Local
The scientific activist
Harvard award draws attention to Frank Kameny’s pre-activist days
Veteran gay rights leader Frank Kameny, who is credited with founding the gay activist movement in Washington 41 years ago, returned to Cambridge, Mass., last month to receive an award from the Harvard University Gay & Lesbian Caucus. Kameny, 77, received a master’s degree from Harvard in 1949 and his Ph.D. there in 1956 — both in the field of astronomy.
With Harvard University President Lawrence Summers looking on, about 200 Harvard gay students and gay alumni gave Kameny a standing ovation on June 6 as an official with the Gay & Lesbian Caucus introduced Kameny at a ceremony on the Harvard campus.
The award presented to Kameny at the ceremony honors him for “his longstanding advocacy and activism and his incredible personal commitment and contribution to the lives of all gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender people.”
In an interview this week, Kameny said his return to Harvard brought back memories of his pre-gay activist days — including his studies at Harvard, his early ambitions to become an astronomer and become involved in the U.S. space program, and his service in the military during World War II.
Kameny rarely talks about his pre-activist days in his public appearances on behalf of gay rights. His friends and colleagues in the gay rights movement say those early years played a key role in shaping what observers say has been Kameny’s groundbreaking work on behalf of gays in D.C. and throughout the nation.
Long-time activists know Kameny for his role as founder in 1961 of the Mattachine Society of Washington, D.C., the first gay rights group in the nation’s capital. Shortly after its founding, Kameny broke new ground by leading the first ever gay rights protests in front of the White House, Pentagon and State Department.
Those who know Kameny say few people are aware of his use of the scientific principles and knowledge he acquired in the study of physics and astronomy to debunk the psychiatric theories of the 1950s and 1960s, which held that homosexuality was an illness and that gays suffered from a psychiatric disorder.
In his 1981 book, “Homosexuality and American Psychiatry: The Politics of Diagnosis,” researcher Ronald Bayer credits Kameny with almost single-handedly persuading the early homophile movement to change its position of accepting the prevailing psychiatric theories that gays were disordered to the posture that these theories were scientifically unsound and must be refuted.
Kameny said his love for science began in his teenage years in New York City’s borough of Queens. He graduated from Richmond Hill High School in 1941, at the age of 16, after skipping two grades, in part, because of his exceptional aptitude for science and math. In September 1941, Kameny began his undergraduate studies in physics at New York’s Queens College.
He said he had expected to immerse himself “in the sheer joy” of courses in math and physics, along with other college related activities. But all of that changed abruptly three months later when the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor. “Nothing was the same after that,” Kameny said.
Two years later, in May 1943, Kameny enlisted in the Army, signing his enlistment papers three days before his 18th birthday. In September of that year, he was called into active duty, where he remained until March 1946. Although he had two years of college under his belt, Kameny said his Army superiors assigned him to a mortar crew with the 58th Armored Infantry, which was part of the Army’s 8th Armored Division in Europe.
Before he knew it, Kameny said, he was engaged in front-line combat in France, Holland and Germany. Some of his most harrowing moments, he said, came during the Battle of the Bulge, where the German army made a ferocious effort to break through the lines of allied forces. Stationed in trenches during freezing whether, Kameny recounts how he and his fellow soldiers endured German artillery fire while trying to catch some sleep in the dead of night.
“I came within a hair’s breadth of losing my life several times,” Kameny said. “If you hear the whistle of a shell and then the explosion, you’re OK,” he said. “But if the whistle stops suddenly, before the explosion, you’re in gave danger of being hit.”
Years later, Kameny would wear the combat medal he earned in the Battle of the Bulge as he led the D.C. Gay & Lesbian Activists Alliance in presenting its annual Memorial Day wreath at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier at Arlington National Cemetery.
Space ambitions jettisoned
At the conclusion of the war, Kameny returned to Queens College after being discharged from the Army in 1946. He completed his undergraduate work less than two years later and began his studies at Harvard. While there, he taught astronomy at Yale University and later traveled to Arizona and Northern Island, where he conducted research in astronomy at internationally acclaimed observatories. After receiving his PhD. at Harvard in 1956, he began teaching astronomy at Georgetown University.
In 1957, he left Georgetown after being recruited by the government to take a job as an astronomer with the Army Map Service in Washington. The nation’s race against the Russians for superiority in space had just begun in full force. Kameny had set his sights, among other things, on a possible role in the U.S. space program. A short time later, Congress created the National Aeronautics & Space Administration. Kameny has said he would have seriously considered applying to become an astronaut. But that was not to come about.
Just five months into his job at the Army Map Service, U.S. government security officials discovered Kameny was gay and opened an investigation into Kameny’s alleged “threat” to national security. Within a few weeks, he was dismissed from his job, with his name placed on a list of people labeled as government security risks.
Kameny fought his dismissal in court, taking it all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court, where he became the first to challenge a firing by the federal government on grounds of sexual orientation. The high court let stand a lower court ruling against Kameny, effectively ending his career as a civil servant and an astronomer.
What Kameny did next, as the saying goes, is part of history — at least the history of the U.S. gay civil rights movement. His longtime friend and fellow activist, Craig Howell, has said that had it not been for the government’s discovery of his sexual orientation, Kameny would likely have become one of the world’s eminent astronomers.
“The government’s loss became our gain,” said Howell.
Local
Local LGBTQ groups, activists to commemorate Black History Month
Rayceen Pendarvis to moderate Dupont Underground panel on Sunday
LGBTQ groups in D.C. and elsewhere plan to use Black History Month as an opportunity to commemorate and celebrate Black lives and experiences.
Team Rayceen Productions has no specific events planned, but co-founder Rayceen Pendarvis will attend many functions around D.C. this month.
Pendarvis, a longtime voice in the LGBTQ community in D.C. will be moderating a panel at Dupont Underground on Sunday. The event, “Every (Body) Wants to Be a Showgirl,” will feature art from Black burlesque artists from around the country. Pendarvis on Feb. 23 will attend the showing of multimedia play at the Lincoln Theatre that commemorates the life of James Baldwin.
Equality Virginia plans to prioritize Black voices through a weekly online series, and community-based story telling. The online digital series will center Black LGBTQ voices, specifically trailblazers and activists, and contemporary Black queer and transgender people.
Narissa Rahaman, Equality Virginia’s executive director, stressed the importance of the Black queer community to the overall Pride movement, and said “Equality Virginia is proud to center those voices in our work this month and beyond.”
The Capital Pride Alliance, which hosts Pride events in D.C., has an alliance with the Center for Black Equity, which brings Black Pride to D.C. over Memorial Day weekend. The National LGBTQ Task Force has no specific Black History Month events planned, but plans to participate in online collaborations.
Cathy Renna, the Task Force’s director of communications, told the Washington Blade the organization remains committed to uplifting Black voices. “Our priority is keeping this at the forefront everyday,” she said.
The D.C. LGBTQ+ Community Center is also hosting a series of Black History Month events.
The D.C. Public Library earlier this year launched “Freedom and Resistance,” an exhibition that celebrates Black History Month and Martin Luther King Jr. It will remain on display until the middle of March at the Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial Library at 901 G St., N.W.
District of Columbia
U.S. Attorney’s Office drops hate crime charge in anti-gay assault
Case remains under investigation and ‘further charges’ could come
D.C. police announced on Feb. 9 that they had arrested two days earlier on Feb. 7 a Germantown, Md., man on a charge of simple assault with a hate crime designation after the man allegedly assaulted a gay man at 14th and Q Streets, N.W., while using “homophobic slurs.”
But D.C. Superior Court records show that prosecutors with the Office of the U.S. Attorney for D.C., which prosecutes D.C. violent crime cases, charged the arrested man only with simple assault without a hate crime designation.
In response to a request by the Washington Blade for the reason why the hate crime designation was dropped, a spokesperson for the U.S. Attorney’s office provided this response: “We continue to investigate this matter and make no mistake: should the evidence call for further charges, we will not hesitate to charge them.”
In a statement announcing the arrest in this case, D.C. police stated, “On Saturday, February 7, 2026, at approximately 7:45 p.m. the victim and suspect were in the 1500 block of 14th Street, Northwest. The suspect requested a ‘high five’ from the victim. The victim declined and continued walking,” the statement says.
“The suspect assaulted the victim and used homophobic slurs,” the police statement continues. “The suspect was apprehended by responding officers.”
It adds that 26-year-old Dean Edmundson of Germantown, Md. “was arrested and charged with Simple Assault (Hate/Bias).” The statement also adds, “A designation as a hate crime by MPD does not mean that prosecutors will prosecute it as a hate crime.”
Under D.C.’s Bias Related Crime Act of 1989, penalties for crimes motivated by prejudice against individuals based on race, religion, sexual orientation, gender identity, disability, and homelessness can be enhanced by a court upon conviction by one and a half times greater than the penalty of the underlying crime.
Prosecutors in the past both in D.C. and other states have said they sometimes decide not to include a hate crime designation in assault cases if they don’t think the evidence is sufficient to obtain a conviction by a jury. In some instances, prosecutors have said they were concerned that a skeptical jury might decide to find a defendant not guilty of the underlying assault charge if they did not believe a motive of hate was involved.
A more detailed arrest affidavit filed by D.C. police in Superior Court appears to support the charge of a hate crime designation.
“The victim stated that they refused to High-Five Defendant Edmondson, which, upon that happening, Defendant Edmondson started walking behind both the victim and witness, calling the victim, “bald, ugly, and gay,” the arrest affidavit states.
“The victim stated that upon being called that, Defendant Edmundson pushed the victim with both hands, shoving them, causing the victim to feel the force of the push,” the affidavit continues. “The victim stated that they felt offended and that they were also gay,” it says.
District of Columbia
Capital Pride wins anti-stalking order against local activist
Darren Pasha claims action is linked to his criticism of Pride organizers
A D.C. Superior Court judge on Feb. 6 partially approved an anti-stalking order against a local LGBTQ activist requested last October by the Capital Pride Alliance, the D.C.-based LGBTQ group that organizes the city’s annual Pride events.
The ruling by Judge Robert D. Okun requires former Capital Pride volunteer Darren Pasha to stay at least 100 feet away from Capital Pride’s staff, board members, and volunteers until the time of a follow up court hearing he scheduled for April 17.
In his ruling at the Feb. 6 hearing, which was virtual rather than held in-person at the courthouse, Okun said he had changed the distance that Capital Pride had requested for the stay-away, anti-stalking order from 200 yards to 100 feet. The court records show that the judge also denied a motion filed earlier by Pasha, who did not attend the hearing, to “quash” the Capital Pride civil case against him.
Pasha told the Washington Blade he suffered an injury and damaged his mobile phone by falling off his scooter on the city’s snow-covered streets that prevented him from calling in to join the Feb. 6 court hearing.
In his own court filings without retaining an attorney, Pasha has strongly denied the stalking related allegations against him by Capital Pride, saying “no credible or admissible evidence has been provided” to show he engaged in any wrongdoing.
The Capital Pride complaint initially filed in court on Oct. 27, 2025, includes an 18-page legal brief outlining its allegations against Pasha and an additional 167-page addendum of “supporting exhibits” that includes multiple statements by witnesses whose names are blacked out.
“Over the past year, Defendant Darren Pasha (“DSP”) has engaged in a sustained, and escalating course of conduct directed at CPA, including repeated and unwanted contact, harassment, intimidation, threats, manipulation, and coercive behavior targeting CPA staff, board members, volunteers, and affiliates,” the Capital Pride complaint states.
In his initial 16-page response to the complaint, Pasha says the Capital Pride complaint appears to be a form of retaliation against him for a dispute he has had with the organization and its then president, Ashley Smith, last year.
“It is evident that the document is replete with false, misleading, and unsubstantiated assertions,” he said of the complaint.
Smith, who has since resigned from his role as board president, did not respond to a request by the Blade for comment at the time the Capital Pride court complaint was filed against Pasha.
Capital Pride Executive Director Ryan Bos and the attorney representing the group in its legal action against Pasha, Nick Harrison, did not immediately respond to a Blade request for comment on the judge’s Feb. 6 ruling.
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Local LGBTQ groups, activists to commemorate Black History Month
U.S. Attorney’s Office drops hate crime charge in anti-gay assault
