Dr. Eric Cervini’s “The Deviant’s War”

As members of the LGBTQ community, we must pay homage to those before us who fought and helped pave the way for equality. That is exactly what Dr. Eric Cervini did in his first published book, The Deviant’s War: The Homosexual vs. the United States of America, which came out earlier this year.

Cervini, an award-winning LGBTQ historian, traced the origins of the fight for queer rights in the U.S. before Stonewall. The Deviant’s War follows the story of Dr. Frank Kameny, an astronomer working for the U.S. Defense Department in Hawaii. In 1957, he received a summons to report immediately to Washington D.C. because the Pentagon had reason to believe he was a homosexual. After a series of humiliating interviews, Kameny was promptly dismissed from his government job just like countless LGBTQ men and women before him. However, Kameny fought back.

Based on firsthand accounts, Cervini pulled court documents, FBI records, and almost 40,000 personal documents, shedding light on Kameny’s legacy as an early champion of LGBTQ equality and the Mattachine Society of Washington, the group Kameny founded that became the first organization to protest the systematic persecution of gay, federal employees.

OUT FRONT received the opportunity to chat more with Cervini and learn more about the book and Kameny’s story.Hello, Dr. Cervini! Thank you for taking some time to chat with me with me about your book, The Deviant’s War. How has it been received?
It has been a great honor to see such a demand for LGBTQ history. When I first came up with the idea of writing this book about Dr. Frank Kameny, the Grandfather of the Gay Rights Movement and the pre-Stonewall fight for LGBTQ liberation, I wasn’t sure if there would be a lot of demand for it, but it has been so reassuring to see that people care about their past and how we can learn from it to continue the fight for equality today.

Dr. Kameny was a rising astronomer who was fired from his government job for being gay in 1957. What inspired you to write this book and tell Kameny’s story?
I was in college and just happened to watch the film Milk by Oscar Award winning screenwriter Dustin Lance Black. As a 19- or 20-year-old, I had no idea about Harvey Milk’s story, and I was shocked that I had not learned it before that moment. I never heard of him in high school; I certainly hadn’t heard of him until this film, and it made me wonder who else I was forgetting or who else had history erased.

So, when I was looking at Harvey Milk on our university library database, a related figure popped up of a different name that I did not recognize, which was that of Dr. Frank Kameny. I noticed that historians had long regarded him as the “Grandfather of the Gay Rights Movement,” but there had never been a book written about him, and he had just passed away two years before that.

So, I went down to the Library of Congress in Washington, D.C. to open up his personal papers. He had donated hundreds of thousands of pages of documents; every letter he had ever sent or received was stored there, and that was seven years ago. Now, those letters are really the backbone of The Deviant’s War, and they really show, not just his story because he really is a lens through which we can understand the broader fight for LGBTQ equality in the decade before Stonewall, and also America.

I don’t think you can talk about the fight for gay rights unless you talk about the Black Freedom Movement or the Women’s Liberation Movement or trans resistance. You have to tell all these other stories and how they are interconnected to understand the broader history.

Exactly. Many believe the gay rights movement began with Stonewall, and although that was a monumental moment in LGBTQ history, you don’t really know how many untold stories there are that happened before then.
Yes, and I think that is one of my goals of writing this book. This is just one book out of dozens, if not hundreds, that should exist in our LGBTQ history. All these foundational figures who deserve their own books, people like Barbara Gittings who was a lesbian activist, or people like Sylvia Rivera and Marsha P. Johnson who were trans activists. All these figures who are just secondary characters in my book, and I have the honor of sharing their story in relation to Frank.

All these people deserve their own books, too. I hope people read the book, learn their names, learn a little bit about their stories, and then might be inspired to write their own books or their own articles about some of these other heroes in our movement.

The Deviant’s War came out at the beginning of June, and just a couple weeks later, the Supreme Court ruled that LGBTQ people could not be fired because of their sexual orientation. How exciting was that for you?
It was very exciting, and I think this is really the culmination of a 60-year battle that began with Frank Kameny and his Supreme Court petition in 1961. The very first Supreme Court petition ever by an openly gay man fighting for the rights of the gay minority, and specifically employment rights of the gay minority. That was 60 years ago, and at least, we have legal protection. That said, I think we also need to prepare for a massive resistance on the part of private employers who will continue to use religion as an excuse, a false excuse for discrimination. I think we need to be vigilant and prepare for the continuing fight.

What do you hope readers take away from this book?
With the national reckoning we have been experiencing on race relations, I hope that people read the book and understand that Stonewall was a riot. It was led by trans people and people of color, but it is not just one riot that defines us in our community. The entirety of Pride, everything that we know, our identity, our modes of resistance, was borrowed by the Black Freedom Movement. Black is beautiful became gay is good. That was before Stonewall.

The 1963 March on Washington was organized by a gay, black man named Bayard Rustin. The next year, gays were marching. So, every step of the way, we borrowed from the Black Freedom Movement. Also, we have gay rights. Not just Stonewall, but tangible gay rights because of trans women of color and their fight before, during, and after Stonewall. There is a much larger story that we must tell to fully understand the importance of black, queer people and black, trans people in our movement and to fully understand our moral obligations to those groups.

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Do you believe the Black Lives Matter movement is making a significant impact on the LGBTQ community?
Sure, and I think it always has. We would not have Pride without the Black Freedom Movement. So, when people were asking how we can celebrate Pride in the middle of a pandemic without parades, I would say you are seeing it right now. Fifty thousand people marched in New York as part of a queer liberation march in solidarity with Black Lives Matter. That is what Pride looks like, and I believe that is what will be the future of Pride. That is what it should be. It should be a march of explicit resistance against oppression of those who were the first to fight for us, and the first to be forgotten.

There were several people who lost their jobs back then because they were LGBTQ. Why do you think Dr. Kameny was one of the first people to fight back?
That is a good question. Partially, I think it was just the sheer force of his personality. He was a genius. He was a Harvard-educated astronomer; he always knew that he wanted to study the stars and study astrophysics; he was always at the top of his class, and he only valued logic.

Because he was confronted when he lost his job simply for being gay, when he was working for the Defense Department and the government told him, “You are not allowed to work for the federal government because you are immoral,” because he was subject to blackmail, he said, that doesn’t make sense.

A, I am going to argue that to be gay is a moral good, and B, I am going to make that claim as an openly gay man, as my authentic self. Therefore, I cannot be susceptible to blackmail by communism who would use my sexuality against me. Therefore, I am proving by making these arbitrary claims and using this strategy that the federal government is actually the one that is illogical, the one that is immoral, and the one that is carrying out the systematic persecution of homosexuals.

So, I think it was just a simple matter of right and wrong that was based upon his preoccupation with logic and rationality. At the end of the day, prejudice is never rational or logical.

Since The Deviant’s War is your first published book, what did you enjoy the most about writing it?
I am first and foremost a researcher. That is what brings me the most joy. Sitting in an archive excavating our past, finding stories that have been hidden or forgotten, that is what bring me the most joy. Writing it was my second-favorite thing.

Did you encounter any major challenges?
Marketing and selling is very hard because most LGBTQ history books that have been published are academic. They have been geared towards professors, scholars, and students, which is great and important, but I think it is equally important, if not more so, to be writing for the general public and to prove that our stories matter, that our stories are important and provide a guidebook for how we can continue to fight today. So, persuading the publishing industry of that fact, persuading them that there was a demand for queer history, was frankly quite difficult.

It was hard to persuade them that there was an audience, and I hope that the success of this book proves to the publishing industry that there is a significant demand for queer history. There are countless Americans out there, whether they are part of our community or allies, who want and need to know our history. I hope this is just the first of many books about our path and giving these heroes rightful due.

What made you want to become a historian and researcher?
I’m not sure [laughs]. It is a difficult profession, it is not the most lucrative, but honestly, I think it is such an honor and an obligation. It was really when I discovered Frank Kameny’s story in college and seeing the stories of so many other heroes who were before then hidden in archives, FBI documents, and government transcripts.

When you first start, and for me it was as an undergraduate, to discover these heroes, that comes with obligation because I had the option, if I wanted to, to just finish my senior thesis or finish with my master’s dissertation or my PhD. Let it just be that, or I could have introduced them to the world and make sure that their name are household names just like Harvey Milk, George Washington, or Martin Luther King Jr.

These gay heroes, these queer heroes, deserve to have their place engraved in history. So, when I stumbled upon their names and their stories, I think it would have been a shame if I just let them be forgotten. I think that is what kept me going, despite all these difficulties of being a historian, or a queer historian. You know, needing to pay the bills, but that is what kept me going, and frankly, I am so glad that I did.You celebrated the book launch with a digital book tour. How did that go?
It was a lot! We did an 18-city, virtual book tour. The original one was going to be six cities coast-to-coast, which I was very excited about. It was going to be in-person; we were going to do them with drag queens at gay bars with all these great nonprofits, but we sadly had to scrap that and build from the ground up.

I said, you know, if I am going to do it digitally, the one silver lining is that I can multiply the number of events that we do because I can just do them all from my chair. It turns out that even doing them from your chair is just as exhausting. Like a backpacking trip, I am very glad that I did it, but I would never do it again. It was worth it. I met so many incredible figures, activists, artists, drag queens, authors—so many aspects and facets of our community. I am so grateful that I was able to do it, and hopefully, the next book tour will be in person and slightly less Zoom involvement.

Do you have some other books in the works?
I have some idea, but they are in the early stages. This book was about the 60s, but I am especially interested in doing the 70s now. We will see.

Before we wrap up, are there any other projects you would like to mention or plug?
The one thing that I definitely plan on continuing is my podcast, which is The Deviant’s World. The book is The Deviant’s War, and the podcast is The Deviant’s World. I am excited to bring on other historians who study LGBTQ culture, politics, and community.

To stay up-to -date, follow Cervini on social media, or visit ericcervini.com.

Photo courtesy of Eric Cervini