National
Kennedy Library showcases Kameny letters to JFK
Pioneering activist wrote to White House from 1961-1963
‘In 1961, it has, ironically, become necessary for me to fight my own government, with words,’ Frank Kameny wrote to President Kennedy. (Washington Blade file photo by Michael Key)
The John F. Kennedy Presidential Library in Boston is taking steps this month to publicize the dozens of letters, pamphlets and press releases that D.C. gay rights pioneer Frank Kameny sent to President Kennedy from 1961 to 1963.
In a prominent write-up on the Kennedy Library website, library official Stacey Chandler, a reference archives specialist, said the letters poignantly document Kameny’s role as one of the nation’s first advocates for the rights of gay people before the highest levels of the U.S. government.
Chandler said the letters and other documents from Kameny are part of the library’s archives and are available for viewing online. Kameny died at the age of 86 in 2011.
“In World War II, I willingly fought the Germans, with bullets, in order to preserve and secure my rights, freedoms, and liberties, and those of my fellow citizens,” Kameny told Kennedy in a letter dated May 15, 1961 that’s part of the archive collection.
“In 1961, it has, ironically, become necessary for me to fight my own government, with words, in order to achieve some of the very same rights, freedoms, and liberties for which I placed my life in jeopardy in 1945,” wrote Kameny. “This letter is part of that fight.”
In a letter dated Aug. 28, 1962 Kameny told Kennedy, “You have said: ‘Ask not what your country can do for you, but what you can do for your country.’ We know what we can do for our country; we wish to do it; we ask only that our country allow us to do it.”
Kameny wrote the letters in his role as president of the Mattachine Society of Washington, D.C., the city’s first gay rights organization that Kameny co-founded in 1961 and led through the 1960s and early 1970s.
Chandler noted in her article that the Mattachine Society of Washington came into being shortly after the U.S. Supreme Court declined to take the case of a legal challenge that Kameny filed against the then U.S. Civil Service Commission.
In a first-of-its-kind action, Kameny contested the Civil Service Commission’s decision in 1958 to fire him from his job as an astronomer with the Army Map Service in Washington following an investigation into alleged homosexual activity by Kameny.
Among other things, the Commission cited a 1953 executive order by President Dwight Eisenhower that barred from the federal workforce anyone with a history of “sexual perversion” and other “immoral or notoriously disgraceful conduct.” Homosexual acts between consenting adults were considered among the prohibited conduct.
“Kameny wrote an astounding number of letters throughout his lifetime of advocacy, most of which are now in the Library of Congress,” Chandler wrote in her Kennedy Library article. “The huge volume of his correspondence makes the personal nature of his letters to President Kennedy especially surprising for archivists here,” she said.
“In these letters, he tenaciously argued for the right of gay Americans to work as civil servants,” she said.
In the same May 15, 1961 letter in which he told of his combat service in World War II, Kameny told Kennedy, “Yours is an administration that has openly disavowed blind conformity…You yourself have said, in your recent address at George Washington University, “…that (people) desire to develop their own personalities and their own potential, that democracy permits them to do so.’
“But your government, by its policies certainly does not permit the homosexual to develop his personality and his potential,” Kameny wrote.
In a Feb. 28, 1963 letter, Kameny told Kennedy about his fledgling effort to persuade the American Psychiatric Association to remove homosexuality from its list of mental disorders.
“Homosexuality is neither a sickness, disease, neurosis, psychosis, disorder, defect, nor other disturbance, but merely a matter of the predisposition of a significantly large minority of our citizens.”
Chandler said the Kennedy Library’s archivists could find no response from Kennedy or anyone else at the White House to Kameny’s letters.
“In fact, the only response we’ve found in our archives is a brief note from John W. Macy, Chairman of the U.S. Civil Service Commission, to Bruce Schuyler, Secretary of the Mattachine Society, who requested a meeting,” Chandler wrote.
In his note to Schuyler, Macy said, “It is the established policy of the Civil Service Commission that homosexuals are not suitable for appointment to or retention in positions in the Federal service. There would be no useful purpose served in meeting with representatives of your Society.”
Chandler said that in a March 6, 1963 letter to Kennedy, Kameny appeared to be referring to the government’s lack of response to his and the Mattachine Society of Washington’s overtures to the Kennedy administration.
“We wish to cooperate in any way possible, if the chance for friendly, constructive cooperation is offered to us by you,” Kameny wrote, “but if it continues to be refused us, then we will have to seek out and to use any lawful means whatever, which seem to us appropriate, in order to achieve our lawful ends, just as the Negro has done in the South when he was refused cooperation.”
In 1975, after several court rulings against the Civil Service ban on gay employees that Kameny played a role in organizing, the Civil Service Commission ended its prohibition on gay federal workers. In 2009, John Berry, the gay director of the U.S. Office of Personnel Management, the successor to the Civil Service Commission, presented Kameny with an official government apology for his 1958 firing.
“Things have changed,” Chandler quoted Kameny as saying around the time Berry issued the apology with the full backing of President Obama. “How they have changed. I am honored and proud that it is so.”
The Kennedy Library, which is part of the U.S. National Archives and Records Administration, highlighted its collection of Kameny correspondence this month as a follow-up to a video that the NARA released in support of the It Gets Better Project, Chandler said.
LGBT rights advocates led by gay author and syndicated columnist Dan Savage created the It Gets Better Project to draw attention to bullying targeting LGBT youth. With President Obama among the political leaders and celebrities who have spoken in an “It Gets Better” video, organizers say the project has helped lift the spirits of many LGBT youth that have suffered from taunts and physical violence.
NARA director David S. Ferriero, who holds the title of Archivist of the United States, recorded a recent “It Gets Better” video that is available for viewing on the NARA website.
“It is so exciting that the Kennedy Library is highlighting Kameny’s letters to President Kennedy,” said Charles Francis, founder of the Kameny Papers Project, which arranged for Kameny’s voluminous correspondence and writings to be given to the Library of Congress.
Francis noted that copies of the Kameny letters to President Kennedy are among the collection at the Library of Congress but that the letters at the Kennedy Library are the originals.
“This was done on Frank’s typewriter from Frank’s living room,” Francis said.
“It’s progress. It’s real progress,” he said of the prominent treatment the Kennedy Library is giving to the Kameny letters.
See the Kennedy Library article on Kameny letters here.
State Department
State Department implements anti-trans bathroom policy
Memo notes directive corresponds with White House executive order
The State Department on April 20 announced employees cannot use bathrooms that correspond with their gender identity.
The Daily Signal, a conservative news website, reported the State Department announced the new policy in a memo titled “Updates Regarding Biological Sex and Intimate Spaces, Including Restrooms.”
The State Department has not responded to the Washington Blade’s request for comment on the directive.
“The administration affirms that there are two sexes — male and female — and that federal facilities should operate on this objective and longstanding basis to ensure consistency, privacy, and safety in shared spaces,” State Department spokesperson Tommy Piggot told the Daily Signal. “In line with President Trump’s executive order this provides clear, uniform guidance to the department by grounding policy in biological sex as determined at birth.”
President Donald Trump shortly after he took office in January 2025 issued an executive order that directed the federal government to only recognize two genders: male and female. The sweeping directive also ordered federal government agencies to “effectuate this policy by taking appropriate action to ensure that intimate spaces designated for women, girls, or females (or for men, boys, or males) are designated by sex and not identity.”
The Daily Signal notes the new State Department policy “does not prohibit single-occupancy restrooms.”
National
I’m telling the scared little girl I once was it’s okay to feel free
This week is Lesbian Visibility Week
Uncloseted Media published this article on April 23.
By SOPHIE HOLLAND | At 13 years old, I remember looking in the mirror in my Toronto bathroom and thinking, “Yeah, I’m a lesbian.” At the time, I thought it was a dirty word. Thinking back, it could be because the first time I heard it was when a family member said, “I don’t know what a lesbian is, they are like aliens.”
And although I walked around in camouflage Crocs with a rainbow My Little Pony charm, plaid knee-length shorts and a shark tooth necklace (yes, these are all, in my opinion, stereotypically lesbian apparel!), I didn’t feel like I fit the mold. The longer I thought about it, the worse I felt, so I buried my feelings deep inside.
Now I am 25, and I have been out since I was 22. Three years ago, I never could have imagined that I’d be working for a queer news publication and celebrating Lesbian Visibility Week, an annual event meant to honor and uplift lesbian perspectives and highlight the hardships our community faces. To me, LVW is so important because, frankly, it has been an absolute shit show getting here, to a place where I feel love and joy most days.
I think back to the frustration of constantly being asked, “Do you have a boyfriend?” Of watching princess movies and seeing a broken girl only find herself when her prince charming arrives. I remember listening to music that was always about heterosexual relationships. I remember feeling left out in high school when, one by one, my friends got boyfriends.
I tried the boyfriend, and I tried really hard for it to work at a large detriment to my wellbeing. I brainwashed myself into thinking I was probably bisexual, which I told my closest friends around 16 and unsuccessfully told my parents at the same age. I was probably subconsciously using this as a litmus test of their acceptance and to soothe the anxiety I felt around my sexuality.
Learning to love who I am did not only come from me unraveling my internalized lesbophobia and dissecting the oppressive societal messages of heteronormativity. It came from meeting an awesome community of lesbians and queers. I found people who understood my worldview and who showed me the ropes. I no longer had to stutter over concepts like lesbian loneliness or my frustration with misogynistic straight men.
They all just got it.
Without this community, I am not sure if I could be as warm and confident in myself as I am today.
And while I still experience homophobia, like being spat on while walking with an ex in downtown Toronto or having a stranger yell in my face “Are you fucking lesbians?” in Kensington Market, the joy and love still outweighs the nasty.
So, as the sentimental dyke that I have become, I decided to ask a set of lesbians in my orbit — including my friends as well as Uncloseted staffers, board members and followers — if they would share a little bit about what makes them love being a lesbian. And now, I can share it with all of you. Here they are. Happy LVW!
Timi Sotire
Falling in love with her was a reset. I felt like a kid again, hopeful about the future. We’ve had to overcome many obstacles to be together, but I’d choose her in every lifetime. I was sick with a long-term health condition when we met, and hanging out with Sophia really helped me with my recovery after my surgery.
Bella Sayegh
Being a lesbian is one of the most beautiful things in the world. To be authentically yourself in resistance and joy is so special within the lesbian community.
Parker Wales
When I met Liv, I finally understood why almost every song is about love.
Gillian Kilgour
There is no connection quite as perfect as between lesbians, no one sees me like my lesbians do.
Chyna Price
There’s many things I love about being a lesbian. But here are my top three:
- There’s just a deeper understanding when it comes to being loved by another woman.
- The next one would be the sense of community, especially being a POC masculine-presenting lesbian. I don’t feel like I’m cosplaying as someone else like I felt like I was doing before I came out.
- There’s so much history going back to the 1800s on how we found and fought for our love. That fight makes me proud because it shows me … that we’ve [found] ways to express our love even when it was misunderstood, illegal and deemed as madness.
Hope Pisoni
Before I knew I was a lesbian, romantic relationships seemed suffocating — it felt like everyone would expect me to act my part in the meticulous performance that is heterosexuality. But meeting my spouse and discovering our identities together showed me just how freeing it could be to love without a script to follow.
Leital Molad
It was the joy of watching the New York Sirens defeat the Toronto Sceptres at our first professional women’s hockey game — surrounded by hundreds (maybe thousands?) of cheering lesbians.
Angela Earl
I spent years building a life that looked right. But I never felt settled, and eventually I started asking what would actually make me happy. Coming out was about more than who I love, it was letting go of everything I was told to be. The last few years have felt like coming home to a life that had been waiting for me.
Tali Bray
What I love about being a lesbian is what I love about being in love … the wonder and joy of “oh, this is what it’s supposed to feel like.” I love moving through the world with women.
Izzy Stokes
I didn’t fall in love until I realized that queerness was an option. My queer friends have helped me see so much more than I grew up seeing. I’m so proud of us, and I’m so grateful for my lesbian community.
Nandika Chatterjee
When I met my fiancée is when I started to feel most like myself. That meant loving myself for who I am and embracing my identity as a lesbian. I felt free in a way I have never before. That’s the long and short of it.
Liz Lucking
The love and joy of being a lesbian is getting to live the life I dreamed of but never thought I would get to have!
Reflections
As I read these beautiful entries, it’s not lost on me that we’re still living in a world where lesbians are more likely to struggle with maternity problems, fetishization, and compulsory heterosexuality — not to mention the intersectional pressures of racism from both inside and outside the queer community. That’s part of why, according to a 2024 survey, 22 percent of LGBTQ women have attempted suicide, and 66 percent have sought treatment for trauma.
So if you are a lesbian who isn’t out or doesn’t feel safe, I hope you read this and can glean some hope from these messages. So when you look in the mirror, you know that it’s okay to release the weight — which can feel so heavy — of a heteronormative world.
We still have a long fight until all lesbians can feel safe to be themselves, but this is a community that does not back away from the tough, from the joy, from being loud and from all the other things that it takes to start a small revolution.
Hell yeah, lesbians! Here’s to you.
*I am signing off with my cat on my lap and a pride flag over my head <3.
Cuba
Trans parent charged with kidnapping, allegedly fled to Cuba with child
Cuban authorities helped locate Rose Inessa-Ethington
Federal authorities have charged a transgender woman with kidnapping after she allegedly fled to Cuba with her 10-year-old child.
An affidavit that Federal Bureau of Investigation Special Agent Jennifer Waterfield filed in U.S. District Court for the District of Utah on April 16 notes the child is a “biological male who identifies as a female” and “splits time living with divorced parents who share custody” in Cache County, Utah.
Waterfield notes the child on March 28 “was supposed to be traveling by car to” Calgary, Alberta, “for a planned camping trip with his transgender mother, Rose Inessa-Ethington, Rose’s partner, Blue Inessa-Ethington, and Blue’s 3-year-old child.”
The affidavit notes the group instead flew from Vancouver, British Columbia, to Mexico City on March 29. Waterfield writes the Inessa-Ethingtons and the two children then flew from Mérida, Mexico, to Havana on April 1.
The 10-year-old child called her biological mother on March 28 after they arrived in Canada. The custody agreement, according to the affidavit, required Rose Inessa-Ethington to return the child to her former spouse on April 3.
“Interviews of MV [Minor Victim] 1’s family members provided significant concerns for MV 1’s well-being, as MV 1 was born a male, however, identifies as a female child, which is largely believed to be due to manipulation by Rose Inessa-Ethington,” reads the affidavit. “Concerns exist that MV 1 was transported to Cuba for gender reassignment surgery prior to puberty.”
The affidavit indicates authorities found a note in the Inessa-Ethingtons’ home with “instruction from a mental health therapist located in Washington, D.C., including instruction to send the therapist the $10,000.00 and instructions on gender-affirming medical care for children.”
The affidavit does not identify the specific “mental health therapist” in D.C.
A Utah judge on April 13 ordered Rose Inessa-Ethington to “immediately” return the child to her former spouse. The former spouse also received sole custody.
“Your affiant believes that due to the extensive planning and preparation exhibited by both Rose Inessa-Ethington and Blue Inessa-Ethington to isolate MV 1 and take MV 1 to Havana, Cuba, without notifying or requesting permission from MV 1’s mother indicates they are likely not planning to return to the United States,” wrote Waterfield.
The affidavit notes Cuban authorities found the Inessa-Ethingtons and the child.
A press release the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of Utah issued notes the Inessa-Ethingtons “were deported from Cuba” on Monday “with the assistance of the FBI.”
The couple has been charged with International Parental Kidnapping. The Inessa-Ethingtons were arraigned in Richmond, Va., on Monday. The press release notes a federal court in Salt Lake City will soon handle the case.
The New York Times reported the child is now back with their biological mother.
“We are grateful to law enforcement for working swiftly to return the child to the biological mother,” said First Assistant U.S. Attorney Melissa Holyoak of the District of Utah in the press release.
The case is unfolding against the backdrop of increased tensions between Washington and Havana after U.S. forces on Jan. 3 seized now former Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro and his wife, Cilia Flores.
President Donald Trump shortly after he took office in January 2025 issued an executive order that directed the federal government to only recognize two genders: male and female. A second White House directive banned federally-funded gender-affirming care for anyone under 19.
The U.S. Supreme Court last year in the Skrmetti decision upheld a Tennessee law that bans gender-affirming care for minors.
Cuba’s national health care system has offered free sex-reassignment surgeries since 2008.
Activists who are critical of Mariela Castro, the daughter of former President Raúl Castro who spearheads LGBTQ issues as director of Cuba’s National Center for Sexual Education, have previously told the Washington Blade that access to these procedures is limited. The Blade on Wednesday asked a contact in Havana to clarify whether Cuban law currently allows minors to undergo sex-reassignment surgery.
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