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.
District of Columbia
Judge issues revised order in Capital Pride stalking case
Defendant Darren Pasha agreed to accept less restrictive directive
A D.C. Superior Court judge on April 30 reinstated an anti-stalking order requested by the Capital Pride Alliance against local gay activist Darren Pasha based on allegations that Pasha engaged in a year-long effort to harass, intimidate, and stalk the organization’s staff, board members, and volunteers.
The reinstated order by Judge Robert D. Okun followed an April 17 court hearing in which he rescinded a similar order he initially approved in February on grounds that more evidence was needed to substantiate the need for the order.
At the time he rescinded the earlier order he scheduled an evidentiary hearing for April 29 at which three Capital Pride staff members testified in support of the anti-stalking order. But Okun discontinued the hearing after Pasha, who was representing himself without an attorney, announced he was willing to accept a revised, less restrictive temporary restraining order.
The judge said Pasha’s decision to accept a restraining order made it no longer necessary to continue the evidentiary hearing. He then asked Capital Pride and Pasha to submit their suggested revisions for the order which they submitted a short time later.
The case began when Capital Pride Alliance, the D.C.-based LGBTQ group that organizes the city’s annual Pride events, filed a civil complaint on Oct. 27, 2025, against Pasha, accusing him of engaging in a year-long effort to harass, intimidate, and stalk Capital Pride staff, board members, and volunteers. It includes a 167-page addendum of “supporting exhibits” that includes multiple statements by unidentified witnesses.
Pasha, who has represented himself without an attorney, has argued in multiple court filings and motions that the stalking allegations are untrue. In his initial court response to the complaint, he said it appears to be a form of retaliation against him for a dispute he has had with Capital Pride and its former board president, Ashley Smith, who has since resigned from the board.
Similar to his earlier anti-stalking order against Pasha, Okun’s reissued order on April 30 states, a “Temporary Anti-Stalking Order is GRANTED, effective immediately and remaining in effect until further order of the Court or final disposition of this matter.”
It adds, “The defendant shall not contact, attempt to contact, harass, threaten, or otherwise communicate with any protected person, directly or indirectly, including through third parties, social media, electronic communication, or any other means.”
Unlike the earlier order, which did not identify the “protected persons” by name, the latest order includes a list of 34 people, 13 of whom are Capital Pride staff members or volunteers, including CEO Ryan Bos and Chief Operating Officer June Crenshaw. The other 21 people listed are identified as Capital Pride board members, including board chair Anna Jinkerson.
Possibly because Pasha addressed this in his suggested version of the order, the judge’s revised order says Pasha is allowed to visit the D.C. LGBTQ+ Community Center, where the Capital Pride office is located, if he gives the community center a 24 hour advance notice that he will be visiting the center, which hosts many events unrelated to Capital Pride. The earlier order required him to stay at least 100 feet away from the Capital Pride office.
The new order also prohibits Pasha from attending 21 named events that Capital Pride Alliance either organizes itself or with partner organizations that were scheduled to take place from April 30 through June 21. The order says he is allowed to attend the two largest events, the June 20 Pride Parade and the June 21 Pride Festival and Concert, in which 500,000 or more people are expected to attend.
It says Pasha is also allowed to attend the June 15 Pride At The Pier event organized by the Washington Blade.
But for those three events the order says he is restricted from entering “ticketed and controlled access areas.”
At the April 29 court hearing, Okun also scheduled a mandatory remote mediation session for July 23, in which efforts would be made to resolve the civil complaint case brought by Capital Pride without going to trial.
District of Columbia
Both sides propose revised orders in Capital Pride stalking case
Defendant Darren Pasha agreed to accept less restrictive directive
An evidentiary hearing in D.C. Superior Court on April 29 in which the Capital Pride Alliance presented three of four planned witnesses to testify in support of its civil complaint that D.C. gay activist Darren Pasha engaged in a year-long effort to harass, intimidate, and stalk its staff, board members, and volunteers ended abruptly at the direction of the judge.
Judge Robert D. Okun announced from the bench that the hearing, which was intended provide Capital Pride an opportunity to present evidence in support of its request to reinstate an anti-stalking order against Pasha that the judge temporarily rescinded on April 17, was no longer needed because Pasha stated at the hearing that he is willing to accept a revised, less restrictive temporary restraining order.
Pasha made that statement after two Capital Pride witnesses — June Crenshaw and Vincenzo Volpe — each testified in support of the stalking allegations against Pasha for over an hour under questioning from Capital Pride attorney Nick Harrison and under cross-examination from Pasha, who is representing himself without an attorney.
After Capital Pride’s third witness, Tifany Royster, testified for just a few minutes, and after the judge called a recess for lunch and to attend to an unrelated case, Pasha announced that after obtaining legal advice he determined that he was unsuited to continue cross-examining the witnesses. He said he would be willing to accept a significantly less restrictive temporary restraining order.
Okun then ruled that the evidentiary hearing was no longer needed and directed Capital Pride and Pasha to submit to him their version of a revised stay away order. He said he would use their proposed revisions to help him develop his own order, which he would issue after deliberating over the matter.
He also scheduled a mandatory remote mediation session for July 23, in which efforts would be made to resolve the case without going to trial. He then adjourned the hearing at 3:50 p.m.
The online Superior Court docket for the case stated after the hearing ended that the judge would issue “a new modified Temporary Protective Order,” but it did not say when it would be issued.
Shortly before the April 29 hearing began at 11 a.m., Harrison filed a “Draft Temporary Anti-Stalking Order” that included a list of 34 “Protected Persons” that Harrison said during the hearing were affiliated with Capital Pride Alliance as staff and board members, volunteers, and others associated with the group.
The proposed order stated, “The defendant shall not contact, attempt to contact, harass, threaten, or otherwise communicate with any protected person, directly or indirectly, including through third parties, social media, electronic communications, or any other means.”
The proposal represented a significant change from Capital Pride’s initial civil complaint against Pasha filed in February that Pasha claimed called for him to stay away at least 200 yards from all Capital pride staff, board members, and volunteers without naming them. Okun granted that stay away request in February but reduced the stay away distance to 100 feet.
Capital Pride attorney Harrison disputes Pasha’s interpretation of the order, saying the 100-foot stay-away was for events, not for individual Capital Pride staff, volunteers, or board members. He said the order prohibited Pasha from engaging in any way with the Capital Pride staffers, volunteers or board members.
But the proposed order Capital Pride at first submitted at the April 29 hearing also called for Pasha to stay away from and to not attend as many as 25 Capital Pride events scheduled to take place this year from April 30 through June 21 and for him to say away from the Capital Pride office located at 1827 Wiltberger St., N.W., which is the building in which it shares with the DC LGBTQ Community Center.
At the April 29 hearing, at Pasha’s request, Okun called on Capital Pride to consider allowing Pasha to attend at least the two largest events — the Capital Pride Parade and Festival — which draw over 500,000 participants.
Harrison said in a follow-up message to the judge following the hearing that Capital Pride would allow Pasha to attend those two events and one other as long as he stays away from “ticketed and controlled access areas.”
At an April 17 status hearing Okun rescinded the earlier stay away order at Pasha’s request, among other things, on grounds that it was too vague and didn’t provide Pasha with sufficient specific information on who to stay away from. It was at that hearing that Okun scheduled the April 29 evidentiary hearing, saying it would give Capital Pride a chance to provide sufficient evidence to justify an anti-stalking order and Pasha an opportunity to challenge the evidence.
In his own response to the initial civil complaint filed in February and in subsequent court filings, Pasha has strongly denied he engaged in stalking and has alleged that the complaint was a form of retaliation against him over a dispute he has had with Capital Pride and its former board president, Ashley Smith.
Like its initial complaint filed in February, Capital Pride filed a multipage document at the start of the April 29 hearing with written testimony from staff members and volunteers who allege that Pasha did engage in stalking, harassment, and intimidating behavior toward them and others.
Like Capital Pride, Pasha following the April 29 hearing, filed his own proposed version of the stay away order with significantly less restrictions than the Capital Pride proposal. Among other things, it calls for him to restrict his contact with Capital Pride CEO Ryan Bos and Crenshaw but says it “does not by its terms restrict the defendant’s communications with any other person, entity, governmental body, or media outlet.”
“Darren Pasha sent multiple messages to us and to the court after the proceedings asking for further modifications — which we are not accepting or responding to,” Harrison told the Blade in response to a request for further comment on Judge’s request for each side to submit proposed revisions of the stay away order.
“We appreciate the court’s time and careful attention to the evidence presented today,” Harrison told the Washington Blade in a written statement after the hearing. “This process was about bringing forward the experiences of individuals who reported a pattern of conduct that caused fear, serious alarm, and emotional distress,” he said.
“Capital Pride Alliance remains committed to ensuring that our events and community spaces are safe, welcoming, and free from harassment and we will continue to take appropriate steps to support and protect our community,” his statement says.
“I am happy with what we have accomplished so far,” Pasha told the Blade after the hearing. “I’m just waiting to see what will happen next. But I want to reiterate this goes back to when someone treats you wrong you speak up,” he said. “Even if I lose this case, I am glad that I spoke up and raised concerns.”
He added, “I will just be confident that in the next couple of months the truth will come out. But for now, I am happy with the progress that we have made regarding this.”
This story will be updated when the judge issues his revised stay away order.
Rehoboth Beach
Rehoboth’s Blue Moon sold; new owners to preserve LGBTQ legacy
‘They don’t want to change a thing’
The iconic Blue Moon restaurant and bar in Rehoboth Beach, Del., has been sold to new owners who have pledged to keep it an LGBTQ-affirming space, according to longtime owner Tim Ragan.
Ragan and his partner Randy Haney sold the Blue Moon to Dale Lomas and Mike Subrick, owners of Atlantic Liquors on Route 1.
“They don’t want to change a thing,” Ragan said. “They’re local people, they live here. Dale worked his first job at Dolle’s.”
Ragan and Haney did not sell the business, only the real estate. The deal includes a 10-year lease with renewal options under which Ragan and Haney will continue to operate the Moon. He noted that the couple could opt to sell the business at any time.
“It’s going really well so I’m not in any hurry,” Ragan told the Blade. “It’s hard to run a business and manage a property that’s 120 years old — now someone else has to fix the air conditioning. Our responsibility will be to run the business.”
Ragan offered reassurances that the Moon will continue to be a gay-friendly destination.
“Dale’s comment was that Rehoboth has been good to us and we just want to give back. The Moon is part of Rehoboth’s history and we want to preserve that.”
He said there are no immediate changes planned for the structure, apart from a new roof in the atrium that was damaged in a hail storm. Ragan noted that the property comes with several apartment rental licenses that they have never exercised and the new owners may decide to rent those out.
The Blue Moon business, at 35 Baltimore Ave., dates to 1981 and is an integral part of Rehoboth’s LGBTQ community, hosting countless entertainment events, drag shows, and more over 45 years. Local residents have celebrated birthdays, anniversaries, weddings, and other special occasions in the acclaimed restaurant.
The two buildings associated with the sale were listed by Carrie Lingo at 35 Baltimore Ave., and include an apartment, the front restaurant (6,600 square feet with three floors and a basement), and a secondary building (roughly 1,800 square feet on two floors). They were listed for $4.5 million. The bar and restaurant business were being sold separately.
But then, earlier this year, the Blue Moon real estate listing turned up on the Sussex County Sheriff’s Office auction site. The auction was slated for Tuesday, April 21 but hours before the sale, the listing changed to “active under contract” indicating that a buyer had been found but the sale was not yet final.
Ragan said the issue was the parties couldn’t resolve how much was owed due to a disagreement with the bank. “We didn’t owe $3 million,” he said. “We said we’re not paying any more until we sell.”
The sale contract was written five months ago. It took three attorneys to get a payoff amount agreed to by the bank, he added.
“No one wanted to buy both things. We now have a longterm lease. We couldn’t be happier.”
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Rehoboth’s Blue Moon sold; new owners to preserve LGBTQ legacy
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