Hey, history lovers. I'm Mike Rosenwald with Retropod, a show about the past, rediscovered.

When Frank Kameney died in 2011, his obituaries called him the Rosa Parks of the gay rights movement.

Kameney coined the phrase, gay is good.

His early gay rights marches in suit and tie were the precursor to today's

raucous gay pride parades.

It was quite a life for a man whose formal occupation was otherworldly, by which I mean he was an astronomer and a Harvard-educated

one at that. But in the summations of his extraordinary life, one of the most notable achievements

went largely unmentioned. Actually, it wasn't really an achievement, at least not yet.

It was about the time he lost and lost big. After fighting in World War II, Kameney returned to the

States and picked up a Ph. a PhD at Harvard, then moved to

Washington, taking a job with the Army Map Service. It was 1957. He was gay, and back then,

that was considered immoral and unacceptable. After his bosses learned he had been arrested in a gay cruising area, not far from the White

House, they sent him a letter saying he was fired.

Yes, for being gay.

This made Kameney very, very angry.

In 1989, he spoke with author Eric Marcus about that moment.

Here's some of their conversation that was featured on the podcast, Making Gay History.

Meanwhile, by that time, I had decided that basically what this amounted to was a declaration of war

against me by my government. A, I don't grant my government the right to declare war against

me, and B, I tend not to lose my wars. Camany sent letters, lots of letters, all the way up to the Oval Office.

Nobody did a thing.

Nobody cared.

...