Local
Longtime gay activist Frank Kameny dies
Community, public officials mourn loss of LGBT movement hero, pioneer

Frank Kameny’s gay rights activism predated the Stonewall riots by more than a decade. (Washington Blade file photo by Michael Key)
Expressions of condolences from LGBT activists and their straight supporters poured in from across the country this week following the death in Washington on Tuesday of Franklin E. Kameny, one of the nation’s most prominent gay rights leaders.
Friends said Kameny, 86, appears to have died in his sleep while in bed at his house in Northwest Washington. A representative of the D.C. Medical Examiner’s office, who spoke to friends and well-wishers who stood outside the house Tuesday night, said the cause of death couldn’t be immediately determined.
Kameny’s passing came a little more than a month before the planned celebration on Nov. 15 of the 50th anniversary of his founding of the Mattachine Society of Washington, the first gay rights organization in the nation’s capital.
LGBT rights advocates Charles Francis and Bob Witeck, who were longtime friends of Kameny’s and established the project to preserve Kameny’s papers over a 50-year period, said they would be announcing soon plans for a memorial service to honor the gay rights leader’s life.
Witeck said Nov. 15 is being considered as a possible date for a Kameny memorial gathering.
Timothy Clark, Kameny’s tenant and friend, said he found Kameny unconscious and unresponsive in his bed shortly after 5 p.m. on Tuesday. Clark said he became concerned when he arrived home a few minutes earlier and noticed Kameny hadn’t retrieved his newspapers, which are delivered outside the house in the morning.
He said he called 911 and rescue workers determined that Kameny had passed away earlier, most likely in his sleep. Clark said he had spoken with Kameny shortly before midnight on the previous day and Kameny didn’t appear to be ill or in distress.
Kameny is credited with being one of the leading strategists for the early gay rights movement – beginning nearly a decade before the 1969 Stonewall riots in New York’s Greenwich Village and continuing forward.
The Stonewall riots, triggered by a police raid of the Stonewall gay bar, are considered by most activist leaders as the starting point of the modern LGBT rights movement. But movement leaders credit Kameny and his collaborators in the Mattachine Society of Washington with laying the groundwork that enabled the post-Stonewall LGBT organizing to flourish.
“Frank was a revolutionary who lived to see the world change, and I’m comforted by that,” said Francis. “He was the first gay American to root the argument for gay civil equality in the words of Thomas Jefferson and the Declaration of Independence and Constitution.”
Gay historian David K. Johnson, who wrote about Kameny in two books on the gay rights movement, said Kameny broke from the early American “homophile” movement’s tactics of accommodation with the prevailing views that homosexuality was a disorder.
“Kameny’s style and tactics differed markedly from those of earlier homosexual leaders,” Johnson wrote in a 2002 article posted on the website of D.C.’s Rainbow History Project. “By unabashedly proclaiming that homosexuality was neither sick nor immoral, Kameny helped move gays and lesbians out of the shadows of 1950s apologetic, self-help groups and into the sunlight of the civil rights movement, setting the tone for a movement that continues today.”
It was during his years as head of the Mattachine Society of Washington that Kameny in July 1968 coined the phrase, “Gay is Good,” which activists say became a forerunner to the gay pride celebrations that followed the 1969 Stonewall riots.
Born and raised in New York City, Kameny served in combat as an Army soldier in World War II in Europe. After the war, Kameny received his doctorate degree in astronomy from Harvard University.
He came to Washington in 1956 to take a position teaching astronomy at Georgetown University. The following year, government recruiters persuaded him to take a job as a civilian astronomer with the U.S. Army Map Service in Washington.
NASA career derailed
Kameny told the Blade in a 2002 interview that the nation’s race against the Soviet Union for superiority in space had just begun in full force and he 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 and Space Administration and Kameny 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 investigators uncovered information leading them to believe Kameny was gay. They opened an investigation into his 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 challenged the dismissal before the U.S. Civil Service Commission, which set personnel policies for federal employees. The commission upheld the firing, prompting Kameny to take the matter to court. After losing in the lower courts, he appealed his case to the U.S. Supreme Court, becoming the first known gay person to file a gay-related case before the high court.
The Supreme Court upheld a lower court ruling against Kameny and declined to hear the case. But Kameny’s decision to appeal the case through the court system motivated him to become a lifelong advocate on behalf of LGBT equality.
Gay historian Johnson wrote in his 2002 article that Kameny’s lawyer withdrew from the case after the U.S. Court of Appeals ruled against Kameny, forcing Kameny to write his own appeal to the Supreme Court.
Johnson called Kameny’s 60-page legal brief filed before the high court a groundbreaking challenge to the federal government’s policy barring homosexuals from working for the government in any capacity. Johnson said it served as Kameny’s and the gay movement’s strategy document for advancing legal rights for gays in the years going forward.
Kameny’s Supreme Court brief, or petition, also offered the world its first glimpse of what became his trademark use of blunt, sometimes inflammatory language combined with reasoned arguments to challenge anti-gay policies.
“The government’s regulations, policies, practices and procedures, as applied in the instant case to petitioner specifically, and as applied to homosexuals generally, are a stench in the nostrils of decent people, an offense against morality, an abandonment of reason, an affront to human dignity, an improper restraint upon proper freedom and liberty, a disgrace to any civilized society, and a violation of all that this nation stands for,” he wrote in his Supreme Court petition.
“These policies, practices, procedures, and regulations have gone too long unquestioned and too long unexamined by the courts,” he wrote.
Gov’t apologizes to Kameny
Although Kameny lost his own case, he spent the next decade working with attorneys and other gay and lesbian federal workers to chip away at the then U.S. Civil Service Commission’s ban on gay federal employees through new court challenges. By 1975, after losing several cases to gay employees who won reinstatement to their jobs over a period of years, the Civil Service Commission dropped its ban on gay employees.
The change, which came under the administration of President Gerald Ford, was based on court rulings saying the government could not discriminate against homosexual federal employees if no evidence exists to show a harmful “nexus” between someone’s sexual orientation and their ability to perform their job.
Kameny, who called the development a major victory for gay rights, turned next to ongoing efforts to end two other anti-gay policies of the government – the ban on gays from receiving government security clearances and the ban on gays in the military.
In 2009, the Obama administration through the U.S. Office of Personnel Management – the successor agency to the Civil Service Commission – issued Kameny a formal apology for his 1957 firing. The apology was extended by OPM Director John Berry, an openly gay man.
In an area of work for which Kameny is less known, he established a paralegal practice in the 1970s that continued through the 1980s and early 90s to represent gays encountering problems obtaining or retaining security clearances as well as gays facing discharge from the military because of their sexual orientation.
Activists following his paralegal work, including those who he helped keep their security clearances, called Kameny a tenacious counsel who sometimes worked with lawyers and other times served as an administrative representative before adjudicatory hearings, including discharge hearings in all branches of the military.
“When the super-secret National Security Agency (NSA) was on the verge of firing me simply for discovering I was gay, I enlisted Frank Kameny’s help in resisting,” said Jamie Shoemaker, a linguist and NSA career employee.
“His gutsy, unapologetic efforts to save my career and that of many others with security clearances led to a ground-breaking change in the attitude of our country’s intelligence agencies toward gays,” Shoemaker said.
Kameny said he was pleased when his security clearance practice became mostly unnecessary in the 1990s when President Bill Clinton issued an executive order prohibiting discrimination based on sexual orientation in the issuance of government security clearances.
Soliciting sodomy
In his work with military service members ensnared in what activists called witch hunts, where military investigators pressured vulnerable gays to identify other gays under false promises of lenient treatment, Kameny coined another phrase aimed at helping those under investigation – “Say nothing, sign nothing, get counsel.”
Charles Francis and others who knew Kameny said his paralegal work met an important need in the years before groups such as Lambda Legal Defense and Education Fund and Servicemembers Legal Defense Network emerged to take on this type of legal work.
LGBT movement colleagues also credit Kameny with playing a lead role in the effort to persuade the American Psychiatric Association in 1973 to remove homosexuality from its list of disorders. As a scientist by profession, Kameny wrote and spoke often beginning in the 1960s about what he called the faulty or “junk” science that the psychiatric profession used to support its claim that homosexuality was a mental disorder.
Kameny and others supporting him within the profession argued that nearly all of the “gays are sick” theories were based on studies of patients in therapy. There were little or no studies made of the overwhelming majority of gays who never sought therapy and functioned well in society despite widespread anti-gay prejudice, Kameny and others argued.
When broader studies were conducted of gays and lesbians in the population at large, findings showed there were no differences in the numbers found to have mental health problems between samples of gays and straights, Kameny often pointed out.
In yet another area of work, Kameny is credited with playing an early and effective role in pushing for repeal of state sodomy laws, which made it illegal for consenting adults to engage in oral or anal sex in the privacy of the home. In keeping with his characteristic defiant rhetoric, Kameny sought to dramatize what he called the “lunacy” of laws prohibiting private, consenting sex.
On a number of occasions he publicly solicited public officials, including D.C.’s police chief in the 1960s, to engage in sodomy with him. In 1987, when the U.S. Supreme Court upheld Georgia’s sodomy law in the case Bowers vs. Hardwick, Kameny said he wrote letters soliciting sodomy to each of the Supreme Court justices that voted to uphold the law.
“I defied them to prosecute me,” he told the Blade. “They never did.”
Joe Solmonese, president of the Human Rights Campaign, said Kameny “led an extraordinary life marked by heroic activism that set a path for the modern LGBT civil rights movement.”
“From the early days fighting institutionalized discrimination in the federal workforce, Dr. Kameny taught us all that ‘Gay is Good,’” Solmonese said. “As we say goodbye to this trailblazer on National Coming Out Day, we remember the remarkable power we all have to change the world by living our lives like Frank – openly, honestly and authentically.”
Chuck Wolfe, CEO of the Gay & Lesbian Victory Fund, said Kameny’s death marked the “loss of a hero and a founding father of the fight to end discrimination against LGBT people.”
“Dr. Kameny stood up for this community when doing so was considered unthinkable and even shocking, and he continued to do so throughout his life,” Wolfe said. “He spoke with a clear voice and firm conviction about the humanity and dignity of people who were gay, long before it was safe for him to do so. All of us who today endeavor to complete the work he began a half century ago are indebted to Dr. Kameny and his remarkable bravery and commitment.”
Local activists who knew Kameny said they are deeply saddened over his passing but pleased to have shared time with him at several LGBT events in Washington during the past three weeks.
On Sept. 30, D.C.’s LGBT Community Center honored Kameny along with three other activists with its community service award at a ceremony at the downtown Hotel Sofitel. Kameny delivered what his activist friends called his standard and beloved fiery speech asserting his 50-year struggle to change society to bring about full and unabridged rights for LGBT people. It was to be his last speaking engagement.
His passing inside his house on Tuesday came several years after the city designated the house at 5020 Cathedral Ave., N.W., as a historic landmark because of the work Kameny and his activist colleagues performed there since the 1960s on behalf of LGBT rights. In 2010, the D.C. City Council voted unanimously to name a two-block section of 17th Street near Dupont Circle as Frank Kameny Way in honor of Kameny’s lifelong work on behalf of equality for the LGBT community and the community at large.”
Kameny’s death also came five years after Francis and Witeck helped arrange for the Library of Congress to acquire more than 50,000 documents from the Kameny Papers Project, which pulled together nearly 50 years of papers and documents that Kameny compiled through his work on behalf of LGBT people.
“Frank Kameny was the Rosa Parks and the Martin Luther King and the Thurgood Marshall of the gay rights movement,” Yale Law Professor William Eskridge told the Associated Press earlier this year.
Virginia
From the Pentagon to politics, Bree Fram fighting for LGBTQ rights
Transgender veteran running for Congress in Va.
After being ousted from military service, Col. Bree Fram — once the highest-ranking openly transgender officer in the Pentagon — is now running for Congress.
Fram, who lives in Reston, Va., brings more than two decades of public service to her campaign. From the battlefield to the halls of the Pentagon, she spent more than 20 years working inside the federal government, often advocating for LGBTQ people and other marginalized communities from within the system.
Fram spoke with the Washington Blade about her decision to run amid sustained attacks against her — and against the LGBTQ community more broadly — from the Trump-Vance administration and far-right officials.
She said her commitment to public service began more than 22 years ago, shaped in large part by watching the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.
“I had grown up expecting that there was this beautiful American peace stretching into the world for the foreseeable future, and that kind of image was shattered,” Fram told the Blade. “I realized that there was a continuous price to be paid to protect our democracy, to protect our freedoms. To be able to play a small part in defending those freedoms was incredibly important to me — to be part of something larger than myself.”

Commissioned through the U.S. Air Force Officer Training School in 2003, Fram served as an astronautical engineer and rose to the rank of colonel in the U.S. Air Force before later serving in the U.S. Space Force. She remained on active duty until 2025, when she was forced out following the Trump-Vance administration’s reinstated ban on trans military service.
Fram has been married for 20 years to her spouse, Peg Fram, and they have two children.
Beyond her military service, Fram has long been involved in advocacy and leadership. She has been a member of SPARTA, a trans military advocacy organization, since 2014, served on its board of directors beginning in 2018, and was president of the organization from 2021-2023.
Most recently, Fram served as chief of the Requirements Integration Division at Headquarters, Space Force, and as co-lead of the Joint Space Requirements Integration Cell in collaboration with the Joint Staff. Previously, she was chief of the Acquisition Policies and Processes Division for the assistant secretary of the Air Force for space acquisition and integration.
Earlier in her career, Fram served as a materiel leader at the Air Force Research Laboratory, overseeing the development of counter-small unmanned aerial systems and offensive cyberspace technologies in support of Pentagon and intelligence community priorities, managing an annual budget exceeding $100 million.
Her previous assignments also included oversight of Air Force security cooperation in four strategically significant Middle Eastern countries and 258 foreign military sales cases valued at $15.79 billion; serving as executive officer to the Air Force director of strategic plans, where she helped integrate the 30-year, $3.6 trillion Air Force Plan; a legislative fellowship on Capitol Hill with then-U.S. Del. Madeleine Bordallo (D-Guam), handling military, veterans, and foreign affairs issues; and a program management role at the National Reconnaissance Office, where she led a $700 million multi-agency engineering and IT contract overseeing more than 500 personnel and supporting $40 billion in assets.
Fram also directed 24/7 worldwide operations and maintenance of mission data processing for space-based and airborne national intelligence assets and co-led the Department of the Air Force’s LGBTQ+ Initiatives Team and Barrier Analysis Working Group from 2023-2025.
She holds a master’s degree from the Air Force Institute of Technology and is a distinguished graduate of the Naval War College. Fram deployed in support of Operation Iraqi Freedom, where she worked on airborne counter-improvised explosive device technologies.
In January, Fram, alongside four other trans military officers, was given a special retirement ceremony by the Human Rights Campaign — a direct result of President Donald Trump’s 2025 Executive Order 14183, titled “Prioritizing Military Excellence and Readiness.” The policy directed the Pentagon to adopt measures prohibiting trans, nonbinary, and gender-nonconforming people from serving in the military.
Under Virginia’s current congressional maps, Fram would challenge Congressman James Walkinshaw in a Democratic primary in the 11th Congressional District, which includes the city of Fairfax and most of Fairfax County. However, the district’s boundaries could change pending ongoing redistricting discussions in the state.
Fram emphasized that her decades working within the executive branch shaped her understanding of what it means to take — and uphold — an oath to the Constitution, even when those in power later forced her out of service solely because of her identity, not her performance.
“Through 23 years of service, I learned what it meant to fulfill that oath to the Constitution, and I wanted to continue serving,” she said. “But when this administration came in and labeled me and others like me ‘dishonorable’ and ‘disciplined liars who lack the humility required for military service,’ it hit hard. When the Supreme Court then agreed to let the administration fire all of us, I had to figure out what would allow me to continue my service in a way that was meaningful and lived up to that oath.”
After being told she would have to retire from a career she describes as her life’s calling, Fram said she began searching for another way to serve — a path that ultimately led her to run for Congress.
“I had done the work over the past couple of decades to understand the America that I believe in, that America I believe we all can be,” Fram said. “That’s where this decision came from. I believe I can fight back and fight forward for Virginians — with the knowledge I have and with a vision of the America we can be.”
That vision, she said, is one that has yet to be fully realized — despite decades of promises from Democratic leaders across all branches of government.
“This is about protecting our fundamental rights — freedom of speech, freedom to assemble, bodily autonomy, a woman’s right to choose, and the ability for queer people to live our best lives,” Fram said. “Right now, our government is throwing barriers up in front of many people. They’re strengthening them, building walls higher, and actively damaging lives.”

Fram said her leadership philosophy was shaped by watching strong, effective leaders during her time in the Air Force and Space Force — leaders who reinforced her belief that true leadership means expanding opportunity, not restricting it.
“Leadership is about tearing barriers down — not climbing over them and forcing others to suffer through the same things,” she said. “It’s about making sure the people coming up behind us have even more opportunity to go further, faster. How do we be better tomorrow than we are today? How do we fulfill our founding promise of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness?”
One way Fram said Congress could help dismantle those barriers is by passing the Equal Rights Amendment, enshrining constitutional protections for all people — particularly LGBTQ Americans.
“Getting the Equal Rights Amendment into the Constitution is absolutely critical to the future of queer rights,” she said. “Voting rights must also be clearly protected.”
Protecting democracy itself is also among her top priorities, Fram said.
“We need to take control of the House so we can put real checks on this administration,” she said. “That allows the American people to see how this administration is actively making their lives worse and less affordable — and it’s how we ultimately throw them out and get back to making life better.”
Fram said her experience working under four presidents — including during Trump’s first term — reinforced her belief that opposition to efforts curtailing civil liberties is essential.
“The primary thing we can do to protect democracy is to get rid of this administration,” she said. “Taking control of the House gives us true investigative power. Under every rock, there is likely an impeachable offense because they are failing to faithfully execute the laws of the United States.”
For her, the message Trump is sending is clear — he and others close-minded to the LGBTQ community are threatened by the possibility of what someone truly dedicated to service can become.
“One of the reasons this administration had to throw us out and silence us was because we were an example of what was possible. We shined so brightly by meeting or exceeding every standard that they couldn’t hide us away by any other means except kicking us out.”
Fram acknowledged that her identity has been a political target since 2016, but said those attacks have never been grounded in her ability to lead or accomplish complex missions over more than two decades of service.
“If others want to attack me on my identity, I welcome it,” she said. “I’m focused on whether people can afford groceries or feel safe in their communities.”
“I’m happy to be a lightning rod for those kinds of attacks,” she added. “If it allows Democrats to advance an agenda that makes life better for Americans, they can come after me all day long. They attacked me while I was in the military, before I was ever running for office.”
On policy, Fram said affordability, health care, and safety are at the center of her agenda.
“No one should be afraid to go to the doctor or fear surprise medical bills that put them into debt,” she said. “Every American deserves access to affordable, high-quality health care.”
She also emphasized a willingness to work across party lines — even with those who previously politicized her identity — if it means delivering results for constituents.
“If someone wants to work together to make people’s lives better, I’ll work with them,” she said. “If they want to come after me based on who I am, they can waste their energy on that.”
Asked how she defines hope in the current political moment, Fram rejected the idea of passive optimism.
“Hope isn’t naive optimism,” she said. “Hope is doing the work — engaging people and bending the moral arc of the universe toward justice.”
She added that representation itself can be transformative.
“Just being in Congress changes the narrative,” Fram said. “It lets a kid say, ‘Oh my God — I could do that too.’”
District of Columbia
Eleanor Holmes Norton ends 2026 reelection campaign
Longtime LGBTQ rights supporter introduced, backed LGBTQ-supportive legislation
The reelection campaign for D.C. Congressional Delegate Eleanor Holmes Norton, who has been an outspoken supporter of LGBTQ rights since first taking office in 1991, filed a termination report on Jan. 25 with the Federal Elections Commission, indicating she will not run for a 19th term in the U.S. House of Representatives.
Norton’s decision not to run again, which was first reported by the online news publication NOTUS, comes at a time when many of her longtime supporters questioned her ability to continue in office at the age of 88.
NOTUS cited local political observers who pointed out that Norton has in the past year or two curtailed public appearances and, according to critics, has not taken sufficient action to oppose efforts by the Trump-Vance administration and Republican members of Congress to curtail D.C.’s limited home rule government.
Those same critics, however, have praised Norton for her 35-year tenure as the city’s non-voting delegate in the House and as a champion for a wide range of issues of interest to D.C. LGBTQ rights advocates have also praised her longstanding support for LGBTQ rights issues both locally and nationally.
D.C. gay Democratic Party activist Cartwright Moore, who has worked on Norton’s congressional staff from the time she first took office in 1991 until his retirement in 2021, points out that Norton’s role as a staunch LGBTQ ally dates back to the 1970s when she served as head of the New York City Commission on Human Rights.
“The congresswoman is a great person,” Moore told the Washington Blade in recounting his 30 years working on her staff, most recently as senior case worker dealing with local constituent issues.
Norton has been among the lead co-sponsors and outspoken supporters of LGBTQ rights legislation introduced in Congress since first taking office, including the currently pending Equality Act, which would ban employment discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity.
She has introduced multiple LGBTQ supportive bills, including her most recent bill introduced in June 2025, the District of Columbia Local Juror Non-Discrimination Act, which would ban D.C. residents from being disqualified from jury service in D.C. Superior Court based on their sexual orientation or gender identity.
For many years, Norton has marched in the city’s annual Pride parade.

Her decision not to run for another term in office also comes at a time when, for the first time in many years, several prominent candidates emerged to run against her in the June 2026 D.C. Democratic primary. Among them are D.C. Council members Robert White (D-At-Large) and Brooke Pinto (D-Ward 2).
Others who have announced their candidacy for Norton’s seat include Jacque Patterson, president of the D.C. State Board of Education; Kinney Zalesne, a local Democratic party activist; and Trent Holbrook, who until recently served as Norton’s senior legislative counsel.
“For more than three decades, Congresswoman Norton has been Washington, D.C.’s steadfast warrior on Capitol Hill, a relentless advocate for our city’s right to self-determination, full democracy, and statehood,” said Oye Owolewa, the city’s elected U.S. shadow representative in a statement. “At every pivotal moment, she has stood firm on behalf of D.C. residents, never wavering in her pursuit of justice, equity, and meaningful representation for a city too often denied its rightful voice,” he said.
A spokesperson for Norton’s soon-to-close re-election campaign couldn’t immediately be reached for a comment by Norton on her decision not to seek another term in office.
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Congratulations to R. Warren Gill III, M.Div., M.A. on being appointed as the development manager at HIPS. Upon his appointment, Gill said, “For as long as I’ve lived in Washington, D.C., I’ve followed and admired the life-saving work HIPS does in our communities. I’m proud to join the staff and help strengthen the financial support that sustains this work.”
Gill will lead fundraising strategy, donor engagement, and institutional partnerships. HIPS promotes the health, rights, and dignity of individuals and communities impacted by sexual exchange and/or drug use due to choice, coercion, or circumstance. HIPS provides compassionate harm reduction services, advocacy, and community engagement that is respectful, non-judgmental, and affirms and honors individual power and agency.
Gill has built a career at the intersection of progressive politics, advocacy, and nonprofit leadership. Previously he served as director of communications at AIDS United, supporting national efforts to end the HIV epidemic. Prior to that he had roles including; being press secretary for Sen. Bernie Sanders during the 2016 presidential primary, and working with the General Board of Church and Society, the United Methodist Church, the denomination’s social justice and advocacy arm.
Gill earned his bachelor’s degree in philosophy and religious studies, Jewish Studies, Stockton University; his master’s degree in political communication from American University, where his graduate research focused on values-based messaging and cognitive linguistics; and his master of Divinity degree from the Pacific School of Religion.
