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Nick Langewis BOOM! Voices of the Sixties: Personal Reflections on the '60s and Today shares Brokaw's perspectives and personal accounts of 1960s issues including Vietnam and the civil rights movement. One glaring Boomer-era omission, however, was the gay rights movement. Brokaw, on a recent CNN appearance, says that the gay rights movement "came later," and he didn't intend to slight the movement by not including it. While the impact of the movement was marked notably in the late 1960s by the Stonewall riots, its momentum and progress were due in no small part to the work of Dr. Frank Kameny, who has written a letter to Brokaw and representatives of Random House Publishing Group. "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." Continues Kameny, "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." Kameny condemns the complete lack of mention of not only himself, but also such gay rights figures as Barbara Gittings, Harvey Milk, and the Mattachine Society, and events such as Stonewall, the White House pickets of 1965, and Kameny's slogan, "Gay is Good," coined in 1968. "No booms in your book," charges Kameny, "only silence and heterosexuals." "This is not some 'PC' extremist history," writes Kameny at The Kameny Papers Project. "It is as mainstream as Jefferson, as relevant as the Suffragists, as powerful as the sit-in at Woolworth's and certified by the Smithsonian Institution." WWII veteran Kameny's work is showcased at the Smithsonian through the Summer of 2008. "The whole purpose of the Kameny Papers Project, and our gifts to The Library of Congress and The Smithsonian Institution," says Kameny, "is to ensure that this kind of passive-aggressive hostility to our history does not occur." "Gay is Good," concludes Kameny to Brokaw. "You are not." The video of Brokaw's appearance on CNN's Reliable Sources and the entire text of Dr. Kameny's letter, dated November 26, 2007, follow below. Mr. Tom Brokaw Ms. Gina Centrello Ms. Kate Medina Dear 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 have
been 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.
VIDEO TRANSCRIPT: KURTZ: I have heard some criticism of the book saying that you deal with civil rights, you deal with women’s liberation, as it was called then, but you don’t devote any time or space to the burgeoning gay rights movement. Is that something… (CROSSTALK) BROKAW: I don’t, because the gay rights movement came slightly later. It lifted off during that time and I had to make some choices about what I was going to concentrate on. The big issues were the anti-war movement, the counterculture. I do make some reference to it, but it is only fleeting. And it wasn’t any attempt on my part to suppress it. It is just that the gay rights movement really came later after the ‘60s, it really began to take hold in the ‘70s. I did the first television documentary on AIDS in America, and it was because my friend Larry Kramer (ph) had stopped me on the street and said, there is something going on in the gay community that you need to pay attention to. So in this book it was not an oversight on my part to try to downplay the rise of the gay rights movement, which did come later.
NBC Nightly News alumnus Tom Brokaw has been criticized for excluding the gay rights movement from his recently released book on growing up in the Vietnam era. #
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Random House Publishing Group
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Originally published on Tuesday November 27, 2007.