Latest news with #MattachineSociety
Yahoo
3 days ago
- Politics
- Yahoo
Why is Dupont Circle important to DC's LGBTQ community? A look back
WASHINGTON - U.S. Park Police and DC Police confirmed on Friday that Dupont Circle would be closed for what may be the largest pride festival in the District's history, drawing criticism from DC leaders and the LGBTQ community. But why is Dupont Circle important in DC's Pride history? The backstory The first Pride festival was a block party organized by LGBT bookstore Lambda Rising in 1975, then located three blocks north of Dupont Circle on 20th and S St NW. The store closed in 2010, after 35 years of business. By 1981, a parade was added as part of the annual festivities, starting at Meridian Hill Park and ending at Dupont Circle. Parade routes in the 90s traveled along P Street through Dupont Circle before traveling south to Freedom Plaza. Dig deeper The larger Dupont Circle neighborhood has long been considered one of D.C. prominent gay neighborhoods. Every Halloween since 1986, a High Heel Drag Queen Race takes place on 17th Street, two blocks away from Dupont Circle. The race made headlines in 1991 when police arrested six men at the unpermitted event, using what many called "excessive force" to break up the revelry. An investigation into the officers followed, as well as an apology from D.C.'s then Mayor Sharon Pratt. Big picture view D.C. has a deep history of gay rights activism throughout the last six decades. In 1965, the DC chapter of the Mattachine Society picketed for gay rights in front of the White House – four years before the Stonewall Riots in New York City. Dr. Frank Kameny, a federal employee who was fired from his job for suspected homosexuality in 1957, served co-founded the Mattachine Society and organized the first of many White House pickets in the summer of 1965. Kameny told FOX 5 DC in a 1991 interview that D.C. had a "repressive kind of atmosphere" in the early 60s. "The vice squad had been set up … to, in effect, hunt down gays and create occasions for arresting us so that we could be thrown out of the civil service, out of civil service jobs, because at that point simply being gay was a disqualifier for federal employment," said Kameny. But Kameny also described the 60s as a "wonderful time to be doing anything and exciting and stimulating." "Nothing had been done and everything had remained to be done and we went out and did it. And we could, and we accomplished things," said Kameny. "Nowadays the road has a few more rocks. Watch more archival footage from D.C.'s Pride history on FOX LOCAL. The Source This story includes information from the National Park Service and previous FOX 5 DC reporting.
NBC News
21-05-2025
- Politics
- NBC News
Trailblazing gay rights activist honored for turning his firing from Army into lifelong mission
After he lost two federal court battles, Kameny filed his petition with the nation's highest court despite having no legal experience. In his petition, he did something revolutionary: He didn't deny he was gay; instead, he challenged long-held social beliefs that there was something inherently wrong with same-sex attraction. 'Petitioner asserts, flatly, unequivocally, and absolutely uncompromisingly, that homosexuality … is not only not immoral,' Kameny wrote, 'but that, for those choosing voluntarily to engage in homosexual acts, such acts are moral in a real and positive sense, and are good, right, and desirable, socially and personally.' Even though his petition was denied, it would be the defining moment of Kameny's life. The focus and surgical exactitude that qualified him to guide a missile through the stars would from then on be applied to guiding an unwilling society to the idea that gay Americans were, in every way, deserving of equal rights and respect under the law. 'Frank Kameny didn't necessarily set out to be an activist,' said Jim Obergefell, the named plaintiff in the Supreme Court's 2015 landmark same-sex marriage ruling, Obergefell v. Hodges. 'Frank Kameny saw injustice. He was experiencing unfair treatment, and he reached that point where he was no longer willing to accept it, and he took action, and it was a scary thing for him to do to start these, these marches in public, to demand equality and fairness.' From pickets to pride marches In 1961, the year the high court rejected his petition, Kameny and fellow activist Jack Nichols founded the Washington, D.C., chapter of the Mattachine Society, one of the first gay rights organizations in the country. At a time when homosexual acts were punished by law and homophobia was the norm, Kameny proclaimed his identity in the streets, even in front of the White House and other government buildings. He also persuaded other gays and lesbians to picket along with him and demand equal rights. That culminated in the Annual Reminder demonstrations outside Philadelphia's Independence Hall, which started in 1965 and continued until 1969. Kameny enforced a strict dress code for participants at the demonstrations to create an air of respectability. 'It was 100 degrees, 100 literally; it was July the Fourth. Boiling hot,' Wicker said. 'Frank insisted we all wear coats and ties and that women all wear dresses and we act as 'ordinary Americans.'' Longtime LGBTQ activist Martha Shelley, who also participated in the pickets, similarly loathed the dress code: 'I hated having to put on a dress or skirt and march around with these pre-printed picket signs and be respectable,' she recalled.
