The Deviant's War: The Homosexual vs. the United States of America

by Eric Cervini

A Publishers Weekly most anticipated spring book

From a young Harvard- and Cambridge-trained historian, the secret history of the fight for gay rights that began a generation before Stonewall.

In 1957, Frank Kameny, a rising astronomer working for the U.S. Defense Department in Hawaii, received a summons to report immediately to Washington, D.C. The Pentagon had reason to believe he was a homosexual, and after a series of humiliating interviews, Kameny, like countless gay men and women before him, was promptly dismissed from his government job. Unlike many others, though, Kameny fought back.

Eric Cervini's The Deviant's War is the story of what followed. This book is an assiduously researched history of an early champion of gay liberation, one who fought for the right to follow his passion and serve his country in the wake of Joseph McCarthy's Lavender Scare. We follow Kameny as he explores the underground gay scenes of Boston and Washington, D.C., where he formulates his arguments against the U.S. Government's classification of gay men and women as "sexual perverts." At a time when staying in the closet remained the default, he exposed the hypocrisies of the American establishment, accelerated a broader revolution in sexual morals, and invented what we now know as Gay Pride.

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 the Mattachine Society of Washington, the group Kameny founded, became the first organization to protest the systematic persecution of gay federal employees. 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.

Genres: History, Nonfiction, LGBT, Queer, Politics, Biography, Audiobook

512 pages, Kindle Edition

First published June 2, 2020

Reviews

[Eric Cervini · Rating 5 out of 5]

A+++++ would write again.

[Alok Vaid-Menon · Rating 4 out of 5]

I'm a big queer history buff and I really appreciate how Eric chose to publish this in a popular press rather than academic press, and write it in a way that makes it more accessible to people outside of the academy. At times the text is cinematic and reads like a movie script. Translating this much archival material and primary sources into something so visual and bracing takes intention and work, and I appreciate that.

Here are some of the things I learned from this book:

1) When governmental/army officials were searching for homosexuals to persecute "feminine bodily characteristics" and "effeminacy" were specifically named and targeted. The specificity of policing gender non-conformity so often gets lost from conversations around gay politics, history, and theory.
2) The CIA director gave 13 reasons why gays should not be allowed in the government including that they were: emotional, promiscuous, not discrete, obsessed with gossip, gullible, and gossipy. This is such an explicit account of a caricature that still demeans gay life today.
3) Early gay activists continually drew comparison of the status of gay people to Black people. Kameny writes: "The homosexual in this country is in the position that the Negro was in about 1925, when he first began to fight." The possibility of Black gay and Black queer people is never even really imagined. In this way it's an indictment of the kind of inherent whiteness of gay politics and theorizing, as well as the indebtedness of gay rights to racial justice.
4) Kameny instituted a rigid professional, gender conforming dress code at the first picket protest to make sure that gay and lesbian people "looked employable." This is one of many illustrations of how rather than challenging race/class/gender normativity, early gay activists sought to participate in it. In this way -- it's not as the conventional story gets told that gay activists started with liberation and became co-opted with conservative interests, there has always been a conservative faction. This gay respectability is the specter of contemporary anti-trans vitriol.
5) I know that this book was oriented around Kameny, but I really wish we heard more from Black queer activist voices like Ernestine Eppenger who we all owe so much to and introduced a more political, demonstrative approach to gay organizing. Perhaps in future work!

[David · Rating 5 out of 5]

Frank Kameny taught himself to read by age 4. By 6, he had chosen to be an astronaut. At 15, his desire for boys, however long it it might last, was not a problem - society would have to change. He entered Queens college at 16. Took a break from his physics to fight in WWII as he turned 18 in 1943. He returned to finish Physics at Queens, and on to Harvard for PhD in Astronomy. He found love with Keith at an observatory assignment in Arizona. His PhD came in 1956 back in Boston.

And I'm only on page 16!

Within a year, he had been caught by DC police in a public bathroom with enough on his record to cost him his clearance. No security clearance, no need for his specialized astro training.

He fought the rest of his life for the rights of homosexuals. This expanded from gays to lesbians to any minority that was being oppressed (the 60's were huge times for Civil Rights).

This lengthy book felt too short when I was done. When you finish a chapter, you NEED/WANT to start the next one.

e.g. Here is the end of Ch 13 "The Student"
One week after Armed Forces Day, Bob Martin, the bisexual, Goldwater-supporting Columbia student, moved into the newly employed astronomer's home."

C'mon! How can you NOT start the next chapter to find out what happens?!

By the time you get to Ch 19 "The Pride", you can feel the Christopher Street Liberation Day first parade of 1970 coming to a climax. What a great chapter! But you are only 90% done with the book. What can exceed this revolution?

Ch 20 "The Candidate" simply astounded me with the story of Frank running for Congress, with election primaries in May 1971. He took 4th out of 6 candidates. This was not a loss, but a serious victory.

I saved the final Epilogue "The White House" to read after dinner today. I had read someone's review (Tyler Beals) say that tears could be expected here. Since I had tears already in this book, I readied myself for the ending chapter in the life of Frank Kameny. But the end was not even close yet. A roller-coaster of GREAT news (serious wins in court cases) and TERRIBLE news (AIDS) followed by GREAT news (Gay Marriage from Supreme Court June 26, 2015) and SAD news (Marsha P Johnson 'suicide') and GREAT news (Obama repealing Don't Ask Don't Tell) in 2010 with Frank sitting in the front row wearing his Combat Infantryman Badge, and finally Frank passing on Oct 11, 2011 - "National Coming Out Day".

Wow!

Even the 'sources and acknowledgments' at the end of the book is a small story about a student named Eric Cervini looking for a topic for a research paper in an undergrad urban history seminar, and only knew Harvey Milk. A little digging turned up Kameny's name. This turned into a Thesis, which followed him to Cambridge and PhD, followed by a book. Thank goodness for the meticulousness of Frank Kameny in keeping every single correspondence paper (6-stories high if piled).

Thank you Eric Cervini for this book! I'm glad the internet is at my fingertips, because this book makes me want to take action. I'm signed up to march in Washington in August.

I wrote to a couple of new GR Friends while reading this book, about how much I liked this book. I told them how I wished I could travel back in time and help with this cause through the 60's. But I also said that it is like watching "Band of Brothers" and wishing to go back to WWII and "help". A 'romantic' ideal, but these were VERY TOUGH times.

A new wave of revolutionary youngsters took over where Frank left off. But Frank's scientific and persistent personality made him a leader by example. He may have given the new wave of activists a headache with his Roberts Rules of Order, and dress codes at picket lines. But he simply saw himself as morally RIGHT being homosexual and focused his 1960's efforts using 1960's methods to defeat the US Government.

[Garrard Conley]

Cervini has gifted us that rarest of treasures, a guidebook for real activism. Page by page, in painstaking detail, we see our flawed and beautifully idealistic hero Frank Kameny fight for basic human rights. Equal parts inspiring and sobering, The Deviant’s War avoids empty valorizing and focuses instead on what it takes to survive in a world that wants to erase you. Should be required reading for queer people and straight allies.

[Erik · Rating 4 out of 5]

Eric Cervini uses "The Deviant's War" to shine a spotlight on a gay figure, and a gay era, lost to history.

Frank Kameny was a Harvard educated astronomer working for the US government in Washington, D.C. when an old arrest came back to haunt him, making him yet another victim of the federal government's anti-LGBT Lavender Scare. But Kameny didn't take his firing for being gay sitting down, and he dedicated the next many decades of his life fighting for gay rights in the nation's capital: from founding the DC Mattachine Society to partnering with the Gay Liberation Front post-Stonewall. A complicated figure whose obsession with respectability and failure to acknowledge his own middle-class, racist biases, Kameny is owed both respect and criticism.

Unfortunately parts of the book feel odd: the book is at times both a biography of Frank Kameny but tends to veer, rather disconnectedly to a surface-level history of the 1950s and 60s fledgling gay-rights movement. Cervini is clearly an astute researcher, but his inability to tell a connected story and to give depth to otherwise disjointed mentions of historical figures kept this book from being the outstanding work it could have been.

Nonetheless, "The Deviant's War" fills important gaps in the gay historical canon and provides insight into an otherwise fairly unknown character. And for that reason it's an important tale.

[Meg · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book makes me so thirsty for LGBTQ+ history, and I didn’t think I could be any thirstier!! As someone who specializes in LGBTQ+ history professionally, it is incredibly fulfilling to see LGBTQ+ history being told well, and told in a way that is not only accessible, but incredibly enjoyable and even entertaining. Dr. Cervinis effervescent personality that is showcased in his instagram and social media presence is marvelously translated into one incredible, impeccably researched book that will take it’s place as a classic text of LGBTQ+ history. The Deviant’s War brings to life the untold story of Frank Kameny and the climate of persecution he worked through to become one of the most influential gay rights activists of the 20th century. 

The U.S. Homophile Movement lasted from 1950ish-1970ish, so 20+ years of meetings, protests, and publications. There are so many threads to follow to make sense of it all, a feat which has previously been all but impossible without access to the archives and repositories that store this information. No longer. With the publication of The Deviant’s War comes a vivid telling of the U.S. homophile movement, impeccably researched with a bibliography capable of transforming the way we teach LGBTQ+ history in the United States. Something I loved about this book is the way it humanizes people and doesn’t give in to the culture of worshipping historical figures as heroes without flaws, but insists that we appreciate them and their work for what they really are, humans and movements which aren’t perfect and can’t always be expected to make the right decisions. It’s important to learn about influential actors of queer history, but we are allowed to look at them realistically, because not only is historical worship inaccurate, but the attention it can get can really obscure other important people and movements. I love that this book starts with the premise that LGBTQ+ pride as we know it today is directly connected to Frank Kameny entering a tearoom, something that others might consider an unsavory part of his history is put front and center. The narrative seamlessly illuminates how the type of shame “sexual deviants” experienced led to the rebellion from this shame, which is what fermented what we know today  as gay pride. As a queer person, reading this book made me feel like I somehow knew more about myself when I was finished reading. Just because LGBTQ+ history has been hidden, marginalizied, and even censored, doesn’t mean that we, me and you, aren’t a part of it. We are making LGBTQ+ history right now. We owe it to ourselves to learn about our LGBTQ+ ancestors, to truly see how far we’ve come as we keep pushing for queer liberation. 

[Jessica Woodbury · Rating 3 out of 5]

There are a lot of untold stories of gay history. This one is much more specific than the title makes it out to be. While we get some gay movement context along the way, most of this book is devoted to one man and his singleminded focus on the government discriminating against federal employees.

On the one hand, there's a lot that's interesting here. I had never heard Kameny's story. I had heard of some of the other gay movements in the 50's and 60's but didn't have a clear idea of how they fit together and how different movements and coalitions formed. Plenty of parts of Kameny's story are interesting, but I don't think this book did the best job at putting everything together.

It's not an academic text, it's not overly focused on legal cases as the title makes it sound. But it also isn't "popular nonfiction." It's often so dry I was dying for a little color and texture in the story. Often Cervini goes off for long quotes of transcripts of hearings and interviews, which were often repetitive. Kameny is a character, he's uptight and highly strung and makes a lot of ridiculous decisions throughout his life because of his inability to see beyond his limited scope. The text almost never comments on these. Sometimes that comment is unneeded as Kameny's actions are obviously ridiculous, but often there is a need for context and explanation. Or at least some fun, at least giving us a portrait that feels more like a portrait.

I also question the idea of an entire book that centers Kameny's story. As many others tell him along the way, his obsessive focus on government security clearances ignores so much of what the queer community is facing. It is very reminiscent of a strain of activism we've seen as long as these modern queer activism movements have existed: a focus on privileged white cis gay men.

The more the book opened up to other movements and the conflicts between them, the more I was interested. But it felt like we zipped past these conflicts and because the book tended to focus so heavily on Kameny I wondered what was missing, whether these stories were as simple as they sounded, or if it was just the flatness of being made secondary and removing all the detail. As a movement we have a lot to think about with coalition building and intersectionality and I kept thinking about all of that in this book, too. But the book didn't really seem to at all. The book just spits out facts at you, and then moves along to the next facts. I would have liked something shorter with more life in it. Or something that really dives into the technicalities and the bigger picture. But this never did either and left me pretty cold.

[Philip · Rating 5 out of 5]

I've always wanted to know more about Frank Kameny. Author Eric Cervini combed over 40,000 documents to create a biography rich in facts and allowed him to paint an honest and authentic portrait of Kameny as the grandfather of our LGBTQ Civil Rights movement. Must read for anyone interested in LGBTQ politics pre-Stonewall. Kameny and his colleagues laid the groundwork for the rights we have today. I am in awe. As Kameny coined, "gay is good."

[Conor Ahern · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is the story of Frank Kameny and the other folks who toiled for lesbian and gay rights in the period before Stonewall. The author, a very thoughtful and toothsome (someone called him a "snackademic," lol) young scholar--Eric Cervini--lays out the respectability politics that guided this stubborn and tenacious young man to become the first advocate for lesbian and gay equality in the workplace.

As a gay civil rights lawyer, and given the momentous 7-2 Supreme Court decision in Bostock that extended Title VII protections to LGBT people, I read this eagerly and with great relish. With that said, the author takes what might have been a dry historical monograph and imbues it with personal details, amusing anecdotes, and commentary on the wider society to make for what I think was a very enjoyable read.

We chose this for our book club and this past week, we were lucky enough to host the L.A.-based author via Zoom. He graciously sat with us for a full hour, talking about gay DC, the failings of the LGBT rights movement to support the civil rights of other groups, the failure of queer men to adequately support queer women and trans people, and had thoughtful, intriguing answers for all of our questions.

I highly recommend this book to anyone who wants to know about the early stages of the LGBT rights movement in the United States, or who is interested in the tensions between conventional and radical elements within a movement ostensibly agitating for the same goal, or who is interested in understanding (some of the) tensions that still divide those who fight for LGBTQ+ civil rights and those who fight for civil rights based on sex or race.

[Jordan (Jordy’s Book Club) · Rating 5 out of 5]

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.

[John · Rating 4 out of 5]

4 1/2 stars. This book deserves 5 stars but it was just a little dry in a few areas & a little repetitious in sections. Regardless, it should be required reading for the LGBTQ community & their allies. Mostly pre-stonewall history of activism. I knew a little bit of most subjects in this book but what I knew was the tip of the iceberg. Without the activism of a few select individuals I cannot imagine we would have made the progress we have in little over half a century. This is a stark reminder of how things were, how far we have come, how far we have left to go and how very much we have at stake in losing these hard earned accomplishments toward equality.

[Avid · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is an exhaustive (and exhausting, actually) look at the very slow and painful development of gay rights in america. There’s an overwhelming amount of information, and reliance on the life and times of frank kameny. You really have to enjoy reading court transcripts (the actual transcript) to really appreciate this book, as they are relied upon to a great extent to tell the story of the state of gay rights (or lack thereof) in the 1960s, in particular.

While the writing is accessible, and written to present facts and their effects on homosexuals over a number of decades, its style is pretty repetitive. Gay people have had to endure a ridiculous amount and degree of humiliation, unfair social and employment practices, and intrusive legal battles to get to where we are today. Illustrative examples abound in this book - way more than are necessary to tell the story.

I would recommend this to scholars and other people with a particularly deep quest for knowledge about the history of the gay rights movement. Or if you’re particularly interested in frank kameny. Unfortunately, it’s really excessive for the casual, or even serious, historian.

[Jennifer Schultz · Rating 4 out of 5]

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.

[That One Ryan · Rating 4 out of 5]

While many people believe the Stonewall Riots to be the beginning of the gay rights movement, “The Deviant’s War” shows us there were already soldiers at war long before the riots.

This was such a well researched and in depth look at not only Frank Kameny, The Mattachine Society, and earliest beginnings of the gay rights movement but also of all the first activists and their roles in the fight.

Worth a read for anyone who enjoys rights today that these people fought to ensure existed

[oliver · Rating 5 out of 5]

my god, i'm terrible at reading nonfiction. nevertheless, this was such an important read for me.
it's disheartening that the same problems that plague our community now were present in the 1940s and earlier--racism, trans exclusion, in-fighting, and respectability politics. these four evils must be defeated before we see true liberation.
this book has almost an overwhelming amount of information, and i will definitely need to go back and reread this at some point.
plus, the epilogue covered aids, so i obviously need to go over that in more detail.

[Porter Broyles · Rating 5 out of 5]

What a phenomenal introduction to the subject of gay rights. Like most Americans, I do not know too much about the subject. I knew the basics---during my youth and college days, homosexuality was was wrong and defined as a mental illness. At some point, in June, there was a riot at some bar call Stonewall. In the 80s/90s, AIDS was the gay disease and deadly---if you had AIDS, you were, by definition, regardless of what you said, a fag. In the 90s Clinton issued a Don't Ask Don't Tell policy, opposition to gay marrage was one of the rallying cries of the Republican Party for decades, and then the Supreme Court ruled it was legal in all 50 states.

But ask me about the history of the gay rights movement? Nada.

This book presented the subject of the gay rights struggle through two channels.

FIRST, it introduced Frank Kameny. Kameny was a Harvard educated Astronomer in the late 1950s who was fired after he was arrested for and copped a plea to a minor infraction. While the US was looking for qualified astronomers to compete angainst Russia in the Space Race, he could not get a security clearance which made him unemployable in his field. Kameny sued. He became the first person to challenge anti-homosexual issues on the basis of a violation of Civil Rights.

Kameny went on to become a leader in the gay rights movement.

I know that there are undoubtedly others, but as a primer on the subject, I thought Cervini did an excellent job in focusing to follow the life of one of those figures. This helped to make his life (and by extension others) important. The reader became vested in the story of and the tragedy that was Frank Kameny.

I don't want to spoil the story, but Kameny helped to start several political groups focused on gay rights, opposed the belief of homosexuality was by definition an illness (an idea which apparently many gay rights groups didn't oppose!), and became the first openly gay candidate for Congress.

SECOND, while telling the story of Kameny, Cervini provided a broad overview of the gay rights movement during the 50s, 60s, and beyond. I had never heard of the Mattachine Soceity, the Daughters of Bilitis, the Gay Liberation Front, the North American Council of Homophile Organizations, the role of the NC-ACLU, the Gay and Lesbian Alliance, etc.

I had never thought about the importance of whether or not the word "homosexual" was a noun or an adjective. In other words, what does it matter if a person is described as a homosexual or a homosexual (fe)male? Does it matter if "homosexual" is used as a noun/adjective? This book explores that.

While I know that when I was younger, the focus was on gays and lesbians, I didn't know much about the history involving the internal struggles/issues with in the movement concerning bisexuals and transvetites---let alone all of the other nuianced designations over the years.

This book covers it.

It even covers the areas wherein Kameny failed as a leader---e.g. his desire to keep public displays of affection out of the public arena.

Overall, this was one of the best books I've read in a long time.

One quote that stand out... it almost felt as a personal condemnation. In the 1990s I was invited by a gay friend to go with him to a bar with him. While I valued his friendship, I refused. I felt like Frank Kamedy:

“During Kameny’s first year at Harvard, someone invited him to a Boston gay bar. He wanted to go, and he knew he would likely enjoy it. And if he enjoyed it, he would likely return. And if he kept returning, if he found himself voluntarily trapped in Boston’s gay world, that would indicate that he was a homosexual, which he was not.

[Sloane · Rating 1 out of 5]

Though it provides a sense of the state-sponsored discrimination and day-to-day injustices facing the queer community in the US following WWII, 'The Deviant's War' is a reductive slog that reads like a 389-page Wikipedia article. It is a beige narrative history whose structure lies on the refrain "on X date, this happened, on Y date, this happened." It lacks complex analysis and nuanced insights — a confusing absence, even for a popular history, given that its author was trained at Harvard and Cambridge. In emphasizing chronological linearity, it ignores the dynamic plurality that is history.

It also attempts to frame Kameny as a figurehead of the gay rights movement, but prominent scholars of LGBTQ+ history have flagged Cervini for placing too much emphasis on the protagonist's role in bringing gay rights into mainstream American politics. Despite an impressive amount of research, at times it verges on the ahistorical.

I was so excited for this book, but it really was exhausting, exaggerated and, as a result, extremely disappointing.

[Adam · Rating 5 out of 5]

Wow! Eric Cervini exposes a monumental piece of LGBT history and this book is going to be HUGE! This is a must read for everyone! Book is officially out June 2nd!

[Mark · Rating 5 out of 5]

"We have information that you are a homosexual.
What do you have to say in your defense?"

Nationwide, an estimated one million persons had been arrested for being gay or lesbian in the fifteen years following World War II. That is one person every ten minutes. On April 27, 1953, President Eisenhower issued Executive Order 10450 which charged the Civil Service Commission and the heads of federal agencies the task of investigating federal employees to see if they might be a security risk. Included were gays and lesbians. Before a judge ruled against the order in 1973, between 5000 – 10,000 gays and lesbians had been fired from their federal job solely because of their sexual orientation. Many more were discharged from the military. In 1975, the Civil Service Commission ended its ban. By then, more persons had been fired for being gay or lesbian than for being charged as a communist.

Exactly two years to the date after Eisenhower signed his order, I was born in the middle of Ohio in the Midwest of the nation. America was in a period of financial and political growth but also of conformity, repression, and oppression. I remember my mother starting dinner each evening then changing her clothes and freshening her make-up before my father would come home from work at 6:00 pm. I recall my parents asking me “what would the neighbors think” whenever I did something wrong or non-conforming.

Sexuality, of course, was never discussed yet “everything” promoted a heteronormative attitude about it. “Homosexuality” was never discussed but those who “practiced” it were thought to be deviants who chose to act outside God, nature, and society. They were mentally ill, perverts, and sinful.

The United States was also in the years of the Cold War. Fear had become the foundation of the country and the government purged itself of Communists and “homosexuals” who were thought to be blackmail material and unpatriotic. So, besides being deviant, mentally ill, and sinful, those who “practiced homosexuality” were also criminals.

I came to sexual awareness in the middle-to-late 1960s. The Vietnam War and Civil Rights movement filled the news and violence had come to the streets. As I became aware of my sexual attraction to my best male friend and several male characters on television, and lacking information and role models, I began to believe the “official story” that I was sinful, mentally ill, and criminal.

However, in places like New York, LA, San Francisco, and Washington DC, a few persons like Frank Kameny--a Harvard educated man denied security clearance because he was gay--were starting to tell a different narrative. They began to say they were the experts about their own life, not those who lived outside it. “Homosexuality” was not a choice nor a disease. It was not sinful. It was an identity. It was part of who they are. It was as normal as heterosexuality. To pretend to be straight was not normal. To live a lie was sinful and immoral. These few brave persons also started to bring their story to the courts and even the streets. They started to tell a story that changed the way LGBTQ persons saw themselves.

When I entered high school, aware that I was gay but also living in a part of the country still devoid of role models, information, and a changing understanding of sexuality, an uprising in a New York gay bar in the midst of the sexual revolution led to a short period of gay liberation in large urban centers. It also began to express a nascent understanding of the diversity of sexuality.

Eventually, of course, information and changing attitudes slowly found their way to the middle of the country. Largely because of my birthdate and place of birth, I can look back at my own life and see America’s changing understanding of sexuality and identity. I can observe how information, evidence, and interpretation cause(d) me to confront myself and my understanding of who I am as a gay man.

Dr. Eric Cervini’s book, The Deviant’s War, is a rich and fascinating account of the gay rights movement in the United States during the 1950s and 60s. Using the life and activism of astronomer Dr. Frank Kameny, Cervini’s exhaustively researched book (there are almost 100 pages of references) places the early struggle for gay legal rights in the context of the Cold War, Civil Rights movement, Viet Nam protests, and sexual revolution.

Many people think of the Stonewall Uprising of 1969 as the start of the modern LGBTQ rights movement, but Cervini makes clear that event did not occur in a vacuum but was tied to these events as well as to people including Senator Joseph McCarthy; FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover; Presidents Eisenhower, Kennedy and Johnson; Bayard Rustin; and others.

The Deviant’s War, however, is not a “light” read. This is a book filled with historical details but also those that are more biographical. Therefore, the book reads like it is placed half-way between an academic text and a popular biography.

During the Eisenhower era in the United States, the federal government investigated and purged countless gay and lesbian persons from their jobs. This witch hunt, of course, filtered into the wider society. Even in the early 1970s, I had to sign a morality clause when I applied for a job as a teacher, a contract clause that could be used to dismiss me from my job.

One of those persons fired was Harvard educated Frank Kameny, a brilliant astronomer who held an occupation few could fill just as the Soviet Union launched the first satellites into space. Kameny worked for the US Army Map Service but lost his job in 1957 when an investigation revealed he was gay.

Kameny, however, refused to go quietly. He was a private man with a strong moral center and a logical mind that refused to let the illogical stand. He spent the rest of his life arguing against the state sanctioned injustice and the illogic of firing from jobs qualified and essential persons because they were gay. He repeatedly sued the US government, represented himself at court and eventually represented others. He even filed a pro se appeal with the Supreme Court—the first time gay rights was taken to the highest court. Kameny had no legal training but that he learned on his own.

In that appeal, Kameny wrote that “In World War II, petitioner did not hesitate to fight the Germans, with bullets, in order to help preserve his rights and freedoms and liberties, and those of others. In 1960, it is ironically necessary that he fight the Americans, with words, in order to preserve, against tyrannical government, some of those same rights, freedoms and liberties, for himself and others. He asks this court, by its granting of a writ of certiorari, to allow him to engage in that battle.”

His appeal went on to discuss the illogic of firing someone for being gay or lesbian. He also noted that “This [the purging of gays and lesbians from their jobs] clearly makes of the Federal employee a second-class citizen, since, upon pain of severe penalty, he may not engage, in his own time, and in his own private life, in activities in which all other citizens of the District of Columbia may freely and legally engage, and, in fact, he may not even arrange his life, or exist in a state legal to all residents of the District.”

He went on to ask, “What kind of people are these against whom our government is so viciously and uncompromisingly prejudiced?”

Though the Supreme Court denied his appeal, Kameny would not quit.

He helped found an early advocacy group (Mattachine Society of Washington) that would work for legal rights of gays and lesbians, and was one of the first to lead a picket line outside the White House in 1965 for gay rights and to organize an annual July 4th demonstration outside Independence Hall in Philadelphia.

Kameny, who was dictatorial and lacking in many customary social skills, logically concluded that the handful of protesters had to win people to their side by showing they were professional and like any other person. His was not a movement for liberation but for acceptance and legal rights. He told his handful of protesters they must wear business attire (suits and ties for men, and dresses and heels for women) and carry signs that were all the same size and stapled to wood with exactly 10 staples. His was an protest of respectability that eventually grew outdated.

In 2009, the Obama administration issued a formal apology to Frank Kameny stating “In what we know today was a shameful action, the United States Civil Service Commission in 1957 upheld your dismissal from your job solely on the basis of your sexual orientation. And by virtue of the authority vested in me as Director of the Office Of Personnel Management, it is my duty and great pleasure to inform you that I am adding my support … for the repudiation of the reasoning of the 1957 finding by the United States Civil Service Commission to dismiss you from your job solely on the basis of your sexual orientation. Please accept our apology for the consequences of the previous policy of the United States government.”

Kameny sent a reply: “Apology accepted.”

Kameny, who has sometimes been called the Grandfather of the LGBTQ Rights movement, had almost been lost to history when he died in 2011. LGBTQ history is seldom taught in schools and LGBTQ persons are seldom represented in a discussion of history even though all of us are influenced by our sexuality and society’s response to it. For example, Bayard Rustin, the man who organized the 1963 March on Washington during which Martin Luther King, Jr. delivered his “I Had a Dream Speech,” was gay. However, because the federal government was using his sexual orientation against him and the Civil Rights movement, he was kept in the shadows.

Cervini, who graduated summa cum laude from Harvard College and received his Ph.D. in history from the University of Cambridge, says that it took him seven years to research and write the book. I am not surprised. He consulted firsthand accounts, recently declassified FBI material, and over 40,000 personal documents.

Because I am not a detail person, I often had to reread some passages; the information is dense. Even so, the book held my attention and I finished it having learned so much more about the decades during which I was a young child or teen.

Ending with the year following the Stonewall uprising in 1969, I find it unfortunate that Cervini has said he does not plan to write a continuation of the story. He writes well and is clearly a gifted and dogged researcher. In fact, the book is so self-assured and the prose so readable that it is difficult to imagine this is Cervini’s first book.

Though The Deviant’s War ends with a epilogue that includes the Ohio ACLU case that led to the marriage equality decision of 2015, Cervini only spends a few pages on LGBTQ rights events occurring after 1970. I would love to see him take us to the “other side” of Stonewall and focus on the sexual freedom of the 70s that came to an abrupt halt with the arrival of HIV/AIDS in the 1980s, a disease that led to a fierce backlash from the straight community. From there he could tell the story of other defining events such as the fight to allow gays and lesbians to openly serve in the military, the efforts to repeal the Defense of Marriage Act, and the legal battles for marriage equality with the questions it raises about a white middle class gay male movement vs. one more inclusive and liberating.

Cervini’s book is an important one in LGBTQ and American history. Though Frank Kameny appeared as a chapter or a few pages in some history books, Cervini’s book may well be the first dedicated to telling the story of the man who helped create the foundation for modern LGBTQ rights.

For persons who want a greater understanding not only of the LGBTQ rights movement but also of America in the 1950s and 60s, and for those who want a playbook on activism, this book is essential. It is one of the few that tells a story often lost in a discussion of the Cold War and the country’s response to it. The Deviant’s War is a well-informed document about state sanctioned discrimination. I highly recommend it.

[laurel [the suspected bibliophile] · Rating 5 out of 5]

A history of the beginning of the modern gay rights movement in the wake of the 1950s Lavender Scare, focusing on gay rights activist Frank Kameny.

I really, really enjoyed this book—and learned a lot that I didn't previously know!

Cervini focuses a lot on what Kameny's Mattachine Society (not really related to the original Mattachine Society) did and, most importantly, did not do. Kameny was focused on respectability and integration with the heterosexual norm, which left out those who did not conform to the rigid social expectations and laws of the 1950s and 1960s. He insisted on suits for men, dresses for women, a gender conformity that downplayed the wearer's homosexuality in favor of respectability. He was also an arrogant, egotistical and sometimes volatile man with the deep belief that his way was the right way—even as the movement passed him by.

Not to say he didn't do a lot of good. The man was tireless.

But the book emphasizes the idea that if you don't fight for everyone—especially trans and gender nonconforming people and women and people of color—then you're really only fighting for assimilation into the ruling power.

Anywho, a must-read in terms of the early gay rights movement before Stonewall, and the US government's attack on the LGBTQ+ community.

[Melania 🍒 · Rating 4 out of 5]

4|5

[Michael Newcomer · Rating 5 out of 5]

An interest in The Deviant’s War was placed well before its publication, as there is a maddeningly sparse landscape of conventionally published books dealing with the early history of LGBTQ+ advocacy in the United States. Of what is available, the story tends to begin at Stonewall and move forward from there.

This review isn’t a diatribe against the lack of well-researched text there is on the subject, but an exultation of it’s merits as a breath of fresh air for a community that is starved for history.

The book is especially timely in light of the landmark Supreme Court decision that bars discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation and gender identity. A fight that was catapulted from the origins of this story all the way back in 1957.

In the acknowledgments, it is said that the book was born from a doctoral thesis by the author on Frank Kameny, the protagonist. The arguments that are presented by Kameny resemble a thesis for modern America that a post-WWII generation wasn’t able or willing to accept. Gay is Good. There is a moral argument that gay is good, and the US Government has no right to determine morality for its own anyhow.

In a story like this, especially for a young/modern audience where 50s/60s/70s public and political opposition seems simultaneously abhorrent and awkwardly familiar, context is key.

What was the US Government’s legal argument against the granting of security clearances to federal employees, if not purely for moral judgement? The picture becomes clear amongst the paranoia of the J. Edgar Hoover led FBI and the Red Scare.

What did the early Gay Liberation movement look like against the backdrop of the larger protests against the Vietnam War and for Black and Women’s Civil Rights? How did the early Homophile movement simultaneously piggy-back off of and exclude (intentionally or otherwise) these and their most vulnerable minorities to amplify their voice and position?

How was the APA so embarrassingly late to the conversation of societal punishment for homosexuals, and how did that lack of action hurt the early movement?

This book offers answers to all of those questions in a way the story hasn’t been told. I only wish this book were written many years ago, before so many of its key characters passed, so that more first-hand accounts could be included in the narrative.

It is a blessing that it was written now, and I hope that this inspires more research and authorship into the early history of an “out” America.

If you’re looking to start your education into the story of visible queers in the USA, this book is a fantastic and riveting place to start.

[Cody · Rating 5 out of 5]

I was fortunate enough to read an advance copy 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.

5 Stars

[Alex Giorgio · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a must-read for anybody interested in the American LGBTQ Rights movement. The issues that early gay rights groups had are just as relevant now, as ever. This book is a masterpiece of LGBTQ history.

[Quinn da Matta · Rating 5 out of 5]

This life-changing book perfectly documents our history and gives voice to the thousands who fought for our freedoms. It is this book that taught me more about the tenacity and the resilience of the LGBTQIA+ movement (and why those initials keep expanding). It is this book that reinforced my belief that we are descended from heroes and warriors. And it is this book that proves we can overcome all obstacles because, where this book ends, our story begins.
This book left me feeling honoured to be a gay person and proud of my community for everything they have endured, accomplished and achieved.
Meticulously researched and poignantly written, Eric Cervini has created one of the seminal textbooks of the LGBTQIA+ struggle and erected a beacon of hope for all of us who follow in their brave steps.

[Brett Benner · Rating 4 out of 5]

“We are a minority, not only numerically, but also as a result of our caste-like status in society’ -David Webster Cory, from “The Deviants War”

Exhaustively researched Dr Eric Cervini has written a fascinating, messy, complicated and anger inducing history of the start of what is today the LGBTQ movement. Roughly covering the sixties Cervini centers his book on Frank Kameny, a brilliant astronomer who is fired from his government job for indecent acts, and begins the decades long fight to regain his employment and establish his secure footing as a gay American who should be afforded the same rights as his straight counterparts.
While J Edgar Hoover worked to further suss out gays in the government, Kameny was working to establish long term social movements to eradicate the prejudices that were causing countless men and women their careers, livelihoods and in some cases their very lives. As the book progresses the sheer volume of gay rights groups and the various particpants can feel overwhelming, and by covering such a large swath of time familiar players like Martha P Johnson become secondary in this narrative, as Stonewall doesn’t even arrive until well over halfway through. But this is a small quibble because as a gay man now in my fifties, I’m frankly embarrassed I didn’t know who most of these people were and marvel at the detail he writes with. Yes there are moments that veer towards a slightly more academic recounting, but it doesn’t detract from a compelling and necessary history lesson, especially for LGBTQ Americans.

[Calvin · Rating 5 out of 5]

Gay is good. It has taken generations of grit, advocacy, and love to place me in a country where I can say and believe that. Gay is good, my friends.

[Steven · Rating 5 out of 5]

WOW. This historical deep dive lays bare what an absolute f*cking witch hunt the LGBTQ community endured during the ‘50s and ‘60s. Viewed specifically through the lens of Frank Kameny, a striking image is conjured of the continuous energy and commendable fortitude put forth to fight injustice at a very early stage. The content is so well-researched that it reads like an autobiography, while remaining highly engaging... even to those of us who would not identify as a history buff (i.e., me). I will likely not recall every detail nor did I recognize every political figure mentioned, BUT I have absolutely absorbed some eye-opening information and have been deeply moved.

[Denise · Rating 5 out of 5]

Pretty much everyone, certainly everyone with the slightest interest in LGBTQ+ matters, is familiar with Stonewall. Far fewer people are aware that the fight for gay rights didn't start there or know the names of the generation of activists that came before. Centered on astronomer Frank Kameny's long battle against the US government, this wonderful, highly informative book of queer history is essential reading for the LGBTQ+ community.

[Dylan Lyons · Rating 5 out of 5]

A must-read for LGBTQ+ folks, their allies, and anyone interested in American history. This book took Eric Cervini seven years to write, and it shows. The sheer amount of research that went into it is clear and it pays off. I learned a ton from this book and after reading it, feel even more inspired to pursue advocacy and activism for marginalized groups.