Since its installation in 2008, the popular exhibition entitled ‘Creating the United States’ has drawn more than 1.5 million visitors to the Thomas Jefferson building in the Library of Congress. The display is designed to demonstrate how the Declaration, the Constitution, and the Bill of Rights are “living instruments” integral to the evolution of the United States; and now, two original and highly significant documents pertaining to the gay rights movement have been added to the exhibition.
The documents in question are gay civil rights trailblazer Frank Kameny’s petition to the U.S. Supreme Court, written in 1961, and a letter to the Mattachine Society of Washington D.C. from U.S. Civil Service Chairman John W. Macy, Jr., written in 1966. Both pieces were donated to the Library of Congress on behalf of the Kameny Papers Project, an archive of the gay rights pioneer’s writings and works.
According to curators of the exhibit, Kameny was the first individual in the nation to file a civil rights violation petition with the Supreme Court pertaining to sexual orientation. After he was fired from his position with the Army Map Service in 1957, Kameny drafted the petition and stated that the government’s discriminatory actions toward gay individuals constituted an “affront to human dignity.” The Supreme Court ultimately denied the petition – but it sealed Kameny’s legacy as the founder of the American gay rights movement.
On the other end of the civil rights spectrum, John W. Macy, Jr.’s notorious ‘revulsion letter’ stands beside Kameny’s petition in the Library of Congress exhibit as a reminder of the deep discrimination that incited the movement for gay rights. In the letter, Macy justified discriminatory activity by the Civil Service by citing “the revulsion of other employees by homosexual conduct.” Macy’s letter was used as evidence in the Perry v. Schwarzenegger case for same-sex marriage in 2010, and remains a pertinent document in the ongoing fight for LGBT equality.
Bob Witeck, a co-founder of the Kameny Papers Project, explains that the inclusion of these seminal documents in the ‘Creating the United States’ exhibit shows that “telling America’s story and creating a more perfect union are impossible without sharing these testaments to our nation’s gay civil rights story.”
