 |
|
 |
Gay Is Good
The Life and Letters of Gay Rights Pioneer Franklin Kameny
Edited by Michael G. Long
Cloth $36.95
| 978-0-8156-1043-4
| 2014
ebook 978-0-8156-5291-5
"Michael Long has edited a compelling, important, and fascinating collection
of letters from one of the American gay rights movement’s most
influential and stubborn activists. . . . The letters are a joy to read."—Craig Loftin, author of Masked Voices: Gay Men and Lesbians in Cold War America
|
|
View at YouTube
|
|
|
Michael G. Long is the author and editor of several books on politics, religion, and civil rights. He is the editor, most recently, of Beyond Home Plate: Jackie Robinson on Life after Baseball.
|
Book Description »[Hide »]
Contrary to popular notions, today’s LGBT movement did not begin with the
Stonewall riots in 1969. Long before Stonewall, there was Franklin Kameny
(1925–2011), one of the most significant figures in the gay rights movement.
Beginning in 1958, he encouraged gay people to embrace homosexuality as
moral and healthy, publicly denounced the federal government for excluding
homosexuals from federal employment, openly fought the military’s ban against
gay men and women, debated psychiatrists who depicted homosexuality as a
mental disorder, identified test cases to advance civil liberties through the federal
courts, acted as counsel to countless homosexuals suffering state-sanctioned
discrimination, and organized marches for gay rights at the White House and
other public institutions. In Gay Is Good, Long collects Kameny’s historically
rich letters, revealing some of the early stirrings of today’s politically powerful
LGBT movement.
These letters are lively and colorful because they are in Kameny’s inimitable
voice—a voice that was consistently loud, echoing through such places as the
Oval Office, the Pentagon, and the British Parliament, and often shrill, piercing
to the federal agency heads, military generals, and media personalities who
received his countless letters. This volume collects approximately 150 letters
from 1958 to 1975, a critical period in Kameny’s life during which he evolved
from a victim of the law to a vocal opponent of the law, to the voice of the law
itself. Long situates these letters in context, giving historical and biographical
data about the subjects and events involved. Gay Is Good pays tribute to an
advocate whose tireless efforts created a massive shift in social attitudes and
practices, leading the way toward equality for the LGBT community.
6 x 9, 344 pages, 15 black-and-white illustrations, notes, bibliography, index
|
|
|
