Es impresionante el nivel de detalle y la profundidad de la investigación que hay detrás de este libro. Es una narración completa que no deja cabos sueltos sobre el hombre que inició el movimiento de los derechos LGBT+. Sin embargo, no lo idealiza en ningún momento ni intenta crear una leyenda todopoderosa. El autor nos presenta a Frank Kameny como un hombre tanto prodigioso como caprichoso, con sus virtudes y defectos. Se me hizo eterno, pero amé cada segundo de la lectura.

The level of detail and depth of research behind this book is impressive. It's a comprehensive narrative that leaves no loose ends about the man who started the LGBT+ rights movement. However, it doesn't romanticize him at any point or attempt to create an all-powerful legend. The author presents Frank Kameny as a man both prodigious and capricious, with his strengths and weaknesses. It seemed eternal to me, but I loved every second of the reading.

This one took me much longer to read than I care to admit, but I am not sure why. it is exactly the kind of history I would want to read, history that is nearly lost to us, because it occurred a generation before Stonewall. It very well could simply have been the time frame in which I was reading it - a lot happened last year, to say the least.

Prior to reading this, I had no idea who Frank Kameny was. I am so glad I stuck with it, because it is one of the best books I read last year, despite it taking me a while to get through.

Highly gifted and evident from a young age when he taught himself to read at four, Kameny's path should have been easy. By age six he knew he wanted to be an astronaut. Yet life would get incredibly painful and complicated for him in 1957, just twelve short years after fighting for our country in WWII. It was in that year Kameny was called to Washington where he was to meet with officials who had reason to believe he was a homosexual - the kiss of death for one's career when security clearance is required.

After a series of insanely humiliating interviews, Kameny was relieved of his duties in Hawaii. He was not the first to be fired for being gay, nor was he the last. What makes Kameny stand out though, is that he fought back - taking on the US government.

Kameny became an early leader in the fight for gay liberation, when those words did not yet even go together. Kameny refused to be silent and simply accept his dismissal. He began putting together the arguments that formed the basis of the broader movement that we know today.

Kameny is not without flaws and I find it refreshing that those were laid out in detail, just as the rest of his story was. A particular point of interest I want to touch on is the idea Kameny had in his head of respectability. He insisted on a very strict dress code at the protests he organized; he wanted to ensure that gay and lesbian protestors looked "employable". Even from the outside looking in, Kameny felt it was important to look the part instead of as an 'Other' that would potentially hurt the cause and there were extremely rigid guidelines he expected fellow picketers to follow. I find this to be an important mention because I feel like today people who are removed from the LGBTQIA+ community do not recognize the fact that there is conservatism there, just as we see in so many other aspects of society. Kameny wanted fellow protestors to remain what the time Period considered respectable. I think this is a thought that takes some getting used-to, considering how perspectives have changed so drastically over the decades in some ways, and in others not at all.

Kameny would spend much of the rest of his life dedicated to fighting for the rights of homosexuals specifically, though this broadened as the years went on. He founded the DC branch of the Mattachine Society - good Lord, the in-fighting sometimes! It grew incredibly frustrating to read, but Kameny never lost sight of the goal even through all of it. Gay and lesbian people deserved the same right as everyone else and he would not rest until he had done all he could to make it so.

There is so much information here, the author has meticulously researched his main subject and then placed him in the proper context of his time. The sheer amount of material he worked with is jaw-dropping, something like over 40,000+ documents which he weeded through in order to tell this story. It is an important one and needed to be told.

Highly recommended.

As a result of my various committee appointments and commitments I am unable to disclose my personal thoughts on this title at this time. Please see my star rating for a general overview of how I felt about this title. Additionally, you may check my GoodReads for additional information on what thoughts I’m able to share publicly. Thank you for giving me the opportunity to read this and any other titles you are in charge of.

QUICK TAKE: must read history book about the gay civil rights movement, in particular gay civil rights activist Frank Kameny, who was fired from his job at NASA when it came to light that he had a homosexual encounter in a public bathroom. For those looking for a better understanding of the fight for equal rights in the LGBTQIA+ movement, this is a must read.

My post will go live on Wednesday, June 24 at 12:30 PM (EDT)

Every couple of years there's a new kid on the block when it comes to the be-all-end all of LGBT nonfiction books. And every couple of year's I'm sorely disappointed—I'm not sure if it has to do with the hype machine around the books, if it's what they decide to focus on, or if it's the author's themselves (almost always cisgender white gay men).

When this book started to make waves in the LGBT book blogging community, I took notice. And then when I found out Cervini was giving a talk via the Boston Public Library (BPL event site), I requested a copy of the book via NetGalley to see why there was so much hype.*

I won't say I'm sorely disappointed with this one, but I'm definitely not enthusiastic about it. Cervini has done his research, this is his adapted doctoral dissertation after all, and he's a decent writer, but it seems like more information about the same-old white men that we've heard about in previous books. Sure, he dives more deeply into Frank Kameny's life and history and his driving force behind the Mattachine Society of Washington and the countless lawsuits against the US Federal Government, but was this the story we really needed?

"When the trans patrons and drag queens and street youth put their bodies on the line at the Stonewall, 'Gay is Good' transformed from a tactic, from an antidote, to a tangible truth. The movement exploded in size because, for once, homosexuals could join the movement as themselves, as individuals who deviated from society in an infinite number of equally detested combinations. They could point to the least respectable of them all—covered in blood and tears and streaking makeup—and say, That is me." (Chapter 18, The Liberation)

With transgender pioneers Sylvia Rivera and Marsha P. Johnson and lesbian leaders Ernestine Eppenger, Barbar Gittings, Martha Shelley, and Lilli Vincenz as supporting characters in this, why couldn't they have been the lens through which we viewed this time period? I know part of this is because he finished writing and defending his dissertation back in 2015 and the world is a far different place in 2020. Reading it now, during 2020 Pride month doesn't provide the same context as it would have in 2015 (pre-Obergfell v. Hodges, marriage equality) or even 2019 (pre-Bostock v. Clayton County, LGBT job protection). And with the current administration still stripping the healthcare rights of transgender Americans, these women, especially the trans women of color, seem like throw away nods. Cervini treated their stories respectfully and with the importance they deserve and some had larger roles in the book (Gittings) than others, but it just came up short of what the world needs.

"Kameny could not forget Dowdy's attempt to tarnish his respectable Society with the crass words and images of other homosexuals. He feared his opponents would use Drum's semipornographic material to discredit his suit-and-tie society. This is the type of material your movement is publishing?" (Chapter 12, The Picket)

This being said, where Cervini excelled was drawing the line and highlighting the tension between the respectable Society and the "other". At times I felt Cervini was being too kind to Kameny and the old school around their drive for respectability (an argument that remains valid today, especially around marriage equality and job protection) in that white men gay men will leave others being, specifically trans women of color, to get respectability. In this instance, this is why it was useful to have Kameny (cisgender gay man) as the protagonist of this work because Cervini was able to show his very slow and begrudging evolution from stalwart respectability to pride as a protest. How much of this actually being Kameny or being viewed through the historical lens (there were pages and pages of notes) is unknown. I have to wonder how much creative liberty Cervini took when he interpreted Kameny's stories about the first pride march (the scene on the hill when Kameny and other old school homophiles talk about their feelings in the moment had me tear up) or about the APA movement when Kameny is the one who takes the microphone in an unprecedented protest. Was this polishing a turd (I'm sure there's a better way to say it), or was it genuine introspection on a life lived fighting "the man"?

"Hoover did not need further proof that homosexuals threatened national security. Indeed, if it was so easy for him to blackmail homosexuals, why would the Soviets not blackmail them, too?" (Chapter 6, The Bureau)

Other things I noted:

He spent pages and pages about the purge of homosexuals from the federal government during the McCarthy era but never once referred to it as the "Lavender Scare" (Wikipedia link) which was just weird to me. (The chapter focusing on this was "Panic on the Potomac", which yay alliteration, but come on!)
I was not aware the term "Auntie Tom" existed. Urban Dictionary (that great resource) defines it as: "A homosexual male who's personal goals will always take precedent over that of his fellow homosexuals. Even to his own detriment." It looked like a direct quote from someone (historical document), and I 100% understand why it may have fallen out of use with Uncle Tom being problematic, but it was still something new to note.
This book is already outdated, always a risk with nonfiction, with the Bostock v. Clayton County U.S. Supreme Court decision granting job protection for LGBT individuals released June 15, 2020 (less than two weeks after publication).
I now want a t-shirt that says "Lavender Menace". I already have a book I bought a few years ago full of LGBT super villain stories, but thanks to Betty Friedan I want the t-shirt. ["Meanwhile, National Organization for Women (NOW) president Betty Friedan referred to lesbians as a 'lavender menace' that threatened to delegitimize the entire women's liberation movement." (Chapter 19, The Pride)]
The LGBT rights movement and Black Civil Rights movements have been intertwined from the beginning and will forever be connected. ["Congressman Nix of Philadelphia, a Democrat, was Pennsylvania's first black U.S. representative and the sixty-four-year-old son of a former slave. In 1962, by agreeing to meet with the Society, Nix became America's first member of Congress to speak to homosexual activists. He did so within weeks of an election." (Chapter 7, The Crusader)]
The first electronic dating service, Operation Match (1965, Wikipedia link) came from Harvard University undergrads (hello pre-Facebook), and within the first three years they wanted to include homosexuals!
I REALLY hope they had a really good copy editor. The version I read (clearly a pre-press version because of the lack of page numbers and end note citation numbers] was riddled with typos and missing words. I'm sure this was remedied, FSG generally has wonderful editing.
There is so much history that has been loss or easily could be lost and things like the ONE Archives (website), Making Gay History (website), and even the National Archives and Library of Congress have been and will continue to be incredibly vital over the next few years as those who were alive in the early days of the LGBT rights movement die and no longer have the chance to share their histories. And this is even more important for trans voices, women's voices, Black voices, and other racial minorities—there is so much we don't know or wasn't recorded out of fear of persecution.

Recommendation: I have so many thoughts and there all jumbled because of when I read this book. I know if I would've read this last year my thoughts would have been 100% different on this. I also know that because of the large number of LGBT history, politics, literature, and other courses I've taken I have a different perspective than your run-of-the-mill LGBT reader. Cervini did a great job writing about a fascinating time in LGBT history and brought light to many things that are often just footnotes in history books or things you hear in passing in an LGBT class. That being said I will continue ask moving forward with every LGBT nonfiction book I read, "is this the story we need to hear right now?" For me, it wasn't, but for others it may well be.

*I received a copy of The Deviant's War from the publisher via NetGalley in return for my honest opinion. No goods or money were exchanged.

Opening Line: "It began, as usual, in a public restroom."

Closing Line: "'Gay is good. It is. And that is that." (Not whited out as this is a work of nonfiction.)

This book starts out with a HOOK! Wow that first chapter makes it impossible to not read this book. But then...the number of people, organizations, dates, and places get to be so hard to keep up with (which is not the author’s fault, it is the facts of history). And then the chapter start to get too long. However, the book is VERY well written and is no doubt a history that I knew nothing about and am so grateful to have available to me. I do not regret spending my time with this book. It’s just a hard one to pick up because of the information overload...not to mention how sad it is that all of this happened not that long ago. Even this week, the SCOTUS ruled in favor of protecting the LGBTQ+ community from being fired for their sexuality. So it just all compounds for a difficult book to read, but an essential and much needed one. Thank you, Eric Cervini!

A thorough and well-written civil rights history of homosexuality in the US. I learned a lot about the fight for rights for LGTBQ issues and felt that this was very readable non-fiction.

Cervini's expertise about queer history, particularly in a pre-Stonewall context is evident in The Deviant's War. Piecing together the lives of those who paved the way for the modern gay rights movement, Cervini has created mandatory reading for those interested in learning more about the roots of the movement and its major players.

Many thanks to Net Galley and Farrar, Straus and Giroux for an advanced galley of The Deviant's War. As far as I’m concerned, this is essential reading for queer people and allies alike. Like many others, my understanding of the gay rights movement was limited to the Stonewall Riots and sprinklings of the history of Harvey Milk. I had never heard of Frank Kameny or the U.S Homophile Movement (the gay rights movement pre Stonewall). Frank Kameny’s war against the U.S government and the persecution it imposed on gay men and women was instrumental to what we now know as pride.

Cervini’s incredibly thorough account reads less like a textbook and more like a novel. The Deviant’s War humanizes its main characters and is paced with the urgency of the activist movement it invokes. Frank Kameny, while a hero for the gay rights movement, was not a perfect man. Nor should he be portrayed as one. Cervini does a fine job of celebrating Kameny’s impact while holding him accountable for his misgivings.

While Kameny’s tale is the focal point of the book, I was also compelled by the stories of Randy Wicker, Barbara Gittings, Marsha P. Johnson, and Sylvia Rivera. So many brave individuals fought for a movement that had previously been forced into the closet. Reading about the collaboration between these activists was inspiring. I appreciated the chronological order of events, especially when new characters were introduced, and their stories became intertwined with the greater story being told. It reminded me of the framing device used in the Mrs. America miniseries (hint hint @television production companies).

Overall, I very much enjoyed The Deviant’s War. I learned something new with each page about the work behind the scenes that builds the groundwork for widespread awareness that changes the world. Cervini has gifted the LGBTQ+ community with an indelible portrait of the struggles that led to the rights we enjoy today. All the while bringing important awareness to the history of queer activism and the debts owed to the Black Freedom Movement and black trans women of color. I am inspired to continue learning and understanding the history that is vital in pursuing necessary activism today. You can’t lip sync for your life if you don’t know the words.

5 Stars

Book Review - Deviant's War by Eric Cervini ⠀
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Pride month is just around the corner, and in honor of that and with the help of #netgalley I given a copy of The Deviant's War by Dr. Eric Cervini to read in advance of its release. ⠀
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This is the perfect book to kick off #pridemonth, this is an examination of an often lost part of LGBT history and of an oft forgotten pioneer. ⠀
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From the author:⠀
"Based on firsthand accounts, recently declassified FBI records, and forty thousand personal documents, The Deviant’s War unfolds over the course of the 1960s, as Kameny built a movement against the government’s gay purges. It traces the forgotten ties that bound gay rights to the Black Freedom Movement, the New Left, lesbian activism, and trans resistance. Above all, it is a story of America (and Washington) at a cultural and sexual crossroads; of shocking, byzantine public battles with Congress; of FBI informants; murder; betrayal; sex; love; and ultimately victory."⠀
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This book is HEAVY on detail and factual accounting. It moves quickly and is paced surprisingly well for non fiction. The book feels like a first hand account, even though its extraordinarily researched and reported. Frank Kameny is a true hero and should be a more well know LGBT icon and pioneer. I enjoyed reading this and was surprised how quickly I finished a 500 page book. Theres always a fair share of tragedy in LGBT history, but I loved reading about a person who was unashamed and unabashedly himself and worked subversively during the Lavender Scare to assure the rest of us some of the rights we have now. ⠀
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Give this a read if you love: history, fierce true to life stories, unknown LGBT history and a compelling tale that both moves quickly and is riveting. Bravo to Dr. Eric Cervini for researching this story and bringing it to life with such detailed and accurate writing. ⠀

Read if you: Want a comprehensive pre-Stonewall history of LGBTQ life/history/activism, centered on Frank Kameny's fight against his dismissal from the U.S. Civil Service commission.

First of all--don't let the 500+ pages daunt you. The actual narrative is 350 pages. And although you might get bogged down by some of the court proceedings, this is an eye-opening look and revelatory dive into the harrassment LGBTQ citizens faced in the 1950s-60s, and how exposure, let alone activism, could ruin a person's career (and life).

Librarians and booksellers: If you're looking for an in-depth exploration of the early days of LGBTQ activism, try this one.

Many thanks to Farrar, Straus, and Giroux and NetGalley for a digital review copy in exchange for an honest review.