Kameny was instrumental in organizing the DC chapter of the Mattachine Society, one of America’s first gay-rights groups. What Frank realized is that once it’s no longer a secret, the power is gone. But once you’re out of the closet, then you can’t be blackmailed. There was this whole notion of gay being a threat to national security because they’re blackmailable. In 1957, he’s basically saying, “Yeah, I’m gay, I’m a homosexual, and you have to treat me like an equal.” That takes guts. Frank Kameny, for instance, was a victim of the scare, but getting fired led him to become one of America’s first gay-rights activists.įrank Kameny is really the first openly gay person in America.
But DC was also the site of many groundbreaking moments in gay history. Beginning in the 1950s, Washington was ground zero of the Lavender Scare, during which tens of thousands of federal employees were fired for being gay. Not everyone is in the position not everyone has the privilege or the courage. Then you have these activists who start realizing, wait, the only enemy we have is the closet, and the closet is something that we construct, so we need the courage to come out and tell people. On the other hand, that is precisely what makes it harder to form a political consciousness, because so many people don’t want to acknowledge that they’re gay. It means, on the one hand, you can survive, you can exist in institutions, and you can have equal rights, because no one knows that you’re a part of this despised minority. Gay people can hide, right? It’s a double-edged sword. The book is all about that-the power of secrecy. Can you talk about the role of secrecy in the history of the gay-rights movement? A writer and thinker with a conservative bent, he eschews the term “queer,” objecting to its “radical political connotations.” I met up with him at Annie’s, where we spoke over the music of Elton John and Rick Astley, looking out on rainbow paper lanterns strung across the sidewalk.
Himself a gay Washingtonian, Kirchick is a journalist, a nonresident senior fellow at the Atlantic Council, and a columnist at Tablet.
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Throughout Secret City, such details bump up against momentous historical events: Kirchick traces how homosexuality affected the Alger Hiss trial and the Iran-Contra affair, while making the case that Washingtonians were in the vanguard of organizing for equal rights. Word spread, and Annie’s Paramount Steakhouse became one of DC’s quintessential gay haunts. A brief aside in James Kirchick’s sweeping new book, Secret City: The Hidden History of Gay Washington, recounts how a Dupont Circle diner became a midcentury gay haven: Two men were covertly holding hands under the table, and a bartender came over to tell them they didn’t have to hide.