Review: "The Deviant's War - The Homosexual vs. The United States Of America" Is an Engrossing Look Back at Trailblazing Rights Pioneer Frank Kameny

After his military service in the Army throughout WWII, Frank Kameny finished his degree at Harvard and was an in-demand astronomer, working for the Army US map service. He was a sought after expert at the end of the '50s in America's race for space when astronomers including Kameny were treated like stars by the government - unless you were exposed as a homosexual.

Kameny was stripped of his government security clearance at the height of the Cold War based on two disorderly conduct charges in a clear case of entrapment in a San Francisco men's room and for cruising, like millions of others in Lafayette Park.

The pioneering activist's full story is chronicled in Eric Cervini's "Deviant: The Homosexual vs. The United States of America," the most comprehensive bio-history of Kameny and his times. Cervini tracks Kameny's courageous direct activism in challenging government policies against gays.

His efforts are now often overshadowed by the historic events of the 1969 Stonewall Riots, the flashpoint that catalyzed the national GLBTQ movement.

Kameny is now largely remembered for orchestrating the yearly protest in front of Independence Hall and the White House, and for the slogan "Gay is Good," but he trailblazed several legal avenues to legal rights for gay America. His solo crusade started in 1957, in fighting the military over his dismissal as being unjust and unconstitutional. He fought back via the service's chain of command, then through the courts of appeal, and finally made his own arguments in front of the U.S. Supreme Court.

The closeted FBI director J. Edgar Hoover had files on Kameny and thousands of other gay Americans, which were used for the government's purge of homosexuals during the "Red Scare" propagated by Sen. McCarthy, based on claims that homosexuals would be easy prey for blackmailers and could be exploited by Russian agents to gain access to pass classified information.

Cervini does a great job weaving in the gay underground of the '50s and '60s Washington and New York, filling in a lot of activist history that is too often ignored. Cervini's scope and detailing fills in a lot of gay history that is too often ignored, and his exhaustive research included sifting through thousands of recently declassified FBI files.

With long stretches of unemployment, and barely enough money to eat, Kameny was busier than ever as co-founder of Mattachine, Washington, and did what he could publicly and privately for the cause. He also counseled other gay active duty and active service members whose lives were being destroyed.

Cervini delves into Kameny's personal life, documenting how he went to the clubs and the baths, vacationed in Provincetown, and otherwise had an active social life. He had a string of short-term affairs - one with Bob Martin, a Columbia student who became a disciple activist of Kameny and started a more radicalized movement on and off campus. But the two diametrically opposite activists remained both friends and colleagues.

Other pioneering activists of the late '60s in the gay civil rights movement are given their due as Cervini surveys the fledgling, and often fractious, gay rights groups of the era, including the Gay Activist Alliance, the Gay Liberation Front, and ECHO, among others.

Kameny's co-activist in the movement's public demonstrations in Washington and Philadelphia was the equally fearless Barbara Gittings, member of the Daughters of Bilitis and soon becoming a leading figure on the national scene. Kameny and Gittings also fought the system as legal consultants working with military and employment cases where gay people were fired or oppressed in the 1960s.

This is Cervini's first book, and it impresses on every level. It's an engrossing history of a defining time in GLBTQ history that is often glossed over. The lived experience and sacrifices of the early gay rights pioneers continue to inspire as justice and GLBTQ legal protections are currently under attack every day by antigay forces in today's government.

The Deviant's War: The Homosexual vs. The United States of America
by Eric Cervini
Hardcover
$35.00
https://us.macmillan.com/books/9780374721565