New at Reason

December 7, 2006

Jonathan Rauch celebrates a new collection of the papers of Franklin Kameny, a path-breaking gay rights hero.

Comments

|12.7.06 @ 1:09PM|#

One man can make a difference.

The irony is that, if he and others had not been forced to the wall to begin with, they wouldn't have brought about the change that they did.

|12.7.06 @ 2:43PM|#

It's very easy to forget how different life was only forty years ago. I salute Mr. Kameny.

|12.7.06 @ 3:06PM|#

Aresen: I had to explain this to my mother recently. She wanted to know why the parades, the discussions, the protests, the "agenda." I explained that we didn't choose to make our sexuality the focus of our lives; it's the homophobes and anti-gay forces that think about nothing else that did. (we/our being the glbt community)

We'd shut up if they'd stop trying to shut us out.

|12.7.06 @ 3:22PM|#

"* In 1965, Kameny's Washington Mattachine Society issued a path-breaking public declaration that "homosexuality is not a sickness, disturbance, or other pathology in any sense." In 1973, after years of protest and persuasion by Kameny and others, the American Psychiatric Association removed homosexuality from the list of mental disorders, perhaps the largest mass cure ever effected."

One down, a few hundred to go.

|12.7.06 @ 3:23PM|#

"We'd shut up if they'd stop trying to shut us out."

What a load of tripe. Get your preverted lifestyle out of my face and I'll leave you alone

|12.7.06 @ 4:15PM|#

John D's ignorant response illuminates the problem that the rest of the world has with same-sex coupling. They can't stop focusing on the sex! They are freaking obsessed with it! It's almost like they all have some secret urge to engage in it, but their switch-bearing daddy superego won't let them. Gosh - could that be the case? Could they all have that sweet/sore spot that urges to be rubbed? And the denial of the rubbing just makes them cranky? Cynical minds might say so. Of course we all know that they have god and nature on their side, so they must be right. Right?

Cole|12.7.06 @ 5:05PM|#

In fairness to John D, it's pretty hard in modern-day society to go outside, go to work, go to school, without seeing two dudes humping. I try to avoid it, but there it is, some guy's nutsack all up in my face.

What a country!

|12.7.06 @ 5:18PM|#

I think John D wrote this article under his real name.

|12.10.06 @ 3:11PM|#

Maybe John D. should stop hanging out at those Turkish baths. Just a suggestion.