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

About this book

FINALIST FOR THE 2021 PULITZER PRIZE IN HISTORY. INSTANT NEW YORK TIMES BEST SELLER. New York Times Book Review Editors Choice. Winner of the 2021 Randy Shilts Award for Gay Nonfiction. One of The Washington Posts Top 50 Nonfiction Books of 2020. 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. Based on firsthand accounts recently declassified FBI records and forty thousand personal documents Eric Cervinis The Deviants 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.