Hero

I ran across this in the last week. It provided a lot more info on a name I have run across infrequently since coming out in '80.

Some Key quotes:

The memo is dated June 28, 1962. Reading it, one can scarcely believe that it was written as recently as 44 years ago.

From: Director of Personnel, Library of Congress.

To: Nevin R. Feather, a library employee.

Subject: "Interrogatory."

The library, it begins, "has received a report concerning you." It "has been reported" that "you had permitted a man to perform a homosexual act (fellatio) on you. Also, that you related that you find members of the male sex attractive; that you have been in bed with men; and that you have enjoyed embracing them." Enjoyed embracing! "Is this report true?"

At the bottom of the page, appended as a hurried note, is a plea for help. "I must admit I am quite shook-up over this matter," Nevin Feather wrote to Franklin Kameny. "Please advise me."

The disposition of Nevin Feather's case is lost to history, but the memo is not. In one of those cosmic japes that make fools of us all, the Library of Congress's sinister interrogation of its gay employee now reposes as a historical document in, yes, the Library of Congress. There it joins company with the diaries of George Washington and Theodore Roosevelt, the papers of Thurgood Marshall and Daniel Patrick Moynihan, and 16,000 other document collections spanning 60 million pages.

... In 1961, he organized the Mattachine Society of Washington, a pioneering gay-rights group. Under its auspices, he bombarded the government with letters, receiving replies like "Please do not contaminate my mail with such filthy trash" (from a member of Congress), and "Your letter of August 28 has been received, and in reply may I state unequivocally that in all my six years of service in the United States Congress I have not received such a revolting communication."

... 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.

... "We are honorable people who deal with others honorably and in good faith," he insisted to the Un-American Activities Committee. "We expect to be dealt with in the same fashion -- especially by our governmental officials." There you hear the pipsqueak, indomitable voice of equality.