Google Doodle celebrates American LGBTQ Rights Activist Frank Kameny on Pride Month

Google celebrated Pride month on Wednesday by honouring the American LGBTQ rights activist Dr. Frank Kameny, who is known as the most prominent figure of the LGBTQ rights movement. He was also an astronomer and veteran. He died in 2011 at the age of 86.

Google describes Kameny as “one of the most prominent figures of the US LGBTQ rights movement” and thanks him “for courageously paving the way for decades of progress”.

The picture on Google's homepage shows Kameny wearing a colourful garland, paying a fitting tribute to him as we enter the month of June, which is celebrated globally as ‘Pride Month’.

Google Doodle on American LGBTQ rights activist Dr. Frank Kameny

Frank Kameny and his journey

Franklin Edward Kameny Born in Queens, New York, on May 21, 1925. He studied physics at Queens College when he was 15. He served the army during World War II and after his return to the U.S., he obtained a doctorate in astronomy at Harvard University.

He became an astronomer in 1957 with the Army Map Service, but after a few months, he was fired on an executive order effectively barring members of the LGBTQ community from federal employment. He had challenged the firing at the Supreme Court and organized the first gay rights protests outside the White House in the 1960s.

Kameny and 10 others became the first to stage a gay rights protest in front of the White House and later at the Pentagon in the year in 1965. A few years before the Stonewall Riots, Frank Kameny organized one of the country’s first gay rights advocacy groups.

In the early ‘70s, He had successfully challenged the American Psychiatric Association’s classification of homosexuality as a mental disorder, and in 1975, the Civil Service Commission finally reversed its ban on LGBTQ employees. He became the first openly gay candidate in 1971 for the US Congress when he ran in the District of Columbia’s first election for a non-voting Congressional delegate. After his defeat, Kameny and his campaign organization created the Gay and Lesbian Alliance of Washington, DC, an organization that continues to lobby the government and press the case for equal rights.

More than 50 years after his dismissal, Kameny received a formal apology from the U.S. government in 2009. In June 2010, Washington D.C. named a stretch of 17th Street NW near Dupont Circle “Frank Kameny Way” in his honor.

Watch Google's special ode here -