I'm Eric Marcus and this is making gay history.

I'm Eric Marcus and this is making gay history.

In 1953, President Dwight D Eisenhower signed an executive order that essentially banned gay people from federal employment.

It was an incredibly paranoid time in our nation's history.

The anti-communist thought they saw subversives behind every tree and traitors under every rock.

So the federal government set out to fire all employees they believe threatened the nation's security and gay people

were a huge risk. Why? Because they could be blackmailed by foreign spies and why

could they be blackmailed? Because they had to keep secret they were gay. And why do they have to keep secret that they were gay?

Because they could be fired from their jobs,

lose their homes, even lose their families if anyone knew they were gay.

Don't bother trying to figure out that logic,

because it'll make your head explode.

One of the people who lost his job because he was a known homosexual was an astronomer

employed by the Army Map Service named Frank Kamene. They had no idea what they were doing

when they fired Frank. Frank wound up becoming one of the most militant and

important thinkers and leaders of the LGBT civil rights movement,

long before it was called the LGBT civil rights movement,

or even the gay rights movement.

So I went to Washington to interview Frank.

It was a surprisingly mild early June day when I arrived at Frank's house in Washington, D.C.

It's a modest two-story post-war brick colonial in a leafy prosperous neighborhood, just outside

the center of the city.

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