Frank Kameny won’t be buying Tom Brokaw’s new book, Boom! Voices of the Sixties. The legendary gay activist’s irked over Brokaw’s straight-washing of American history. In an effort to make his grievances knon, Kameny’s penned a spirited, pissed off missive to Brokaw and his publishers:
As a long-time gay activist, who initiated gay activism and militancy at the very start of “your” Sixties, in 1961; coined the slogan “Gay is Good” in 1968; and is viewed by many as one of the “Founding Fathers” of the Gay Movement, I write with no little indignation at the total absence of any slightest allusion to the gay movement for civil equality in your book “Boom! Voices of the Sixties”. Your book simply deletes the momentous events of that decade which led to the vastly altered and improved status of gays in our culture today.
…
Mr. Brokaw, I could go on, but this should be sufficient to make my point. The whole thing is deeply insulting. As I said, you have de-gayed an entire generation. For shame, for shame, for shame. You owe an abject public apology to the entire gay community. I demand it; we expect it.Gay is Good. You are not.
No word on whether Brokaw will offer that apology. We’re not holding our breath. Nor do we plan on reading his book – not that we were in the first place.
Read the entire complaint, after the jump:
November 26, 2007
Mr. Tom Brokawc/o Random House Publishing Group
Ms. Gina Centrello
Publisher
Random House Publishing GroupMs. Kate Medina
Executive Editorial Director
Random House Publishing GroupDear Mr. Brokaw and Mmes. Centrello and Medina:
As a long-time gay activist, who initiated gay activism and militancy at the very start of “your” Sixties, in 1961; coined the slogan “Gay is Good” in 1968; and is viewed by many as one of the “Founding Fathers” of the Gay Movement, I write with no little indignation at the total absence of any slightest allusion to the gay movement for civil equality in your book “Boom! Voices of the Sixties”. Your book simply deletes the momentous events of that decade which led to the vastly altered and improved status of gays in our culture today. This change would havebeen inconceivable at the start of the Sixties and would not have occurred at all without the events of that decade totally and utterly ignored by you. Mr. Brokaw, you have “de-gayed” the entire decade. “Voices of the Sixties”??? One does not hear even one single gay voice in your book. The silence is complete and deafening.
As a gay combat veteran of World War II, and therefore a member of the “Greatest Generation”, I find myself and my fellow gays as absent from your narration as if we did not and do not exist. We find Boom! Boom!! Boom!!! in your book about all the multitudinous issues and the vast cultural changes of that era. But not a single “Boom”, only dead silence, about gays, homosexuality, and the Gay Movement.
The development of every other possible, conceivable issue and cause which came to the forefront in that period is at least mentioned, and is usually catalogued: race; sex and gender; enthnicity; the environment; and others, on and on and on — except only gays.
In 1965, we commenced bringing gays and our issues “out of the closet” with our then daring picketing demonstrations at the White House and other government sites, and our annual 4th of July demonstrations at Independence Hall in Philadelphia. The Smithsonian Institution displayed these original pickets last month, in the same exhibition as the desk where Thomas Jefferson drafted The Declaration of Independence. The name of the Smithsonian’s exhibition? “Treasures of American History”. In your book: No Boom; only silence.
About 1963, a decade-long effort commenced to reverse the psychiatric categorization of gays as mentally or emotionally ill, concluding in 1973 with a mass “cure” of all of us by the American Psychiatric Association. No boom in your book; only your silence.
The most momentous single Gay Movement event occurred at the end of June, 1969, when the “Stonewall Rebellion” in New York, almost overnight (actually it took three days) converted what had been a tiny, struggling gay movement into the vast grass-roots movement which it now is. We had five or six gay organizations in the entire country in 1961; fifty to sixty in 1969; by the time of the first Gay Pride march, in New York one year later in 1970, we had 1500, and 2500 by 1971 when counting stopped. If ever there was Boom, this was it. In your book, no Boom, only your silence.
About 1972, Elaine Noble was elected to the Massachusetts state House of Representatives as the first elected openly gay public official. I had run here in Washington, DC, the previous year for election to Congress as the first openly gay candidate for any federal office. Harvey Milk was elected to the Board of Supervisors in San Francisco. No boom in your book; only your silence.
Mr. Brokaw, you deal with the histories of countless individuals. Where are the gays of that era: Barbara Gittings; Jack Nichols; Harry Hay; Del Martin and Phyllis Lyons; Randolfe Wicker; Harvey Milk; numerous others? No booms in your book; only silence and heterosexuals.
Starting in 1961 a long line of court cases attacked the long-standing U.S. Civil Service Gay Ban (fully as absolute and as virulent as the current Military Gay ban, which actually goes back some 70 years and was also fought in the 60s) with final success in 1975 when the ban on employment of gays by the federal government was rescinded. In your book, no boom; only your silence.
The assault on the anti-sodomy laws, which made at least technical criminals of all gays (and most non-gays for that matter, although never used against them) and which was the excuse for an on-going terror campaign against the gay community through arrests the country over, began in 1961 and proceeded through the 60s and onward. In your book,
no boom; only your silence.In 1972, following up on Stonewall, the first anti-discrimination law protective of gays was enacted in East Lansing, Michigan, followed by the much more comprehensive one in D.C. in 1973, starting a trend which now encompasses some twenty states, countless counties and cities, and has now reached Congress in ENDA. In your book, no boom; only your silence.
The Sixties were a period of unprecedented rapid social and cultural upheaval and change. We gays were very much a part of all that. A reader of your book would never have the slightest notion of any of that. In your book, no boom; only your silence.
At the start of the Sixties gays were completely invisible. By the end, and especially after Stonewall, we were seen everywhere: in entertainment, education, religion, politics, business, elsewhere and everywhere. In BOOM our invisibility remains total.
The only allusions to us, in your entire book are the most shallow, superficial, brief references in connection with sundry heterosexuals. Where are the gay spokespeople? We are certainly there to speak for ourselves. But in your book, only silence.
Mr. Brokaw, I could go on, but this should be sufficient to make my point. The whole thing is deeply insulting. As I said, you have de-gayed an entire generation. For shame, for shame, for shame. You owe an abject public apology to the entire gay community. I demand it; we expect it.
Gay is Good. You are not.
Sincerely,Franklin E. Kameny, Ph.D.
Charles Merrill
True in 1963, At Frank Kamenys suggestion, the New York and Washington, DC, chapters of the Mattachine, the New York chapter of the Daughters of Bilitis, and Philadelphia’s Janus Society join to found the East Coast Homophile Organizations. Nicknamed ECHO, the association marks the beginning of a new era of activism for the US. Homophile movement. Not sure if any of that made national news that Brokow would have in his news files, but I doubt it. I don/t intend to read the Brokow book, but it wasn/t until the end of the 60’s that gay rights movement began to make serious news as a movment. Al Goldstein, started Screw magazine in 1968, and Jack Nicols left Screw, and brought out the first gay magazine in NYC. Stonewall was 1969, and probably that made national news, in the NYT anyway.
Leland Frances
With all due respect, Brokaw is writing as an historian/social commentator. What might not be in his personal “news files” or whether all individual events at the time “made national news” or were deemed “serious” at the time is irrelevant, as, I trust, would apply to many of the nongay events he mentions. E.g., New York papers did cover the Stonewall riots but primarily trivialized them contemporaneously.
As Kameny posits, there is NO excuse for the public flowering of the movement for gay equality in America not to be included. But the EXPLANATION is that, once again, Brokaw has demonstrated how “white†he is, by which I mean not just Caucasian, but male, heterosexual, and privileged to whom we REMAIN almost always invisible and always irrelevant.
At first glance, someone so “white†could be forgiven for not being aware of gay activism in the U.S. that goes back to the ‘50s. Many, possibly even most, modern gays are unaware of it, too. However, the limited attention to Stonewall in 1969, and the fact that it didn’t begin to permeate public consciousness beyond NY until the next year, is, again, irrelevant because, as an earlier NY Times article featured on Queerty indicated, Brokaw “loosely defines the ‘60s as the period from 1963 to 1974.†That would include not just the period involving Stonewall but four years of growing pride events across the country celebrating its anniversary, and the development of gay groups on countless college campuses as Kameny notes. His ignoring that [versus being ignorant of it], and their continued, even larger and broader existence today is irreponsible, and, YES, homophobic.
What about Jose Sarria in 1961, the first out gay to run for public office? Brokaw could have demonstrated the type of nexus of events that historians wet themselves for by makinge note of the fact that the organizer of the still famous 1963 March on Washington for Black civil rights [which is one of the main subjects of his selective book] was organized by an out gay Black man, Bayard Rustin. As Kameny noted, the White House was first picketed by gays in 1965. Demonstrations in the ‘60s against antigay military policies [which he could have linked to the number of medal-winning gay vets who have since come out and bills in Congress today to admit gays to the military] predate that as does the first statewide decriminalization of sodomy in Illinois—a MAJOR change in American culture and jurisprudence that he could have linked to the Supreme Court decision “legalizing†sodomy nationwide in 2003. Kameny could have also mentioned that, in 1971, he was the first out gay to run for Congress, and was a major player in that first great national triumph [with international influence] that occurred in 1973 when the American Psychiatric Association ruled that gays are not inherently mentally ill. A decision that got HUGE mainstream media coverage and, again, occured within the functional timeframe of Brokaw’s book.
And 1974 was a watershed year for us as Kathy Kozachenko and Elaine Noble, became the first out gays elected to public office, and already elected Allan Spear came out. {Kameny mildly errs re Noble/’72.] Along with Sarria’s and Kameny’s attempts, Brokaw could have linked that to the number of out gay office holders today.
Employing the “where are they now?†angle so much, he could have included David Mixner who, while closeted then, played a key role in the challenge of Eugene McCarthy to LBJ and was one of the organizers of the Moratorium to End the War in Vietnam in 1969 that had tens of thousands descending upon Washington and millions of participants across the country and Europe. That was when Mixner became friends with student Bill Clinton, who organized a parallel demonstration at Oxford [used against him by Bush pere when they ran against each other]. Years later after coming out, Mixner was instrumental in many gay rights campaigns, including helping engineer Ronald Reagan coming out against Prop 6 which would have banned gays from teaching in California, and, more famously, helped elect Clinton [and then fell out with him over DADTDP].
And, as mentioned, there was the huge role lesbians played in the women’s movement which Brokaw give ample discussion while degaying it. There was also a scandalous effort to drive them out led by feminist matriarch Betty Friedan. But, hey, just because gays were major players in that and the other two main subjects of Brokaw’s solipsistic book, as well as being one of the two issues that gave rise to the extremely powerful and rich “Religious Right,†why should he “see†us any more now than he did forty years ago? I guess being 50% of something isn’t mathmatically significant in Brokaw’s white world.
Being gay is not a choice but ignoring us is, just as not “hearing†the many LGBT voices and issues that have boomed across those decades. For all his celebrity news reader/author status [“white” men idolizing other “white” men], we highly doubt that these or any of Brokaw’s memorablia will ever take the same hallowed place next to Thomas Jefferson’s desk and other “American Treasures” as Kameny’s has.
For Brokaw to do this, please, tell me again what HRC, NGLTF, and GLAAD have accomplished?
Dawster
why is this coming up again? we’ve already discussed how gay issues in NYC/San Francisco/L.A. triangle never made national headlines. anyone living outside of those areas still had no idea what “gay” actually was.
to (1) expect that people living in the 60’s would immediately know information that was happening on the other side of the nation at all times, (2) would immediately hop on the “gay” acceptance bandwagon, and (3) would understand what such strides would mean for the future is ludicrous, absurd, and asking WAY too much from people.
there are a host of people living at the time in mid-america who can verify that such gay strides was not up for national debate. had Brokaw been privy to this information and included it in the book, most people in mid-america from that time would read his book and think… “huh?”
this is a “person reflection” of Tom Brokaw’s view of what was going on during the most recent (and violent) culture/counter-culture war – a seriously tumultuous time in American history… and he’s getting bitched at because his person view (and that of most Americans) did not include gay topics.
what a disgraceful shame that the man should be attacked for this. do you know what i did with my boyfriend who always screamed “but what about ME and MY needs?” i dumped him. not everything about life/history/America centers around the gay culture, you know. there are OTHER aspects of life… and we life in a free society, and people ARE allowed to write about those events… WITHOUT being bitched at.
Leland Frances
Poor, poor shat upon Tom Brokaw. Dawster, it’s far more likely that your boyfriend forced the issue of your dumping him because he just didn’t have the heart to say, “Jesus Fucking Christ, what did I ever see in a total ‘tard like you?!”
This is no goddamn “person reflection” [sic] that Brokaw transcribed from his Hardy Boys diary, or a chronology of individual events that only made national headlines. What a disgraceful shame [as opposed to a “graceful shame”?] that you so feel the need to defend this whitest of “white” men that you resort to distorting history and the book itself. Self-loathe much?
ggreen
Looks like Miss Frances took and extra dose of crazy today.
Dawster
Leland, i’m actually appreciative of those that are far greater than i, and what they have done in the past so that i may be able to walk around in assless chaps today. THAT wasn’t the point.
the point is that, among my dearest friends (as mentioned in the previous post on this issue) are people who lived through this time period, now in their mid to late 60’s… and all who are gay… and NONE of them remember anything about gay rights or a homosexual agenda or ANYTHING related to being gay during that time frame. in fact, it didn’t even exist at the time in their area. there was a war going on, and THAT was america’s focus.
the one person i mentioned before was even a protester and a hippie and never once felt comfortable coming out because among the ‘free-love flower children’ gays were still not accepted. it was the only thing the culture/counter-culture agreed upon!
therefore, gay issues did not make national news, was not well known, and was not something that a regular mid-american person would have known. any “personal reflection” would, in fact, reflect this.
so let the man be, for christ’s sake. just because i think that people should be allowed to write their viewpoint on American History, without being discriminated against, i’m now deemed “‘self loathing’? isn’t that SLIGHTLY hypocritical?
hells kitchen guy
Who gives a shit what this pretty-boy suit (ghost)writes about anything? Christ, I’m in the generation born between the end of WWII and the Kennedy Presidency, and I’m so fucking sick of hearing about Baby Boomers myself I could puke every time I hear the word.
Let this self-important leave “us” out of his “history.” Who gives a shit?
Dom
Brokaw is another one of those useless TV anchors who was cheerleading for the war in Iraq and kissed the ass of GWB, and now he’s trying to make it look as tho none of it ever happened, just like all the rest of the Beltway Bimbos – Friedman, Brooks, Broder, Matthews, etc. Fuck him, and the str8 horse he rode in on. And he STILL can’t pronounce an “L” to save his life (ask Harry Shearer!).
Leland Frances
The POINT, Dawster, had you cared to look below the surface, is that, regardless of the information isolation [through no particular fault of their own] of your friends who were “of age” during the time the book covers, this is a book put together by a man who was a reporter for NBC out of Los Angeles, not Bumfuck, South Dakota, in 1966. Not only would that have put him in a newsroom that would have received wire service reports about Stonewall three years later, but gay activism was ALREADY an issue IN Los Angeles by that time. Just ONE example: a local demonstration against the military ban on gays IN 1966, the same year Brokaw started at KNBC:
“As [Harry] Hay and his staff carried on their interviews with NEWS REPORTERS, the Los Angeles Police Department, realizing that the event was actually going to take place, and already beset by Watts uprisings, could only foresee further difficulty in a homosexual motorcade through the streets of the city. ‘If you want to go into military service, why don’t you just sign up?’ Sgt. Wesley Sherman of Police Department Special Events asked Don Slater. ‘Why create an incident?’ But a desire to go into the service was not the question. Don Slater and most other Committee members had already served and had been honorably discharged. ‘Who wants to be drafted?” Slater asked NEWSWEEK reporter Phil Hagen. ‘Surely not the homosexual. But the government’s categoric rejection of all persons it knows to be homosexual is un-American and based on ignorance and superstition. Homosexuals are asking for equal rights and benefits from their country. At the same time they recognize their equal duties and responsibilities.’…By Friday night everyone was a little on edge. ‘TIME’ photographers were all over the place. …[While, ultimately, only the ‘Free Press’, covered it among local papers] Committee members did see themselves on CBS News at 6:00 and 11:00 that night.” Emphasis mine.
-http://www.tangentgroup.org/history/articles/motorcade.html
If other local reporters were aware of it, and KNBC’s competitor covered it, and even international magazines “Newsweek” and “Time,” why are such things so absent from Brokaw’s chronicle, again, when it would be so appealing for an objective historian to write something like, 41 years later, and 22 years after Air Force T. Sgt. Leonard Matlovich appeared on the cover of “Time,” gay men and women are still fighting to serve their country openly.” Why? BECAUSE HE’S A FUCKING BIGOT.
Further, it’s not just his memories but he SELECTIVELY interviewed countless others for the book, hence the title “VoiceS of the Sixties.”
Per the Times article Queerty originally linked to, rather “white” in its own way,
“Tom Brokaw’s ‘Boom!’ orchestrates a baby-boom epiphany. It stages a virtual reunion of America’s Class of 1968, accompanied by a full spectrum of opinions about the impact of that pivotal year. Although he describes his role in this process as that of moderator and class president, there’s more to it than that. Mr. Brokaw serves as a latter-day Rip Van Winkle, awakening to marvel at FOUR DECADES’ WORTH OF CHANGES in the book’s DOZENS of interviewees.” Emphasis mine.
From Amazon’s description: “The voices and stories of both famous people and ordinary citizens come together as Brokaw takes us on a memorable journey through a remarkable time, exploring how individual lives and the national mindset were affected by a controversial era and showing how the aftershocks of the Sixties continue to resound in our lives today. In the reflections of a generation, Brokaw also discovers lessons that might guide us in the years ahead. …Race, war, politics, feminism, popular culture, and music are all explored here, and we learn from a wide range of people about their lives.” EXCEPT FOR THE GAYS!@
Clearly the book is NOT, as you perceive it, written from the perspective of what he and they knew about THEN, but a RETROspective of a well-connected, well-informed [even then] bigot who cherry-picked people and quotes that would reinforce his own very narrow, very “white” view of the world.
And for that he deserves no pass and Kameny’s condemnation is entirely appropriate.
Dawster
okay! okay! i get it. my friends are blatant liars and a person DOES NOT have a right to print their own selective viewpoint on American History in what shaped them.
anything else is homophobic. i got it. the george bush “all or nothing” “with us or against us” mentality. I GOT IT.