce it, make gay kids question their self-worth.  It's why many contemplate suicide.

Surviving in a world where people would rather you be invisible is an accomplishment. Read the rest of this post...

Sally Ride, 1st female astronaut in space, dies - partner says she was gay

Gonna be hard not to teach gay history how.

Sally Ride, who died today after a 17-month battle with pancreatic cancer, was the first female U.S. astronaut in space and became friends with Tam O'Shaugnessy at the age of 12. It was not until today, however — nearly 50 years after meeting — that their 27-year romantic relationship was made public.

The pioneering scientist was, a statement from Sally Ride Science announced, survived by "Tam O'Shaughnessy, her partner of 27 years."

With that simple statement — listed alongside her mother, Joyce; her sister, Bear; her niece, Caitlin and nephew, Whitney — Ride came out.

Also this via Wikipedia sheds some light on why she eventually decided not to come out:

Ride was one of 8,000 people to answer an advertisement in a newspaper seeking applicants for the space program. As a result, she joined NASA in 1978. Prior to her first space flight, she was subject to media attention even being asked during a press conference "Do you weep when things go wrong on the job?"

The questions were asked, or at least reported, by People magazine in 1983. Even then, Ride was willing to stand up for women:

No other astronaut was ever asked questions like these: Will the flight affect your reproductive organs? The answer, delivered with some asperity: "There's no evidence of that." Do you weep when things go wrong on the job? Retort: "How come nobody ever asks Rick those questions?" Will you become a mother? First an attempt at evasion, then a firm smile: "You notice I'm not answering." In an hour of interrogation that is by turns intelligent, inane and almost insulting, Ride remains calm, unrattled and as laconic as the lean, tough fighter jockeys who surround her. "It may be too bad that our society isn't further along and that this is such a big deal," she reflects.

Granted, this was thirty years ago, but I'm still amazed that someone would ask a woman these questions.

I remember in 1989, when I was working in the US Senate, and we went on a congressional delegation to West Berlin in early December, in the midst of the fall of the Wall. We'd been picked up at the airport by the number two man in either the US embassy in Bonn or, more likely, the US consulate in West Berlin. Along with the Senators, we staff were hustled onto a bus - Senators in front, staff in back - when I witnessed the following conversation take place with the #2 guy and Senator Dole's Arms Control/Defense staffer, who was a woman (and was, I believe, the only female congressional staffer on the trip).

I paraphrase, because I didn't record the conversation, but I remember it like it was yesterday:

EMBASSY GUY (to female Dole staffer): Excuse me, but you're on the wrong bus.

DOLE STAFF: Really?

EMBASSY: Yes, the spouses' bus is the next one over. This one is for Senators and staff.

DOLE STAFF: I'm not a spouse, I'm Senator Dole's Defense and Arms Control staffer.

EMBASSY: Yes, but we're heading straight to the consulate for meetings and the women are going shopping after freshening up at the hotel, I just thought you might prefer to be with the women.

DOLE STAFF: Uh, no thank you, I think I'll stay here.

EMBASSY: Are you sure?

DOLE STAFF: Yes.

I was blown away.  I'd never witnessed this blatant of a display of sexism (I was only 25).  I was speechless.  I remember we asked the staffer if she was okay, we were all kind of in shock.  She wanted us to ignore it, so we did (which I would not have done today).

So things were, are, different for women.  I can understand in an intensely male environment like the Space Program, and even after, a woman not being totally comfortable acknowledging publicly that she has a lesbian partner. Read the rest of this post...

Effort to repeal gay history law in CA fails

They couldn't even get enough names on the petition to put it up to a vote. Ha! Read the rest of this post...

How gay men were set up in elaborate blackmail stings in the 1960s

From Slate:

In almost every case, after making contact, the chicken would accompany the mark up to his room, or suggest another hotel where they could go instead. Once in the room, one of two scenarios would follow.

In some cases, the bulls would wait until the two men had gotten themselves into a compromising position before bursting into the room and identifying themselves as vice squad detectives, capitalizing on the fear, panic, and surprise they induced in the victim as they initiated what they referred to as the play. At the Hilton, where Skull Murphy was head of security, the timing was made easier by the inch or so Murphy had shaved from certain room doors, into which he inserted a small dental mirror taped to the end of a cane, the better to see exactly when to pounce.

The bulls would explain the penalties for violating sodomy laws or corrupting a minor, then demand an outright bribe, or as they did to the Princeton professor, suggest that the victim pay “bail money” as a way of avoiding making his arrest public, or prison. In some cases the bulls might induce a payoff by putting a victim together in a room with another man they pretended to have arrested for the same thing elsewhere in the hotel. That other man might say something like: “Hey, I can’t afford to be arrested. I’m going to offer them money, what about you?” Having the victim induce the payoff, rather than demand the money outright, lowered the criminals’ exposure in court.

With all the right clothes and the right police jargon, some of the blackmailers appeared “more detective than real detectives,” the FBI’s Paul Brana said. The official paperwork—warrants, affidavits, arrest forms—was convincing too.

They specialized in targeting the rich and powerful:

They played this long game with chutzpah too. On two occasions they marched New Jersey Congressman Peter Frelinghuysen, who sat on the House Foreign Affairs Committee, right out of his Capitol Hill office and onto a private plane for a trip to his New Jersey bank where he paid them $50,000 in total, according to the FBI’s Paul Brana. Admiral William Church, who, among other duties was in charge of the New York Naval Yards at the time, was escorted from the Pentagon, handing over $5,000, as was an Army general who paid $2,000. The criminals also rushed a prominent surgeon right out of an operating room, forcing his colleague to finish the procedure. They didn’t miss a chance to see a bit of the world either, flying to London to nick a well-known British producer for $3,000.

Once successful in obtaining a payoff, the culprits often returned for more. A Midwestern teacher paid $120,000 over a four-year period. A Kansas City businessman handed over nearly $150,000 until he pleaded with the criminals to kill him because he had no more money. If denied, the criminals made good on their threats, often destroying lives. The Times reported that “The marriage of one victim who refused to be intimidated was wrecked when the gang informed his wife.” According to Time magazine, the fiancé of another victim broke off her engagement.

Read the rest of this post...

Without Alan Turing, this blog post would likely be in German

On the 100th anniversary of gay mathematician Alan Turing, there was an interesting back and forth in the blog comments over the weekend.

Hue-Man asks:

And my question: Is it too much of an exaggeration to suggest that without Turing, we’d be working our slide rules… in German?

Kalil responds:

To answer your question:
It's not an exaggeration at all.
If a sole individual can be credited with winning the war, it's Alan Turing, for giving us complete intelligence on the entirety of German force distribution and movements. When we went in on D-Day, we practically knew the location of every individual soldier, due to the top-down, radio-dependent nature of the german operations.
And if a sole individual can be credited with beginning the information age, again, it's Alan Turing.

And yet... Where are the monuments? Did you hear about him in your history classes?

Why not?

Read the rest of this post...

Alan Turing's 100th bday

Brilliant mathematician, codebreaker, and man hounded to his death by the British government for being gay.  Google has dedicated it's home page today to Turing with some kind of codebreaking scheme that is eluding me.  I got it to work once or twice, but now am totally lost. Read the rest of this post...

How Stonewall got it right and Occupy Wall Street got it wrong

Fascinating analysis, and theory, from Linda Hirshman In the New Yorker:

This Sunday, as every fourth Sunday in June, the streets of New York will fill with prideful marchers celebrating Pride Month. There will be similar marches, too, in cities around the country. Sunday marks the forty-third year since the uprising in a Greenwich Village bar called Stonewall that supposedly started the modern gay revolution. The myth is that a few hundred angry people acted out in lower Manhattan, and the world changed. Maybe that’s where Occupy Wall Street got the idea that this is how it’s done.

It’s the wrong lesson. Stonewall was the product of a handful of brilliant community organizers applying basic principles of social organizing. Without them, Stonewall would have been nothing more than one of several gay-bar pushbacks in the late sixties, or another one of the non-gay street demonstrations that characterized New York in that tumultuous time. It was the dedicated strategizing of the men and women of the nascent gay movement that turned something unremarkable into the Bastille. Their achievement is a field guide to how to make a social movement, and also offers insight into why Occupy is failing.

She goes on to explain in detail. It's not a long article, and worth the read. Read the rest of this post...

What’s a Straight Girl Like You Doing in a Place Like This?

A special essay for us by Linda Hirshman, who's book, "Victory: The Triumphant Gay Revolution," comes out from Harper Collins today.  I asked Linda to explain what got a straight grandma to write a history of the modern gay rights movement?  Below, she explains.

What’s a Straight Girl Like You Doing in a Place Like This?
By Linda Hirshman
Author of “Victory: The Triumphant Gay Revolution,” available Tuesday, June 5 in hardcover and Kindel versions.

"Victory," my political story of the gay revolution will come out, so to speak, on Tuesday.

John has asked me to write something about how I came to write it and what it meant to me. He may not have had the question in mind, but many people, including Publisher’s Weekly and the eminent gay scholar Nathaniel Frank, have commented on a straight grandmother thinking she should write the big book about the gay movement as it achieves, er, Victory.

At first, I was quite defensive about this question.

A white southerner, Taylor Branch, wrote the definitive history of the racial civil rights movement. I am a trained political philosopher; why in the world not? But I have seen it is asked in good faith, and it is true, in retrospect, that the book probably meant more to me coming to the movement as an outsider than if I had grown up in it.

Like most people, I have gay and lesbian friends. My closest friend since childhood happens to be a lesbian woman; I performed her marriage ceremony to her partner of thirty years last month. But our friendship played no role in the decision. I consider myself someone who does not need to be friends or relatives with people to recognize their humanity and cherish their aspirations to live flourishing lives. PFLAG does good work, for sure using the closer ties for good ends. I, however am no Dick Cheney. That’s what it means to be a liberal (no apologies) – recognizing that all people have certain legitimate claims because they are human, not because they happen to be your daughter.

No, I got interested in the gay revolution after I heard the great Harvard political philosopher Michael Sandel use the sodomy cases in a lecture at Berkeley around 1987. The horrible Supreme Court decision in Bowers v. Hardwick had just come out, and Sandel was arguing that claims to be tolerated in one’s privacy, which were at the heart of the sodomy litigation, would not work.

Instead, the movement had to make, and, Sandel contended, had already started to make, claims that their relationships were manifestations of human love and connectedness and should be respected and admired, not just tolerated. A movement that makes an affirmative moral claim. I’ve been interested ever since.

Space is short, but because I was a stranger, I consciously experienced what many gay people may take for granted: the power of the community.

When I approached the great gay journalist and historian Eric Marcus at the very beginning of my process, I held my breath. Would people like Eric, who had labored on the subject in much leaner times, reject me, the interloper, who comes when the victory is near? Of course, he did not. Instead he opened his Rolodex, introduced me to everyone he knew, including Frank Kameny (in the nick of time), and guided me lovingly through the thickets of who was who.

From Eric to Robby Browne, from Robby to Larry Kramer, from Eric to Ann Northrop, from Ann to Marlene McCarty. Standing outside the courtroom on the first day of the Perry trial, West Coast guru Karen Ocamb “figured out” as she later admitted “that I might be someone smart” and decided to let the California sunshine in to my inquiries. From Karen to Rex Wockner, and so on.

The medium is the message. The way people like Eric and Karen treated me is the living manifestation of why the gay revolution succeeded in being, as the L.A. Times said last week, the fastest moving civil rights movement in American social history. They saw a naïve straight woman as a potential ally. They made it easy for me to do what I could to help.

Had they seen me going badly wrong presumably they would have made my life a living hell, as they so brilliantly did to everyone from Ed Koch to Barack Obama when necessary. As I began to do my research and interviews I realized that’s what all the successful movers of the fast moving movement did.

And in the end, Nathaniel Frank is right. I wrote an adoring history. Not because they were good to me, but because they were good. As the button says.

Read the rest of this post...

Exclusive excerpt from "Victory: The Triumphant Gay Revolution" - new book about modern gay history

Linda Hirshman (Credit: Nina Subin)

Linda Hirshman has provided us with an exclusive excerpt of her new book, "Victory: The Triumphant Gay Revolution."

I've known Linda for a few years now.  She's rather fascinating.  I've not known many people who truly understand the way gay (or any other) politics is, and has been, done in (and outside of) Washington over the years.  Linda is one of the select few who does.

Among other things, she right away recognized the importance of the gay Netroots, of the gay blogs and our readers, in the making of gay civil rights policy in Washington.  It's something that even gay and lesbian observers don't always fully recognize or understand.  Linda, a straight woman in fact, immediately did.

Here's a quick description of the book from the publisher, Harper Collins:

More than just a history, VICTORY is the enthralling and groundbreaking story of how a dedicated and resourceful minority transformed the notion of American equality and forged a classic campaign for cultural change that will serve as a model for all future political movements.

Hirshman acknowledges that there is a lot of work left to be done. But VICTORY is nevertheless the amazing story of how a band of extraordinary individuals brought on a revolution that, in forty years, has transformed American life and our notions of human identity. As she writes in the epilogue, “No matter how the saying goes, the arc of history more wiggles than bends toward justice. The Victory was not only the funding of AIDS research or the legalization of same-sex marriage in California or the Will and Grace television show or the Supreme Court ruling that sodomy laws were unconstitutional. But all these events together, plus many more, have served to slowly bend the arc of history toward justice.”

Linda's book is coming out this week on Tuesday, and I asked her if she could provide an exclusive excerpt for you guys.  She thought the portino of her book dealing with the gay Netroots would be the most interesting.

You can buy Linda's book on Amazon either in hardcover (for $18.47) or for Kindle ($14.99).

Here's the extended excerpt with Linda's notes added in:
Excerpts From "Victory: The Triumphant gay Revolution" Read the rest of this post...

San Diego is first city in the country to get a "Harvey Milk Street"

Nice. Read the rest of this post...

Gay history, in hyper-drive

Richard Socarides in the LA Times:

Several reasons account for the success. The gay community tends to be more affluent, and the ability to give generously to candidates has translated into significant political clout, from the local level to the White House. Its leaders are well-versed in the machinations of government and the means of power, knowledge hard-won through years spent dragging politicians into the fight against the AIDS epidemic.

But experts and advocates agree on one explanation above all others: Familiarity.

"People came to understand we existed," Jones said. "They worked with us. They knew us. They had [gay] family members. That demystified it and made it harder for them to hate us in an abstract way."

That was an avenue obviously unavailable to African Americans. "It isn't as if white people suddenly come to discover they have African American children or relatives," said Kenneth Sherrill, a professor at Hunter College in New York and a longtime gay activist.

Well, some white people did, like Strom Thurmond. Didn't seem to create any late-life epiphanies for him. But he's the exception that doesn't define the rule.

I hadn't really thought about it the way it's framed in this article, but a lot of us felt that it was a weakness that we were born into straight families - it immediately removed us from membership in any like community. Meaning, African-American are usually born into African-American families, Latino kids into Latino families, while gay kids are far less often born into gay families. And while it takes away any immediate sense of membership in a gay "community," if we come out (and all goes well) we immediately create allies in the straight community, our family. Read the rest of this post...

MLK ally Bayard Rustin at 100

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Media Contact:
Nicholas Glenn | Communications Coordinator |312- 799-2161 glenn@chicagohistory.or

Bayard Rustin at 100
Rediscovering a Forgotten Hero

Known as the "invisible man" of the civil rights movement, Bayard Rustin was a mentor to Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Artfully bringing Gandhi's techniques of nonviolence from India to America; Rustin organized the 1963 march on Washington D.C., the largest demonstration to date in American history. Rustin set the stage for a movement that captured the hearts and minds of millions of Americans. Yet despite his pivotal contributions, Rustin was expunged from history largely for being openly gay.

Beginning its 9th year, the Out at CHM series explores the contributions LGBT communities have made to Chicago and the nation. On Thursday, February 9, 2012, Chicago Urban League President Andrea L. Zopp moderates a discussion on Rustin’s enduring legacy with filmmaker Bennett Singer, co-director of the acclaimed documentary Brother Outsider: The Life of Bayard Rustin, and Rustin's surviving life partner Walter Naegle.

The evening will also explore how Rustin is being rediscovered by a new generation of Americans committed to social and economic justice. During the conversation, film clips from Brother Outsider will be shown to add context to the life of this unknown hero. For more information please visit chicagohitory.org

Read the rest of this post...

Chicago activist John Pennycuff dies

From Tracy Baim at the Windy City Times:

Pennycuff served for many years on the Chicago Commission on Human Relations Mayor's Advisory Council on LGBT Issues, was a member of Queer Nation Chicago, was office manager of Windy City Media Group ( publishers of Windy City Times ) for several years, had worked for the Logan Square Chamber of Commerce and for 35th Ward Ald. Rey Colon. He was also a volunteer in ACT UP, the Emergency Clinic Defense Coalition, Equal Marriage NOW, the Coalition Against Bashing, and many other groups. He donated to many organizations and political campaigns.

In 2003, Pennycuff was inducted into the Chicago Gay and Lesbian Hall of Fame. He used the occasion to hijack the microphone and push for a $1 million increase in city HIV/AIDS funding. Prior to the induction, he had also protested the event—a rare "triple" in activism: protesting outside, speaking out inside, and shaking the mayor's hand as he received his crystal award.

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Video: The gay rights movement

Good video.  Though Pam's concerns are spot on.  This is a short video representative of the larger history of the modern gay rights movement.  A lot of stuff was missing between the really old stuff from the 50s/60s and bullying/DADT (circa 2010/2011). Like Timothy McVeigh in the late 90s, a huge DADT story and our only court victory at that point, or the campaign against Dr. Laura Schlessinger in 2000, again huge in that it was the first TV boycott that actually worked. Or how about the rise of the gay Internet (which both of those campaigns deal with).

There's also the issue of the video including a lot of white guys and almost nobody black, Asian (one shot of Dan Choi), or female.  I sometimes think the PC desire for inclusion can go too far, but in this case, there are women, for example, who have made a difference, who could have easily been included, such as Clinton HUD appointee Roberta Achtenberg, a number of the DADT women, or Elizabeth Birch during her time at HRC (I think there was even a quick shot of current HRC head Joe Solmonese, why not Birch too?).  Or just some photos of lesbians getting married in California or elsewhere.

I'm not a fan of false inclusion.  Meaning, what reporters do sometimes to make sure their stories seem "fair" - if they're too critical of Republicans, because Republicans have been doing most of the lying, the reporter makes sure to even the story out with lots of Democrats doing bad things too, making it look incorrectly like the Dems have been just as bad as the Republicans.  But it's hardly a stretch to say that there were more women and minorities who had a lead role in our movement than what was suggested in this clip.

And then there's the issue of trans people. This clip clearly seems to be a gay, and LGBTQIAA, documentary.  Is that okay nowadays?

Read the rest of this post...

Blogger and activist Mike Tidmus has died

Karen Ocamb has a really nice tribute. Read the rest of this post...

Longtime gay journalist Paul Varnell has died

Photo by Rex Wockner

Very sad. He was a big name.  More from Rex Wockner. Read the rest of this post...

How Frank Kameny turned the tables on J. Edgar Hoover

This is hysterical.  I'd never heard about this.  From Lou Chibbaro at the Washington Blade:

In interviews with the Washington Blade in the 1980s and in 2006, Kameny told of how he and fellow members of the Mattachine Society of Washington, which Kameny co-founded, were contacted by an FBI agent in the summer of 1963 and invited to a meeting with the agent at FBI headquarters.

Kameny recounted that he and Mattachine Society Member Bob Bellanger had no idea why they had been summoned to a meeting with the FBI, and the two wondered whether a crackdown against Mattachine was in the works.

To their amazement, Kameny said, FBI Special Agent John A. O’Birne politely asked him and Bellanger to remove Hoover’s name from the Mattachine Society’s mailing list, saying Hoover did not wish to have his name on such a list.

Kameny recounts how he told the agent he'd have to get back to him. Kameny subsequently wrote the agent and told him that he would only take Hoover's name off the list if the FBI agreed to give them the name of another agent to put on the list, and that the group would still reserve the right to send a newsletter to Hoover if it was really important. They never heard back from the FBI, but a subsequent records search shows an internal FBI memo saying the agency would never agree to demands from a "homosexual organization."

Imagine the chutzpah to do this in 1963. We owe a lot to guys like this. Read the rest of this post...

National Park Service lists Frank Kameny’s home in National Register of Historic Places

National Park Service
For Immediate Release: November 2, 2011
Contact: David Barna, (202) 208-6843

Dr. Franklin E. Kameny Residence in Washington, DC, listed in the National
Register of Historic Places

The National Park Service has recognized the historic significance of gay rights activist Dr. Franklin E. Kameny, by listing his home in the National Register of Historic Places.

"Dr. Kameny led a newly militant activism in the fledgling gay civil rights of the 1960s," said NPS Director Jonathan B. Jarvis. "He was a landmark figure in articulating and achieving gay civil rights in federal employment and security clearance cases, and in reversing the medical community's view on homosexuality as a mental disorder."

Kameny's efforts in the civil rights movement, modeled in part on African American civil rights strategies and tactics, significantly altered the rights, perceptions, and role of gays, lesbians, bisexuals, and transgendered people in American society.

Franklin Kameny (1925-2011) was a Harvard trained astronomer and World War II veteran. In 1957, Dr. Kameny was fired from his job with the Army Map Service for refusing to answer questions about his sexual orientation. Based upon an Executive Order issued by President Dwight D. Eisenhower, thousands of men and women lost their federal civil service jobs solely due to their sexual orientation, based upon a belief that homosexuality posed a security risk. Dr. Kameny waged a four-year legal fight against the idea that sexual orientation could make one unfit for federal service. Although the U.S. Supreme Court declined to hear his case, it was the first time that an equal-rights claim had been made on the basis of sexual orientation.

In 1961 Kameny co-founded the Mattachine Society of Washington, an organization committed, through activism to achieving equal social and legal rights for homosexuals. Through lobbying of government officials, testifying before congressional committees, bringing court challenges, and picketing the White House, Kameny and his allies pressured the U.S. Civil Service Commission to eventually abandon its policy of denying homosexuals federal employment. Kameny led efforts to remove homosexuality as a basis for denying government security clearances. He was also involved in the first legal challenge to the U.S. military's policy of discharging gay and lesbian service members, including the much-publicized case of gay Air Force Sergeant Leonard Matlovich. Kameny played a leading role in attacking the American Psychiatric Association's (APA) definition of homosexuality as a mental illness. In 1973, the APA voted to remove homosexuality from its Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Psychiatric Disorders. In 1998, President Clinton signed an Executive Order banning discrimination in federal employment based upon sexual orientation.

For years, Dr. Kameny's residence at 5020 Cathedral Avenue, NW, in Washington, DC, served as a meeting place, archives, informal counseling center, headquarters of the Mattachine Society, and a safe haven for visiting gay and lesbian activists. It was here that Dr. Franklin E. Kameny developed the civil rights strategies and tactics that have come to define the modern gay rights movement.

www.nps.gov

About the National Park Service. More than 20,000 National Park Service employees care for America's 396 national parks and work with communities across the nation to help preserve local history and create close-to-home recreational opportunities. Learn more at http://www.nps.gov/

National Park Service, Office of Communications 1849 C Street NW, Washington, DC 20240 United States

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