Washgton, D.C.'s hidn gay history is unvered 'Secret Cy'

Contents:

• WASHGTON BLA: LGBTQ NEWS, POLICS, LGBTQ RIGHTS, GAY NEWS
• GAY DAD FABIAN NELSON EARNED JT 33 VOT WHEN HE LAST RAN FOR OFFICE. NOW HE’S BACK & READY TO W
• FIRG OF GAY CATHOLIC SCHOOL TEACHER ULD TT LATT SUPREME COURT LG
• WASHGTON, D.C.'S HIDN GAY HISTORY IS UNVERED 'SECRET CY'
• AT THE CLUB: LOTG EARLY BLACK GAY AIDS ACTIVISM WASHGTON, D.C.
• NEW ‘GAY WATER’ LOOKS TO AVOID BUD LIGHT DISASTER

WASHGTON BLA: LGBTQ NEWS, POLICS, LGBTQ RIGHTS, GAY NEWS

This historic appotment has s roots an extraordary moment 1957 when Frank Kameny, a young astro-physicist, cid to stand his ground when the feral ernment dismissed him om his job for beg gay.

GAY DAD FABIAN NELSON EARNED JT 33 VOT WHEN HE LAST RAN FOR OFFICE. NOW HE’S BACK & READY TO W

In The Deviant’s War, Cervi firsthand acunts, classified FBI rerds, and personal documents, predomantly om the Frank Kameny Papers at the Library of Congrs, to give the rear an sight to the 1960s when the Mattache Society of Washgton, the group Kameny found, beme the first anizatn to prott the systematic persecutn of gay feral employe. As reviewed Washgton History, this volume b Kameny’s own words, cludg approximately 150 documents om his personal papers om 1958 to 1975, wh ntextual analysis and mentary to explore the evolutn of gay rights strategy.

FIRG OF GAY CATHOLIC SCHOOL TEACHER ULD TT LATT SUPREME COURT LG

Johnson explor the the experienc and ristance of the DC gay muny at the ontl of the ernment’s attempt to purge LGBT people om the Civil Service both before and durg the McCarthy era.

Addnal llectns have been acced and/or ma accsible sce this gui’s creatn, cludg the digal llectns available through The People’s Archive, DC Public Library: Digized edns of the Washgton Bla, DC’s prcipal LGBT newspaper sce s first issue October 1969; and digized edns of Blacklight, an pennt newspaper servg DC’s Black gay muny. Court of Appeals for the 4th Circu Richmond is an early tt of how that major Supreme Court cisn ptg ee speech agast anti-discrimatn laws will play out beyond the hypothetil suatn that se, which volved a platiff who had never actually ma weddg webs or been asked to do so by a gay person.

“The Court rejected the dissent’s assertn that s cisn opened the door to discrimatn employment, ” ACLU attorney Josh Block wrote a reply to Becket’s the exampl raised the Supreme Court did not clu a relig anizatn or a gay employee, and Gorsuch repeatedly voked a 2000 cisn allowg the Boy Suts to expel a gay volunteer on “exprsive associatn” grounds. “We all said that thoands of relig anizatns all across the untry ask their employe to uphold their tradnal view of marriage word and ed, and if you terpret the statute that way, ’s gog to unleash lots of lawsus agast them, ” Goodrich the Supreme Court has specifilly said preventg racial discrimatn is a pellg ernment tert that jtifi rtrictg First Amendment eedoms, he noted that the Supreme Court has rejected such a fdg on discrimatn agast gay or transgenr people. “Secret Cy: The Hidn History of Gay Washgton, " by Jam Kirchick, is a 654-page tome that took years of rearch and an exhstive vtigatn to printial archiv, historil terviews and once-classified ernment rerds.

WASHGTON, D.C.'S HIDN GAY HISTORY IS UNVERED 'SECRET CY'

“I realized that all the stori I was readg, and the personali and phenomena, whether was McCarthyism or the Reagans, FDR or JFK, that there were the gay stori lurkg the background, ” Kirchick said.

Those stori lurked the background out of necsy: The st of g out as gay — or, more likely, beg outed agast one’s will — was enormo profsnally and socially. “It was the specter of homosexualy that provoked the first and only suici by a member of Congrs his Capol Hill office, ed Lyndon Johnson to et that his historil lead would evaporate, and seized the paranoid md of Richard Nixon send only to the plots of his ever-expandg enemi list, ” Kirchick wr. ” Rumors of homosexualy were tastrophic to those who were acced of , but Kirchick also asks the rear to nsir the broar human and societal impact of such wch hunts on gay Amerins workg ernment.

“To asss the full sle of the damage that the fear of homosexualy wrought on the Amerin polil landspe, one mt take to acunt not only the reers ed and the liv cut short, but somethg vaster and unquantifiable: the possibili thwarted, ” Kirchick wr. Although openly LGBTQ people have ma their way to the hight ranks of ernment today, was not long ago that spected homosexuals workg for the feral ernment were hunted down, publicly huiated and termated wh the full force of the ernment. There were whispers that Reagan was possibly participatg “homosexual nduct, ” and some Republins saw Reagan’s potential nomatn as a “danger to the Republin Party and the untry.

AT THE CLUB: LOTG EARLY BLACK GAY AIDS ACTIVISM WASHGTON, D.C.

The possibily that Kemp uld jo the ticket was evince that there was a “homosexual rg” around Reagan and that he was “the ventriloquized pawn of shadowy and sister forc, ” Kirchick wr. When a ngrsman later asked Reagan’s munitns ai about the loss of the nomatn for Kemp, he reportedly said, “It was that homosexual thg, ” Kirchick wr. “Secret Cy” ends wh the princy of Bill Clton, who said a mpaign speech ont of a largely gay dience Los Angel 1992, “I have a visn, and you are a part of .

” Wh those words, Clton would do somethg that would have seemed unfathomable to most, if not all, of his precsors: make an explic appeal to gay Amerins for their support a printial electn.

NEW ‘GAY WATER’ LOOKS TO AVOID BUD LIGHT DISASTER

By JOHN-JOHN WILLIAMS IV | Jackie Abell said she was ught off-guard by the Maryland Supreme Court’s lg agast a gay man whose employer, Catholic Relief Servic, refed to provi health benefs for his hband after sayg that dog so was ntrary to s Catholic valu. In her groundbreakg study of AIDS and black polics, Cathy Cohen intifi the early 1980s as a perd of nial regardg the impact of AIDS black gay muni. This say asks, how did black gay men who were disloted om the center of AIDS service and public-health outreach (by discrimatn or by choice) the early years of the epimic receive rmatn about the vis’s impact?

This say only begs to approach the qutns by nsirg the cril role that the ClubHoe played early AIDS activism directed toward black gay Washgtonians.