100 years ago, the pioneering LGBTQ+ rights leader Frank Kameny was born

Frank Kameny’s legacy lives on

A first generation American from Queens, N.Y., Kameny was a decorated WWII veteran. With a prodigious 148 I.Q., he earned a Ph.D. in astronomy from Harvard University. In 1957 he was recruited by the Army Map Service, a pioneering agency in space exploration. In 1953 in the wake of McCarthyism, President Eisenhower issued Executive Order 10450 that prohibited homosexuals from military or civilian employment. Having nothing to do with workplace c…

100 years ago, the pioneering LGBTQ+ rights leader Frank Kameny was born

Who was Frank Kameny?Frank Kameny, a pioneering LGBTQ+ rights advocate, would have turned 100 May 21. Kameny earned the moniker “Father of the Gay Rights Movement,” having become an activist after he lost his federal government job in the 1950s for being gay. Here and on the following pages are some key facts about Kameny, who will be honored Wednesday at a ceremony in front of the U.S. Supreme Court building.He was born in 1925 into a middle-cl…

A visual history of 100 years of New York’s LGBTQ+ spaces

Queer Happened Here — A new book from historian and writer Marc Zinaman maps scores of Manhattan’s queer venues and informal meeting places, documenting the city’s long LGBTQ+ history in the process. When writer and historian Marc Zinaman was a child, he’d walk past The Ansonia in New York City’s Upper West Side on his way to school each day. He originally deemed the detailed beaux-arts building – which opened in 1904 and was the site of The Ans…